bedouin kitchen, st kilda

A number of our Melbourne Peeps love the Bedouin Kitchen, and had a spectacularly delicious meal there ages before we arrived in Melbourne. So when A invited us out to dinner on Sunday night, we were very interested in what there was to offer.

The menu is not super extensive for vegans, but there are some obvious options such as dips, olives and tabbouleh. I went for the Kushery ($18.50), which was layered rice, macaroni and lentils in a spicy tomato sauce. This dish does usually contain yoghurt, but can be made without.



It was a really mild dish, not overly flavoursome, but the combination of simple flavours and the rice with lentils and pasta made this a delightful and filling dish. I would love to try something like this at home, it seems quite straightforward.

Danni wasn't feeling super, or very hungry, so opted for the Arabic bread with dips ($14.50), minus the tzatziki. This was perfectly servicable, with spices on the bread (which I always love!), but there isn't a huge amount you can say about bread and dips.

Perusing the menu, and the dishes that came out, I suspect the food would have been a lot more exciting if we ate cheese (there was a lot of baked cheese involved in everyone else's dishes). However the food we got was still quite good.



They were attentive and helpful, and very accomodating of dietary requirements. However our table ordered three serves of mashed potato (it is allegedly the best potato in the world, but it is not suitable for vegans so I wasn't invested in it). This order, though made at the same times as the rest of our ordering, failed to make it to the kitchen, and towards the end of the meal, when we asked where it was, we were told the kitchen had run out. The annoyance is less that they had run out (it happens), and more that they hadn't told us.

It was at this point that we left, because Danni wasn't feeling well, but later twitter updates indicate that maybe there was also a problem with dessert not arriving.

Food was good, points for helping us find the vegan food, but mixed feelings about the rest of the experience.



Bedouin Kitchen
103 Grey St,
St. Kilda

GF available

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.

deconstructed burritos

I'm not sure if this was part of a bid to end Same-Same Cookering (TM Miss T), or an effort to combine a number of comfort foods in to one, but recently we've been toying with the idea that a tortilla is quite similar in many ways to roti.

So we decided to try eating food on tortillas as if we were eating dahl and roti. This was a pretty genius idea.



The rice was a brown rice with red beans concoction, and I served it with some refried beans (warm, heated from a can *cough*).

As little cool sides I added 'avocado carrot with garlic salad' and 'fresh mexican chile sauce,' both from A Taste of Mexico, an awesome vegetarian Mexican cookbook. The chile sauce was nicely spicy, and I got to use coriander from our balcony garden! The combination of grated carrot with avocado was also very nice. Also added some shredded iceberg lettuce, because we had some rolling around the fridge.

This was really simple, and really delicious! I love beans and rice.

blackberry cupcakes and strawberry cupcakes

For Tuesday's brunch, I made a whole lot of cupcakes. On Friday I'd picked up some strawberries and blackberries from the markets, unable to decide which sort of cupcakes I wanted to bake.

So I baked both, halving the batter in order to make six of each. It was awesome! Also they were gluten-free, and still light and fluffy (for the most part). Hooray!



various fruits in cupcakes

The soy flour is a new addition to my gf baking, and it worked a treat! Thanks to Johanna for the tip!

ingredients
2ish heaped cups of gluten free flour (plain; I used Orgrans)
2 tablespoons soy flour
half a cup of sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
80g nuttelex/vegan margarine (melted)
4 chinese soup spoons of apple sauce
three quarters of a cup of soy milk
50g blackberries
100g strawberries (diced)

method
Combine flours, sugar and baking powder together. Add in essence, nuttelex and applesauce, then gradually add soy milk, whilst stirring. As soon as thoroughly combined, half the mixture into two separate bowls.

Into one bowl, carefully mix the blackberries. Squish one blackberry carefully, in order to get some black berry juice in the mixture. Be careful not to break any other blackberries, as this will change the colour and flavour of the batter.

Into the other bowl, mix in the strawberries. Squish a strawberry in order to get some strawberry juice in there.

Spoon in to a twelve cupcake tray. Bake for 20 minutes at about 180C.

plush pizza, hawthorn

We've had some terrible to excellent experiences in pizza since we went vegan, but I will be honest - all of those experiences were at home, rather than at a store. I think that our recent pizzas of awesome are a testament to that. We just hadn't had a fantastical, amazing pizza from a pizza shop.



