Vegan MoFo Day 19 - Tidy-up Thursdays - Mung beans for Hummus

In the past two weeks Tidy-up Thursdays has involved an obscure flour and some old tinned produce which had past it's prime. This week it was time to play with a legume so I selected the most neglected one in my pantry - mung beans. At the moment my pantry is home to 14 different varieties of dried lentils and beans - black beans, pinto beans, red kidney beans, brown lentils, black lentils (urad dal), yellow split peas, red lentils, chickpeas, puy lentils, cannellini beans, soy beans, black eyed beans, Egyptian broad beans and mung beans. That's a lot of legumes! Most of them are used fairly regularly but I haven't been game to use mung beans since my fellows took a dislike to everything I made with them.

To be fair I didn't experiment with them broadly enough and only tried them in a handful of Indian curries. Curries are generally hits rather than misses so it was a bit disheartening that I was the only person enjoying these cute little green legumes. The mung beans were relegated out of sight next to the black eyed beans which are my least favourite. A recipe for Mung bean hummus posted on 101 Cookbooks caught my eye a few months back - there are heaps of different hummus recipes around using so many types of legumes but this was the first one I had seen using mung beans.

Mung beans are a lot easier to prepare than chickpeas as they don't require to be pre-soaked and only take around 30 minutes of cooking to soften so this hummus was pretty easy to whip up from scratch. Heidi's version didn't include cumin but I added some to mine and only used around half the amount of tahini as I was almost out of it. I also made a slightly larger quantity as I had cooked up a very big batch of mung beans. 

   

My fellows were none the wiser when I presented them with this hummus. They could tell that it was different to my standard chickpea hummus yet they had no idea what the secret ingredient was. It did have a slightly earthy flavour although it didn't taste anything like the mung beans we had eaten in the past. The hummus was spread on homemade pita bread along with falafels from Oasis Bakery that had been sitting in the freezer for a while to make falafel wraps. The remainder of the hummus disappeared rapidly mopped up with more pita bread and some baby carrots that had been pulled up from the garden. As this was so successful and I still have lots of cooked mung beans in the fridge I'll be whipping up another batch in the next day or two. Veganosaurus wrote a helpful post about sprouting mung beans a couple of weeks ago which is something I would like to try in the future too.

Mung Bean Hummus (Adapted from 101 Cookbooks)

2 cups cooked mung beans
1/4 - 1/2 cup tahini
3 tablespoons lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 large garlic clove, roughly chopped
1/2 cup (or more) water
olive oil, sliced spring onions and smoked paprika, for garnish

Place the cooked mung beans in a food processor and process on high speed until the beans have broken down into a coarse mixture. Add the tahini, lemon juice, salt, cumin, garlic clove and 1/4 cup of water into the food processor bowl and continue processing. Add 1/4 cup of water (or more) slowly while the food processor is running until the hummus reaches the consistency you are happy with.

Spoon the mixture into a serving bowl and garnish with olive oil, spring onions and smoked paprika.

Low fuss camping food

Over the last couple of decades camping trips with friends, family and the young man have been a popular pastime of ours. These trips have varied widely in locations yet there is a particular spot in between Seymour and Nagambie we have returned to more than others as dogs are permitted and to be able to swim in a creek with your pooch is so much fun for all. The other bonus is this place is it's generally not overcrowded with people which is often the case with more popular camping locations.

After a recent failed attempt trying out a new camping site that was full to the brim on a long weekend, the man and I were keen to head back to our rugged place of serenity. As we were only camping overnight I decided to make the food completely low fuss and picked up some supplies from Oasis bakery. This also meant packing less as we didn't need to worry about bringing the camp stove, gas bottle and cooking utensils.

Not long after arriving and setting up the tent, we constructed some delicious falafel wraps in a matter of minutes. They were made with mountain bread, hummus, falafels, a mixture of salad leaves, tomato, red onion and a dash of Tapatio hot sauce. Ollie doesn't usually get the chance to be involved in food photography and jumped at the chance on this occasion! He is very well mannered around food and didn't think about taking a bite.

