bush tomato marinade

Bush tomato is not really tomato, it is more closely related to eggplants but it looks a bit tomato-y in its fruit form and colonialism and English, ugh, yo. They're found in various species and forms across Australia and are super delicious but also occasionally poisonous! Which is a great punchline for a joke about Australia, I guess. Because it's so widely spread it has a lot of indigenous names, commonly akudjura (when crushed or powdered) or kutjera.

Anyway in my quest to use more indigenous spices that have been pushed aside by racism and the euro-centricity of Australian cooking, I am currently playing with bush tomato, and at the recent vegmel 4th birthday picnic I made a bush tomato salad where I marinated basically everything in bush tomato. This is the GREATEST MARINADE ever. If I ate meat I would put it on all of them, but I don't so TOFU and maybe I have yet to try tempeh with it but I'm sure it'll work.

Bush tomato tastes smokey and kind of like amazingness.

BUSH TOMATO MARINADE

2 tbl ground bush tomato (I get mine from Gewurzhaus on Lygon Street where they love me)
2 tbl sunflower or macadamia oil
2 tbl olive oil
1 tblish of minced garlic

Mix it all together, slather it on some tofu and leave it to sit. This amount goes across about 400g of tofu (firm! as always with marinading).

I served it with shaved carrot and zucchini and some cherry tomatoes, in a bush tomato-based dressing.

BTW if anyone in the Melbournes knows where I can buy not-ground bush tomato, please let me know, I want to try turning these into scones.

fancy eats at capital m

I spent most of yesterday in the vicinity of Xuanwumen, suspiciously close to my work despite it being a public holiday (端午节, the dragon boat festival). As a break between meandering around Niu Jie and heading down Liulichang Jie (which is the calligraphers' area), C (my companion for the day) suggested we drop into Capital M for lunch.

I've been to Capital M only once before, to meet Senator the Hon Bob Carr, and acknowledged it was a bit swanky without really taking in quite how swanky it was.

After having a two hour, three course meal, and spending way more money on one meal than I have previously in Beijing, I, uh, now get the idea just how swanky it is.


Unsurprisingly I couldn't eat any of the set menus, but with a bit of negotiation I was still able to get a meal with some amazing moments. Such as this salad, above, with grape fruit, flower petals, and an assortment of leaves, in a light dressing. I hate dressing, and yet I still found this absolutely delicious.



I followed this up with a modified pasta, ordered without the anchovies (ps, things that taste terrible: anchovies), but with everything else: capers, olives, tomato. This was very oily, and C, who is Italian, made fun of me for ordering pasta outside Italy.

Finally, to round out my meal, I ordered the fruits with sorbet, which turned out to be made with a coconut milk base, and was rich and creamy and delicious.

Not pictured here: the Turkish Delight with which we ended, nor my delight over soft, fresh, crispy, and most importantly not-sugary bread.

Capital M

3/F, No 2. Qianmen Pedestrian Street
(just south of Qianmen)
Beijing

前门步行街2号3层

eggplant salad

emilly made an eggplant salad as her savoury contribution to the planet vegmel picnic. it was super tasty, and filled the house with the smell of eggplant that was a) delicious and b) not cooked by me, which i like (cooking eggplant makes me nervous). she is not really a food blogger, so i have volunteered to blog the recipe on her behalf!



eggplant salad

this is a little bit inspired by greg + lucy malouf's soused zucchini recipe, so you could probably make this a zucchini salad, if you were that kind of person (i am not. well, not in salad).

ingredients
1 medium sized eggplant
lots and lots of salt
olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice (or red wine vinegar)
1 teaspoon castor sugar
2 teaspoons sumac (plus some extra, if you like)
fresh coriander and/or parsley

method
cut up the eggplant. thinnish slices is best but emilly did it in chunks, and was then cursing the chunks during the entire cooking process. put the eggplant into a colander with lots of salt on each surface; put a plate on the top and some cans to weigh it down and press the eggplant, and leave for at least half an hour.

rinse the eggplant off, pat it dry with a paper towel, and then get more paper towel ready so you can drain the eggplant. fry with what seems like a painful quantity of oil. if you sliced it, you could probably brush each side with some oil so that you don't end up using equal quantities of oil and eggplant, but it cooks nicer and faster with plenty of oil.

for the dressing, combine lemon juice, sugar and sumac. mix together the eggplant and the dressing. this can all go in the fridge if you have prepared it in advance! then when it is time to go to the picnic/serve the salad, add some chopped parsley and/or coriander and sprinkle it over the top!

some salads and things

Ages and ages ago Em blogged about this quinoa avocado salad, and I promptly forgot about it until Michael also blogged about it.

