shepherd's pie

I posted the recipe for this pie some years ago in my old food blog, but I made it again last night and thought I’d post it up here.


Shepherd's Pie



This is a great pie for hiding things in. It’s so chunky, an extra ingredient is easy to slip in. It’s not necessarily going to hide the shape of the mushrooms, since mushrooms are pretty obvious, but it helps to hide the flavour and texture, if your aversion to mushrooms is, like mine was, solely texture based.

When we first went vegetarian, D declared that I had to learn to eat a lot of the dreaded mushrooms, and having recipes that made it easy to disguise the flavour really helped. And now I really like mushrooms!


ingredients

1 can kidney beans (drained)
handful of mushrooms
one tomato
half cup stock or wine
one carrot
half cup of peas
half capsicum
half an onion
chives
parsley
chilli flakes
pepper
one garlic clove
tomato sauce
four potatoes


method

Dice the carrot, onion, tomato and capsicum. Fry the onion in some olive oil with the chilli flakes, pepper, parsley, chives and a squirt of tomato sauce until the onion is translucent. Mince the garlic and fry, then add the carrot, capsicum and tomato, as well as the stock or wine. You may not need the whole half cup, though. After the tomato renders down a bit, add the mushrooms (diced or cut small) and the kidney beans. Allow the liquid to evaporate a little, then add the peas and heat through. Spoon filling into an oven dish.

In the meantime, prepare the potatoes for mashing. I like to boil them with some garlic, and mash with a little nuttelex. Spread the mashed potatoes over the top of the filling, then brush or drizzle a little olive oil.

Bake for ten minutes at 190C.

raspberry choc mud cake

I got home from work on Tuesday to find Vegan Indulgence sitting atop my computer. It was published by Aduki just in August, and I only heard of it on Tuesday - it was Davyd, in this instance, whose vegan finger was on the pulse. The book looks fantastic. It's a tiny thing, $11.95 only, filled with things that look rich and delicious.

The raspberry choc mud cake was indeed, as expected, rich and delicious. I've been cutting the tiniest pieces, and still going in to some sort of temporary sugar overload.

This was my first attempt at a layered cake, and as you can see from the photo above it was a very messy experience. I think it would help if I had a spring-form pan, which I could then wrap around as I worked up the layers. But messy or not, it was still a tasty outcome (ie, cake).

Other things that look great: black forest cake, passionfruit melting moments, orange and fig slice.

evergreen, ee beng, and luk yea yan, penang

An Auntie took us to breakfast at Evergreen Vegetarian on Jalan Cantonment. It is a general buffet self-service style place, though it does also offer ala carte dishes and bao, and there was a whole wall of mooncakes available for purchase. I had some great noodles and a tasty potato thing, amongst other dishes. I also picked up a lotus bean mooncake for later nomming (it was nomlicious).

Ee Beng Vegetarian Restaurant is on Lebuh Dickens, and due to its location near Jalan Hutton I ate there twice recently. It's also a general buffet self-service setup, with two dozen or so dishes to choose from which you then take to the counter to be measured and paid for. The noodles were fantastic, and I missed out on what my mother described as a really fantastic mushroom and broccoli thing.

Auntie took us out to breakfast a second time, and being delightful she again took us to a vegetarian restaurant, Luk Yea Yan on Macalister. Breakfasts that are common in restaurants in Australia are tasty, hash browns and baked beans and wilted greens and things, but nothing beats soup and noodles for breakfast. It was such a delight to sit there, my hand curled around a soup spoon, chopsticks in my other hand, piling the noodles on my spoon and drinking the liquid. I had a fresh soy milk to compliment it, and when I'm in Penang, I'm not the only one drinking soy milk. My mum, my aunties, we all order soy milk, and it is fresh and so fantastic.



Evergreen Vegetarian
39A Cantonment Road
Georgetown

Ee Beng Vegetarian
20 Lebuh Dickens
Georgetown

Luk Lea Yan
148 Jalan Macalister
Georgetown

restoran wawasan mutiara, penang

After we established that we needed to stay an extra week in Georgetown, investigations began to find places to eat breakfast. The hotel breakfast is cool and all, but at 42RM is quite expensive. My parents stumbled across Restoran Wawasan Mutiara, an Indian restaurant opposite the Komtar carpark and beside Bazar Komtar. We ended up visiting it so many times that my parents gave a tip to our waiter on our last visit, so pleased were they.



I tried the vegetable biryani, which I got with dahl, cabbage and beans. They were just slightly spicy, with a really great flavour. The dosai masala was fantastic, I had one filled with onion and cabbage, and was scolded for not using my sugar appropriately (or at all).