Our dinner plates consisted of dolmades, more falafels, baba ganoush, hummus, olive bread and a bean stew. I was on the verge of buying a chickpea or bean salad whilst shopping at Oasis but after I spotted a bean stew the thought of a salad was immediately dismissed. The bean stew was labelled as being spicy yet the man thought it needed more oomph and stirred through a decent amount of hot sauce before we served it up. Although this is something you would usually eat warm we thoroughly enjoyed it as a cold dish. A similar spread was also enjoyed for breakfast the following morning.

These foods were perfect for an overnight camping trip and I can imagine they would also be great for remote road trips where vegan foods are limited. Even though I'm fortunate to have a fantastic Middle Eastern bakery nearby, some of the items we took away can also be sourced from most Australian supermarkets.

Ollie was mortified when we departed after his morning dip and uncharacteristically cried most of the car trip home. We are glad although not surprised that he enjoyed it as much as we did and are keen to take him for a longer camping trip soon.

Vegan MoFo - Stopover 17 - Oman

Oman's cuisine is a reflection of it's geographical position in the crossroads of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Rice is a staple which is usually served with meat. Herbs, spices, onions, garlic and lime are also important ingredients in Omani cooking. Food differs regionally and some dishes can be spicy although they are not as spicy as Asian dishes.

After Mandee mentioned that she had done a world theme for Vegan MoFo a few years ago I took a peek at her posts and kept a few recipes in mind in case any of the same countries came up.  When Oman was drawn I made an instant decision to try Mandee's recipe for koftas with a tomato and zucchini sauce as it sounded so good. All of the koftas I've made in the past have been Indian curries with ball shaped koftas, in Middle Eastern dishes koftas are usually a flatter oblong shape.

I already had some precooked kidney beans in the freezer that equated to about one and a half cans so I made a slightly bigger batch and scaled the rest of the ingredients up accordingly. I didn't have any fresh coriander so I used some ground coriander in the koftas and garnished with fresh parsley at the end instead. I used a little less cinnamon as I ran out and also swapped fresh bird's eye chillies for chilli flakes in the tomato sauce. The mixture for the koftas was simple to make with the aid of a food processor, as the mixture was a bit sticky I shaped the kofta patties on the baking sheet with the back of a spoon.

This meal was fantastic, the koftas were very flavoursome and the cinnamon was still detectable even though I didn't use the full amount. The chickpea flour worked it's magic and turned the sticky patties into koftas with a nice crust and an interior that wasn't mushy or dry. The tomato and zucchini sauce had a nice amount of heat to it without being too spicy. It wasn't too difficult to put together and I would happily make this again.

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Did you know?

Traffic accidents are the number one cause of death in Oman because nobody wears seatbelts. It is also illegal not to stop your car if you hit a camel whilst driving.

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

Iskender Kebab

A few months ago I made a frivolous comment about veganising an Iskender Kebab. The man and young man were rather keen on the thought of Iskender Kebab but I wasn't sure how to pull it off at the time so I added it to my "ideas" list for the future. The man was given a peek at this list recently as I wanted him to select a couple of items from it and his top pick was Iskender.

For the uninitiated, Iskender Kebabs are traditionally comprised of thinly sliced gyros meat served on top of cubes of Turkish pide which is covered with a tomato sauce and yoghurt and garnished with fresh tomato slices and parsley. We used to order them from a local kebab shop, obviously back when we were omnivores.

The main hurdle I needed to overcome was creating a decent Turkish pide. My previous attempt of making pide last year had shattered my confidence as the bread turned out almost rock hard! After looking up a few recipes, I made this one from taste.com.au and halved the recipe in case it didn't yield satisfactory results. This dough was extremely pliable and stretching out the pide to an even consistency proved to be a bit of a challenge. As you can see in the photo above, the centre of the pide turned out a lot browner and crispier due to the dough being too thin in this area. Regardless of these minor issues, the pide turned out so much nicer than than the one I tried previously. 

