Vegan MoFo Day 8 - Summary Sundays - Week 1

Hey there, hope you have all enjoyed the first week of Vegan MoFo and aren't doing your heads in trying to keep up with the pace! There are heaps of inspiring recipes floating around and once again my bookmarks are getting out of control but rather than share some of them today I'm going to give a shout out to some of the themes I've been enjoying so far.

Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe, one of my fellow Melburnian bloggers is baking TV Dinners this month. She has been recreating some lovely looking meals inspired by a range of television shows.  

Seinfeld still remains as one of my favourite shows ever so I'm loving Seinfeld MoFo - A blog about nothing over at Naked Vegan Lunch. Crystal and Trevor have already covered one of my favourite episodes The Soup Nazi, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that a calzone will pop up during the month too.

Joey from Flicking the Vs is veganising British meals for the month and has had my mouth watering with her lovely looking Chelsea buns and Mulligatawny soup.

Cadry from Cadry's Kitchen is revisiting favourite foods from her past travelling around in a virtual DeLorean fuelled by a Flax Capacitor. Check out her Back in Thyme posts - her graphic is fantastic! 

Mandee from Cupcake Kitteh's MoFo Mimic is similar to my Monday theme except she is taking inspiration from her favourite bloggers and bookmarked recipes for the entire month. 

Lazy Smurfs month long taco cleanse sounds exactly like the type of cleanse I would like to embrace. These posts stirred up my taco cravings so badly I had to whip up our favourite combination of refried beans, tofu adobe with cashew cream, guacamole and hot sauce on soft corn tortillas for dinner last night.

What are your favourites themes so far? It's easy to miss things with so much going around!

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In my theme intro I mentioned that I was going to have a surprise on Sundays. Well here it is for all you animal lovers - a short video of our 14 year cat Monty showing young Ollie who is the boss of the house. This was taken not that long after we rescued Ollie who has settled down so much in just over a year after having a pretty confusing start to life. It took a little for us to integrate these guys but thankfully they get along quite well these days.

Hope you are all having a great weekend!

Vegan MoFo Day 7 - Sweet Saturdays - Raspberry yoghurt cake

There was a time in my life when the majority of the cookbooks I owned were a selection of Woman's Weekly cookbooks, which had been impulse purchases during shopping trips to the supermarket. In the midst of a clean out a few years back I gave all but one of these cookbooks away to charity as the pile was so large and I hadn't been using them for ages anyway. I held onto one for nostalgic reasons as it contained a recipe for a lentil cottage pie which was the first vegetarian meal I ever cooked for my family.

When Jes from Eating Appalachia posted about a lemon blueberry yoghurt cake this week, I had an instant flashback to a raspberry yoghurt cake my husband used to bake years ago. I knew that this recipe came from one of those Woman's Weekly cookbooks and immediately went searching for the one I had retained to see if the cake we used to love was in this book. After I scanned the index and found the raspberry yoghurt cake my other baking plans for Sweet Saturdays were put on hold as I was compelled to veganise this cake that used to be such a household favourite.

It was never a complicated cake to put together and this vegan version also proved to be pretty straight forward. The cake can be made with whatever berries you have kicking around in freezer, at times we used to make it with a mixture of berries or blueberries. It's a lovely moist cake and not overly sweet which is a good thing in my book. When it comes to sweet treats I've been making slices mores than anything recently but now that this recipe has been rediscovered I'm sure it will be appearing often at home.

Raspberry yoghurt cake with cream cheese frosting (Adapted from Woman's Weekly Low-fat food for life) 

½ cup (125g) dairy-free margarine

¾ cup (165g) firmly packed brown sugar

2 tablespoons ground flaxseed

6 tablespoons water

1¼ cups (200g) self-raising flour

½ cup (140g) soy (or other non-dairy) yoghurt

100g frozen raspberries

Cream-cheese frosting

60g tofutti cream cheese

20 g soy yoghurt

½ cup (55g) icing sugar

1 teaspoon lemon or lime juice

Preheat over to 180C. Grease a 14 x 21cm loaf pan and line it with baking paper.

Beat the margarine and sugar together with a hand held mixer in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Stir the ground flaxseeds with the water in a small bowl and pour this into the bowl containing the butter and sugar mixture. Beat until just combined.

Using a wooden spoon, stir through the flour, yoghurt and raspberries until all the ingredients are thoroughly combined. Spread the mixture into the loaf pan.

