Vegan MoFo - Speedy bookmarked meals

If you are anything like me, your recipe bookmarks will have grown madly since the start of October. There have been so many fantastic recipes and ideas shared during Vegan MoFo already and there is still over half of the month remaining! During the nights I've had off my country theme cooking, I turned to a couple of easy meals I had bookmarked over the last couple of weeks and put them to the test.

First up was a Mac n Cheese recipe from Chloe's Kitchen which I read about on omgoshimvegan. I haven't tried many of these types of recipes and we haven't enjoyed the baked versions I've made but this one looked so nice and creamy, the ingredients sounded good and it was a speedy dinner which was just what I wanted. I loved that it included broccoli florets as I normally include them in creamy pasta dishes. I only made half the quantity of the recipe which was more than enough for the three of us and also added a few broad beans as we really enjoy them in pasta. This bowl of pasta tasted great and restored my faith in Mac n Cheese, it was very creamy and had a nice cheesy flavour.

It's no secret that I love tofu scramble and have been blogging about them a bit recently. Fellow Australian blogger Erin of Meet the Wikos tofu scramble caught my eye with her Aussie twist of adding the indigenous herb lemon myrtle as I had never used it before. I also loved how it was served on roasted tomatoes and the only change I made to this was to fry a few mushrooms in with the tofu. The man and I really enjoyed this meal, it was packed full of lemony flavour and the fresh thyme paired perfectly. The young man wasn't so keen on it although he is pretty picky when it comes to scrambles. Now that I have lemon myrtle in the pantry, I've been thinking of a few other ways I would like to use it.

I'm happy to have found a couple of quick tasty meals I will definitely make again in the future and am looking forward to trying out some more of the delicious recipes I have bookmarked!

Vegan MoFo - Stopover 10 - Serbia

If you've been following along with my theme this month you may recall how surprised I was to draw the neighbouring countries of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina last week. Can you imagine my amazement when Serbia (which borders both Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) was drawn in the next batch of countries? This was the third neighbour out of 10 countries drawn so far from the pool of 196 countries!

I've been a bit cunning at times with these themed dinners by adding in a leftover dish from another country if I thought it would suit as I hate to waste food. There were heaps of black eyed beans with chard remaining from our Cypriot meal so I was happy to pair them with a simple Serbian vegetable based dish of sauteed capsicums/bell peppers with onions and tomatoes along with some home-made bread to round out the meal.

A flatbread called Lepinja stood out most amongst the many types of traditional Serbian breads to choose from. I used this recipe and simply substituted the minimal amount of cow's milk to soy. After conducting some google image searches for Lepinja, I used one of the methods of presenting it by scoring the top of the bread and topping it with sesame and nigella seeds. This bread was really lovely, very fluffy on the inside and perfect for mopping up the juices on our plates.

Sataras which is also known in Bosnian as Satarash can be compared with a stripped down version of ratatouille as it's cooked in a similar style yet it doesn't contain any eggplant or zucchini. This was a simple dish which wasn't the most amazing dish on it's own although paired with the beans and bread it worked really well and we did find the complete meal enjoyable and satisfying.

Hope you all have a great weekend! Around the world in 20 days will continue on Monday and I have some other non-themed posts planned until then.


Sataras

1 tablespoon olive oil
2 small onions, thinly sliced
pinch of raw sugar
1 red capsicum (bell pepper), cut into long 2cm wide strips
1 yellow capsicum (bell pepper), cut into long 2cm wide strips
1 green capsicum (bell pepper), cut into long 2cm wide strips
1 x 400g tin diced tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon vegetable stock powder
salt and pepper, to taste

Heat the olive oil over medium heat in a deep sided frying pan and cook the onions with a pinch of sugar for 5 minutes or until softened. Add the capsicums and fry, stirring often for 10 minutes or until the capsicums have softened slightly. Stir through the tinned tomatoes and vegetable stock powder and cook until the capsicum are tender. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

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Did you know?

Over a third of the raspberries grown in the world come from Serbia. Frozen fruit exports make up a substantial part of Serbia's economy.

Do you want to know where else I've been this month? Click here for the round up.

Vegan MoFo - Stopover 9 - Brunei

Brunei has been the most troublesome country so far when it came to choosing something to cook, looking back now I'm not sure if I made the wisest choice. It wasn't easy to find a dish unique to Brunei as the cuisine is so heavily influenced by it's neighbouring countries of Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. One dish that really jumped out at me was Roti Murtabak - spiced minced meat and onions wrapped in roti bread and fried which is usually served with pickled onions. Murtabak is also a common food in India, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and some Middle Eastern countries although the ingredients vary between each country.