The gyros part didn't require much thought as we loved the taste and texture of the gyros seitan I adapted from I Eat Grains! last year. Both times I have added 1/4 cup chickpea flour to Rachel's recipe as I have found that seitan recipes from the US usually turn out moister than they should be. I found it interesting during recipe testing that someone from the UK mentioned that their gluten flour requires less liquid to be added than the US recipes state. Perhaps the vital wheat gluten used in the US acts a bit differently to the gluten flour available in other parts of the world.

The tomato sauce seemed too easy after looking up a few Iskender recipes. They all called for tomato paste with some water and melted butter with a few adding in a pinch of cayenne. A true vegan cultured yoghurt felt like way too much to tackle this time around so I decided to use something in it's place that we all adore, cashew cream.

We all loved this meal, it satisfied our kebab cravings and it was a lot of fun to plan and put together. There were quite a few steps involved in the recipe but it was spread over the course of a few days to lighten the load. There was some seitan leftover so for lunch the following day we had wrap style kebabs using store bought pita bread and I added some garlic to the remainder of the cashew cream. Iskender is not something I can see myself making on a regular basis but I'm sure it will be requested again in the future.

Iskender Kebab

Olive oil, for frying
1/2 quantity seitan gyros, sliced thinly
Turkish pide, cut into bite sized pieces and kept warm
Tomato sauce
Cashew cream
Fresh tomato slices and parsley, for garnish

Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and cook the seitan in batches until browned on both sides.

Arrange the pieces of turkish pide on serving plates and place the seitan slices on top. Cover with some  tomato sauce and cashew cream and garnish with fresh tomato slices and parsley.


Turkish Pide (Adapted from taste.com.au)

250g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon dried yeast
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup lukewarm water
Olive oil, for greasing
3/4 teaspoon nigella (black onion, kaloonji) seeds
3/4 teaspoon sesame seeds
2 teaspoons dairy-free margarine, melted
2 teaspoon olive oil

Mix together the sugar, yeast and warm water in a small jug and set aside for a few minutes until it becomes frothy.

Combine the flour and salt in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour the water into the well and mix the wet and dry ingredient together with your hands.

Tip the dough onto a clean bench and knead for about 10 minutes, after this time the dough should be smooth and springy. Lightly cover the dough with oil and place in a bowl. Cover with a tea towel and position in a warm spot for about an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.    

Preheat the oven to 230C and place a baking tray on the centre shelf. Place the dough on a floured surface and flatten slightly with your hands. Transfer to a baking sheet and cover with a damp tea towel for 15 minutes.

Stretch the dough out to a rectangular shape of approximately 40 x 18 cm. Leave on the baking paper and cover with the tea towel again. After 10 minutes, remove the tea towel and brush the top of the bread with a mixture of melted margarine and olive oil. Sprinkle the nigella and sesame seeds on top.

Remove the baking tray from the oven and slide the pide on the baking paper onto the tray. Cook for about 10 minutes or until the top of the bread turns a golden colour. 


Tomato sauce

1/4 cup tomato paste
1/4 cup water
pinch cayenne pepper (optional)
1 tablespoon dairy-free margarine

Stir together the tomato paste,water and cayenne pepper (if using) in a saucepan. Add the dairy-free margarine and heat on a low flame until the margarine has melted.


Cashew Cream

1 cup cashews
1/2 cup water
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon agave nectar
3 tablespoons lemon juice

Soak the cashews in hot water for at least 4 hours. Drain in a colander and rinse with cold water. Place the cashews, water, salt, agave and lemon juice in a blender and process for a few minutes, scraping down the sides if necessary, until it becomes a creamy sauce.  Keep refrigerated in a covered container.