Bake in the oven for 1 hour. Test for readiness with a skewer after this time, if it comes out clean the cake is ready. If not, bake for an extra 5-10 minutes.

Allow the cake to stand in the tin for 10 minutes then turn it out onto a wire rack and allow it to cool down before icing.

Whisk together the tofutti cream cheese, soy yoghurt, icing sugar and lemon/lime juice and spread over the cake.

As the icing contains tofutti cream cheese I prefer to store the cake in the refrigerator.

Vegan MoFo Day 6 - Free Fridays - Curried "egg" sandwiches and Beanatouille

Welcome to Free Fridays! As I couldn't decide on a single theme for Fridays I'll be mixing it up a little over the weeks - this time my theme is called Frugal Friday. It may sound a bit similar to Tidy-up Thursdays but instead I'm posting a recipe that utilises ingredients from my pantry I frequently use rather than things that have been laying idle. I also have a quick recipe to share that was dreamed up a couple of days ago to clear out some produce from the fridge.

A few weekends ago it was nearing lunchtime, the man and I were extremely hungry and he wasn't enthused with any of my food suggestions. After fossicking around in the pantry for a bit, I spotted a bag of besan (chickpea flour) and realised it had been a while since I had last made curried "egg" sandwiches. These faux "eggs" are one of the man's favourite things to eat and if there are any leftovers remaining from sandwiches he loves having them on toast as quick workday lunch.

I posted a recipe for chickpea "eggs" earlier this year which is a cut down version of a spicier Ethiopian fluffy "eggs" recipe from Vegan Eats World. These chickpea "eggs" are a perfect addition to to a mixed brunch plate and have proven to pack up nicely for travelling. In this post I made mention of a plan to build upon the recipe further by stirring through some curry powder and mayonnaise at the end which I have done a few times but on the last couple of occasions I've added the curry powder into the mixture at an earlier stage. This allows the curry powder to be more evenly distributed throughout the "eggs". I've also found that using a scant cup of besan makes the texture of the "eggs" a little softer than if you use a firmly packed cup of besan. Another thing I've simplified along the way is to omit frying some onions to stir through the mixture - instead I add some sliced red onion, spring onions/scallions or chives into the sandwiches. We have enjoyed these sandwiches the past two weekends in a row - the first one was a classic combination with lettuce and vegan mayo and last weekend I also included sliced tomato and Vegusto piquant cheese, our favourite vegan cheese.

I'm sure everyone else participating in Vegan MoFo can relate to being short on spare time at the moment. My usual meal planning has gone out the window so a couple of nights ago I was thinking about how to use up some vegetables that were in danger of heading to the compost in a speedy meal and came up with something I named beanatouille. Amongst these vegetables that needed to be used were zucchini and capsicums so my mind drifted to ratatouille which I haven't made in such a long time. To get away with preparing another time intensive dish to pair with the ratatouille I decided to throw in some cooked kidney beans to add some protein hence my naming of the dish. Eggplant is usually a part of ratatouille but as I didn't have any about, a large sliced mushroom took it's place.

The beanatouille was served on top of mashed potatoes and cauliflower (aka. caulipots) as there was a sad looking half head of cauliflower in the fridge too. Some baby spinach leaves were layered between the caulipots and beanatouille and for the initial scepticism the meal invoked it turned out to be quite a success.

Curried "egg" sandwiches (Adapted from Vegan Eats World)
Makes 4-6 sandwiches

1 cup besan/chickpea flour
1 2/3 cups warm water
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon curry powder (or use less for a milder version)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
½ teaspoon black salt (this provides the eggy smell and flavour)
½ teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
pepper, to taste

Cook the besan in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly for 2 minutes or until the flour darkens slightly and smells toasty. Transfer the besan to a bowl.

Pour the water, olive oil, lemon juice, curry powder, black salt and sea salt into the saucepan. Start adding the besan into the saucepan a few tablespoons at a time, whisking all the time. After all of the besan has been added, use a spatula and continue stirring for a minute or two until the mixture becomes very thick and begins to pull away from the sides. Turn off the heat and allow the pot to cool down for 10 minutes.

Drag a fork through the mixture to break it up into small lumps resembling scrambled eggs. Season with additional salt if required and black pepper, to taste. Some chopped fried onions can be stirred through the mixture if you wish.

Construct sandwiches using the curried "eggs" combined with your desired combination of shredded lettuce, tomato, vegan cheese, vegan mayonnaise and chives/spring onions/red onion.

