Vegan comfort

Somehow this blog has been vegetarian so far - I haven't even cooked meat at home for over a month. This takes it even further with it being my first true vegan dish. I'm not a vegetarian or vegan but I enjoy cooking in this way, as I'm not actually very good at cooking meat! This is a wonderful lentil recipe from Smitten Kitchen which falls into the vegan and comfort food categories. Om nom nom. It was also relatively easy to prepare - just make sure you leave enough time to cook the lentils... I didn't and we ended up eating them a little before their prime. But it still turned out pretty well I'd say!

Stewed lentils with tomatoes

2 teaspoons olive oil
2 cups large-diced yellow onions (2 onions)
2 cups large-diced carrots (1 really big carrot!)
1 tablespoon minced garlic (3 cloves)
1 800g can whole plum tomatoes
1 cup French green lentils (400g)
2 cups vegetable stock
2 teaspoons mild curry powder
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

I fried the onions and carrots in olive oil until the onions started to brown, then added the garlic and cooked for a further minute. I then added the tomatoes, lentils, stock, curry powder, thyme, salt and pepper and cooked for about 40 minutes - until the lentils were tender and nice. I then added the vinegar and served.

I would probably advise maybe 3/4 tablespoon of vinegar in future as it was a little overpowering.

Banana bread/cake

Our local greengrocer was having a huge sale on bananas about a month ago... While I don't actually like fresh bananas I totally couldn't pass up this offer for the prospects of cake baking! I froze all the bananas as soon as I got home and have been using them gradually for baking... which is fun when you already have all the ingredients and don't have to go out!

I found a relatively simple recipe on Smitten Kitchen and reproduced it using what ingredients we had - for instance, I ground my own cloves then passed them through a sieve before baking. We also had no nutmeg so I added a little more cinnamon instead.

Ingredients:
5 small ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted salted butter
3/4 to 1 cup brown sugar
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
Pinch of ground cloves
1 1/2 cup of flour

First I defrosted and smashed the bananas, then mixed them in with the melted butter. I added the brown sugar, beaten egg, vanilla essence, cinnamon and ground cloves, and mixed around with a wooden spoon. I then sifted the baking powder on top of this mix and stirred it in. The flour went in last and I stirred it until it was a relatively thick consistency and all the ingredients were uniformly distributed. I greased the edges of a bread tin (20cm x 10cm - but smaller might be better in future) and put the mix in, spreading it out as evenly as possible. I then baked at 175C for 45mins - or until a tester comes out clean - and turned out onto a plate.

Best served buttered!

French toast mod. #1

I love french toast. Absolutely love it. When I was little we used to have french toast sandwiches with cheese in the middle and this is a kind of modification to that.


Ingredients for 1 sandwich:
2 slices of fresh bread
1 teaspoon of butter/margarine
1 teaspoon of grated Gruyere cheese
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 egg
1/8 cup milk
Pepper and salt to taste

First I whisked the egg and milk together until fully combined, then chop the thyme and mix with the cheese. Add a little salt and pepper to this if you like. Next I wet the bread all over with the egg mix like with normal french toast. I melted the butter on the pan and then put the
first slice of bread on. I covered this with the thyme and cheese then put the other slice on top. Once the bottom was sufficiently cooked, I flipped the sandwich over and cooked the other side until also crispy. And then I ate it in record time.

Vegetarian dinner with my folks!

Tonight Mum, Dad and my little brother came over for dinner! I don't often cook for more than 2-3 people, but it turned out pretty well and I have leftovers for work which is always a perk! I have been cooking vegetarian a lot lately, so I thought I'd continue by making a pumpkin soup and onion tart. I got the recipes from smitten kitchen again... waiting until I get some verjuice before I continue on with Maggie Beer's book as almost everything in that book requires verjuice. Anyway, onto the recipes!

Butternut Pumpkin Soup:
Made about 6 portions...

Ingredients:
125g butter
1 large onion, finely chopped
4 large garlic cloves, chopped
1L chicken stock (animal content free)
1kg butternut pumpkin
1 teaspoons minced fresh thyme
1 teaspoons minced fresh sage
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/8 cup cream

First I prepped the pumpkin, garlic and onion by cutting the pumpkin into small pieces, and dicing the onion and garlic. Next I melted the butter in a heavy based saucepan, and fried the onion and garlic until they were clear. I then added all the stock, pumpkin, and herbs, and brought the mixture to the boil and simmered on a medium heat until the pumpkin was nice and tender. Once the pumpkin was cooked I turned off the heat and took the pieces of pumpkin out and blended them until smooth, which could then be added back to the stock. After returning the pureed pumpkin, I whisked the soup until it had thickened sufficiently, then added the cream. And it's done! I served it with little bread rolls with Gruyere cheese melted on top AND the following onion tart - which was probably my favourite part of the meal!

Onion Tart:
Makes 1 tart (1 sheet of frozen puff pastry)

Ingredients:
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon mustard
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
500g onions
1 sheet puff pastry
1/3 cup shaved Parmesan

Preheat the oven to 190C.
So I got my lovely boy to slice the onion for me (as my eyes are way too sensitive) and kept it aside ready for frying. I added the olive oil to the frying pan and, once hot, added the fennel seeds and sauteed for just less than 1 minute. I then added the onion and cooked until the onion started to caramelise - YUM. While the onion was cooking I spread a thin layer of the mustard over the pastry. Once the onion was done I put it over the mustard and covered with the Parmesan. Now into the oven for about 15-20 minutes or until the puff pastry looks nice and golden. Oh man, we have extra onion cut and I am totally making this again tomorrow night!

