Chickpea soup with mint and lemon

Recipe bookmarks tend to pile up and get out of control if you're a person like me. I am always adding more to the list and my occasional attempts to cull the older ones that have been hanging around for a while doesn't really seem to work. I guess I am addict when it comes to hoarding recipes!

I bookmarked a chickpea, lemon and mint soup from Green Gourmet Giraffe almost two years ago now. Johanna had made an interesting soup from Stephanie Alexander's cooking bible The Cook's Companion which is a cookbook I was given as a wedding present many years ago. The main reason for bookmarking Johanna's post was to remind me to look this recipe up in my copy as the size of this book and the thousands of recipes within can be rather daunting at times.

With some mint in the fridge that needed using up and a few lemons on my tree that were finally ripe, now was the perfect time to give this a try. I did forget to buy celery that was intended for the soup when I was out shopping and made a few vegetable alerations. Stephanie's method was different to other soups I had made and I didn't really follow her instructions and used my intuition more than anything. As I prefer my soup to be on the thicker side, I decreased the amount of stock which turned out to be a wise decision.      

The only issue I had with the recipe was the amount of lemon that was written in the ingredients, it was listed as the juice of 2 lemons. Lemons come in various shapes and sizes and some are juicer than others. Like Johanna, I only used about one and a half lemons and found this to be on the strong side initially although the addition of the mint and parsley garnishes did a good job of balancing out the flavours. This soup was lovely and creamy and simple to make, it just requires a bit of planning ahead as the chickpeas need to be soaked in advance.

Chickpea soup with mint and lemon (Adapted from The Cook's Companion and Green Gourmet Giraffe)

250g dry chickpeas
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 leeks, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 medium potato, peeled and diced
6 cups vegetable stock
Juice of 1½ lemons (just under half a cup)
½ teaspoon salt
freshly cracked black pepper
2 tablespoons fresh mint leaves, chopped
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped

Soak the chickpeas in a bowl filled with water overnight or at least 8 hours. Drain and rinse thoroughly in a colander.

Heat the olive oil on medium heat in a stockpot and add the coriander and cumin seeds. When the seeds begin to sizzle and smell fragrant, add the leeks, carrot and potato. Cook for 10 minutes until the vegetables have softened, stirring occasionally. Add the chickpeas and vegetable stock, bring to the boil and simmer, covered for 1 - 1½ hours until the chickpeas are soft.

Transfer the contents to a blender and process in batches until smooth. Pour the soup back into the pot and reheat on low. Stir through the lemon juice and seasoning to taste. Ladle into bowls and garnish with mint and parsley.

Vegan MoFo - O is for Olive Bread and Okonomiyaki

Oooohhh, it's a double post! Olive bread was my choice for this letter until the man asked me to make the Japanese pancake thing you used to make that starts with O - he meant Okonomiyaki of course.

I used to buy Olive bread from time to time but it wasn't terribly popular at home so I would end up devouring the majority of it. I love eating it fresh or toasted and we also discovered on the weekend that it gives an interesting twist to your standard garlic bread. I halved quantities and adapted a recipe from The Cook's Companion which made a french stick sized loaf. A mixture of black and green olives went into the mix as it was what I had on hand and I also used a different herb. It turned out to be a really nice light loaf of bread although I probably would use a few more olives next time.

The name Okonomiyaki translates to okonomi - "as you like it", yaki - "grilled". They are Japanese pancakes which are very tasty when made solely with vegetables as it's the topping sauces that really complete the dish. All of the okonomi sauces contained oyster sauce at my Asian grocer so I searched around and decided to give this simple one a try. I scaled the quantities of the recipe back to 1/4 and made a couple of vegan friendly substitutions. I found that the sauce was rather thin so it was thickened up with some cornflour.

The pancakes are very easy to put together especially if you have a food processor to shred up the cabbage, carrots and zucchini. This was the first time I have used capsicum or bean shoots but they needed using up so they went in.The hardest thing to judge is the consistency of the vegetable batter, if it's too runny they pancakes won't hold together very well but if it's too thick they can taste too floury. They are easy to make and fun to decorate and will fill you up a lot quicker than you think.      

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

Olive bread (Adapted from The Cook's Companion)

300g bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon yeast
1 teaspoon dried oregano
12 black and green olives, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
150ml warm water

Place the flour, salt, yeast, oregano and olives in a large bowl and mix well. Make a well in the centre, pour in the oil followed by the water and mix well. Transfer the mixture to a clean bench and knead for 10 minutes or until the dough is springy and elastic. Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl, cover and leave to rise until doubled in size, approx 1 hour.