The recipe I referred to came with pretty vague instructions for making the roti bread. As I was making this on a weeknight and had roti that needed using up I chose to skip this step. For some strange reason I decided that I was going to use tempeh as my mince meat replacement so I prepared the tempeh by boiling small chunks with soy sauce, olive oil and water as this works so well in Isa's Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes. When the tempeh had cooled down, I cut it into tiny mince sized pieces and hoped that frying it with onions and spices would be enough to eliminate the fermented taste I find gross. The tempeh wasn't a complete success as it still had a bit of an unpleasant taste to it yet there was an even more overwhelming presence. Coriander and aniseed were some of the other spices included and I was disappointed that they were undetectable due to the cardamon which was pretty much all you could taste.

In an attempt to make the meal enjoyable, I looked up a curry dipping sauce for a Malaysian dish called Roti Canai, this condiment that was very easy to prepare pretty much saved the day. The dipping sauce was spicy enough to drown out some of the cardamon and add some additional spices. I wouldn't repeat these rotis without a lot of playing around so I haven't bothered posting my version. A lentil and mushroom filling may work better than tempeh and the cardamon definitely needs to be cut back by at least half if not a quarter.

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Did you know?

Kampong Ayer which translates to Water Village was named after Venice in Italy and it is in fact the world's largest water village. It is a region in the capital of Bandar Seri Begawan which was built almost completely on wooden stilts and is connected by many bridges. Approximately 10% of Brunei's population reside there and their main mode of transportation is by water taxi.

Do you want to know where else I've been this month? Click here for the round up.

Vegan MoFo - Stopover 8 - Lebanon

When the young man drew Lebanon out of the hat, he grinned and said to me, "I think you'll like this one". He was spot on, what's not to love about Lebanese food - falafels, hummus, baba ganoush, pita bread, tabbouleh, ful medames and mujaddara to name a few. The only problem with these foods is that I've made them all before so I searched further to find something new to try.

Kibbeh is a national Lebanese dish typically made of burghul, onions, ground meat and spices. It can be served in a number of ways, the most common form is stuffed and fried in the shape of mini footballs. I had more than enough fried foods last week so when I spotted a baked version in World Vegan Feast by Bryanna Clark Grogan I simply had to try it. Bryanna's version started with a layer of thinly sliced onions drizzled with olive oil which were covered with a bulgar and mashed potato mixture followed by a layer of lentils and topped off with the bulgar and mashed potato.

The most substantial change I made to the recipe was to use quinoa in place of bulgar as it's something I don't keep in the pantry. I loved that the recipe provided several options with regards to the fresh herbs that could be used and as I had mint and parsley on hand that's what I used. The spices in the dish were minuscule by my usual standards which made me wonder whether this meal was going to be flavoursome enough. I needn't have been worried as it turned out to be really lovely, the spices and mint were quite subtle although it was the onions throughout that really made the dish. Using quinoa may not have been the best substitute as the texture of the kibbeh turned out to be rather crumbly which made it impossible to cut squares neatly. I served the kibbeh with pita bread and leftover baked okra as it need to be used up.

During my research I came across a dip I hadn't heard of before called mutabbel before realising that it's a slightly spicier version of baba ganoush. Both of these eggplant dips are common to Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Jordan, Kurdistan, Israel and Egypt even though their names and ingredients vary slightly between countries. I've made baba ganoush plenty of times before using different methods to cook the eggplant and this time I decided to initially blacken the eggplant over a gas flame, stuff it with garlic slivers and finish the cooking in the oven. I enjoy the smoky flavour that roasting eggplants over a flame brings although I find it time consuming and fiddly to completely cook the eggplant this way so I was much happier with the method I chose.

Mutabbel

1 large eggplant (about 750g)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and cut into thin strips
2 tablespoons tahini
¼ cup lemon juice
1 teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon smoked salt
olive oil, parsley and smoked paprika, for serving

Preheat oven to 200C.

Place the eggplant over a gas flame until the skin is mostly blackened (this step can be skipped if you like and the eggplant roasted a longer time. Make incisions in the flesh of the eggplant and insert slices of garlic in the cuts. Place the eggplant on a baking tray and cook in the oven for 30 minutes or until the eggplant is very tender and collapsing.