That changed on Saturday, when we ventured over to Plush Pizza with Jo.

It was amazing. AMAZING. Featured here is the Satay Pizza (because penguins love pizza) and, at Jo's insistence, the Ben's Special. Not featured is the garlic pizza I ordered in lieu of garlic bread.

The satay pizza featured fried tofu, red onion, mushrooms, and roast zucchini with a satay sauce. It was fantastic. I would have eaten it all by myself, not sharing it, if I could have. I really want to eat it again. A lot.



The Ben's Special was surprisingly tasty. It had balsamic vinegar, which is an instant face pull for me, I find it an unpleasant addition to just about anything. So it was to my surprise that rather than being defeated by a pizza featuring balsamic vinegar, I found it blended really well with the avocado, tomato, mushrooms and mozzarella.

The prices at Plush Pizza are a little on the expensive side, but it is definitely worth it for an amazing vegan pizza. And the venue is cosy but friendly, with comfy seating and some nice looking mirrors. And postcards. And it comes recommended by others!




Plush Pizza
85 Burwood Road
Hawthorn

GF options (including bases) available

wonton noodle soup

You know what I love? Noodles. What a surprise! I hear you exclaim. I can tackle a bowl of noodles from a metre away, and I'm not ashamed of it.

My ultimate comfort food is any sort of soupy noodles. It is unfortunate, then, that Danni is not a big fan of soupy noodles. Last week, after suffering a very large amount of the blahs, I really wanted noodle soup, and so we negotiated: lots of wontons for Danni, lots of noodles for me.

I've made jiaozi before, and I'll confess, my wonton making is remarkably similar to my jiaozi making, except I use different wrappers.



Wontons are pretty straight forward to make. I like to either steam them or boil them, and serve them in a bowl filled with vegetables, noodles and soup. I promise that picture above has soup in it. It is just covered by a lot of noodles.

wontons

ingredients
a palmful of chinese cabbage
a palmful of enoki/golden boy mushrooms
small amount of fresh chives (chopped)
one clove garlic (minced)
half a cupish of firm tofu (approx 100g)
three or so shakes of dark soy
Wonton wrappers

method
Evenly dice the cabbage and mushrooms. In a wok, fry the mushrooms and cabbage with the garlic, in a small amount of peanut oil. After the cabbage starts to soften, add the chives, tofu, and soy. Smush and stir until it is well mixed and evenly coloured, for about three or four minutes. You may want to season with pepper, but this is not my thing. Put this aside to cool.



The wrappers need to be defrosted, but preferably fresh from the fridge. This makes them easier to handle. Please also note that the wrappers do dry out quickly, so don't leave them out for too long. Some people recommend working with the waiting wrappers covered, but I can never be bothered dealing with that.

Separate from the top, one by one. Place a small amount of cooled filling in the centre (about half to three quarters of a teaspoon). Moisten finger with water, and run around the edge of the wrapper. Fold up at the middle. Pinch in at the sides (not pictured), so that instead of being a semi-circle the wonton looks more like a trapezium.

soupening
I like to bring a big pot of stock to boil. My preference is for a soup with a full body, so dried vege stock won't be quite enough. I've got some celery pieces in the freezer, so into a pot (with vege stock in it) I'll throw one of those, plus to top of a carrot or two. This pot simmers away whilst I'm folding the wontons, then I scoop out the celery and carrot so it's just liquid.



Into the pot, by this point boiling, I will gently drop my wontons. For this step (and many of the following), the above pictured cooking implement is key. I don't know what it's called, I just know that it's essential in this style of cooking, and also for steamboats (mmm, steamboats). Anyway, using this golden wire scoop, gently lower four or five wontons into the boiling stock. Let them boil away for six or seven minutes, or until they're floating on the top (mine always float from the very start, which is why I have to time them). Put these aside.

Back to the pot, I'll add my vegies (in this instance, one carrot that has been julienned, and two or three bunches of bok choy that hav been sliced in half lengthways). After a minute or two, I will pull those vegies out, and put them in bowls, and put in some noodles, giving the same treatment.

Serve them up in large bowls. If the wontons have cooled too much or are sticking together, I will sometimes drop them back in the pot for thirty seconds to heat them through. Then pour soup over the whole lot, and serve hot, perhaps with some chopped chilli in soy sauce.


