kari kapitan - nonya (mock) chicken curry

My childhood memories are filled with spices: eyes watering as my mum added too much chilli; ears echoing as she pounded spice using mortar and pestle; hiding in the front room as she made blachan.

Nonya (from the Malaysian Straits) curries are heavy with chilli and coconut and simmered for hours. The smell weaves through the house and you know deliciousness is ever so slowly nearing. There is a comfort there, still, in curries on all days, no need to restrict them to only cold days.

Kari Kapitan is one of the first things I learnt to cook, I was reluctant to leave my mum's daily provisions without being able to provide it for myself. After we went vegetarian, I did not even try to convert this, because the way the chicken falls from the bone is such an integral part to the dish's flavour, I thought I would not be able to replicate it, and I wanted to leave it perfect in my memory rather than mess it all up.

In January, in preparation for a curry party (which I will blog about eventually), I took a leap of faith and gave it a go, using mock meat (which I never use), and I was so excited as the smells started to float through the house, the chilli and the potato and the garamasala. When I sat down I tried my own curry first, such a slight but I couldn't wait, and it was just as I remembered, the bite of the chilli and the gravy, coconuty and sour and just perfect.

It's so important to me that after all this time, I am able to have one of my favourite foods, something that I thought I wouldn't get to eat ever again. This is the first time I've posted a recipe with mock meat, as I try not to eat it too often, but in this instance there is nothing that will give quite the same texture and result. And it's such a wonderful result.



kari kapitan (Nonya mock chicken curry)

This is a very simple version of an old favourite. It can get more complicated than this, but this is a great way to indulge in an old favourite without too much trouble.

Mock chicken is not for everyone. It's made from gluten, or soy, and occasionally dairy, so check the packet.

ingredients
1 shallot
1 clove garlic, minced
1 heaped teaspoon dried chilli flakes
1 heaped teaspoon garamasala
3 curry leaves
3 lime kaffir leaves
3 medium to large potatoes, peeled and diced (some small cubes, some larger)
1 cup mock chicken pieces
a large handful snake beans (cut in thirds)
1 tomato, diced tiny
1 large can coconut milk
1 cup vegetable stock


method
Using a thin-bottom pot, fry the shallot (sliced) in some peanut oil with the garlic, until it starts to discolour. Mix together the chilli and garamasala with a little water until a thick paste is formed, and add this paste, as well as the mock chicken, to the pot. Braise the chicken, and coat well in the paste. Add the potato, tomato, lime kaffir leaves and curry leaves, as well as the stock. Add extra water so that the ingredients are almost but not totally covered. Simmer on low heat with the lid on for about thirty minutes, then add the snake beans. Add extra water if necessary, and replace the lid. Simmer or another twenty minutes, then add the coconut milk. Leave to simmer with the lid off for ten minutes. Smother rice in the gravy and serve.




I am posting this for the WYF Cuisine Event.

revisionist bread history

Although we had a delicious bread success last month, D and I are revising the bread making, in the hopes of creating the perfect bread.

Our most recent attempt saw us lengthening the second kneading, extending it up to about ten minutes. We then pushed the dough into the greased baking tray, and left it for a second rising, of about forty-five minutes. This allowed the dough to seal in those places where we had mixed in tomatoes and oil. I think next time I'm going to reduce the amount of sugar in the initial dough, in the hopes it strengthens the gluten strands.

vegetus' vegan carbonara

Vegetus shared this recipe yesterday, and D and I promptly gave it a go this evening, with a few modifications. It was quite easy, done in the length of time it takes to boil the fettuccine, and it was tasty.



vegetus' carbonara pasta

ingredients
1 clove minced garlic
olive oil
shake of dried parsley and marjoram
large handful of button mushrooms, sliced
some sun-dried tomatoes, sliced long
long pasta
1 tin cannellini beans, drained
pepper and salt
soy milk
a dozen cherry tomatoes, halved

method
blend the cannellini beans with a little soy until a nice smooth sauce forms. prepare the pasta.

fry the garlic with the parsley and marjoram in a tablespoon or two of olive oil. add the mushrooms and fry until soft and almost cooked through, then add the sun-dried tomato. after frying for five minutes, add the beans. simmer on low for three or four minutes, adding more soy milk if necessary.

remove sauce from heat. add cherry tomatoes and leave the lid on for a couple of minutes, so the tomatoes start to soften. add the drained pasta and mix through well. serve warm.

hot cross buns

Hot cross buns are delicious religious iconography, a sweet spiced bun with fruit inside and a cross on top of sugar; or scandalously with no fruit or even with chocolate (SCANDAL) (delicious, delicious scandal).