Any leftover curried "eggs" can be stored in an airtight container in the refrigerator for at least a week.

Beanatouille

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 medium onion, sliced into half moons

2 cloves garlic, minced

½ red capsicum/bell pepper, sliced thinly

½ green capsicum/bell pepper, sliced thinly

1 zucchini (250g), sliced into half moons

1 large mushroom (100g), sliced (optional)

1 x 400g tin diced tomatoes

1 teaspoon dried basil

1 teaspoon dried marjoram

1½ cups cooked red kidney beans or a 400g tin, drained and rinsed

Salt and pepper, to taste

Heat the oil in a large deep sided pan and sauté the onion over medium heat for about 5 minutes, or until softened. Stir through the garlic for a minute then add the red and green capsicum, zucchini and mushroom. Increase the heat to medium-high and cook for 5-10 minutes, stirring every minute or so, until the vegetables have softened slightly.

Pour in the tomatoes and reduce the heat back to medium. Stir through the basil and oregano. Allow to cook for another 5 minutes then add the kidney beans and cook until they have heated through and the vegetables are tender. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Vegan MoFo Day 5 - Tidy-up Thursdays - Black Bean Dip for Taco Pizzas

Does anyone else have black bean flour in their pantry? I picked up a bag on a whim a couple of years ago and it's been collecting dust ever since. There was absolutely no reason for this impulse purchase (apart from the fact that I love black beans) as I had never seen it used in a recipe before. I've spotted the black bean flour during minor pantry clean ups and sighed about it's presence without giving much thought as to what I would ever do with the darn stuff.

When I decided to incorporate Tidy-up Thursdays into my weekly Vegan MoFo themes, black bean flour was the first ingredient that sprang to mind. After I dug it out of the pantry and inspected the packet I was excited to find a few recipes printed on the back - one of which was for black bean taco pizza and another for the bean dip to spread on the pizzas. Black bean taco pizzas were not a new concept as the delightful Cadry from Cadry's Kitchen introduced me to this wonderful concoction last year which have since become one of our favourite styles of pizzas to make at home - I posted about my love for them last year too.

My usual method of making a black bean taco pizza involves cooking up a batch of spicy black beans which are half mashed and mixed with some napoli sauce to spread on the base of the pizza. This time was a little different as I used the black bean flour to create an adaptation of the bean dip recipe on the flour packet. This had a nice smooth texture and was more ideal for spreading on a pizza base even though it didn't look very appetising. The main thing that concerned me whilst making up the bean dip was the extremely strong earthy flavour from the bean flour so I added more seasonings to try to tone the earthiness. The man really loves his black bean taco pizza and gets annoyed when I mess with meals that he adores so I was certain he wasn't going to be impressed with this version. This is a snippet of our conversation while I was assembling the pizza...

The Man: "You don't normally put refried beans on the taco pizza, do you?"

Me: "They aren't refried beans but this isn't what I usually do either. I'm trying something different for Vegan MoFo."

The Man: Goes into a bit of a rant involving some minor expletives about Vegan MoFo and how I shouldn't mess with perfection.

Me: Sigh!

Thankfully the bean dip on the pizza didn't spoil the experience and there were plenty of other flavours in the toppings to further tone down the flavour of the bean flour. After the bean dip was spread on the pizza base it was layered with minced garlic, sliced red onions, mushroom, red capsicum/bell pepper, olives, crumbled plain corn chips and cheezly. We always top our cooked slices with some hot sauce for extra kick too.

Only 3/4 cup of flour was used to create the bean dip of which I only used half to spread on a large pizza base. The remaining portion of the bean dip was successfully hidden in a big pot of chilli. There is still a heap of the flour remaining so I would love to know if anyone has used it before and can point me in the direction of some other recipes that use black bean flour.

Black Bean Dip (Adapted from Bob's Red Mill Black Bean Flour packet)

¾ cup black bean flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon chipotle chilli powder

½ teaspoon cumin

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 cups hot water

1/3 cup salsa (I used a Fonterra tomatillo salsa purchased from USA Foods)

½ batch Napoli sauce

Place the black bean flour, salt, chipotle chilli powder, cumin and cayenne pepper in a saucepan and slowly add the water, whisking constantly to ensure there are no lumps. Cook the mixture over medium-high heat for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and cook for 5 minutes.