NOM.

unAustralian brunching

We took advantage of today's unfortunate holiday to venture over to Lisa's place for a late brunch.

Please don't get me wrong, I am Australian and I like being Australian, but no way am I going to *celebrate* the invasion and subsequent decimation of a people. It's disrespectful, and it erases our history, which for good or bad is still our history.

Also, as vegans, we are already incredibly unAustralian, just ask the Lamb industry and Sam Kekovich. So we took advantage of the day instead, and had an 'unAustralian' brunch (ie, no animals were injured in the makings of our brunch).

We had a small but very convincing array of sweet goods.



Cate's cinnamon scrolls were where most of us started, and where some of us sadly thought we'd have to end - covered in molten sugar and filled with the same, this sent me into a sugar coma. However do not fear, I was not defeated by this deliciousness! I soldiered on.



Kristy provided lamingtons, I believe because Toby has never before eaten their coconutty deliciousness. These lamingtons were supposed to have soyatoo whipped cream in them, but there was some sort of cream dispensing failure. They were still delicious! ETA these were in fact jelly cakes! Which I ALSO have never before had! INTERESTING.



I woke up early to my alarm this morning, in order to bake some gluten-free berry cupcakes - six strawberry, and six blackberry, freshly purchased from the Queen Vic Markets. I did this by splitting the plain batter, and then carefully mixing into each half. This was the first time I have split a batter for this purpose, and it was lots of fun!

The savouries were also worth getting up for!



Craig and Bec, after cycling all the way from Richmond, appeared with these freshly made dips: one carrot, and one capsicum, to go with Bec's freshly baked bread. It was still warm! And it was very delicious (and gluten-y. and crisp. and amazing).





Craig also provided aoli and tempeh chips. These tempeh chips were super delicious and (allegedly) super simple, I am definitely going to give them a go!



We were super lucky to end up with two potato products. I say super lucky because I LOVE potato products, so I was very interested in eating these all up. Kristy and Toby brought these potato and pea hashy things (I don't know if they had an official name). They were awesome! ETA Kristy informs me these were in fact samosa pancakes. Fantastic!



Chris concocted this baked hash thing (officially, a baked hash thing), topped with nutritional yeast/savoury yeast flakes. It was very squishy but very tasty!



At first I was really conflicted by the 'unAustralian' theme of our brunch. I mean, such a term is immediately fraught with problems and opportunities for parochial crap, and, you know, the positioning of anything that isn't meat pies or anything that is 'foreign' as being, well, foreign.

But such complications didn't prevent me from making only my favourite breakfast food ever, char kuay teow. It is the best. I eat it as often as I can for breakfast.



To round things out (or more accurately, to begin it), Lisa provided us with miso soup and some okonomiyaki. I haven't had miso soup in an age, and it was a delicious and refreshing way to start our brunch. It was great! The okonomiyaki was also pretty tasty, and as Lisa said, clearly nom because it has nom in the name!

full set of nom photos here. I will update this post with recipes as they appear on the internets. Cate has a post up about brunch.

things that didn't quite work

Here are some recent things I've cooked that haven't quite been as delicious as I might have hoped.



SJ has this really awesome tempeh bolognaise recipe, which I have made several times as the sauce for plain pasta. We thought we'd see how this went as a pasta bake, since it allegedly goes amazingly as a lasagna sauce. I topped this with grated cheezly and some nutritional yeast/savoury yeast flakes, and it didn't go that well. The sauce was either too thin to hold to the pasta, or too thick with tempeh to hold to the pasta. The very top of it, encrusted with cheezly and nutritional yeast, was quite tasty though.



The texture of this dish was perfect, and given it was brown rice I was quite pleased. However biriyani it was not. I followed this recipe ish, approximately anyway, and doubled the spices and added extra (garamasala, for example, featured heavily), and it was still kind of bland. Could have done with more spice. I might try this one again.



Lastly a curried vegetable pasty. Not sure where I got the recipe for this one, but again it was a bit bland, could have done with some more spices. Puff pastry covers many sins, but not all of them.

tofu rendang

We had a bit of a drama-rama Wednesday night, and Danni woke up feeling moderately under the weather, and had a bit of a sick day. In my family, the answer to 'feeling cold and flu-ey' is always curry, so I suggested we have a bit of a Malaysian day. 'When don't we?' Danni asked, and I suppose this is true, so we followed our delicious Malaysian treats with some delicious Malaysian curry.