A bunch of brunches

Tofu scrambles have been a habitual weekend brunch item for such a long period when I have the time to cook something up. Although I adore a good scramble and love how it can be changed up in a multitude of ways, I reached the point where I grew tired of cooking and eating scrambles. My last few brunches have been a lot more interesting to eat and photograph so I decided to post about them.

My first effort was centred around trying out some Mexican styled home-made baked beans. The beans had a great flavour although they were tainted by the odd chewy bean here and there. Making up the rest of the plate was avocado, steamed spinach with a drizzle of lime and garlic, a grilled home-grown tomato and some delicious mushroom chicharrones. Last year I made tofu chicharrones from Viva Vegan and loved their taste but not how oily they were. Mandee from Cupcake Kitteh gave me inspiration to try this wonderful marinade out with mushrooms and I have been making them like this since as they are seriously delicious without the guilt.      

I gave the home-made baked beans a miss the following weekend and opted to use some tinned ones instead. The man prefers the sweet chilli variety with a bit of hot sauce added. Some of the same elements from the following week were on our plates again and there was also tofu bacon and some fantastic faux eggs. The faux eggs are adapted from one of Terry Hope Romero's testing recipes so I won't be sharing my version of this until the book is released.

On Australia Day, I decided to cook us up an Egyptian styled breakfast for something even more different. I bought some tins of ful medames from a Middle Eastern store a while ago after being slightly disappointed with my previous ful medames attempt when I cooked fava beans from scratch. The instructions on this tin said to "heat and eat" but I found that the beans needed some lemon and garlic to perk them up. The ful medames were topped with faux eggs, chopped home-grown tomatoes and parsley with some home-made pita bread on the side. The man wanted to know why he wasn't getting the full spread he was becoming accustomed to but I really loved this breakfast.

To appease the man, I went back to a full spread last weekend. Tinned baked beans, tofu bacon, spinach and home-grown tomatoes with a huge dollop of home-made pesto. I usually photograph my own plate but had been snacking along the way and wasn't very hungry by the time everything was prepared, so this is the man's enormous serve of the lot.

Instead of making up a chiccharone marinade for the mushrooms this time, I threw them into the remaining tofu bacon marinade which worked quite well. I also made some tattie scones which I have seen Johanna of Green Gourmet Giraffe and more recently Theresa of The Tropical Vegan post recipes for. I loosely followed Theresa's recipe although I didn't measure any of the ingredients and just made them by feel. Tattie scones are served for breakfast in Scotland and are made up of mashed potato, flour, salt and oil which are rolled out flat and fried on each side. Tattie scones will included in these types of brunches every so often as they were really nice and quite easy to make.      

These brunches haven't been the fastest meals to prepare but I have enjoyed having so much variety on my plate. They are generally consumed very late in the morning which means there is no need for lunch, a small afternoon snack normally sees us through until dinner. And after all this time without a scramble, I'm really starting to crave one again!

Vegan MoFo - Z is for Zaalouk

I wanted to revisit an old recipe for my last alphabet post as it's one I have been meaning to make for a while. Zaalouk is a slow roasted eggplant and tomato combination finished off with harissa, cumin, caraway, fresh coriander and mint that can be served chunky or pureed. I chose to puree it and serve it as a dip with pita bread but when left chunky it can also pass for a salad. It's not a quick dish to make although there is plenty of downtime throughout the process and the end result makes your efforts worthwhile.

The original recipe sourced from a Sunday paper makes a huge quantity and as I only had one eggplant around, I made a third of it this time which resulted in about a cup of dip. It was just as delicious as I had remembered it and one I will definitely make again.

This is my last Vegan MoFo post for the A - Z of golden oldies and newbies. I managed to meet my original goal of posting at least 2 new recipes per week, 12 for the month and ended up posting 15 new recipes, so I'm pretty happy about that. The full list of alphabet posts can be found on this page.

