The End of Vegan MoFo 2010

In the beginning of this month I planned to post everyday. It didn’t happen, but there were only few days without posting. Better than last year.

Here’s one more recipe for all our readers. The crust recipe is mine, the filling recipe is from a leaflet we got from supermarket ages ago. I still don’t know what’s the difference between pies, quiches etc. Maybe this is tart?

Lingonberry and Coconut Tart

crust:
125g margarine + little more for greasing the dish
3 dl wheat flour
0,5 dl sugar
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp cold water

margarine for greasing the dish
coconut flakes or bread crumbs (optional)

filling:
85g margarine
1,5 dl coconut flakes
0,75dl + 2 tbsp sugar
4 dl lingonberries (whole or partially crushed)

Heat the oven to 175 Celsius degrees. Crumble margarine, flour, sugar and baking powder in a bowl with your hands. Add water and mix together to form a dough. Grease a pie dish (25-28cm diameter), sprinkle with coconut flakes or bread crumbs and spread the dough in it. Bake 10 minutes.

Melt the margarine in a pot. Remove from the heat and stir in coconut flakes and 0,75 dl sugar. Spread the lingonberries on the prebaked crust and sprinkle 2 tbsp sugar on them. Spoon coconut mixture on top as small lumps. Bake 20 minutes more. Allow to cool a bit before serving.

Seitanic Temptation

In Finland this kind of casseroles are called temptations (kiusaus in Finnish). They are made of potatoes and other things that are cut in sticks. Anchovies and other fish are very common companion for the potatoes, but temptations can also be vegetarian. The temptation we had today was made of root vegetables and it had seitan as a protein source. It was really yummy.

Seitanic Temptation

2 tbsp oil
2 big carrots
1 small rutabaga
1 onion
salt and pepper
0,5 tsp each basil and chervil
pinch of cayenne
6-8 potatoes
8 small Jerusalem artichokes
2 balls basic seitan
2 dl oat cream
0,5 dl water
margarine or oil for greasing the dish

Peel all the vegetables and cut them and seitan in sticks. Heat the oil in a big pan and fry onion, carrots, rutabaga, salt, pepper, cayenne and herbs for few minutes. Add potatoes and after few minutes add Jerusalem artichokes. Last add seitan, fry couple of minutes and pour in the oat cream. Rinse the cream can with 0,5 dl water and put that in the pan too. Grease an oven proof dish and transfer the food into it. Bake covered 45-60 minutes in 200 Celsius degrees.

Nutty Salad

This salad is an easy side dish. Best in the summer when the cucumbers are at their best. I can’t remember how I invented this, but I’m sure it had something to do with the huge amounts of cucumbers we got from our garden. The recipe makes rather small batch (enough for 2 or maybe 3), so multiple it if needed.

Cucumber and Peanut Salad

1 dl peanuts or salted peanuts
5 dl cucumber cubes
1 thinly sliced small onion (optional)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp dried mint
pinch of salt and pepper

If you use raw peanuts, start with toasting them. Heat a frying pan and toast the peanuts in it, stirring often, until they have brown spots in them. Let cool. You can peel the peanuts by rubbing them between your hands, but you can use them with the peels too. Partially crush the peanuts in a big mortar or in a plastic bag with a rolling pin. Put cucumber, onion and peanuts in a bowl. Mix oil, lemon juice, mint, salt and pepper together and combine with cucumber mixture. Salad is better if you let it sit about half an hour before serving.

Something Simple

If I don’t feel like cooking I often just throw some noodles and other things to a pot and boil them few minutes. Today was one of those days. I will add a picture later if the camera and computer start co-operating. And here’s the picture!

Noodles with Mushrooms and Vegetables

1 l water + bouillon cube (mushroom or other)
2 handfuls of dried funnel chanterelles
some dried chard stalks
1 big carrot
half bell pepper
1 celery stalk
2 handfuls of frozen green beans
1 handful frozen kohlrabi
100g whole wheat noodles
1 onion
soy sauce for serving

Cut carrot, bell pepper and celery into strips. Bring the water to boil and dissolve bouillon cube in it. Add funnel chanterelles, chard, carrot, bell pepper and celery, and boil 2-3 minutes. Throw in frozen veggies and noodles and boil 3 more minutes. Cut the onion in thin half moons and stir it in before serving. Nom nom.

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.

Cabbage Quiche

Recently I found out that what I’ve been calling a pie is actually a quiche. In Finnish we have only one word that means both of them and pie was the only English word I knew. If I’d had to define “pie” I would have said it has crust on the bottom and filling on top and occasionally it has crust on top too. But I also found out is that pies don’t necessarily even have crust in the bottom! I’m not sure if I have understood all the names that you English speaking people have for pies and things like that. Like can quiche be sweet? And what’s the difference between flan and quiche?

Then about today’s recipe. It’s been published in this Finnish blog that I’ve been reading for a while. She makes beautiful cakes and other baked goods. Most of the recipes are useless, since she nearly always uses gelatin or meat, but this cabbage quiche recipe was easy to veganize. It was delicious too, I strongly recommend trying it.