One morning we finally made it there for breakfast, where I had roti pisang and dahl, and our waiter was shocked that I wasn't eating dosai, given it is often a breakfast food and I had ordered it several times previously for dinner. The roti pisang was amazing, and once I got used to the sensation of one bite banana, another bite spicy dahl, it was fantastic. I am eager to attempt roti pisang at home.



The dahl was usually room temperature, which was a bit disappointing, because dahl should be hot lah!

As always it was easy to order vegan, though that wasn't clear from the menu, I just ordered whatever I felt like and hoped for the best, which is often what I do when I'm in Malaysia.

The watermelon juice, incidentally, was pretty tasty. We'd order four glasses of it, and after taking our order the waiter would wander past the table to the kitchen, a whole watermelon in his hand.



Wawasan Mutiara
Lebuh Tek Soon
Georgetown

wandering around penang

I've been away from keyboard for the last two weeks because I had to take an unplanned run up to Penang. I spent a lot of time loitering around Prangin Mall as I was staying at the Traders Hotel on Jalan Magazine. There aren't any vegetarian restaurants in there, but that's okay, because my favourite kitchen implement is the wok, and the tasty dishes that come out of it, ie, mee goreng, char kuay teow, etc, are my favourites. And that's easy to veganise, though most times it helps to speak Hokkien, Cantonese or Malay, because sometimes you have to do a fair amount of alteration.





The other thing I love, is that saying "vegetarian" leads to "do you eat egg? what about garlic?" and oh, I wish restaurants in Perth could be more accepting of that.*





I know the photos all look a bit same-same, and terribly poor quality due to being taken using Toy Camera (an Ixus 55), but oh how I love these foods, and how I miss them when I am not in Malaysia.




*they are not saying 'vegetarians don't eat garlic,' they are checking that I am not Jain or have some other (religious) restrictions.

I'm going to be AFK for a week or two, so if I don't reply to your comment, it's not because I'm rude, I promise.

pumpkin and leek risotto

D’s youngest brother came to dinner last night. Since their parents have been away, all he’s been eating is frozen dinners and takeout, because the only thing he claims to be able to cook is enchiladas, and he has run out of corn tortillas. Unfortunately, he hates mushrooms, so at the last minute I had to revise my original dinner plan and replace it with a pumpkin and leek risotto, which I served with a spinach and sundried tomato pasta salad, and garlic bread.




I don’t know how N felt about it all, but I’m really happy with how the risotto turned out.


pumpkin and leek risotto

Boiling the pumpkin and then frying in a frypan makes the pumpkin soft but crispy. This is also an awesome way to prepare pumpkin for pizzas. If your preference is for roasting instead, feel free, but it will add a little bit to the overall cooking time.

ingredients
one pumpkin (in small cubes)
sage
a shake or three of ground nutmeg
pinch of thyme
two cups arborio rice
five cups stock
half red onion
one leek (white part only)
one clove garlic (minced)


method

Boil the pumpkin until almost cooked, then fry in a fry pan for five or six minutes.

Dice the onion, and in a heavy bottomed pot sauté for about ten minutes, or until caramelised. Cut the leek into lengths of about five centimetres by five millimetres, and add the leek and garlic to the pot. Saute, add the rice, sage, thyme and nutmeg. Stir the onion mixture through the rice until covered, then add a cup of stock. Continue stirring the rice, allowing the stock to soak in before adding another cup.

I think fresh sage would be awesome with this, but I didn’t have any so I used ground, about a teaspoon worth. The amount used may vary.

After ten minutes, or about two cups, add the pumpkin to the rice. Continue to add the stock until the rice is soft, but with a slight resistance when bitten.

pumpkin, sweet potato and spinach triangles

I love puff pastry. Pumpkin, sweet potato and spinach are all delicious, but wrapped in puff pastry they are nomlicious. I arrived home on Tuesday, bored and tired thanks to my Industrial Ecology lecture, and D was spooning the mixture into the puff pastry and covering the kitchen in oil, it was a great way to come home, especially as the kitchen started to fill with the smell of baking pastry.

Of course the fact that this recipe was created by D is why it uses frozen spinach. I am just disclaimering!



pumpkin, sweet potato and spinach triangles

ingredients
one sweet potato
one half small butternut pumpkin
one packet of frozen spinach
three large sheets of puff pastry
rosemary
sage
poppy seeds
oil to brush


method
Boil and mash sweet potato and pumpkin. Soften/warm up the spinach, combine with the sweet potato and pumpkin, and add rosemary and sage to taste. We used dried herbs, but fresh would work fine.