When the eggplant is cool enough to handle, peel off the skin and discard. Roughly chop the eggplant flesh and place into a food processor bowl with the tahini, lemon juice, cumin, cayenne pepper and smoked salt. Process until it has a smooth texture then transfer to a serving bowl. Make a moat in the middle and fill with olive oil. Garnish with chopped parsley and smoked paprika.

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Did you know?

Lebanon is a unique country in the Middle East as it's the only country that doesn't have a desert.

Do you want to know where else I've been this month? Click here for the round up.

Vegan MoFo - Stopover 7 - Cyprus

The cuisine of Cyprus is described as a mixture of Greek, Italian, Turkish and Middle Eastern. Greek Cypriots observe many fasting times throughout the year shunning all animal based products and eating simple vegetable and legume based meals instead. These were the types of dishes I sought out when deciding what to make.

I haven't cooked much with black eyed beans and the recipes I've tried them in so far weren't fantastic so I was happy to try them a different way when I found a black eye bean with chard dish called Louvi me Lahana. I didn't change much about this recipe although I did reduce the amount of oil and water considerably and as mint was stated to be an important Cypriot herb, I used this is place of dill. Although I didn't have the highest hopes for this dish it was actually pretty good, the lemon juice was perfect in this and provided a subtle tang.

Okra is another thing I've cooked with rarely and I simply loved the idea of baking them whole when I discovered that's the way they are served in Cyprus. The recipe I referred to seemed a bit too involved in some parts so I bypassed a couple of steps, substituted mint for parsley and used a minimal amount of oil again. This was so delicious and had a nice kick from the chilli flakes, I was pleasantly surprised that we all loved this and will keep it in mind for future.

It seemed like a perfect opportunity to cook up a batch of pita bread to accompany our other dishes. This is my favourite type of bread to make and I knew it would come in handy to have with meals of some other countries that are featuring this week too.


Bamies me Domata sto Fourno (Baked okra in tomato sauce)
Adapted from a recipe on gourmed

500g okra
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
2 teaspoons salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 large onion, sliced into thin half moons
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 x 400g tin diced tomatoes
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
2 tablespoons fresh mint, roughly chopped
pinch sugar
pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 100C.

Carefully trim the rough ends of the okra ensuring that you don't slice into the insides. Place the okra in a large baking tray, pour the red wine vinegar over the top and sprinkle with salt. Toss to combine all ingredients then spread the okra out in the single layer. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Cook the onions for 5 minutes or until soft then stir through the garlic for a minute. Add the tomatoes, chilli flakes, mint, sugar and pepper and fry for another 5 minutes.

After the okra has cooked for 20 minutes, remove the baking dish from the oven and increase the oven temperature to 200C. Scrape the contents of the frying pan into the baking dish with the okra and stir well. Bake for a further 30 minutes or until the okra is tender.
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Did you know?

The Cypriot mouflon is a rare type of wild sheep which is native to Cyprus and exists nowhere else in the world. They were almost wiped out during the 20th century due to habitat loss, hunting and interbreeding with domestic sheep and still remain as an endangered species today. The mouflon features on the symbol for Cyprus Airways as well as the 1, 2 and 5 cent Cypriot euro coins.

Do you want to know where else I've been this month? Click here for the round up.

Vegan MoFo - Stopover 6 - Monaco

I'm back to my world trip this time stopping off in Monaco, the second smallest country in the world. Even though it measures just under 2 km in area, I still managed to find some dishes that are tied to Monaco. The first is socca, naturally vegan chickpea crepes that are also linked to Nice nearby in the south of France. The other was a dessert called Prince Albert mille feuille, a pastry filled with custard, cream and strawberries.

Socca is a fairly regular breakfast item at home on weekends ever since recipe testing for Terry Hope Romero's new cookbook Vegan Eats World, it's also become my solution for running out of bread. Apart from the resting period it's so easy to put together and tastes great. We normally love our socca with sun-dried tomatoes as well as olives and this was the first time I had been out of them but they worked well enough with olives and onions.

I had great plans for the mille feuille and when it can to the execution, everything went wrong. The puff pastry sheets were pre-baked using a flattening method I saw in this post, unfortunately mine didn't need quite as hot an oven or as long as the recipe stated so the first batch were a burst mess after half the cooking time. A pre-prepared batch of almond cream didn't turn out as thick as I was expecting. I also had woes with an initial batch of custard due to being distracted by a family drop-in and had to remake another batch. When it came time to put the few untainted ones together, I was weary and did a very rushed job. The main thing was they tasted fantastic and my decision to add lemon flavoured icing was a wise one indeed.

