Birthday Party

I had birthday last week and I threw a party on Friday. Friends came to our house and I served potato salad, cabbage salad, rye bread and baguette with garlic spread, mushroom pastries and a chocolate cake. The cake recipe is from a new vegan baking book Puputyttö ja vohvelisankari by Raisa Kettunen.

Here’s everything.

And close up of the potato salad. Chopped onion (or chives) could be used in it too, but one of the guests can’t eat onion, so I didn’t use any. The recipe is for very big amount of potato salad, you may want to half it if you have less than 10 eaters.

Potato and Bean Salad

2 kg waxy potatoes
water and salt for boiling
8 dl cooked black eyed beans
6 pickles
1 dl capers

Dressing:
1 dl oil
0,5 dl red wine vinegar
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp dried dill

Boil the potatoes and allow to cool. Peel and cube the potatoes, cube the pickles and combine them with capers and beans in huge bowl. Whisk the dressing ingredients together in a smaller bowl, pour on the salad and mix well.

Puputyttö ja vohvelisankari

Veganizing The Königsberger Klopse, Part 2

A while ago we posted about or first attempt to make vegan Königsberger klopse. Now we have a recipe for soy balls that actually look like balls. It’s very similar to the one used in Sopranos style lasagne recipe, but the spices and cooking method are different. In the picture below they’re served with boiled potatos and carrot and lentil salad.

Vegan Königsberger Klopse

3 dl textured soy protein
vegetable broth
1 potato
2 dl rolled oats (or dry bread crumbs)
1 dl wheat flour
1 onion
1 big garlic clove
marjoram, thyme and parsley
1,5 tbsp capers
2 tbsp vegan worchestershire sauce
pepper
salt if needed
pinch of cayenne or chili
margarine and oil for baking

Cook the potato in boiling water. Peel and mash it. Chop the onion finely and mince the garlic clove. Put the soy protein into a bowl, add some broth and stir with fork. Keep stirring and add more broth until the soy protein is moist. Remember that it’s easier to add broth than remove it, so add only little bit at time. Let the mixture sit for 5-10 minutes. Combine all the ingredients. Wet your hands and make balls, about 4cm diameter. Grease a wide oven proof dish with margarine and put the balls in it. Brush them with oil and pour about 1dl water to the dish. Bake in 225 celsius degrees for 45 minutes. Add more water if needed. Cover with foil in the end of baking if the balls look dry.

Meanwhile boil some potatos and make the caper sauce. The recipe for the sauce is in the earlier post. Put the balls in the sauce, make sure they’re all covered and wait few minutes before serving.

Veganizing the Königsberger Klopse, Part 1

Königsberger Klopse (or alternatively Soßklopse) is an East Prussian cuisine consisting of meatballs in a white sauce and served with boiled potatoes. Since we obviously won’t be using meat of any sort, veganizing the cuisine is in order.

The secret ingredient in both “meatballs” and white sauce are capers. Lots of them. This first part will however only deal with the white sauce, as we’re desperately trying to perfect the “meatball” substance – our previous experiment resulted in a mess of exploded balls. Wunderbar, eh?

Caper Sauce

3 tbsp margarine
2 tbsp flour
5 dl soy milk
1 glass white wine
3 tbsp capers
salt, white pepper
1 tsp mustard
juice of half lemon

Melt the margarine in a sauce pan, stir in flour. Pour a little bit of milk to the pan, stirr well, add more milk, stirr etc. until all the milk is in the pan. Add the white wine and bring to boil, stirring often. Add capers, salt, pepper, mustard and lemon juice and cook on low heat 5-10 minutes. If the sauce gets too thick , add more milk.

Return of vegan barbecue: seitan steaks and potato-cabbage salad

Seitan recipe is from Animalia‘s Vegegrilliruokia (Veggiebarbecue recipes) pamphlet. Idea for the potato-cabbage salad came from a delicious looking fresh summer cabbage head.

http://animalia.fi/

Fresh salad and delicious seitan.

Seitan steaks

0,5 soy flour
1 dl gram flour
1 dl nutritional yeast (brewer’s yeast)
5 dl vital wheat gluten
0,5 tsp ginger
1,5 tbsp soy sauce
2,5 dl water

Broth

2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp molasses (dark syrup)
2 vegetable bouillon cubes
2-3 l water

Marinade

2 tbsp tomato puré
0,5 dl oil
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp soy sauce
0,5 tsp chili powder
1 tbsp ajvar
2 tbsp herbs
1 tsp curry powder
0,5 dl water
3 tsp minced garlic (optional, we didn’t use it)

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl. Add soy sauce to water and combine it with dry mixture. Knead couple of minutes. Make four balls.

Bring water to boil and add rest of the broth ingredients. Put dough balls to broth and let boil 30 minutes.

Mix marinade in a small bowl, slice cooked seitan balls and put bot into plastic bag and marinade over night. Grill next day.

Potato-cabbage salad

10 new potatoes
250 g new cabbage
10 radishes
1 tbsp caper

Dressing

3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp apple vinegar
2 tsp mustard
1 tsp dried mint
2 minced garlic cloves
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cook potatoes in boiling water until they are soft. Cube the potatoes, shred cabbage and slice radishes. Mix dressing ingredients in a cup and combine with salad.