Yugoslavian Movie Night

We watch quite a lot of movies. Especially non-Hollywood and non-English movies. Pretentious art-hipsterism or not, it’s a wonderful excuse for combining food culture and media culture.

Our movie of choice this time was Srđan Dragojević’s excellent and controversial “Lepa sela lepo gore” (“Pretty village, pretty flame”) which was accompanied by some Yugoslavian (Slovenian) delicacies. Hold your horses! We’re very aware the movie is essentially Serbian and the food cultures do vary in the melting-pot of former Yugoslavia, but we found Slovenian vegetarian recipes and decided that it’s close enough.

We had two kinds of salads, mini quiches, beer and Blair’s habanero chips.

Slovenian Cucumber Salad

5 medium/large potatoes + water for boiling
1 kg cucumbers (3 long)
3,5 dl soy yogurt
3-4 big garlic cloves
salt
pepper

Peel the potatoes, cut them half and slice. Boil them, drain and allow to cool. Coarsely grate the cucumbers, mix with salt and drain in a colander for a while. Mince the garlic and mix everything in a bowl. Let sit in the fridge for couple of hours before serving.

The original recipe didn’t say how much garlic would be good. I used 2 big cloves, but I think the salad could have been more garlicy, so I wrote 3-4 cloves.

Lentil Salad

1,5 dl green lentils + water for boiling
1 small red bell pepper
1 shallot
3 tbsp red vine vinegar
3 tbsp oil
salt
pepper

Boil the lentils about 30 minutes or until soft but not mushy. Chop the shallot and dice the bell pepper. Mix together and season with vinegar, oil, salt and pepper. Let sit in the fridge couple of hours before serving.

Special Macaroni Casserole

It’s handy to have some food in the freezer for days you don’t have time to cook or if you don’t have any leftovers to take with you to work. Today we made loads of macaroni casserole so we could have it for dinner and have leftovers to freeze.

Two Macaroni Casseroles

400g macaroni
3 big carrots
2 medium/small onions
1 celery stalk
1 can white beans in tomato sauce
salt, pepper, oregano
vegetable broth
half bell pepper
3 dl green beans cut in shorter pieces
2 garlic cloves
5 dl coconut milk
scant 1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
pinch of cayenne
1 tsp lovage

Cook the macaroni according to instructions on the package. Peel and coarsely grate the carrots. Peel and chop the onions. Take two oven proof dishes and divide macaroni, carrots and onions in them. If one is bigger than the other, put 2/3 to it and 1/3 to the other (like we did). Slice the celery stalk and put it and white beans to one dish. Sprinkle salt, pepper and oregano on top and pour enough vegetable broth to barely cover other ingredients. Dice bell pepper and mince the garlic cloves. Put them and green beans to the other dish. Combine coconut, cumin, garam masala, cayenne, lovage and some salt in a bowl and mix them with macaroni mix. Cover both dishes with lid or aluminium foil and bake in 200 Celsius degrees for 45-60 minutes. Remove lid/foil from the first dish after 20-30 minutes and from coconutty dish 5-10 minutes before it’s done.

Cooking for Allergic People

I was invited to a class mate’s surprice birthday party. It was a potluck party and I promised to bring a savoury dish, but making something that everyone can eat wasn’t so easy. For example gluten, yeast and nuts were forbidden and it had to be something that wasn’t too weird for omnis. Luckily soy was allowed and I started to think of a pie with tofu based filling. I made a practice pie couple of days earlier with tofu, bell pepper, carrot and celery and realiced it was very similar to a cottage cheese pie that I had made quite a few times in my past. The taste of celery was too strong and I substituted it with leek and used more bell pepper in the final product. I guess the omnis liked my pie, since everyone took second or third slice.

Tofu, Leek and Bell Pepper Pie

Crust
125g margarine
1 dl rolled oats*
1 dl soy flour
1,5 dl potato flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp water
margarine for greasing the dish
sesame seeds or gluten free bread crumbs (optional)

Filling
250g tofu
1 tsp dill
1 tsp parsley
2 tsp basil
0,5-1 tsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp apple vinegar
1 garlic clove
1 small red bell pepper
10 cm piece of leek
2 tbsp potato flour
2,5 dl soy milk
2 tbsp oil

Mix the margarine, soy flour, rolled oats, potato flour and baking powder with your hands until it’s crumbly. Add water and mix. Greace a pie dish (25-27 cm diameter) and sprinkle with sesame seeds or bread crumbs if you want to make sure the crust doesn’t stick to the dish. Spread the dough to the dish with your hands and bake in 225 celsius degrees 8-10 minutes.