I haven't made rendang in ages, and was hoping to try something new, so I modified this recipe at the star online (which to my shame, ahaha, is often my first stop when looking for Malaysian recipes).



Tofu Rendang

Rendang renders all the way down, so don't expect too much liquid from this dish.

ingredients
300ish grams of firm tofu
1 stalk lemon grass
5 fresh lime kaffir leaves
300 ml light coconut milk
2 tbl lime juice
quarter cup of stock (a vegie beef, or vegie)

for the paste
4 shallots
5 or 6 large red chillis
1 clove garlic
2 tbl dried chilli flakes
20g galangal
one small knob ginger
8 cashews
half teaspoon ground tumeric

method
Pound together the paste ingredients until a chunky paste is formed. You can make it a smooth paste, but I like it to still have some bits in it.

Squish out the water in the tofu. In a thin-bottomed pot over medium heat, add a little peanut oil with the lemon grass and the tofu. Fry the tofu for about five minutes, until it starts to colour, then add the paste. Keep frying for another three or four minutes, stirring constantly so that it doesn't stick too much. Add a tiny bit more oil if necessary. Add the coconut milk, and bring to a boil, then reduce to medium-low heat and simmer for about twenty five minutes, lid off. Stir occasionally, and about halfway through add the stock.

Add the shredded lime kaffir leaves and the lime juice, and simmer for another five minutes, or until the entire mixture has well reduced.

I served this with some bok choy and bean shoots in a little garlic-soy sauce.

pineapple tarts part two: de-glutening

Please see pineapple tarts part one: the jamening for previous adventures in pineapple tarts.

Last week's batch of pineapple tarts resulted in too much batter and insufficient jam quantities. Buoyed by my success of first time jam, I decided to go for a double batch of jam, using one large tin of crushed pineapple instead of one small tin of diced pineapple.



This was a mistake! The jam started simmering away happily, then took one million trillion years to reduce, and then started burning to the base! The end result was a very strong pineapple jam, in the wrong colour, and of copious quantities! It was perfectly serviceable for experimenting, but I would probably not serve it to anyone!

The purpose of part two was to see if I could make this batch free from gluten.



I would judge this as moderate success - the flavour of the pastry was a bit milder than I would ideally like it, and it didn't need as long in baking (the end result with the same baking time is a little stiff, clearly over cooked). The pastry goes stale after one day, but I was expecting that. Overall, however, I think I am foreseeing success in my gf pineapple tart future.

apple and cinnamon tea cake

One moderately warm afternoon a couple of weeks ago, during the Christmas and new year break, we had a friend coming over. Instead of attempting to find a place that was both open and served vegan cake, I decided to try making an apple tea cake.

It was a great idea.



I love tea cake! So light and fluffy and cinnamon-y, it is always a good time to eat a tea cake, not just at afternoon tea time!

I modified the cinammon tea cake recipe I have used previously, adding two peeled and diced apples to the mix, but keeping everything else the same. Baking time increased slightly, by about eight or nine minutes.

delicious fruit salad

A couple of weeks ago our good friends J + DB came over for dinner! Asked if they could bring anything, I answered, as I often do, with, "dessert, if you like!"

And they did!



I usually make a pretty plain fruit salad, with whatever I have on hand (preferably with lots of watermelon and oranges), so it was awesome to eat a fruit salad that was all exciting flavours and things I rarely eat!

The highlight of this fruit salad, for me, was the pomegranates. I'd not previously eaten one, and it was exciting to eat such a fun fruit! This salad also contained orange pieces, mint, lychees stuffed with crystalised ginger, and perhaps some mango.

It was delicious!

pizzas of awesome

We've had a recent run of home made pizzas, and recently invited J over to share in the noms.

Using our usual pizza base (but without wholemeal, as we are all out), we put together three awesome pizzas.



Potato and zucchini was J's idea. I sliced and fried the potatoes, then we spread out a thin layer of tomato paste with some crushed garlic and some fresh herbs, and then went to town with the potato and zucchini. This pizza was super delicious (I love potato).



I visited Radical Grocery in order to pick up some Cheezly, going for the mozzarella variety. Cheezly is always a bit on the expensive side, so we went easy, using about a third of the bar. We cut big slices (but thin) of tomato for this one, because that is my favourite way - it really helps retain the moisture and fills your mouth with delicious tomato flavour. Again, fresh herbs from the garden, and some spinach.