Turn off the heat and stir through the salsa and napoli sauce. Allow it to rest for 15 minutes, the mixture will thicken further as it cools down.

Vegan MoFo Day 4 - Worldly Wednesdays - Stopover 29 - Marshall Islands

Last year for Vegan MoFo my theme involved virtually travelling around the world in 20 days, stopping in at 20 randomly selected countries to cook a dish or two. The research and cooking was more time consuming than I gave it credit but I thoroughly enjoyed exploring different cuisines and expanding my limited knowledge of global food. Although my plan was to continue cooking around the world regularly I've only managed to complete another eight countries in the year that has passed and have been stuck on my most recent selection for quite some time.

The Marshall Islands are a small island country in the Pacific Ocean which are geographically a part of Micronesia. Politically this group of islands are a presidential republic in free association with the United States which means the US provides defence, funding grants and access to social services to the Marshallese. This connection to the United States is an indicator as to why the only recipe I could find linked to these islands was a Macadamia nut pie similar to a pecan pie that is popular throughout the United States.

My biggest challenge in recreating this dish was sourcing a suitable replacement for light corn syrup which is not widely available in Australia. I read many conflicting opinions on various cooking forums and had wanted to use liquid glucose as it was suggested as the best replacement. I'm sure that liquid glucose used to be stocked at supermarkets but it seems to have vanished these days. After wasting a lot of time with attempting to track down ingredients, I bit the bullet and used some good old golden syrup. When it comes to replacing eggs in recipes I use ground flaxseeds more often than not but I don't think I've ever veganised a recipe originally made with more than 1 or 2 eggs and was a bit nervous that this recipe called for 4 eggs. I wasn't sure how flax would perform in a larger quantity and subbed in some silken tofu with a bit of cornflour instead.

After my pastry dough had rested and been rolled out the filling didn't take much time to beat together. I was slightly concerned that the centre of the pie was a bit wobbly after being baked for the recommended time and didn't want to bake it for any longer as the pastry had browned and the top of the filling caramelised. The filling appeared to have set up properly after it cooled down but it was still a little oozy after it was sliced. The pie accompanied us to a Father's Day dinner last weekend and everyone really enjoyed it despite my woes about it not being quite right. I don't have much of a sweet tooth and found that this was way too sweet for me - I struggled to finish a small slice.

As this isn't something I'm likely to revisit I won't bother posting the recipe for now. I'm looking forward to my next stopover after being stuck in the Marshall Islands for so long!

Did you know?

The Marshall Islands have the highest incidence of leprosy in the world. Apart from humans the only animal in the world that can contract leprosy is the armadillo.

Vegan MoFo Day 3 - Tempeh Tuesdays - Tempeh Matar

Out of all the daily themes I've selected, Tempeh Tuesdays is the one that has filled me with the most concern. I've cooked way more mediocre tempeh meals that successful ones - as a result this has made me rather unadventurous with it. The prospect of cooking and eating four unappetising tempeh based meals in the space of a month has been weighing heavily on my mind but thanks to the success of this first effort for Vegan MoFo, I'm feeling more optimistic.

To kick off this theme I tried to play it as safely as I possibly could, combining the tempeh preparation method in my favourite lasagne recipe with a recipe we used to love back in our omnivorous days - kheema matar. Kheema matar is a dry Indian curry traditionally made with minced lamb meat and peas. I posted about it during my first vegan MoFo using a faux mince meat recipe courtesy of Diet, Dessert and Dogs made from cauliflower and nuts. This is a fantastic recipe but the downside is that it needs to be prepared in advance so I was hoping that tempeh would also work well in this recipe.

For the initial preparation of the tempeh I used the same technique that is used in this tempeh lasagne - frying the minced tempeh in oil until browned and then pouring soy sauce over the tempeh in order for it to absorb the salty flavours. The rest of the recipe was made in a fairly similar fashion to the meaty version in my favourite non-vegan cookbook The Food of India, although some of the cooking durations in the later stages were shortened a little as the minced tempeh began to clump together a little.

The man doesn't have the same issues with tempeh that I do, in fact he is quite the fan, so it wasn't surprising that he loved this version of kheema matar. The tempeh matar was served with cauliflower tikka masala - a recent addition to our rotation of curry dishes which was also veganised from The Food of India. This tempeh dish won't take the top spot away from my favourite lasagne but I'm happy to say that it is something I'll be repeating again!