Cut each sheet into quarters. Spoon approximately two tablespoons of mixture into one corner of each square. 'Approximately' because my heaped tablespoon might be heaped much higher than yours, so use your judgment. Fold corner to corner and seal and crimp with a fork (on both sides). Brush both sides with oil, shake some poppy seeds on top. Bake for about 30 minutes at 190C.

NOM.

talking about things to eat

It's IBARW this week. I don't talk about racism in this blog, because this blog is just about food. However this blog is specifically about how being Chinese-Anglo by way of SEA and living in Australia impacts my veganism and vice versa, and I'd like to take a moment to talk about food, ethnicity and language.



talking about things to eat
(or: how the words people use to describe food make me feel like a freak)

Growing up as a child, I was familiar with roasts and pasta and pizza and sausage rolls and all sorts of different foods, but almost always when I went home we'd be eating the sorts of things my mother ate as a child, Malaysian and Chinese and Indian, for the most part. We used to eat noodles all the time, and I was ten before I found out not everyone ate rice several times a day. I used to go to the Chinese butcher where I'd peer at whole animals and feet and things, but I know that not everyone grew up this way. I know that this is cultural and it is social and yeah, it has a bit to do with being Chinese from Malaysia.

When we first went vegetarian, the problems this caused for my family and the problems it caused for D's family were quite different.



Feeding us at regular family dinners was not a problem for my mother. Chinese cuisine considers meat as just another ingredient, so altering noodles, curries, and other dishes was as simple as exchanging one ingredient for another. Our meals remained mostly the same. My mother didn't blink at the shift to veganism – about 90% of people of Asian descent are lactose intolerant, so we've never been big dairy consumers – though the loss of eggs threw her for a bit. The real intellectual problem came at holiday events, where dishes become less about tradition (which I tend to view as alterable) and more about superstition – I don't eat fish anymore, so how can I court abundance? I don't eat duck, so how can I show prosperity?

Compare this then to D's family, who eat mostly European/English dishes. For D's mother, feeding us was problematic. We were served a whole lot of dishes made primarily of cheese, and Christmas was a meal of boiled vegetables and cauliflower cheese (note to all who have dinner parties at Christmas: this does not count as a meal). The shift to veganism completely petrified D's grandmother, who literally couldn't think of a single dish to serve us that wasn't a garden salad. So this situation is impacting them differently, but they're trying to think outside what is familiar to them, outside their squares, and they're trying new recipes which I think is worrying them, these unfamiliar paths.



It's interesting, the ways in which we think of food. People have such different backgrounds, and such different habits and histories, but we get used to these things and that's reflected in the ways we think about food. Chinese cooking places so much emphasis on a tiny bit of this, a tiny bit of that, but all elements are essential, and so my mother said to me once, "How can you be Chinese if you don't eat meat?" just the same as I believe she would have asked how I could be Chinese if I didn't eat vegetables, or mushrooms, or rice. Over the years I've become more familiar with English/European food, but it seems so much more focused on the big hunks of things, and so D's family's reaction was (and for some of them, still is) more along the lines of, "But what can you eat?"

I read Jay Rayner's attempt at a week of veganism, where he suggests that "ethnic is the default position for the vegan." I bet he uses 'exotic' ingredients in his cooking, too. I have an ethnicity; we all have ethnicities: the fact that the food I grew up with is easier to veganise than the stuff he ate as a child doesn't make me 'ethnic,' it makes me Chinese. Using these words trivializes the decision I have made to be vegan, and it others my family and my whole freaking life, because using words like that aren't just saying that I'm 'different,' they're saying that I'm 'other.' And he is not alone in this, many people are guilty of this all the time. That you're trying something you've never before heard of doesn't make it 'exotic,' it makes it new to you. And you definitely don't get to describe it as exotic if you're talking about it on the internet - there's a good chance it's not new to your readers. Just because the things I did as a child are different doesn't make me special, and I certainly don't want to feel like a freak. And I realise it's just semantics but semantics are important, because they indicate attitudes - so really, it's not that I have a problem with the word 'exotic,' it's that I have a problem with the attitude that leads to its use, that the food I eat is 'not normal,' that it is other, that I am other.



A guy I know can't pronounce char kuay teow, he always calls it 'koi char' and he thinks that's hysterical. So he can't pronounce the name of a dish that I've been eating since I was little, growing up in the same country as he did, because it's made up of words he's never been bothered learning. Why is that funny? If anything, it's a little sad for him – I can pronounce everything that he eats. If it's anything else, it's a reflection of his privilege, and it's racist – it's different so it's funny. And it makes me feel like a freak, and it makes me hate him.