To round it out, I caramalised some apples and pears in brown sugar, and used the Sweet William chocolate spread on the base. I also crumbled some of their white chocolate in amongst the pear and apple pieces, and when it came out of the oven I carefully sprinkled icing sugar over the top.

Delicious! I love making pizza. It's lots of fun, and I know it's not going to be oozing oil (unless I want it to be), or accidentally covered in cheese.

ETA Danni claims dessert pizza was originally her idea, when we were still living in Perth. So I give credit to her!

pineapple tarts part one: the jamening

There's a bit of a reputation for Chinese people to not like sweet things. The evidence for this, I suppose, is in our savoury desserts and in our lack of chocolate (...valid points). This fits, I suppose, with the Nyonya kuih, sweets that are not sweet (and are, in fact, savouries), biscuits that are not really sugary. And they are delicious, my very favourite biscuits ever. More favourite than tim tams, before I went vegan!

I don't know how to describe my love of kuih, but I will try, in this way: I just found this clip on the SBS website, and it is a minute and a half of wordless kuih-making, and I spent the entire time filled with longing and delight and want (TO EAT IT ALL).

Often (but not always) made from glutinous rice flour, kuih range from cakes, to biscuits, to wafer thin pastries. And Chinese New Year is the jackpot, mountains of kuih, bright colours and biscuits that melt when you put them on your tongue. Kuih is often vegan, except sometimes you need to watch out for eggwash, or in some of the cakes actual eggs.

This CNY my kuih goal is pineapple tarts. Pineapple tarts come in three forms: closed, rolled open, and open. The first attempt at pineapple tarts began, oddly enough, not with picking a recipe (though that was part of it), but picking a style.



I baked all three, and have picked closed. Styled with patience and accuracy, they look like tiny pineapples, and the way the pastry crumbles through your whole mouth is awesome.

However before baking, I first made pineapple jam! You may remember my recent requests that people make jam and then give it to me, because I am not a jam maker. I spent some time searching the shops nearby for pineapple jam, and though I found quince, rosehip, fig, apricot, raspberry, tropical, strawberry and ginger marmalade jams, I was quite unable to locate pineapple jam. So I bought a can of pineapple instead, and made pineapple jam! It was great! Super easy, and it made for jam of perfect consistency to put inside the dough.

And so it was, two firsts in one day, labouriously playing with pineapples. The thing is, I don't even like pineapples - but I love pineapple kuih!

The recipe is not quite finalised, so more to come - I have high hopes that I can make this gluten free (pineapple tarts are one of the few kuih that are not made with rice flour). And expect more CNY posts as we get closer, and I try out more things.

curries from the asian vegan kitchen

Recently Miss T has been on a quest to end same same cookering, and this resulted in some cookering from the Asian Vegan Kitchen. As this is a book I have and haven't used it a while, I thought I would give it a go!

I was feeling in a curry mood (nb: this is actually my normal state), so I picked something with liquid, the assorted vegetables in cashew gravy (India, p18), and something with lots of spicy, the fiery potato curry (Malaysia, p160). In contrast to Miss T, however, this did not prove an end to same-same cookery.



The fiery potato curry had that strong, slightly assam, overwhelming flavour I associate with my childhood. It was not until I was pounding the spices together that I realised that the smell was so familiar, a smell I used to hate when I was a kid, and I flipped back to the book and I looked at the Malay translation: kari pedas kentang. Oh, of course.

Don't get me wrong, this curry was delicious. It would have been more delicious if I had cooked the onion for longer, but it was rich and full-flavoured, and delightfully spicy (and, incidentally, nowhere near as spicy as I had thought it would be). It's not something I've cooked before, but it's not something unfamiliar, so I was a bit annoyed at myself! It was still good, and I will probably cook this one again.



The assorted vegetables in cashew gravy was nice, but a bit bland. The recipe calls for presteaming the root vegetables - if I were to cook this again I would instead go for a longer cooking time and try to cook the vegetables in the sauce. I would probably also add a little bit more chili, and maybe a bit more coriander. It did make a nice contrast to the fieryness of the potatoes.

I modified the potato curry to make it gluten free; the cashew gravy was already gluten free. Then of course we ruined it by serving on roti, but that's because roti is the best.