Tempeh Matar (Adapted from The Food of India)

1 onion, roughly chopped

2 cloves garlic, roughly chopped

2cm piece ginger, roughly chopped

1 large green chilli, roughly chopped

1 medium tomato

2 tablespoons olive oil (divided)

300g tempeh, minced

3 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon ground coriander

1 tablespoon ground cumin

¼ teaspoon turmeric

½ teaspoon sea salt

1 tablespoon soy yoghurt
½ cup water

1 cup frozen peas

Pinch of garam masala

2 tablespoons chopped coriander leaves

Place the onion, garlic, ginger, green chilli and tomato in a blender or food processor and blend until it becomes a smooth paste. 

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a deep sided frying pan over medium-high and cook the minced tempeh for 15 minutes until browned, stirring every couple of minutes. Pour the soy sauce over the tempeh, stir well to combine and cook until the liquid has been absorbed. Transfer the tempeh to a bowl.

Heat the remaining tablespoon of olive oil in the same pan and pour in the contents of the blender. Allow to cook for 5 minutes over medium meat, stirring occasionally. Add the coriander, cumin, turmeric and salt and stir through for a minute. Add the tempeh back to the pan along with the yoghurt and water and stir to combine thoroughly. Cover and allow to simmer on low heat for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally - if it looks too dry and is sticking to the pan, add some additional water.

Add the peas and garam masala and cook for a further 5 minutes. Stir through the coriander leaves and serve.

Vegan MoFo Day 2 - MoFo Mondays - Spicy Cajun Lentil Patties and Homemade Spicy Mustard

Welcome to MoFo Monday! Today I'm digging out a couple of bookmarked recipes from Vegan MoFo 2011 which was the first time I participated in this fun filled month of blogging. I limited myself to making two recipes due to time constraints and found it incredibly difficult to choose from the inspiring list of bookmarks I had gathered.

First up were Spicy Cajun Lentil Patties from Heathen Vegan. I don't have a regular veggie burger recipe that I rely on and enjoy trying out different concoctions from cookbooks, blogs and my head when the mood suits. Burgers aren't always served in buns at my abode either - I'm rather fond of a few protein packed patties alongside a plate of roasted vegetables in colder months. Jeni Treehugger's recipe appealed to me due to the inclusion of a Cajun spice mix as well as the combination of vegetables and other herbs and spices she had used. Her perfectly assembled patties also looked sensational.

Now, I'm going to be totally honest and let you know that I had two attempts with Jeni's recipe due to an ingredient mishap the first time around. The patties were supposed to be made with red lentils but I used brown lentils without thinking twice as they have been my default lentil recently. When the burgers didn't hold together cohesively and their appearance looked entirely different I read through the comments in the post and realised my mistake - oops. The patties tasted great so I had to give them another shot to do the recipe justice - and I'm glad that I did! Both times I doubled the quantity of Cajun spice to give them a little more kick and didn't regret this minor alteration. As I was already roasting vegetables in the oven, the burgers were whacked onto a separate tray and baked for 15 minutes on each side as I find this much easier than frying in batches on the stovetop.

Next cab off the rank was a Homemade Spicy Mustard from The Vegan Ronin. This really is a cinch to make - sterilise a jar, place mustard seeds, apple cider vinegar and water in the jar, shake it up and allow it to sit for a couple of days. After this time blend the mixture with a bit of sugar and turmeric and you're done! I only made half a batch as I didn't have enough mustard seeds for the full recipe but it was enough to fill a small jar. I kept the mustard on the chunkier side as I don't have a mini food processor and my full size blender doesn't do the best job with small quantities. The man is as a huge mustard fan and likened this to a hot English mustard in seeded form.

As it's so easy to make I'm sure I'll be making another batch when this jar runs out. I'm going to keep quiet about how we have enjoyed the mustard so far as it's going to feature in an upcoming MoFo post.

Vegan MoFo Day 1 - Theme Intro

The time has arrived once again for the craziest month in the calendars of vegan bloggers - yep it's Vegan MoFo and it's a month earlier than it has been over the past couple of years! Planning for Vegan MoFo has been quite harried and daily posting seems a little daunting at the moment but I've done a little more preparation than in former years and am going to try my hardest to achieve this goal. There have been so many ideas for themes swimming around in my head and as I couldn't decide on a single one I'm going to work off seven themes, one for every day of the week. Here's what I have in store for you.