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Did you know?

Monaco's flag is the same as the flag of Indonesia. The only difference is that the Indonesian flag is wider. The red and white colours of the flag are the heraldic colours of Grimaldi, the name of the ruling family of Monaco since 1297.

Do you want to know where else I've been this month? Click here for the round up.

Vegan MoFo - Week 1 Round up

Week 1 of Vegan MoFo has flown by so quickly! There have been an enormous amount of inspiring recipes and ideas so I've been bookmarking away like crazy. Last year I posted a summary of some of the great posts that caught my eye halfway through the month and at the end of October. This year I decided to make it a weekly event, here is the first one!

Vegan Richa - Buffalo mozzarella using coconut cream

Cupcake Kitteh - Beetroot pesto

Eating Appalachia - Yemenite Eggplant Casserole

Tofu Mom from Tofu n sproutz - Homemade tofu

think. care. act. - Cannoli

Wing-It Vegan - Vegan meringue using flaxseeds (amazing concept from Miyoko Schinner, the author of the new cookbook Artisan Vegan Cheeses

Wholly Vegan - Avocado chimichurri bruschetta

Vegan Sparkles - Whole roasted tandoori cauliflower

Denise on Earth - Spinach pasta cups

Food stains - Carrot bacon

Inspired Eats - Shiitake mushroom bacon

The Vegan Crew - Lemon thyme tofu

Growing Up Veg - Vegan Wolf pupcakes (very cute!)


Some of the themes I've been enjoying are:

Joey from Flicking the V's - A to Z of ingredients she hasn't cooked with before

Tofu Mom from tofu-n-sproutz - Month of tofu posts

Jojo from vegan in brighton - A different theme a day again this year including Scottish Saturday and the popular Football Sundays


That's just a handful of the themes and posts I've enjoyed over the past week. I'll be back to the around the world theme tomorrow reporting from my sixth stopover.

Vegan MoFo - Grand Final Day

Excuse the interruption in my whirlwind trip around the world. When I planned my theme I decided to select 20 countries and write about them Monday to Friday so I can go off theme on the weekends if I have enough energy to do so. I'm planning to post a summary of links that have caught my eye throughout the week on Sundays and if I have enough time I'll write about something else on Saturdays.

Last weekend the AFL (Australian Football League) Grand Final was held in Melbourne which could be compared with the American Super Bowl in terms of it being our biggest football event for the year. We didn't have any plans for the day and I knew my guys would be watching the game so I spent some time in the kitchen making football styled food to feed our faces with.

It had been ages since I last made a batch of these popular vegan sausage rolls from where's the beef. I couldn't stop thinking about these delicious morsels since being reacquainted with them at the recent Planet VeGMeL 3rd Anniversary potluck (check out the online zine here that was made for the occasion). The mixture of pecans, breadcrumbs, oats, silken tofu and seasonings is extremely tasty and quite easy to put together if you can get your hands on some vegan puff pastry sheets. I highly recommended these sausage rolls, they're pretty legendary around the Melbourne veg*n blogosphere.

We also enjoyed a Mexican styled pizza and I used my standard pizza base recipe topped with tomato paste mixed with Tapatio hot sauce, onions, garlic, mushrooms, Redwood cheatin' pepperoni, olives and mozzarella style Cheezly.

The man asked me to make mini dogs as well as many other things that didn't end up making the cut. We had them in mini rolls with Cheezly, caramelised onions, ketchup and American mustard. I never manage to take a decent shot of our hot dog meals, this is no exception but I thought I would include it anyway.

Vegan MoFo - Stopover 5 - Bosnia-Herzegovina

I'm not sure what the chance of bordering countries being randomly selected in the first week are but it happened to me! After stopping off at Croatia a couple of days ago, here I am back on it's doorstep in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The cuisine is described as being influenced by Turkish, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean and Central Europe which is quite a large mixture when you think about it, so like Croatia there were plenty of options for me to choose from.

The dish I was particularly drawn to was a type of burek called zeljanica, traditionally filled with spinach, cottage cheese, sour cream and eggs. The only problem with this meal was how to manage such a mammoth project on a work night. Some of the traditional recipes I looked at mentioned that you should set aside an afternoon for leisurely burek making. After further googling I discovered it is also served as a filo encased pie, similar to a Greek spanakopita.