STRAWBERRY JAM

I've never made jam before and I kinda winged it this time too. I guess the recipe was adapted from Maggie's Harvest, which describes an apricot jam. Well I didn't have kilos of apricots, I had a kilo of strawberries though!

Ingredients:
1kg over-ripe strawberries
150ml water
300g caster sugar
Juice of 1/2 a lemon

I cooked the strawberries in the water for about 10mins until all the strawberries were sufficiently mashed up. I then added the lemon juice and sugar gradually and stirred until it was dissolved. I cooked this for about 40mins total, at first on a high temperature, then on a low temperature. Basically you just want it to be as viscous as possible.



While the jam was cooking I sterilized the jar I wanted to use (i.e. the only jar in our household not filled with random spices.) Just for your info, I did this by washing the jar in warm soapy water, rinsing, then putting it in the oven at 120C for at least 15mins.

I put the jam into the jar as soon as it came out of the oven... so it was super hot. I'm not sure if that was a good idea, but I wanted it to be as sterile as possible. To cool it down you can run a closed bottle under cold tap water. I'll just wait then pop it into the fridge before bed

Israeli Cous Cous with Roast Tomatoes and Olives

A recipe from smitten kitchen!



For roasted tomatoes and dressing
2 punnets red grape tomatoes
3 large garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup warm water
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

For couscous
2 3/4 cups chicken stock
2 1/4 cups Israeli couscous
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/2 cup Kalamata
1/3 cup chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1/4 cup chopped fresh mint
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

Roast tomatoes and make dressing:
Preheat oven to 125C.

I halved tomatoes through stem ends and placed cut sides up, in a single layer in a large shallow baking pan. I added garlic to the pan and roasted for about 45mins. Cooling only took about 10mins before the tomatoes could be used in a blender!

Garlic was peeled and pureed with oil, water, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and 1/2 cup roasted tomatoes in a blender until dressing was semi smooth.

To make cous cous: I brought the stock to a boil in a heavy saucepan and stirred in cous cous, then simmered, uncovered, for 6 minutes. I then turned off the gas and left the cous cous to set for about 10 minutes.

After all this was ready it was time to combine it with the chopped herbs and olives.

Oh man, so good. Even for my boy and housemate :D

Maggie Beer

Yesterday I purchased Maggie's Harvest by Maggie Beer and today I made her Moist Buttermilk Cake with Strawberries. It was quite a success but it sank a lil bit in the middle. Nothing that couldn't be fixed with icing!








Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1/2 cup buttermilk (which I made myself using 1 cup milk, 1 teaspoon white vinegar, set for 5 mins)
125g unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups sugar
5 eggs, room temperature
Rind of 2 lemons
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
strawberries!

Icing:
100g butter
Rind of 2 lemons
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 2/3 icing sugar

First I preheated the oven to 180C then greased my cake tin (24cm) with butter. I then sifted the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Leaving this for a moment, I added the vanilla to the buttermilk then moved onto creaming the butter. After the butter had become pale, I added sugar steadily until it was well combined with the butter.
I then added 2 whole eggs leaving 30 seconds between them. The other 3 eggs were separated into the yolk and white, and the white discarded. The yolks were added to the mixture leaving 30 seconds between each yolk. I added the lemon rind and oil, followed by half of the flour mix, which was folded into the mixture. Once combined, half of the buttermilk was added. This was mixed in, followed by the rest of the flour mix - again followed by the rest of the buttermilk.
Once all combined, the cake mix is ready to go into the cake tin! It was cooked for 35 minutes, after which the cake was set and had started to come apart from the edges of the tin. I left it for about 20 mins before taking out of the tin, and put it right side up on a cooling rack.
The icing was pretty easy - just combine the ingredients until smooth. Softening the butter in the microwave first helps a bit. I iced it after it was cool and luckily the icing covered the middle which had sunk a little. I then served it with fresh strawberries.

Mushroom pie & potato with goats' cheese

I received a comfort food cook book from my boy for my birthday, which is great because comfort food is the best kind! My first recipe was a delicious pie/tart using mushrooms and goats' cheese.

Ingredients:
200ml milk
150ml double cream
1 garlic clove
350g potatoes
50g butter
350g mushrooms (I used field and button as they were all that was left at the grocer)
100g goats' cheese
2 sheets frozen puff pastry
salt and pepper to taste
Thyme is a nice addition as well

Prior to starting, I preheated the oven to 200C. First I cut the potatoes into 2cm x 2cm cubes and placed them in a pot with the milk and cream, then brought this to the boil and simmered until the potatoes were cooked (about 15mins). While the potatoes were cooking, I cooked the mushrooms in the butter with thyme over a medium-high heat, cooking until all moisture had left the pan.
Once all above had cooked I laid the pastry out into a cooking dish, and filled it first with the potatoes, then with the mushrooms on top. I then put the cubed goats' cheese on the mushrooms and closed up the pastry. I brushed the top of the pastry with milk, scored it, then put it in the oven for 20mins - or until the pastry looks cooked enough.
Delicious!

Just as a note, I would probably use a different cheese next time - probably fontina. This is just my personal taste though and goats' cheese worked pretty well.