I totally slacked off, using lemon juice (from a bottle!) instead of lemons with their zest, and I skipped the coriander and increased the amount of sultanas slightly. I also neglected to toast the sesame seeds, because I was trying to keep my dishes down.

I served this with some tempeh (over-marinated, I'm sad to report) and a curry-ish noodle salad (inspired by Gen at FoE, but unlike hers mine was a complete failure).

easy brown lentil salad

As the weather warms up (not that today is that warm), I've been making some salads. My salad making has become distinctly influenced by the salads made at Friends of the Earth in Collingwood, which is not a bad thing at all; the focus at FoE is on really simple, roundly nutritional salads, and it's exposing me to all sorts of salad combinations I'd never previously considered!



Twice now I've made this lentil salad at home. If you use canned lentils (which - this was my first time!), then it's fast and easy, and delicious! It goes well as a side with pies, or puff pastry triangles.

easy brown lentil salad

1 x 400g can brown lentils, rinsed well + drained
1 carrot, peeled + diced tiny
half a punnet cherry tomatoes, halved
handful spinach, rinsed + torn
half an avocado, diced
1 - 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, preferably fresh but does not have to be

method: combine all the ingredients. serve or eat from the bowl.

super amazing tempe salad

Cast your mind back to Saturday afternoon. I'm not sure how it was for you, but in Melbourne it was warm and we were feeling lazy. Danni thought we should use some spinach, since the spinach we are currently growing is quite amazing in its size and availability. Possessed by something, I don't know, Jo suggested salad.

I know, I know, we're vegans. We need to avoid salad, to convince all those doubters that there is more to veganism than just salad! Think of all those delicious vegan, non-salad meals you've eaten! Think of all those terrible vegan salads you've been forced to endure!

This was not one of those salads. It was, in fact, totally worth being vegan for. (ignore that dangling preposition)



We took our inspiration from Asula, the AMAZING chef on roster at FOE on Saturdays. He cooks the greatest tempe ever. Apparently it is handmade locally by someone, and then Asula works some sort of magic on it so it's really delicious.

In a lunchbox, I combined equal parts tamari and light soy sauce (approx four tablespoons of each) with about half a teaspoon each of ground cumin and ground coriander, and one clove of minced garlic. I cubed my tempe erratically but vaguely in similar sizes, and coated it all in the mixture. Feel free to shake some more soy sauce over the top if it doesn't look moist enough. I put this in the fridge to marinate for about half an hour. Just a note - if I were doing this for gf buddies, I would drop the light soy and double the tamari.

At this point I ventured out of the house to buy some spirits, and Jo and Danni chopped up a handful of walnuts, one beautiful avocado (it is important that the avocado is beautiful), one punnet of cherry tomatoes, a pear and a carrot, which they julienned. They combined this with freshly picked spinach from our garden, and a little bit of lemon juice.

Upon my glorious and successful return, I fried the tempe in some peanut oil (you can use vege oil if you need to avoid peanuts). Don't be timid with the oil, you don't want to be deep frying but you want the tempe to crisp right on up. Fry, turning as needed, for about eight to ten minutes, until crispy and tasty-looking. Then throw it in the salad, as I did, and serve up with something delicious on the side. In our case, it was some left over lentils from FOE. In your case, maybe the world's greatest vausage rolls or something similar.

lazy day salad-based noms

D works from home, and as the weather (very very slowly) creeps back to warm, likes to indulge in some salad-based lunches. These are pretty easy to prepare, and easy to find the ingredients for, as there's a grocery/bakery on the corner, about fifty metres from the front of our apartment block.



The first of these was a tofu and salad wrap. Fresh lavash bread, with some leftover fried tofu, hummous, a Coles mixed salad bag and some King Soyland mayonaise. I offer no verdict on the deliciousness of this wrap, as I was not home to experience it, but D assures me it was delicious (and it was also repeated for lunch the next day).