When it came to making vegan replacements I was a bit slack with this recipe. I didn't have any vegan sour cream on hand nor did I have forethought to soak cashews for my preferred style of home-made sour cream. Instead I whacked a heap of ingredients in the food processor and taste tested the mixture in between pulsing. You'll notice that I included fresh and frozen spinach in this recipe which was due to having a small amount of fresh spinach that needed using up otherwise I would have used one or the other. Bosnian salads were stated to be fairly simple and usually made up of lettuce, tomato, cucumber, onion and capsicum. This combination is what I served on the side dressed simply with some balsamic vinegar.

Regardless of the authenticity of this, it actually turned out to be very flavoursome and the meal was enjoyed by all of us. Burek making is now on my long cooking to-do list and will have to wait for a lazy weekend.


Zeljanica

150g baby spinach leaves
1 x 250g frozen spinach, defrosted
6 spring onions (scallions), roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
500g firm tofu, drained
2 teaspoons salt
½ cup nutritional yeast flakes
2 flax eggs (2 tablespoons ground flaxseed mixed with 6 tablespoons water)
1/3 cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons dairy-free margarine
2 tablespoons olive oil
8 sheets filo pastry (I find the fresh sheets are easier to use than frozen ones)

Preheat oven to 180C.

Steam the baby spinach until just wilted. Allow it cool slightly then combine with the defrosted spinach in a colander and squeeze out as much moisture out as possible. Place the spinach, spring onions, garlic, tofu, salt, nutritional yeast flakes, flax eggs and lemon juice in a food processor and pulse until all the ingredients are broken down and combined thoroughly. You may need to stop and scrape down the sides once or twice.

Melt the dairy-free margarine and mix in the olive oil. Using a pastry brush, grease a 24 cm pie dish with the margarine/oil mixture. Place a sheet of filo pastry in the pie dish, tucking it gently into the corners then brush lightly with the margarine/oil mixture (don’t worry if your sheets are overhanging the tin). Repeat this for a further 3 sheets then spoon in the contents of the food processor bowl and smooth out the top of the mixture. Complete the pie by layering the remaining sheets on top, brushing the margarine/oil mixture between each layer. Fold any overhanging pieces into the centre of the pie and press down gently.

Bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes. The top of the pie may brown rather quickly, don’t be tempted to take it out early as the sides and bottom will still be soggy.

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Did you know?

There are a group of naturally formed pyramids in a Bosnian town called Visoko which caused an international media frenzy in 2005. There were claims that they were man-made and the largest ancient pyramids on earth which was later proven to be a hoax.

Do you want to know where else I've been this month? Click here for the round up.

Vegan MoFo - Stopover 4 - Indonesia

Indonesia was another easy one for me, the meal was planned as soon as the country was drawn! Long time readers of this blog may recall that I struggled to enjoy tempeh for a while before finding some burgers and lasagne that I loved and even after all this time I'm still a bit wary about trying out new tempeh recipes. As tempeh originates from Indonesia I simply had to be brave and delve into a tempeh dish. A recipe called Oseng Oseng Tempe (Fried spiced tempeh) had been on my list to try for ages which is from World Vegetarian Classics by Celia Brooks Brown.

This has been one of my favourite cookbooks for years and definitely the most utilised non-vegan cookbook on my shelf these days. Celia's recipes have rarely left me disappointed, the photography is gorgeous and it covers food from so many countries. Up until now I had only made one of the Indonesian recipes which was a fantastic rendang curry using jackfruit during MoFo last year which still remains as my favourite way to eat jackfruit.

Oseng Oseng Tempeh is a simple dish of thinly sliced tempeh strips shallow fried in oil with shallots and is served with a delicious spicy mixture of cayenne pepper, soy sauce, lime juice, sugar and tomato paste. After the slices were fried there was none of that weird taste I'm not fond of and the young man who is an even bigger tempeh sceptic than me also gave it the thumbs up! I served this with Nasi Goreng (Indonesian fried rice) which was also from World Vegetarian Classics as it's such a typical Indonesian dish and it seemed like a perfect partner for the tempeh. I'm pretty fussy when it comes to this sort of thing and this recipe needed a bit more spice for my liking so I'll probably tweak it a little next time. An interesting note in the cookbook states how it is best to use long grain rice that has been cooked 2-3 hours in advance for Nasi Goreng, fresh rice is no good neither are leftovers that have been sitting in the fridge overnight.

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Did you know?

Most people are aware that there are several volcanoes spread across the islands of Indonesia but how many of you have heard of Mount Kelimutu? It is a unique volcano which contains 3 summit crater lakes that are coloured blue, green and red.

Do you want to know where else I've been this month? Click here for the round up.