My food is not exotic because it's different from your food, it's just my food. And it's not ethnic because that doesn't mean what you think it means. I have enough trouble trying to work out how to incorporate the old food superstitions into my life as it is: I don't need to feel like some sort of foreign novelty whilst I'm doing it. So do me a favour and mind your language.


(With thanks to J + L for reviewing this for me)

potato rendang

Although a thick, spicy rendang has been one of my favourite dishes for much of my life, I have never before cooked it from scratch. For years I have used a packet sauce, because I have long been concerned that I would fail to get the consistency right. Rendang is a dish popular in Malaysia and Singapore, and although I think it originated in Indonesia it will always be a dish that always makes me think of Malaysia.

I was feeling quite a lot of trepidation going into this, worried that there was some essential animal-based element that was going to cause a failure on my part. My memories of rendang are so tied up with meat things, and I was concerned by the texture first, and the flavour second, and I was pretty sure that the end result would be "a thing, not rendang."

I describe it as ‘spicy,’ but in this instance I don’t mean hot, I mean thick with spices. Four tablespoons of chilli flakes sounds like a lot, but given the coconut milk it renders down to add delicious chilli flavour with very little bite.

Cooking it with potato is a bit odd; I suspect that seitan would work better, as it would allow the juices to soak in more effectively (and more in the way of beef), but it was still really tasty, and evoked the memories of that first bite, the odd combination of rich coconut and red chilli and my hands, covered in brown sauce. And it still tasted like rendang, and I'm so pleased.


potato rendang

This dish will take some time, like a curry. I have this terrible habit of using a wok for the rendang, but it would probably work better in a heavy-bottomed pot.

ingredients
five potatoes (sliced into short fingers)

two tablespoons of lemon juice
half cup of stock
400ml(ish) coconut milk

three or four lime kaffir leaves

paste ingredients
one shallot
2 cloves garlic
ginger
four tablespoons dried chilli flakes
half tablespoon ground cumin
tablespoon coriander seeds
shake of ground cloves
short length of lemon grass


method

Pound together the paste ingredients. Dry fry until fragrant, add the coconut milk, simmer for ten minutes. Add the potatoes, continue simmering with the lid on for thirty minutes. Mix the stock, lemon juice and extra chilli flakes if required, and add, along with the lime kaffir. Continue to simmer with the lid off until the liquid has reduced and the potatoes are tender.

Serve with roti or rice, but this would work best with lontong.

asian food fair, fremantle

On Sunday we ventured down to the Asian Food Fair held on the Fremantle Esplanade. The fair was to raise funds for people aiding in Burma, organised by the Buddhist Society of WA.



One of the things I love about a lot of Asian food is the way we categorise it. The fair advertised that vegetarian and non-vegetarian food would be available. 'Non-vegetarian' is not a term you see so much in Western restaurants, but you see it a fair bit especially in Indian restaurants. I love it because 'vegetarian and non-vegetarian' usually indicates there's some thought that's gone into the vegetarian food, and I have made this choice to not eat animal products but it's nice to have some choice in my food, too, which often people don't understand. I was at a workshop yesterday and seeing if there was anything I could eat (yes, I had told them in advance) and there was one thing on the menu that was probably vegan. I commented "at least there's one thing" and the guy I was with said, well, that's your choice. Which fills me with rage, like because I make this choice I should have to not eat delicious food?

Anyway, there was lots of vegetarian and vegan food at the food fair. The line for the dosai was sadly very long, so although I could smell it as we wandered past we walked on by, I will make it up to myself by going for dosai sometime soon. D and I shared a fairly average miscellaneous Indian curries and rice (it was a bit cold), and some mee goreng when the Buddhists ran out of char kuay teow.

When I have been away too long, I forget things, and the look the guy gave me when I asked if there were eggs in it and he said, no, it's strict vegetarian was a moment of oh, of course, how embarrassing for me.



We took home some mock chicken rice, which D and I fought over for breakfast (we both ate it), and some bacheng, which we have yet to eat but which will hopefully be delicious. The chicken rice was a great way to start the day, and also had some char siu which was a surprise delight, and I wish I could buy it more regularly.

The great thing about Chinese cakes is that they are often vegan by default, made only of flours and nuts and things, but I wasn't in the mood and D doesn't like them, so sadly we passed those by.

zapata's mexican restaurant, fremantle

As part of my current obsession with Mexican restaurants, last week we went to Zapata’s in Fremantle.