Georgian Cabbage Quiche

crust:
100g margarine + little more for greasing the dish
1 dl whole wheat or rye flour
2 dl wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp water

filling:
500g cabbage
1,5 dl water
1 big onion
1 pickled cucumber
2 garlic cloves
0,75 dl tomato purée
2 dl oat cream
2 tbsp apple vinegar
2 tsp marjoram
1 tsp salt
1 tsp chili powder (ours was extra hot and I used less than half tsp)
1 tsp paprika
pinch of black pepper

Start with the filling. Cut the cabbage into strips and put them into a pot with water. Bring to boil and simmer 15 minutes, stir occasionally. Make the crust while your cabbage is simmering. Crumble margarine, both flours and baking powder with your hand in a bowl. Add the water and mix together. Grease a dish and spread the dough in it. Bake 10 minutes in 200 Celsius degrees.

Chop the onion and add it to the pot when cabbage has been simmering 15 minutes. Simmer 5 more minutes. Dice the pickle and mince the garlic cloves. Mix all the filling ingredients in the pot and spread on the prebaked crust. Bake 30-40 minutes more or until it looks like ready to eat.

Gluten free option: Use gluten free flour or this crust recipe. Use soy cream in the filling if your oat cream is not gluten free.

Eat Like Egyptian

A while ago I found some cheap dried fava beans, but I didn’t use them for anything right away. They were smaller than fava beans I’ve eaten before and the package said they have exciting taste. Yesterday I thought I’d soak and boil half of them and cook them somehow. The beans tasted as exciting as normal fava beans, but they didn’t have such a hard skin.

I found this Fool Medemmas recipe and decided to try it. I made a bigger batch, since it was supposed to be today’s dinner for two and tomorrow’s lunch for one. It was great with pita bread, and super quick to make. Fresh parsley would probably been better, but we only had dried.

Fool Medemmas

6 dl cooked fava beans
3 small onions
2 plum tomatoes
3 tbsp oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried parsley
1,25 dl lemon juice
1 hot (or medium hot) chili
salt and pepper

Chop the onions, dice the tomatoes and mince the chili. Mix everything in a pot, bring to boil and cook on medium heat 5 minutes stirring occasionally. Serve with pita bread.

Cabbage Wraps

These wraps are quicker to make than regular cabbage rolls. We used carrots in the filling, but I think sweet potato would be great too.

Cabbage Wraps

8 cabbage leaves
4 very big carrots
4 big garlic cloves
4 fresh chili pods or to taste
4 dl cooked black beans
1 tsp Moroccan spice mix
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt
1-2 onions

Cut the stems of the cabbage leaves thinner to make them easier to roll. Steam or boil until they are soft, about 5 minutes. Put them on a towel to drain the excess water. Peel the carrots and garlic cloves. Cut the carrots in big chunks and boil them with garlic until soft. Drain, add chilies and puree with blender. Add beans, Moroccan spice mix, lemon juice and salt. Chop the onion(s). Put couple of tablespoons of the filling on each cabbage leaves and sprinkle some onion on it. Roll and serve.

Luxurious Breakfast

Usually my breakfast is only a cup of coffee and couple of slices of bread. Sometimes on weekends when you don’t have to hurry anywhere it’s nice to have a bigger breakfast. Today I had vegan tortilla Española (Spanish omelet), soy yogurt with strawberries and muesli, carrot bread I baked yesterday, juice and coffee. Now my stomach is so full that I think I don’t have to eat anything before dinner.

Tortilla Española

2-3 tbsp oil
3 potatoes
1 small onion
2 dl chickpea flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp parsley
0,5 tsp turmeric
0,25 tsp paprika (only for colour)
salt and pepper
2 dl cold water

Peel the potatoes, cut in half and slice thinly. Chop the onion coarsely. Heat the oil in a pan and put the potatoes in it. Be careful, the oil can splatter and burn your hand. Fry few minutes. Stir often to avoid potatoes sticking together. Add the onion and continue frying until both potatoes and onion are soft and lightly browned. Remove from heat.

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add water and whisk until well mixed. Add fried potatoes and onion. You can let the mixture sit 10-20 minutes, but it’s not required. Heat the pan again, add more oil if needed. Spread the mixture to the pan and fry on medium or low heat until the surface is dry and bottom is browned. Flip and fry until the other side is browned too.

Yellow And Orange Bread

It’s winter already and we don’t have much daylight or sun shine here. That’s why I tried to add some sun in the bread I made today.

I did measure the wheat flour, but I got confused somewhere after 6 or 7 dl, so I’m not sure how much I actually used. Use more or less if needed. I didn’t look at the time I baked the breads, but I think it might have been 15-20 minutes.

Sunny Bread
(3 breads)

4,5 dl water
25 g yeast
0,5 tsp salt
2 tsp molasses (dark syrup)
0,5 tsp turmeric (use 1 tsp if you want your bread more yellow)
3 carrots
1 dl sunflower seeds
3 dl rolled oats
1 dl rye flour
about 9 dl wheat flour
2 tbsp oil

Dissolve yeast, salt, molasses and turmeric in lukewarm water. Grate the carrots coarsely and add them with sunflower seeds, oats and rye flour to the water and stir until mixed. Knead a dough with wheat flour. Add the oil in the end of kneading. Cover with a towel and allow to rise until doubled.

Punch down. Make three relatively flat round breads, 15-20 cm diameter. Put them on a baking sheet (two on one baking sheet), cover with a towel and allow to rise 10-15 minutes. Take a narrow drinking glass or small round cookie cutter and make a hole in the middle of each bread. Bake in 225 Celsius degrees until they look ready.