I have had a lot of fun with the theme and ventured into cooking with new ingredients like jackfruit, daikon and fava beans. My favorite new recipes to come out of the month were Hot Potato Salad, Imam Bayildi, Pinwheels, Rendang Nangka, Seitan Gyros, Vanilla Slice and Yassa Tofu.

I hope to get one more post in quickly to share some of my bookmarks from the second half of MoFo.

Vegan MoFo - F is for Ful Medames

Ful Medames is something I have wanted to make ever since sampling it a Middle Eastern cafe last year. It's an Egyptian dish consisting of fava beans, olive oil, lemon juice and garlic which is traditionally served for breakfast with eggs and pita bread. When I tried ful medames, it was served with salad and pita bread which was a nice combination. I wanted to replicate this for our meal at home and had already prepared a batch of pita bread for my Ethiopian soup which meant some of the groundwork was already done.

I searched high and low for a recipe containing the right balance of elements that were etched into my memory but none of them seemed quite right. There were also conflicting methods around how the beans were served as several recipes left them whole whilst others mashed them into a refried bean consistency. The ones I had tried in the cafe were whole beans but I had a feeling that my bean-loathing son would prefer them mashed.

I ended up not following any of these recipes, used my intuition and taste tested along the way instead. After cooking the beans, I started with liberal amounts of the seasonings, tasted and then added more lemon and garlic as these were the flavours I could recall as standing out and were the ones that I adored. There was one hiccup in the meal which I will admit to, some of my beans were undercooked which meant they didn't mash well and were a little bit chewy. This was the first time I had cooked dried fava beans so I will remember to taste test more than one bean before declaring them ready next time around!

Click here to see my A - Z of Vegan MoFo posts.


Ful Medames 

1 1/2 cups dried fava beans, soaked for at least 8 hours
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves crushed garlic (or less if you aren't that keen on garlic)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
pepper, to taste
flat leaved parsley, for garnish

After the beans have been soaking for 8 hours, drain them in a colander and rinse well. Place the beans into a pot and fill with water until the beans are covered with at least 2cm of water. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer, covered for about 2 hours or until all of your beans are cooked through.

Drain into a colander, reserving the bean cooking liquid, then return the beans to the pot. Add the lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and cumin and mash well with a potato masher. You may need to add some of the bean cooking liquid if they are too dry. Reheat the beans on a low temperature and serve garnished with parsley.

Ottolenghi Cabbage Rolls

Cabbage rolls have been on my radar to cook again and blog about for a couple of reasons. The first being that they were really nice when I first made them and also because Yotam seems to becoming increasing popular on the blogosphere.

I observed my mother-in-law making cabbage rolls containing meat some time ago which I had never tried in my life. She gave me the idea that I may be able to find a vegetarian version and after searching on the net, I was thrilled to find Yotam's cabbage rolls as there were a few of his recipes that I had already tried successfully.

The original recipe uses ricotta as part of the filling so the natural substitution for this was tofu, nutritional yeast and lemon juice. It is a rather time consuming dish to put together, however once the cabbage rolls are prepared there is an hour of free time to prepare a side dish or two.

It probably wasn't the best decision to serve these with couscous as there are enough grains contained within the cabbage rolls. There was half a packet of pearl couscous in the pantry which I love and had been wanting to use for some time so this became our side dish. It was made up of 2 cloves of garlic, diced carrots and red capsicum, 1/2 teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon harissa, 1 tablespoon lemon juice and a cup of vegetable stock. When the couscous was cooked, I added half a tin of lentils and a tablespoon of coriander. This resulted in a tasty, mildly spiced side dish.

The cabbage rolls turned out beautifully again, however I think they would be even nicer with double the amount of tofu, nutritional yeast and lemon juice and the rice reduced to 1/3 - 1/2 cup. This is what I'll be trying next time...