MoFo Mondays
During my past two Vegan MoFo's I have bookmarked so many recipes and only ended up making a very small portion of them. On MoFo Mondays I will be digging through my MoFo bookmarks and testing out some of these recipes. As the month progresses I'll be cooking and writing about a few recipes from this month too!

Tempeh Tuesdays 
Tempeh has filled me with trepidation for years as I didn't get off to a great start with the fermented soy bean. Since then I've discovered a couple of ways to appreciate it, my favourite being this fantastic lasagne I make on a regular basis during colder months. Tempeh Tuesdays are going to feature new tempeh cooking experiments with the aim of adding some new recipes to my tempeh rotation.  

Worldly Wednesdays
Last year's theme for Vegan MoFo was called Around the world in 20 days where I cooked food from 20 randomly selected countries. I had a lot of fun with this theme and planned to continue it after the month ended on a regular basis. It hasn't worked out as regular as I had hoped as I've only completed another 8 countries in the past 10 months so I'm hoping to reignite my passion for around the cooking this month.

Tidy-up Thursdays
My pantry is in dire need of a jolly good clean out! Over time I have accumulated so many different types of flours, sauces, beans, tinned food, etc. and it's ridiculous that there are ingredients sitting in my pantry that I've never even tried. I loathe throwing away food so the aim of Tidy-up Thursdays is to give the pantry a bit of a spring clean which may involve cooking with items that have past their best before dates!

Free Fridays
When it came to Friday I couldn't decide on a single theme as I had too many ideas so Fridays are going to incorporate a few of the different themes I was planning to write about. I'm not going to give too much away yet, you'll just have to wait and see what is in store!

Sweet Saturdays
I don't have much of a sweet tooth but my fellows definitely do. They usually pester me to bake their favourite recipes when they have a hankering for something sweet so I'm hoping to expand my baking repertoire this month with some more challenging items than the lemon slice, choc-chip cookies and rum balls I make regularly.

Summary Sundays
I posted summary posts throughout my first and second Vegan MoFo to keep track of the recipes I've bookmarked and to share some MoFo love around. It's also a helpful reference for me to look back after the month has ended so I'm doing this again and I may have some surprises in store for Sundays too.

How does my plan for the month sound to you? Are there any themes you are looking forward to reading about? Hope you are all looking forward to a fun filled month of delicious vegan food too!

Buffalo Tofu and Vegan MoFo

The man and I have been hooked on buffalo tofu for quite some time. We were introduced to buffalo tofu at Gasometer and haven't been able to go there without ordering a sharing plate since our first encounter. The spicy coating on the toothsome tofu paired with a cooling ranch dipping sauce is a delicious dish I've been dreaming about recreating at home for quite some time.

My initial attempt used a spice mix purchased from USA Foods as the main seasoning which I posted about last year. It was good enough for us at the time but I continued searching for recipes in an attempt to find out the secret to fantastic buffalo tofu. The majority of recipes used a hot sauce rather than a dry seasoning mix with Frank's red hot sauce clearly being the preferable option. I never remembered to look for this sauce on my occasional shopping trips to USA Foods and was astonished to discover it sitting amongst the condiments in my local Woolworths recently.

After our latest meal at Gasometer I cracked open the bottle of Frank's sauce and placed it under the man's nose. The look on his face was priceless. "That smells exactly like Gasometer's tofu, you MUST make some buffalo tofu." The recipe I followed was posted on The Vegan 8 Korean, it had a short ingredient list with an interesting twist - frozen and defrosted tofu. I really should use this method of preparing tofu more often as I adore the chewy texture that results from this as well as the extra absorbency of the tofu. If you haven't tried out this method of preparing tofu, I highly recommend sticking a block of tofu in the freezer right now! The tofu turns a yellow colour when it's frozen but after it has been defrosted it returns to it's usual white colour.

The only alteration I made was to adjust the quantity of hot sauce from half a cup to a third (and the margarine proportionately) in case it blew our heads off. Half a cup of hot sauce seemed like a lot to use given I was unfamiliar with the sauce. As it turns out I'm sure we would have handled the extra spice and I won't be wary to turn up the heat in the future!

I had already posted about a ranch dipping sauce adapted from Vegweb in my initial buffalo tofu post although this had slipped my mind so I trawled through my cookbooks to find a recipe to try. The majority of the recipes used vegan sour cream which I didn't have on hand so I settled on making a silken tofu based sauce from Appetite For Reduction. I'm a bit of a salt fiend but found that this sauce was too salty which was probably due to the differences in types of stock powders used. It also made a huge quantity which needed to be used within three days so rather than waste the dipping sauce, we eagerly went back for another round of buffalo tofu a couple of days later!

