Tomorrow is the first day of October and the first day of Vegan Month of Food 2009. You can read more about Vegan MoFo from Cake Maker to the Stars and PPK. For us it means we’ll be posting here more often in the near future and will be busy reading other food blogs.
I will also buy new batteries to the camera and try to learn how to take better pictures.
My birthday was few months ago. Instead of having a party I went to a restaurant with Nomad and my sister. I had a portobello burger with sweet potato fries. It was the best burger I’ve ever had, and I wanted to try to make something similar at home. The result was the best burger I’ve ever made, even if the one at the restaurant was better. The burger on the picture isn’t so pretty, but it did taste great.
1 burger bun (I used homemade carrot bun)
1 roasted portobello cap
tomato slices
onion rings
pickle slices
mustard, ketchup
mayonnaise
Put everything inside the bun.
2 l root vegetables (potato wedges, carrot sticks, rutabaga sticks)
3 tblsp oil
1 tsp smoked paprika
0,5 tsp black pepper
salt
little bit of cayenne
Put the root vegetables to a bowl and add oil and spices. Mix with your hands until all the roots are covered with spicy oil. Cover a baking sheet with parchment paper and spread the root vegetables on it. Bake in 225 Celsius degrees for 20 minutes or until they are soft inside and crispy outside (try with a fork). Turn the roots once or twice during the baking. Baking time depends on thickness or your root vegetables. Serve with burger and dip.
Garlic and Chili Dip
2 dl plain soy yogurt
1 tsp mustard
pinch of salt
1 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp minced garlic
half of a fresh lemon drop chili minced*
few drops of Chipotle Tabasco
Mix everything and let sit in the fridge 20 minutes or longer before serving.
*You can use other fresh or dried chili and/or increase the amount of it if you want hotter dip. Half a lemon drop makes a mild dip.
I went to the market place and found a huge bag of carrots for only 1,50€. Of course I had to buy them. At home I started to search for carrot recipes. The recipes in my cook books didn’t inspire me this time, but I found a tasty looking polenta recipe from Cat Tea Corner. I never use their alphabetical index, because I have found “search by ingredient” index more useful. If you want to cook something with a certain ingredient (like carrots), you find the recipes easily. And all the recipes at Cat Tea Corner are vegan.
From the helpful ingredient search I found Baked polenta and vegetables with low-fat onion gravy. I’m not copy-pasting the recipe here, because the writer(s) ask not to and you can see it by clicking the link above. The recipe says you can use any vegetables you want, I used carrots, celery, peas and green beans. I didn’t have white wine, so I used only broth for the gravy. This meal was very easy to make, but making it took over an hour. You just cook the ingredients a little while and then wait the polenta to bake and cool. While you wait, you can make the onion gravy and maybe a salad. We had this simple salad, which was just as easy as the polenta.
15 cm piece of cucumber
2 tomatoes
1 small red onion
handful or two of fresh mint leaves
2 tblsp olive oil
1 tblsp balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper
Cut the cucumber and tomatoes to chunks and slice the onion, and put them into a salad bowl with mint. Mix the dressing ingredients in a small cup and combine with the salad.
We have recently moved to a new apartment, which have been keeping us busy and we haven’t had time to update the blog. The food we have eaten lately has usually been “let’s throw everything on the pan” type, so there hasn’t been much to blog about either. But today I made some chard rolls. My mother gave the recipe a while ago and I have wanted to try it, because she told they are good, which made me assume they are awesome. And they were. You should try them too, here’s both my mother’s original lacto-vegetarian recipe and my vegan version.
12 big chards, leaves and stalks separately
2 dl red lentils
1 onion
4-6 garlic cloves
chili, fresh or dry
2-3 tsp curry powder
3 tblsp fresh cilantro (I didn’t have cilantro and used basil instead)
200 g grated Emmental cheese (I used 1 dl nutritional yeast and 1 dl oat cream)
pinch of salt
canola oil
molasses (about 2 tblsp)
optional: cream (I used oat cream)
Cook the lentils in boiling water for 8 minutes, they don’t have to be soft yet. Drain. Chop onion, garlic and chard stems. Heat some oil in a pan and fry onion, garlic, chard stems, chili and curry powder until onion and chard are soft. Combine with lentils. Add cilantro, cheese and some salt, and mix well. Put couple of tblsp filling on a chard leave and roll. Repeat until you run out of leaves or filling (we ran out of chard leaves). Put the rolls into a greased baking dish, tightly next to each other. Pour little molasses on the rolls and put some water (about 1 dl) to the dish. Bake in 175 celsius degrees 35-40 minutes. Spoon liquid from the dish over the rolls couple of times during the baking. You can pour few tblsp cream on the rolls in the end of baking.
We had these with potatoes and simple green salad (lettuce, cucumber and fresh mint with tahini dressing).
Elitefood 