Later in the week I was home for lunch, and I can assure you that this salad roll was indeed delicious. I picked up some fresh turkish bread rolls from the corner grocery (Omara, on Sydney Road, for the curious), a roma tomato, an avocado, and some baby spinach, and grated some carrot. Also added some hummous (because we're totally on the hummous train at the moment), and some soy mayonaise.

Sometimes I forget how delicious the really simple, easy, fresh vegan food can be. It can be really delicious!

quick mid-week meal: fry's vegan schnitzels + salad punctuated by fruit

Sometimes, you just can't be bothered spending more than ten minutes in the kitchen.



Fry's has this great range of vegan products, schnitzels and burgers and things. They're individually wrapped, which makes me frown quite a lot, but as an occasional lazy treat I can deal with that. I've found them for sale in Woolworths, in the freezer section.

D has never been a big fan of "meat in a lump," (how D grew up in a mostly English household, I'll never understand) so we had this in a bun, spread with avocado, hommous and some delicious fried mushrooms. We also served it with a great salad, brimming with deliciousness (ie, avocado, spinach, carrot and mushrooms) and punctuated by some orange. I love adding fruit to salad, I don't know what it is, but a little fruit really adds something great to salad. I also like adding plum or pear to salad (but it always has to be fresh, it can't be canned).

gado gado

Gado gado is an Indonesian dish, thick with peanut sauce and raw vegetables and lontong and tofu and it is super delicious. It is popular as a meal, or as just another dish in a long meal. It is also very popular in Malaysia, known as either gado gado or in its variation as pasembor. Pasembor is usually identical to gado gado, but might include yams and be made using groundnuts. It is still super delicious, either way!



gado gado

This is a relatively uncomplicated recipe, and though it does involve trying to do three things at once, it is over quite quickly. As there are so many elements, I've broken this recipe down in to parts: peanut sambal, lontong, and assembling the gado gado. Lontong is one of my very favourites, compressed rice; it is an essential part of satay sticks, and gado gado. The recipe I have included here is cheating, but I am usually too lazy to find pandan leaves.

peanut sambal
quarter of a cup vegetable oil
one and a half cups of raw peanuts
five fresh red chillis, sliced and deseeded
1 teaspoon tamarind juice
2 tablespoons grated palm sugar
5 lime kaffir leaves
2 cloves garlic, minced or diced
1 tablespoon dark soy
1 tablespoon kecap manis
one(ish) cup of water

In some vegetable oil, stirfry the peanuts for about four minutes. Be careful not to burn the peanuts, though you have some leeway. Use your wok spatula to lift and drain the peanuts - if you don't know how to do this, just use a slotted spoon. Set aside. If there is an excessive amount of oil left in the wok, and there probably will be, remove some, until only two tablespoons of oil are left. Add in the chillis, tamarind juice, palm sugar, garlic and the lime kaffir leaves. Stirfry on medium heat for two or three minutes, then add a quarter of a cup of water, and keep bubbling and tossing for another minute. Remove from heat. After the peanuts have cooled a little (five to ten minutes will be plenty), combine the chilli mixture (minus the lime kaffir leaves) with the peanuts in a blender or a mortar and pestle, and pound or process until paste. Gradually (as in, a quarter of a cup at a time) add about one cup of water, as well as the kecap manis and the dark soy.

lontong
Cook some long grain rice in your usual way, but add an extra half again the amount of water. Line a long, flat dish with cling-wrap, and scoop the rice in. Press flat. Each piece should ideally be two or three centimetres in height, to give you some idea of the size of the dish you will need. Cover with a clean towel, and layer heavy things on top of it, such as containers with food, and place flat in the fridge. Leave to set for six or seven hours. When it is firm, take out of the fridge, gently lift from the container, and cut in to cubes. You can serve this with gado gado or satay, it goes unbelievably well with a warm satay sauce.

