SAMMICH

We only recently-ish bought a panini grill. We left our jaffle-maker behind in Perth last July, on the grounds that it was old and skanky, and picked up a cool new press a couple of months ago. The downside of a press is that I can't put baked beans in my toasties. The upside of a press is that FOCACCIAS AND SOUR DOUGH AND TURKISH BREAD OH YEAH.



Danni, since she works at home, gets most of the delicious toasties, on the grounds that she can make them more often. And then I get jealous when she IMs to tell me about them. Featured here is avocado, roma tomato, smoked tofu and cheezely, with sour dough brushed with olive oil (we had run out of nuttelex). Smoked tofu in toasted sandwiches is EXCELLENT. I highly recommend it.

nacho cheese dip

I made a nacho cheese dip for the recent gluten-free cheese picnic. The nacho cheese dip was very tasty, and I made it again on Friday, because I had the genius idea that I was going to put it in pizza pin wheels to take to roller derby on Saturday.

This recipe is super simple, and very versatile. I've modified it a little bit from the original recipe, so I reproduce it below, with pictures! Please note that I have followed the original recipe exactly before, and it works super fine.



nacho cheese dip, originally from schmooed food.

ingredients
one and a half cups of water
one third of a cup of raw cashews
four or five cherry peppers (or pimentos, I found this in the jar section of my IGA)
1 approximate cup of savoury yeast flakes
1 tablespoon cornflour (make sure this is gf!)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
half teaspoon salt
half teaspoon onion powder
half teaspoon garlic powder
lots of cumin, four or five shakes

method
Take the stems off the peppers, but keep the seeds in. This adds a nice bite! You don't need to measure out everything in advance, but with this recipe I like to, to make sure I have everything I'm supposed to have.



Then blend it all together! I like to blend the cashews first, to ensure that they're smooth, before adding the rest all at once.

After blending, dump the whole mixture into a small saucepan and stir constantly over medium heat for about five minutes. I like to use a fork for this, but a wooden spoon would be okay also.



After simmering, it should have thickened a bit. Remove from the heat and leave to cool, and it will thicken a bit more! If you find that it is too thick, then add a bit more water during blending or simmering stages. I, however, wanted it thick more like a spread so that I could use it for:



Vegan toasted cheese sandwiches, and pizza pinwheels! This was my first vegan cheese toasted sandwich attempt, and it was awesome! The cheese went perfectly - so perfectly in fact that I am thinking about making another lot of it this afternoon to keep in the fridge for emergency sandwiches during the week!

things with roasted pumpkin

We roasted a pumpkin last week, for the purposes of a leek and roast pumpkin risotto, but this left us with about a quarter of a roasted pumpkin languishing in the fridge. We didn't want it to go to waste, so we made an effort at turning it into deliciousness.



First, we picked up some fresh bread (wholemeal and multigrain, or pumpkin five seeds, something really chewy) and made some roast pumpkin sandwiches. We sliced the pumpkin like lunch meat, then heated them until they were just warm, and layered them with avocado, tomato, spinach, and hommous. Delicious!



Then I modified Pip's tomato tarts with white bean pesto (which she in turn modified from Lolo). I cut the puff pastry into quarters, and chopped the tomato slices into halves in order to fan them out across the squares. I also reduced the number of cans of beans to one, though I kept the amount of pesto at one third of a cup. I made half of the tarts tomato, and the other half little squares of roasted pumpkin. I could have piled the pumpkin and the tomato on a little heavier - the amount of puffing that took place would have allowed that. Still, these were tasty, and I will definitely make them again!