Hot cross buns are an Easter thing, but I don't think they have a specific symbolism. Certainly I can't remember any details from my seven years of Catholic primary school, and wikipedia doesn't have anything constructive to add. Whatever the reason, they are super delicious, and it is a shame they are only available in the lead up to Good Friday. These are storebought, standard from Coles. IGA also does a vegan bun. Please note that many other hot cross buns are not vegan (Woolies and tiptop, for example).

banana and walnut muffins

I had two softening bananas, just going brown, and half a cup of walnuts sitting around doing nothing, so on Monday afternoon I took a break from studying to bake some banana and walnut muffins. They were soft and pretty tasty. I also like to sub chocolate chips for the walnuts.



banana and walnut muffins

ingredients
one and a half cups of SR flour
half a cup of sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
50g nuttelex
3 chinese soup spoons of applesauce
2 shakes cinnamon
half a cup of chopped walnuts
three quarters ish of a cup of milk
2 ripe bananas, mashed

method
Sift together the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and sugar. Mix in the vanilla essence, apple sauce and nuttelex, then slowly pour in the soy milk. Add the walnuts and the mashed bananas, mix well but do not overmix.

Divide in to twelve greased muffin molds (or similar), and bake at 180C for about 20 minutes.

delicious breakfasts at home

Yesterday (Monday) was a public holiday, so after a bit of a sleep-in I rolled out of bed and sleepily started dicing onions in an attempt to make the cheater baked beans from Veganomicon.



Following a conversation with Christine, who the previous morning had advised not baking the beans for the full hour, I cut the baking time down to 35 minutes. I think they probably could have done with a little longer. I halved the recipe, and skipped the mustard, and found that the amount of beans was just perfect, and the taste, as advised, was super delicious.



The aforementioned Christine had (delightfully!) turned up at breakfast the previous morning with a spare bag of nutritional yeast flakes, so I took this opportunity to make french toast. The resulting soggy mixture was awesome, with an eggy consistency, sugary bread, deliciously gorengan, and it was just great.

I will definitely be making both of these things again.


french toast

ingredients
1 cup soy milk
1 tbl nutritional yeast
2 tbl plain flour
1 tsp cinnamon
2 tbl sugar

4 slices of bread

method
Whisk together the soy milk, nutritional yeast, flour, cinnamon and sugar. Dip the bread in the mixture, soaking both sides. Oil a fry pan with margarine or oil (I used olive oil), and have the heat up high ish but not too high. Cook each side for about a minute and a half, until the edges have crisped up but the insides are still soggy - this is just my personal preference, you might want the centre to also be crisp. Serve hot.

Delicious.

diva cafe, mt lawley

Met up with Christine for a mid-morning breakfast yesterday, at Diva Cafe. We all had the vegetarian breakfast, no eggs, no ricotta, and D and I ordered some tomatoes to go with the marinated capsicum, spinach, mushrooms, avocado and toast. I love fresh avocado on toast for breakfast, so fantastic. The meal was tasty, the capsicum quite good and the mushies also. They do fresh orange juice, which I always appreciate. Service was okay, our meals and drinks were quite prompt, but our empty plates sat in front of us for about an hour before someone came to take them away, and though we sat there for three hours, chatting in the morning sun, nobody offered us anything extra to drink, which I thought was a bit odd, given they didn't seem super busy.

I would eat there for breakfast again, but probably not before I try some of the other places along that end of Beaufort Street.

