Eggplant Bharta and Roti

K's tweet about her search for roti a couple of days ago got me thinking about Indian food and when I think about Indian food I think about eggplants. I flicked through my cookbooks and found a recipe for eggplant bharta in La Dolce Vegan. I also made some roti bread.

Eggplant Bharta

Ingredients

• 1 small eggplant
• 1 small onion
• 1/2 cup vegetable stock
• 3 cloves garlic minced
• 5 cm ginger, grated
• 1 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp turmeric
• 1/4 tsp cayenne
• 1 small hot pepper
• 1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (Excluded as I couldn't remember what cilantro was (coriander leaves according to wikipedia) and couldn't be bothered looking it up)

Combine eggplant, onion and stock in a large saucepan on medium-high heat. Cover and cook for 5-7 minutes, until eggplant starts to soften and reduce. Add everything else, except tomatoes and simmer for 2 minutes. Reduce heat and add tomato and cilantro, re-cover, simmer for 5 minutes.

Kramer suggests serving over rice, but I just ate it with roti bread.

Roti bread

• 2 1/2 cups wholegrain flour
• 1 1/4 cup water

Make a well in the flour and gradually pour in the water and mix until dough is formed. Knead for about 8-10 minutes, or less if you can't be bothered. Cover and let dough rest for about 30 mins.

Heat up your frying pan. Put a handful of flour on a plate. Break dough up into about 6 balls. Dip ball of dough into flour and roll out into a thin circle, about 15cm in diameter. Place rolled out dough into your frying pan. Start preparing your next roti. By the time that one is ready, your roti should start bubbling a bit which means it is time to flip it over. Same deal on the other side, but now you can press down firmly on the edges of the roti with a spatula to make the roti puff up (This is the coolest part of making roti bread). The bread is done after that. Set it aside and brush with margarine.

Perhaps the coriander leaves would add more to the flavour, but it wasn't that bad without it. Eating it with the roti was the ideal combination and I'll definitely be making roti more often.

Soundtrack - Bob Dylan at Budokan

Swedish Chocolate balls

Any vegan who has been to Sweden, or has met a Swedish vegan, is familiar with Delicato balls and their chocolatey, coconutty goodness. Alas, these seem to be unavailable outside of Sweden. Not even at IKEA.

Thanks to my Swedish friends, over at veganfitness.net, I discovered that delicato balls are just a commercial version of the Swedish treat, chokladboll. Armed with a recipe, I whipped up a quick batch a couple of nights ago. I took some to work, where they went down quite well, and opened the floodgates for a days worth of jokes about balls.

Ingredients

• 3 1/4 cups oats
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 6 tbsp cocoa (I used cacao powder)
• 1 Tbsp vanilla sugar (I used the Hoyts brand) or 1 tsp  vanilla extract, added with the coffee
• 2/3 cup margarine (nutellex)
• 6 Tbsp  cold coffee
• flaked coconut

Method 

• Mix oats (Instant Oats will give a better texture and flavor and is recommended), sugar, vanilla sugar, and cocoa in a large bowl.
• Using your hands or a potato masher, incorporate the margarine into the dry ingredients until the dough has an even consistency.
• Add the coffee and mix until incorporated.
• Fill a small bowl with flaked coconut.
• With your hands, roll the dough into 3 cm diameter balls.
• Roll each ball in the coconut or pearl sugar and place on a tray.
• Chill chocolate balls for at least one hour before serving.

Required soundtrack: Anything by Roxette 

Tofu fingers with tartar sauce

My fridge is full of tofu at the moment because I just can't resist buying the joyco "nigari hard tofu" as it's so cheap and stuffed with protein (55 grams per pack).

With so much of it available to me, I knew that I had to make a tofu dish for the BBQ potluck. The vegan table came to the rescue with it's "Tofu filet with cornmeal crust and tartar sauce". I did a practice run on Friday and it went well, so I made it again on Saturday.


Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup polenta
• 3 teaspoons mixed herbs (thyme, rosemary, marjoram, basil, oregano and sage)
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1 cup vegan milk
• 2 tablespoons dijon mustard
• 1 block joyco tofu (325 grams)

Mix all the dry ingredients together and in another bowl whisk the mustard into your vegan milk.

Cut tofu into 1cm slices and heat oil in a frying pan.

Dip tofu into vegan milk and dredge in the flour mixture. Fry for a couple of minutes on each side until perfectly brown and crispy (just like in the photo).

For the tartar sauce, mix in finely chopped parsley, pickles and capers into some vegan mayonnaise. I used the Praise 97% fat-free mayonnaise.

Check out K's write up of the potluck to see pictures of all the great stuff other folks made and of my sweet cornbread.

Black bean burgers from hell and blackened tofu slabs

There aren't many things that are more awesome than veganism or heavy metal music, unless of course you combine them both into an online cooking show. Tim Hogarth has done this with his heavy metal vegan cooking website and youtube channel. The videos are really fun and the recipes are not too difficult to make. I've made the apple pie and black bean burgers so far.

Check out the video and recipe for the black bean burgers.

The only mildly difficult part about this recipe was cooking up the black beans, since I'm not willing to pay $5+ for a can of beans no matter how convenient it is. I buy my black beans, and most of my dried beans, from D'Souzas at Preston Market.

BLACKENED TOFU SLABS

Just when you think it can't get any cooler, I pull out a recipe from "vegan soul kitchen". Having experienced the "watermelon with basil sea salt" a few years ago while at a friend's place, and flicking through their copy, I knew that I needed to get it, and I finally did.

Ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon onion powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon coriander
• 1 teaspoon coarse sea salt
• 1 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon white pepper
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 kilo extra-firm tofu (I used the joyco nigari hard tofu that you can get from safeway), frozen, thawed, pressed and patted dry, cut into 3 even widthwise slices

Combine everything, except the tofu, in a small bowl and transfer to a large plate. Brush the tofu with  olive oil and dredge in seasoning. Fry until crisp (2-3 mins each side).


Typing up the recipe has made me realise that I actually put in too much cayenne, which explains its dominance, but that is the kind of dominance I don't mind.

Having made too much of the seasoning, I mixed it in with some margarine and used it as a sandwich spread. It's a keeper.

One pie to rule them all

After trying the Linda McCartney pies a few weeks ago and being bitterly disappointed with its complete lack of flavour, I decided it was time to create a record of all the pies I've tried and rate them on their taste, presentation and all that other stuff food critics write about to help fill up their word count.

Funky pies

My first encounter with these was at last year's world vegan day, and unfortunately they were still frozen in the middle when I dug into a few of them. I wasn't blown away by them as they seemed to be too heavy on the oily pastry rather than the fillings. The fillings were also too chunky, with massive morsels of "chicken". All the flavours are good, but the chilli-non carne is one I won't be trying again. My favourite item from the funky pies people is not a pie at all, but their bacon and mushroom quiche. The brownies are pretty good too.

I was lucky enough to make a visit to the actual cafe in Bondi last year and sampling the rest of their menu was a pure delight and judging by k's recent post, they have raised the bar even higher.

Funky chunky

Rating - 3.5/5

Linda McCartney country pies

How excited I was to find out that these were available in Melbourne after remembering a pleasant experience with them when I was in England a couple of years ago. It was, however, a distorted memory, clouded with tasty potatoes and gravy that covered up for the flavourlessness of the pie. After the first few bites I felt a slight confusion. "Where is the flavour?", I asked myself. I ate a little more and realised that there wasn't any.  I finished it, but the taste of betrayal lingered for a few more hours.

Like most things in life, parallels can be drawn with the entire Wings catalogue. Linda McCartney foods have put out a few good things, I admit that the sausages are nice, much like Wings' "Live and let die", but there are a lot of things that went wrong (e.g. sausage rolls and all the lacto-ovo stuff/the rest of Wings' records, excluding "Band on the run" and, depending on my mood, "Mull of Kintyre").