The menu is fairly extensive, and though I found my portion size to be a little on the small side the prices do reflect that, so next time I’ll probably order something a little more expensive. M ordered the fajitas, for example, which are among the more expensive items on the menu and he was unable to finish his meal (though he really wanted to).



The spicy was spicy, but my enchilada was soft and delicious and everyone (all ten of us) enjoyed their meals, and I will definitely be going back. On Tuesdays they do cheap tacos and cocktails, I understand, and everything that we wanted vegan came out vegan.

They are able to do separate billing if you let them know before you order. I can't remember how they were for gluten-free options.

Zapata's Mexican Restaurant
Shop 30, South Terrace Piazza
Fremantle
(opposite Gelare, above the Pickled Fairy)

namaste indian restaurant

My family loves talking about food, and I am no exception to this. We love talking about restaurants we’ve visited since last we spoke, food we’ve bought and food we’ve made and it’s such an important part of our lives.



My parents like to talk about this Indian restaurant, it’s tiny and rarely very busy. The chef is an accountant by day, and a chef by night. His three children wander about the restaurant working as waitstaff. My mum says to him, you would get more business if you advertised at all! but he protests. He likes it this way, it’s a hobby. He catered for my father’s birthday this year, and when my parents didn’t visit for three weeks the chef started to fret, assumed that we must have been disappointed.



Last night we visited and drastically over ordered. We ordered a mixed vegetable curry, a palak aloo and a chana masala (I thought of you, SJ). My parents also ordered some meaty dishes, hence the over ordering. We had some breads, too: the roti was a bit whatever, but my sister liked the naan and the chana came with bhatura, which our waiter described as naan bread that’s been covered in oil and fried instead of baked tandoor. It was so tasty, really great, it was kind of like a donut and so oily and crisp. After I got home I googled for a bit, and I’m now concerned that it might have had yoghurt (some recipes do, some recipes don’t), so my recommendation for the bhatura is cautious due to that, but I’ll ask next time and we’ll see. I didn’t think to ask this time because he described it as naan batter.



The palak aloo was also pretty fantastic, combining two of my favourite things (potatoes and spinach) into one creamy, tasty dish.

The service is very laidback (the chef's son argued with me about both what time we'd booked and how many we'd booked for in a very 'whatever' sort of way), but it is very fast, and they're super helpful and friendly.

Namaste Indian Restaurant
1/305 Great Eastern Hwy
Midland

homemade birthday food

It was my birthday recently.



On Friday D’s mum tried some new things, a green split pea soup and a kumara peanut coconut thing. I saw her recipe books lying around but I forgot to note down which ones they were, so I can’t tell you where these were from. The peanut thing was really tasty. This doesn't mean that the soup wasn't tasty also (I know that she will read this and fret)! But the peanut thing was the highlight.



On Sunday my mum cooked a whole lot of my favourite food, a sweet pumpkin curry, a chunky dahl (filled with vegetables) and pad thai. Not pictured: delicious, flaky roti. For dessert we had a fruit salad filled with my favourite fruits, watermelon, papaya, banana, lychee, orange, mangosteen. Not exactly fruits that are in season, but fruits I love a lot. If only there was also rambutan! We also had some lime sorbet and some mango sorbet from a local store. The lime had this delightful, tart taste, I really liked it.



Then we played mahjong, and I felt really lucky to be fed all this food and then able to play my favourite game (which is played at birthdays, weddings, etc, so appropriate to the day).

apple danish

Since the success of last week’s pastry-based experiment, I’ve been thinking about the other delicious things I can make with puff pastry. After many days of deliberation, I decided the number one priority was to try making apple danishes, a treat that I have long missed.

apple danish

This recipe is fast and simple, and quite possibly going to be a great new addition to dessert times at dinner parties.

ingredients

2 green apples
nuttlex
¼ tsp cinnamon powder
Shake or two of ground nutmeg
1/8 cup of brown sugar
1 or 2 large squares of puff pastry

method
Peel and dice the apples. I like to use Granny Smiths for baking and desserts (though not for fruit salad). Melt a tablespoon or two of margarine in a pot, add the apples, cinnamon, nutmeg and brown sugar. Allow to simmer for fifteen minutes. The apples should be soft, but should retain their shape. Remove the pot from the heat, and leave to cool.

Cut the puff pastry in to four squares. Depending on how much mixture you like to use and how big the apples are, you will need between four to eight squares. Spoon the apple mixture into the centre of each square, I think two or three tablespoons is about right. Fold two opposite corners to meet in the middle over the apple mixture, press to seal. Brush with melted margarine.

Bake at 220C for 15 to 20 minutes. Eat hot, but remember that apple mixture burns! I always learn that one the hard (but delicious) way.