Cabbage Rolls (Adapted from a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe via The Guardian)

1 tablespoon Nuttelex or other dairy-free margarine
45g vermicelli (recipe states not to use the rice variety but that's all I had!)
3/4 cup basmati rice
1 1/4 cups water
Salt and black pepper
1 medium white cabbage
40g pine nuts, toasted, chopped
125g firm tofu, crumbled
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon lemon juice
4 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
3 tablespoons chopped parsley
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 x 700ml jar passata
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
1/4 - 1/2 cup water, to rinse the passata jar
1 tablespoon sugar
Extra parsley, chopped

Melt the margarine in a small saucepan over medium heat. Break the noodles into rough 2cm lengths and add to the pan, stirring continuously. When the noodles start turning golden, stir in the rice, water and half a teaspoon of salt, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to its lowest setting, cover and cook for 20 minutes. Remove from the heat, allow to sit for 10 minutes, then remove the lid to let it cool down a bit.

While the rice is cooking, remove 12 leaves from the cabbage. Blanch the leaves in boiling water for about 5 minutes, until semi-soft (I do this in batches). Rinse under cold water, drain, pat dry and set aside.

Heat the oven to 180C. Add the pine nuts, tofu, nutritional yeast, mint, parsely and garlic to the rice, season to taste and stir with a fork. Make a parcel with each cabbage leaf, filling it with a generous amount of the rice mix and rolling it up so that the filling is totally enclosed.

Arrange the cabbage parcels close together in a baking dish. Mix the passata, white wine vinegar, water, sugar and some seasoning, pour this over the parcels, and sprinkle with parsley. Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until the sauce is thoroughly bubbling. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for five minutes before serving sprinkled with extra parsley.

Pita Bread

You know you are food obsessed when after reading the front page of the Sunday paper the next thing you turn to is the weekend feature which contains two or three recipes. Most of them are meat related so it's a pleasant surprise when you do stumble upon something without. It seemed apt after my failure with turkish bread the day before that in Sunday's paper there would be a recipe for pita bread. Today was the day to make amends!

The only ingredient lacking from my pantry was semolina so I decided to use some polenta and hope for the best as the quantity required wasn't huge. The dough was fairly straight forward to put together and it was nice change to fry the bread (rather than bake) and watch it puff up in a matter of minutes. This is a technique I have previously used in making Indian flat breads.

The pita bread turned out to be really nice and was excellent to use with the little bit of zaalouk that didn't make it to the BBQ. The batch I made was half of the recipe below which made 5 decent sized pitas. I will definitely be using this recipe again! 

Edited to add: I have made this recipe heaps of times now and always use semolina which gives the bread a better texture. You can also substitute half of the plain white flour for wholemeal if you prefer.


Pita bread (Adapted from Karen Martini's recipe - Sunday Age 13/3/2011)

7g dried yeast
20g sugar
375ml warm water
2 teaspoons salt
500g plain unbleached flour
100g fine semolina (I used polenta)
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus extra

Place the yeast and sugar into a small bowl and pour in 125ml of warm water. Stir briefly to dissolve the sugar then set aside for 5 minutes. Combine the plain flour, semolina and salt together in a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Pour in the yeast mixture, remaining 250ml of warm water and a tablespoon of olive oil. Work the flour into the wet ingredients with your hands until combined, then tip out the contents onto a clean bench dusted with flour. Knead the dough for 10 minutes until it becomes smooth and springy, then return the dough to the bowl and cover with a tea towel. Allow the dough to rise for about an hour or until it has doubled in size.

Punch down the dough and knead on a floured bench for a minute. Divide the dough into 10-12 pieces and roll each one into a ball. Roll each ball into a thin circular shape using a rolling pin, dusting with flour as necessary to prevent them sticking to the bench. Prick the dough with a fork in several places. I usually have about 3 pitas rolled out before I begin frying and roll the rest as I'm cooking.

Fry the pitas in a preheated non-stick pan over medium heat for a couple of minutes on each side until lightly browned. Stack the cooked pitas on a clean tea towel, placing a tea towel between every second one to absorb the moisture.