Tip the dough onto your bench but don't knock it back. Work the dough gently in a long loaf shape, then wrap in a floured tea towel and allow to rise to 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 220C with a baking tray inside. Roll the loaf onto the tray and bake for 20-25 minutes or until the bread sounds hollow when tapped.


Okonomiyaki

1/2 small cabbage, shredded
2 small carrots, grated
1 medium zucchini, grated
1/2 red capsicum, finely chopped
1/2 cup bean sprouts, washed and trimmed
1 teaspoon vegetable stock powder
pepper, to taste
1/3 cup water
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed mixed with 3 tablespoons water
1 cup plain flour
olive oil spray
okonomi sauce (recipe below), for topping
vegan mayonnaise, for topping
spring onions, for garnish

Mix the cabbage, carrots, zucchini, red capsicum, bean shoots, stock powder and pepper together in a bowl. Add the water and flaxseed/water mixture and use your hands to combine thoroughly. Add the flour a little at time, mixing well with your hands.

Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium heat and spray lightly with olive oil. Grab a large handful of the mixture, form it into a ball, flatten it slightly then add it to the frying pan. Press down gently on the pancake to flatten it further. After about 3-5 minutes, flip the cake over and cook for a further 3-5 minutes on the other side. Repeat until the mixture is used up.

Serve okonomiyaki topped with okonomi sauce and vegan mayonnaise, garnished with spring onions.


Okonomi sauce Adapted from Okonomiyaki recipe blog)

1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup vegan worchestershire sauce
1 tablespoon vegan oyster mushroom sauce
1 tablespoon agave nectar
2 teaspoons cornflour

Mix the ketchup, worchestershire sauce, oyster mushroom sauce and agave nectar together in a small saucepan. Stir cornflour with a small amount of water in a teacup to make a smooth past, then add it to the saucepan. Heat gently, stirring for a couple of minutes until thickened.

Vegan MoFo - I is for Imam Bayildi

I went searching through my cookbooks for inspiration for the letter I and stumbled across a recipe I had been meaning to try - a Turkish stuffed eggplant recipe called Imam Bayildi. This recipe appealed to me due to the name which translates to "The Priest Fainted" even more so than the ingredients. There are two stories behind the name; the first is that the priest fainted with pleasure when he tasted this delicious dish and the second is that he keeled over when he saw how much precious olive oil his wife had used to make it.

There were recipes in two of my cookbooks, World Vegetarian Classics by Celia Brooks Brown and The Cook's Companion by Stephanie Alexander. I chose to follow the latter as it is a treasured cookbook but one I have neglected in recent times. It was still useful to cross reference both recipes as Celia Brooks Brown's recipe stated a much longer cooking time of one and a half hours as opposed to 30 - 45 minutes. I ended up cooking the eggplant for close to an hour and a half which resulted in a smooth silky texture.

This meal turned out surprisingly flavoursome considering it only contained onion, garlic, tomato, eggplant, olive, lemon juice and parsley. The recipe was scaled down to feed two as I wasn't sure how great the meal would be or if I would want any leftovers. I was kicking myself that I hadn't made more as this was the most delicious eggplant I have eaten in a while and it's made me realise that the way to succeed with eggplant is to use heaps of oil and a long time in the oven!

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


Imam Bayildi (Adapted from The Cook's Companion)

1 medium eggplant
4 tablespoons olive oil
1 shallot, sliced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 medium tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 bay leaf
pinch of cinnamon
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper, to taste
juice of 1/2 lemon

Slice the eggplant down the centre then scoop out the flesh leaving a small rim in the eggplant shells. Chop the eggplant flesh, salt and set aside. Salt the eggplant shells and set aside for 30 minutes. Rinse and dry.

Preheat oven to 180C. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a saucepan, then cook the shallots on a low flame until soft. Add the garlic and cook for a minute, then stir through the tomato, bay leaf, cinnamon and parsley and cook for 5 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Transfer to a bowl and remove the bay leaf.

Rinse the eggplant flesh and dry with paper towel. Heat another tablespoon of olive oil in the saucepan and fry the eggplant for about 5 minutes until soft and golden. Mix the contents of the bowl through the eggplant.

Spoon the filling into the eggplant shells and place onto an oiled baking tray. Cover with a mixture of juice from half a lemon and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Bake in the oven for 1 hour 30 minutes spooning the liquid over the top of the eggplants a couple of times during baking.