Diva Cafe
49 Beaufort St
Mount Lawley

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.

mushroom stroganoff

This was great, with a rich mushroom flavour and huge chunks of mushroom. Cooked by D, based on this recipe from yeah that vegan shit.




mushroom stroganoff
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons nuttelex (or vegan margarine)
3 cloves garlic, minced
shake or two of salt, a shake of pepper
dash of dried parsley, dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon chives
2 big field mushrooms, cut in to eighths (like a pizza)
3 or 4 largeish whatever mushrooms are there, chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup soy milk
half a cup of white wine


about 400gm of fettucine

method
Heat a little olive oil, and add in the flour, stirring on a medium heat for a few minutes. Melt in nuttelex, add garlic, onion, salt and pepper, and keep stirring for a few more minutes. Add everything else (except the fettucine), bring to a boil, and reduce heat to simmer with the lid on for about twenty minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the fettucine. Serve hot!

lamingtons

After the success of lamington cupcakes, I thought I would turn my hand to actual lamingtons to take to a picnic. After spending the early evening at the Cap S, and a late night visit to Planet Books before walking home, late Friday night I prepared the sponge, using the same recipe as previous, and pouring it into a square pan greased with nuttelex. I also put down some baking paper across the bottom. I left the sponge to cool overnight, covered by a clean tea towel.

Early Saturday morning, before I wandered in to Northbridge for my Chinese class, I sliced the sponge into sixteen squares, and prepared the chocolate dip. Rather than the spread I used for the cupcakes, this time I made a very watery concoction, definitely something one could describe as a liquid rather than icing. I’m not sure of the exact proportions, but it was something like two cups of icing sugar, four teaspoons of cocoa, and a quarter(ish) of a cup of hot water. More chocolate water than chocolate icing, definitely. Again, I left each lamington to soak for several seconds, coating well each side in chocolate, before dipping into the bed of coconut.

This recipe is not yet perfect, but it is definitely adequate for those vegans longing for lamingtons, and I (and D, and our friend Simon) were quite happy to nom several on Saturday afternoon.

blue waters cafe, cottesloe

Yesterday D and I met up with Amber at Cottesloe Beach. Sadly, after two days of stifling warm weather where I desperately wanted to head down to the beach, Sunday morning was clear and bright but at a mere 25ish C, nowhere near warm enough to jump into the water.



Instead, having not yet had breakfast, we wandered across the road to Blue Waters Cafe, where D and I both ordered the vegetarian big breakfast sans eggs and mushrooms. This usually comes with eggs, mushrooms, bread, baked beans, tomatoes and potato and spring onion rosti. Ordinarily D and I are all over the mushrooms, but our waitperson kindly let us know that the mushrooms were marinated in butter, and we swapped them out for some very delicious avocado.

D's coffee was fine, but slow to arrive – after our breakfasts. Amber ordered something very egg based, which she said was great. Highlights were probably the rostis, the avocado and the ciabatta bread, which was excellent.

Blue Waters Cafe
110 Marine Parade
Cottesloe

sun-dried tomato bread

It was pleasing, after the bread-failure of late January, to have a bread success. Now that I've seen a successful bread-rising, I'm pretty stoked - it sort of bubbles, and when you punch it down it really does deflate! This is all very exciting.



Lots of people offered advice, which was awesome. This is how I made it this time, but I will probably add some more tomatoes next time.

sun-dried tomato bread

ingredients
2 and a bit cups of plain flour
2 teaspoons of instant yeast
2 teaspoons of caster sugar
1 shake of salt
1 cup warm water
a small handful of sundried tomatoes, cut small
some dried rosemary

method
Sift together the flour, yeast, sugar and salt. Make a well in the middle, and pour in the warm water.

Because the water shouldn't be too hot, I boiled water and then left it to cool for ages before adding it to the dry ingredients.

Mix together, then on a lightly floured surface, knead for ten to twelve minutes, adding a little more flour if necessary. Leave to rise in an oiled bowl, covered with a tea towel or similar. It will rise and rise! I left it for about two hours.

After two hours, punch the dough down. Ridiculous but true! It just deflates. Flour your surface and knead the dough, adding the sun-dried tomatoes. You may need to add more flour if there is too much oil in the tomatoes. Shake in some dried rosemary.