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I've been a bit quiet around here lately for various reasons and it's likely to remain this way for the rest of the month as Vegan MoFo is coming up in September! My goal is to post everyday throughout September and given the pathetic number of posts I've been churning out recently, I'm going to need the rest of this month to get myself organised. This will be the third time I have participated in Vegan MoFo and I'm looking forward to another fun filled month of reading posts from hundreds of bloggers around the globe. For those who are interested in participating and haven't signed up yet, the registration form is here - make sure you sign up before the cut off date of 28^th August!
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Buffalo Tofu (Adapted from The Vegan 8 Korean)

350g firm tofu, frozen then defrosted
1/3 cup cornflour
Peanut or canola oil, for frying
1/3 - 1/2 cup Frank's red hot sauce (depending on your spice tolerance)
2 heaped tablespoons - 1/4 cup dairy-free margarine (depending on how much hot sauce was used)

After the frozen tofu has fully defrosted, place it in a tofu press and allow it to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes or up to 2 hours. Alternatively wrap the block of tofu in paper towels, place it on a plate and sit some heavy weights on top for a minimum of 30 minutes.

Cut the tofu into whatever shape you feel like - sticks, triangles, cubes. Place the cornflour in a bowl and lightly coat each piece of tofu.

Heat a tablespoon or two of oil in a frying pan and fry the tofu (in batches, if necessary) over medium heat until slightly coloured on each side.

When the tofu has almost finished cooking, place the hot sauce and margarine in a small saucepan and heat until the margarine has melted. Reduce the heat on the frying pan containing the tofu to low and pour the contents of the saucepan over the tofu ensuring it is coated evenly. Allow it to simmer for a minute or two until the sauce reduces then serve the buffalo tofu with a ranch dipping sauce.

Hedgehog

Hedgehog didn't appeal to me when I was a child. I don't recall my mum making hedgehog although I clearly remember my nanna eagerly offering me her chocolate and biscuit slice on many occasions. On reflection I hope nanna's feelings weren't hurt when I repeatedly rejected one of her signature sweets as my attention was usually focussed on the lemon slice and peppermint slice that my aunts would always provide.

The man has always been the complete opposite – he adores hedgehog and has asked me to make it for him numerous times over the years. It wasn't until he purchased an enormous chunk of vegan hedgehog from our local health food store that I tentatively took a bite and decided it was actually rather nice. After that I promised to try making hedgehog at home.

I went straight to Green Gourmet Giraffe in search of a recipe as I had a vague memory of Johanna being a hedgehog fan. Johanna's recipe looked uncomplicated and traditional, there were no additions like dried fruit or nuts which the man would be bound to dislike. Crushing the biscuits to the right size is possibly the trickiest part - Johanna wisely advises against using a food processor as the biscuits turn out too fine, instead she recommends placing the biscuits in a bowl and crushing them with a glass jar until they are approximately the size of 5 cent pieces. I opted to use the end of my marble rolling pin which also did the trick.

While the recipe wasn't vegan it was easy to veganise using Arnotts Nice biscuits in place of Marie biscuits, dairy-free margarine for the butter and a flaxseed egg instead of a chicken's egg. Both of my men adore this slice which I've made a couple of times recently. I think this has gone onto their favourites list and am sure that I will be requested to make this delicious slice again in the future.

Hedgehog (Adapted from Green Gourmet Giraffe)

200g Arnotts Nice biscuits
125g dairy free margarine
½ cup sugar
2 heaped dessertspoons cocoa
1 tablespoon ground flaxseed
3 tablespoons water
2 heaped dessertspoons desiccated coconut

Place the biscuits in a large bowl and crush them with the end of a heavy rolling pin or the base of a glass jar. The biscuit chunks should be no bigger than a 5 cent piece.

Melt the margarine in a small saucepan, stir through the sugar and cocoa and cook for 2 minutes. Mix the ground flaxseed and water together in a small bowl. Turn off the heat and stir through the flaxseed mixture and the coconut. Stir the crushed biscuits into the saucepan mixture thoroughly.

Line a 20 cm square dish with baking paper and spoon the contents of the saucepan into the dish. Spread it out to the edges evenly and smooth out the top. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours or until firm then slice into squares and serve. Store in a covered container in the refrigerator.