Rating - 1/5

Primal pies

While in Sydney last year I checked out most of the must try eateries and sampled two of the pies on offer at Naked Espresso. While I feel they are closer to my ideal pie than the Funky and Linda McCartney ones, they lack a crucial element, structural integrity. The photo below demonstrates this.

As you can see, there is no unity between the filling and the pastry (and it's not just because of the way I'm holding it ;) ). It looks like it has been deflated.  One wrong move and you can say goodbye to all that filling. It's a strange problem as it was a non-issue when I experienced my first vegan pie all those years ago at a humble Preston bakery/cult-ery.

Rating - 4/5

La Panella

Going to La Panella is like visiting an old friend who has become slightly whacky, bleached their hair and made a million friends who are willing to give them large sums of money to set up their own T.V. network, but they still know how to make a nice pie. The pastry is thick enough to hold the filling together, maintains its structural integrity once bitten into and has the perfect T.V.P., gravy and vegetable ratio. True, sometimes I can't tell the difference between the plain vegetable and mushroom pie, but there is such amazing synergy between the core ingredients that I can easily disregard it.

Besides the unbeatable value, the biggest plus for these pies is that they can make carcass munchers unconsciously make an ethical food choice for once in their otherwise heartless lives.  Luckily(?) the supreme master's followers are growing so there may be more of this type of thing happening around the place.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Vegan_Meat_Pie_02_Pengo.jpg

Rating - 5/5


Special mention: Janet's pies in Newtown make a couple of vegan pies with only vegetables!?! in them. Nevertheless they are filling and borderline healthy. Here's a succinct but informative blog post by a sydneysider.

"Cheese burger" pizza

I was thinking about pizza throughout most of the day and decided to make one when I got home from work. I used a recipe from Sarah Kramer's "la dolce vegan".  It's very easy to make.

Ingredients:

• 1 pizza crust (I used the herbed crust from the same book. Basically add a teaspoon each of dried basil and oregano to a regular dough)
• 3/4 cup tomato sauce
• 1-2 pickles thinly sliced
• 1/4 small onion, thinly sliced
• 300 gm sanitarium vegie mince
• 1 cup cheezly
• 2 tbsp mustard

Method:


Preheat oven to 230 degrees. Spread sauce on crust, then place onions, mince, cheese and then mustard (I just squirted the mustard on). Bake 15-20 mins and you are good to go, after allowing to cool for a few minutes.

This was a great pizza and strangely I was unable to finish the whole thing.

Un-Beet-able chocolate cake

Chocolate beetroot cake

Thanks to meveg's post about choc beetroot cupcakes, I found Phillipa O's recipe for chocolate beetroot cake and it is a great one. It is very easy to make and to overeat. Finishing off the leftover raw beetroot reminded me how much nicer fresh beetroot actually is in comparison to the tinned stuff. Is this my first step into raw foodism and "super health"? Hell no!

Roasted eggplant and caramelised onion marinara on Nutmeat

After buying an eggplant and not knowing what to do with it, I turned to my current favourite cook book, Vegan Yum Yum. It supplied me with a kick-arse recipe for the fanciest sauce I have ever made. The challenge was to incorporate it into a protein packed powerhouse of a meal, rather than with the pathetic pasta the book suggested. Rather than using the Fry's chicken-style strips, I opted for a more budget conscious, high protein, choice and went with nutmeat. I fried up a whole can and smothered it with the sauce.

Creamy Polenta with mushrooms

Last week I bought a copy of Colleen Patrick Goudreau's, "The Joy of Vegan Baking", so I decided to make something from her other book, "The Vegan Table".

This is another relatively easy recipe. Basically, make polenta and mix in some soy milk, herbs, margarine, and pepper. Fry up some onions and chuck in the mushrooms and saute until they begin to go limp. Splash in some tamari and set aside. My winesauce (minus the wine) was a couple of tablespoons of balsamic vinegar with margarine melted into it. So easy and delicious. The only problem I had was trying to work fast enough so that the polenta didn't harden up too much by the time the mushrooms and sauce were done. But I can live with that.