Meanwhile crumble the tofu to a bowl with your hand. Add herbs, salt, pepper and vinegar and cumble until it’s quite smooth. Cube the bell pepper, chop the leek and mince the garlic and add them and the potato flour to the tofu mixture and mix well. Last stir in soy milk and oil. Spread the filling on the prebaked crust and bake 25-30 minutes more.

*Some coeliacs can eat only “clean” oats that are not processed at the same place as wheat and other grains that include gluten.

A Simple Stew

I wanted to eat tofu and noodles today and went to buy tofu after school, but the lady in the shop told me they were out of tofu and they’ll get more on Friday. So instead of tofu and noodles I made bean and lentil stew and ate it with couscous (and learnt that white plate isn’t the best for taking picture of couscous). You can use kidney beans, brown beans, navy beans or whatever beans you like to make this stew. We buy dried beans and cook them, but canned beans can be used too.

Bean and Lentil Stew

2 tbsp oil
1 tsp cumin
0,5 tsp ground coriander
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
some chili (optional)
1 big carrot
0,5-1 red bell pepper
1 can crushed tomatoes (garlic flavoured is good)
4 dl water
2 dl red lentils
4 dl beans
salt, pepper
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp basil
1 tsp brown sugar, honey or other sweetener

Chop the onion coarsely and mince the garlic. Cut the carrot and bell pepper to small cubes. Heat the oil in a pot and fry cumin and coriander for half a minute. Add onions, garlic and chili (if you use it) and sauté few minutes. Add carrot and bell pepper, sauté couple of minutes. Add crushed tomatoes and water and bring to boil. Put the lentils to the boiling liquid and simmer 5 minutes. Add the beans and herbs and simmer 15 more minutes. Season with salt (I use herb salt), freshly ground black pepper and sweetener.

Kappa Maki And Other Sushi

Today I made my first sushi. I had eaten sushi once in my omnivorous times, and it had fish in it. Miyoko Nishimoto Schinner’s Contemporary and Traditional Japanese Cooking: Simple, Delicious and Vegan had good sushi rice instructions, which I used. The book said it the amount of rice serves 6-12 people, and I thought half of it would be a dinner for two + some leftovers for lunch next day. I was wrong, we had so much sushi that it looked like we were having a Japan themed party. I guess we’re eating sushi the rest of the week.

Making the sushi was easier than I thought and it was fun. I made kappa maki (cucumber maki) and other maki rolls. I don’t know if the other rolls have Japanese names or do they eat that kind of combinations in Japan, but they were good. I served them with wasabi and Kikkoman shoyu.Leftt: avocado and toasted sesame seed maki. Middle: wasabi, toasted sesame seed and bell pepper maki. Right: avocado, cucumber and toasted sesame seed maki.

Left: wasabi, cucumber and bell pepper maki. Right: carrot (cooked with little bit of water, soy sauce and mirin) and toasted sesame seed maki.

Left: avocado, cucumber and bell pepper maki. Right: kappa maki.

Sushi Rice

1l rice
1l water
1 dl sugar
2 dl sushi vinegar
1 tbsp mirin
1,5 tbsp sea salt

10 nori sheets

Put the rice to a large pot. Fill the pot with cold water, stir with your hands and pour off the water. Repeat until the water is fairly clear. Pour 1l water to the pot and soak the rice at least 30 minutes. Put the lid on (don’t remove it while cooking) and turn the heat to high. When water starts to boil, turn the heat to medium and cook 5 minutes. Turn the heat low and cook 5-10 minutes. Turn the heat off and let the rice sit 5-10 minutes.

Combine sugar, vinegar, mirin and salt in a pot, bring to boil and let cool. Stir the rice with a big spoon or spatula and add some vinegar at the same time. If the rice stops absorbing the liquid, don’t add more. Choose the fillings you want to use and prepare them: cut all the vegetables to thin sticks, deseed the cucumber, toast the sesame seeds etc.

Finally, make the maki rolls. I followed Isa and Terry’s instructions.

Pasta Bolognese

Another great pasta recipe from Rose Elliot’s Vegetarian Pasta. The recipe called for sun dried tomato paste, which we didn’t have, and I substituted it with 1 tbsp tomato puré. We had the Bolognese with whole grain penne, bell peppers and leeks.

Lentil Bolognese Sauce

1,6 dl dried lentils (any colour)
1 onion, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 carrot, finely diced
2 tomatoes, skinned and chopped
1 tsp sun dried tomato paste
1 tbsp chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Cook the lentils. Drain, and keep the liquid. Sauté the onion for 5 minutes, add garlic, celery and carrot. Cover and cook gently for 15 minutes, stirring from time to time.

Add the lentils, tomatoes, sun dried tomato paste and enough reserved liquid to make a thick, soft consistency. Simmer for 10 minutes, adding more liquid if necessary. Stir in parsley, salt and pepper.