Brush a pan with oil from the sun-dried tomatoes. Shape the dough into a round, and place on the tray. Glaze with a little more oil or some milk, and bake at 190C for about forty minutes.

spinach and mushroom pie

I am quite excited about this pie, because it's sort of like eating spanakopita! This recipe was inspired by one I found at vegan visitor, which looked good but was not quite what I was after. I served this with a side of smashed potatoes, roughly following a recipe I found at vegan yum yum.



spinach and mushroom pie

ingredients
lots of mushrooms, about three giant handfuls, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
one and a half packs of baby spinach (two bunches normal spinach, shredded, will also be okay)
half a dozen basil leaves
shake of dried rosemary
salt and pepper
small handful of pinenuts
some black olives (sliced)
some silken firm tofu (that's one block if you're buying it in a 375gish pack from Coles/IGA/Woolies, or two thirds of the whole box if you're buying it from your local Chinese grocer in a takeaway container)
ten long sheets of filo pastry

method
In a little olive oil, fry the mushrooms and the garlic until the mushrooms are soft and delicious looking. Add the spinach, olives and pine nuts, and stir around until the spinach has wilted. Remove from heat. Attempt to drain any excess liquid without losing anything important. After it has cooled a bit, mash in the tofu with the basil leaves, a tiny bit of rosemary, and some salt and pepper. Leave to cool a little bit more.

Grease a suitably sized baking tin. I used a square 20cm x 20cm (ish) cake tin. Take five sheets, fold together in half, and line the bottom and sides of the tin with the pastry. Scoop the filling in to the centre, and cover with the remaining five pieces of pastry, also folded over. Tuck the sides as appropriate. Score the top, through to the filling, with a knife three or four times, and brush with a little nuttelex or soy milk.

Bake 175C for about 40 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes before serving.

black bottom blondies from my sweet vegan

On Saturday we went to the Swan Aid fundraising picnic, and as I knew I would be surrounded by a sea of meat-eaters (and D + Simon) I wanted to bake something delicious and sweet to bring, as well as an abbreviated version of our usual picnic fare of potato salad, hummous and fruit. A quick flip through My Sweet Vegan led me to the delicious sounding but oddly named black bottom blondies. I couldn't work out what the name meant, but I was intrigued enough to try baking them. Later, D pointed out they were 'blondies' as the opposite to 'brownies,' and it all made sense.



I made very few alterations to this recipe. As always I didn't really measure it very accurately, and I only approximately converted things - it called for 6 ounces of vanilla soy yoghurt, which I decided would be about half a cup of soy milk mixed through with three spoons of apple sauce. I also baked it for much longer, finding it required about 45 minutes (as opposed to the recommended 28-35), though that could just be my crazy oven.

These were delicious. They were really easy and they look impressive because of the colour shift, and I'll definitely be making them again.

a weekend of mexican-inspired dinners

Prompted by Lindy Loo's lentil tacos, I attempted some tacos of my own. They were good, but chewing away, D commented, "they're tasty, but they're not really Mexican-y;" and I realised the reason for that was I had forgotten the cumin. Woo go me. But they were still good! Topped them with some lettuce, tomato, grated carrot, and avocado.



Got home after a D-family afternoon tea, had a bit of the lentil taco mixture left over and thought I'd just whip up some sort of rice to go with it. Originally the idea had been to use the lettuce leaves to make some sort of san choy bao thing, but the lettuce had frozen in the fridge, and rinsing them turned them in to tissue, so we just ate the rice and lentils on their own. The rice was very quick, and very tasty, I suspect it will be making a reappearance in our lives as a fast dinner.

I'm not really sure what to call this. I googled 'mexican rice' to see what came up, but the internet was not as helpful as I had hoped it would be, and if someone published a 'chinese rice' recipe I'd be all WHAT? so I don't know. I need to learn more about Mexican food, it's not incredibly common in Perth, perhaps my local library will be able to help me out tomorrow. Or I can flex my googlefu a little more.



Mexican(ish) Rice

ingredients
1/4 red onion, diced
1/2 carrot, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/8 capsicum, diced
1/2 tsp cumin
ground pepper
1 cup long grain rice
2 cups stock
1 tomato
1 sprig spring onion

method
In some oil, fry onion, carrot, capsicum, cumin and garlic, until onion starts to soften. Add rice, stir through until covered, then add the stock and pepper. Bring to boil, then reduce to low, cover with lid and simmer. After fifteen minutes, remove from heat, add spring onion (chopped roughly), and stand for two or three minutes. Serve hot.