If you are serving gado gado as a meal, you will want half a cup of uncooked rice per person when making the lontong.

gado gado
1 potato
1 carrot
a handful or two of snow peas
a cup of bean sprouts
some doufu puffs/fried tofu
lontong
a whole lot of peanut sauce
a small amount of cauliflower

Boil and cube the potato. Julienne the carrot, top and tail the snow peas, and blanch. Cut the cauliflower in to tiny flowers (you can serve this raw or boiled). Prepare bean sprouts, and lay out on a serving dish with potato, snow peas, carrot, cauliflower and doufu. Smother with peanut sambal.

You can sub in and out vegetables as it takes your fancy, I like to use chinese cabbage and capsicum too.

no croutons required - a visual delight (and some potato salad)

I keep meaning to participate in No Croutons Required, a monthly food blogging event, but every month it's one thing or another. Last month I sulked that Johanna (from Green Gourmet Giraffe) beat me to blogging about laksa :P. The month before I decided I couldn't deal with fruit and salad, it being too cold. This month, however, I am totally here!

This month's theme for No Croutons Required is a festive, seasonal picture to bring a taste of Christmas!. Being Northern-hemisphere biased, the request included a wintery scene, to which I laugh.


zanchey at swanbourne

With the onset of the warm weather (37C, finally!), it was time for the first beach visit of the season. Sunday afternoon I packed up a potato salad, some sushi and some jam drops, rummaged around for my bathers and quick-dries, and we made a detour to the bottle-o before heading over to Swanbourne, about twenty minutes away from our house (and just north of Cottesloe).

We met up with Sheeba, Zanchey and Zanchey's dog Jackie, frolicked in the surf for a bit and got sand everywhere.

This is Zanchey's only beach trip for a whole month, as he heads off today to the wilds of deepest darkest England for Christmas, and do you know what England doesn't have? Beaches. I should have given him an extra jam drop to make up for it.


potato salad and tree

No recipe was required for this entry, but what is a photo of food without a recipe?

potato salad

This is a bit of a riff off Emmy's potato salad, which you can find here.

ingredients
four or five potatoes (skin on)
half a cup of rich stock (or half a cup of boiling water and a lot of stock powder, because you want the stock to be strong)
1 clove garlic, minced
about one eighth of a red onion, diced very finely
a handful of snow peas, chopped roughly
one quarter of a red capsicum, diced
salt and pepper
small handful of parsley and chives (well chopped)
a tiny bit of lemon juice
1 tps white wine vinegar

method
After scrubbing thoroughly, boil the potatoes, skin on, until cooked mostly through. Carefully but roughly dice, and combine with snow peas, onion and capsicum.

Mix together the vinegar, salt and pepper, stock, lemon and garlic. pour in to potatoes, add chives and parsley, and stir through. Leave the potatoes to soak in the stock mixture.

pasta salad with five-spice tempeh

Last week I made five-spice tempeh twice in a couple of days. The first time I served it more traditionally, with rice and gailan and things, but the next day the weather was quite warm and I’m trying to get more into salads this summer, so thought I’d try my hand at a pasta salad.

five-spice tempeh pasta salad



ingredients
five spice tempeh
½ avocado (diced)
¾ pack pasta spirals (I use the 500g packs)
half a dozen sundried tomatoes (roughly chopped)
1 cup beanprouts (washed and tails off)
handful of snow peas (chopped into four or five pieces, ends removed)
half a dozen mushrooms (sliced)
a large handful of spinach
peanut oil

2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 clove garlic (minced)
1ish tablespoon chili flakes
half cup vege stock
one shake apple cider vinegar
shake or three sesame oil


method
Prepare the pasta spirals.

Prepare the tempeh (link). Don’t clean the wok after frying the tempeh; instead, add a little more peanut oil and fry the mushrooms. Due to the method used for the tempeh, there should be crispy spiced bits floating about in the oil. This will give the mushrooms a slightly spicy, wok-hei sort of flavour.

Combine the lemon juice, garlic, chili flakes, (hot) vegetable stock, vinegar and sesame oil. Mix until well combined. Drain the pasta, rinse in cold water, and in a large serving dish combine with avocado, tomatoes, beansprouts, snow peas, mushrooms, and spinach. Pour in the dressing and mix well. Leave to soak in for a few minutes, top with tempeh and serve whilst the pasta is still slightly warm.


This time around I used baby spinach, but not-baby spinach will work fine.