I am a wild party animal.

So... I seem to have turned into that person who shows up on a Friday night at the yoga studio. We're going to watch a movie about Ashtanga and eat veg/raw food (I'll be sticking to the raw vegan food). I also seem to have gone mostly raw over the past little while. Not intentionally, but by consistently eating what makes me feel good. My body isn't cutting me a lot of slack lately- between recovering from the fire in November, keeping things running at work, and having a blast with friends/myself/my books/the amazing Edinburgh winter - I'm just not willing to eat stuff that makes me feel unnecessarily sluggish or crappy when I can instead eat stuff that makes me feel pretty damn good, all things considered.

So, here's what I'm bringing to the Gathering of Yogis:

Raw Mole dip

soak in just enough warm water to cover for at least an hour (if you have a superblender) or a few hours (if you are using an immersion blender or a non-super blender):
3/4 cup raisins
2 dried figs
1 dried ancho chili, deseeded and de-membraned
1 dried guajillo chili, deseeded and de-membraned
3 sundried tomato halves
1/2 star of star anise
1 small cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
(if you don't have a superblender, use powdered versions of the spices)

Dump into the blender (including the soak water) and BLEND!

Now, add:

1 c raw almonds (preferably soaked) or 1/2 c raw almond butter
2 heaping tbs raw pumpkinseed butter
2 heaping tbs raw black sesame tahini (I'm sure that white would work too, I just don't have any on hand)
2 small (or 1 large) cloves garlic
1 tomato, chopped
pinch sea salt
1/2-3/4 cup raw unsweetened chocolate (chopped) OR equivalent in cocoa powder + cocoa butter
2 tbs cacao powder

optional add-ins:
1-2 tbs chaga mushroom powder
1 tsp mexican oregano
1/3-1/2 tsp smoked paprika

blend! blend! blend! You may need to add more water, as this is quite thick. I use this as a dip for fresh veg (carrots, courgette, red peppers, cukes), and sometimes as a spread on raw bread (great for when you want something really heavy and filling). Or I just eat it with a spoon. If you usually make cooked mole, be warned that the chili is going to be a lot sharper in the raw version, so you may want to only put in half your normal amount of chili at the beginning, taste, and then add the rest if you want (I want!). It's best to make this the day before, and let it sit in the fridge overnight so that the flavors can romance each other a bit.

Dancing along to: Los Fabulosos Cadillacs' Matador, because I was introduced to the wonders that are Argintinian ska and mole sauce at the same time, and they are forever linked in my little soul.

Pretty please, with a cherry on top.

I like it when fruit attacks my dinner. Also, I bought a cherry pitter on a recent trip to Cambridge. I kid you not. There was a cafe. The coffee was excellent. And for some completely unfathomable and wonderful reason, they had little cherry pitters for sale. While killing time waiting for my train to London, I had one coffee and bought one cherry pitter and was very pleased with life in general (though that could have also had a lot to do with the fun science and bright sunshine and the fact that I was headed to a roller derby game in London).

Cumin-basil socca-like-thing (chickpea flour, flax meal, salt, toasted cumin seeds, dried basil, water). I like to preheat my cast iron pan in the oven, then take it out, melt a tiny bit of coconut oil in it, and then pour the batter in and put it back in the oven. It makes a lovely crust on the bottom. I call this a socca-like-thing because it's not nearly as fried as actual socca. It's more like the love child of socca and chickpea pizza crust.

The socca is simply topped with rainbow chard wilted in white wine, then liberally sprinkled with cracked black pepper and then festooned with pitted cherries. The sauce is reduced balsamic vinegar into which I've melted some unsweetened chocolate.

So easy. So good. And... first cherries of the year!

Dancing along to: Ray Spoon. Fun and yum, just like this dinner.

smoky eggplant roll ups

Fancy and easy for when you don't have time to cook. Eggplant marinated in lapsang suchong tea and soy sauce, filled with mashed pinto beans (leftover cooked pinto beans, toasted cumin, white miso, lime juice), baked in some of the marinade + a chopped tomato. Served up next to warm fall salad: steamed sweet potatoes and green beans, topped with pomegranite dressing (lemon vinegar, pomegranite molasses, black pepper, garlic) and white pomegranite seeds. Soooo colourful. Sooooo easy. Sooooo yum.

Excuse me. Must run. Have 8 346 932 things to do now.

Music: Manic Monday, by the Bangles. And it's not even Monday.

multicoloured carrot pilaf

After a few days of holiday food, it's nice to get back to normal food. This is simple and easy and homey, but not at all boring. You can easily double or triple the recipe for potlucks or to have leftovers for lunches. The fancy-pants carrots and easygoing spices make it great for bringing to shared food-ish events. It's also the perfect break from rich foods after the crazyness of Christmas and before the impending culinary lunacy of Hogmanay. And I love multicoloured carrots! The ones here are orange ringed with purple. So fun!

Multicoloured carrot pilaf

3/4 cup brown basmati rice
1/2 cup puy lentils (dry measure), cooked and drained (about 3/4 cup cooked)
1 tbs cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
3 cardamom pods, crushed,
1 red onion, in half-moons
1/2 tsp smoked salt
1/3 cup chopped dates
1/3 cup currants
1/3 tsp cinnamon
2 multicoloured carrots, in thin rounds
black pepper to taste
lemon juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup chopped parsley (optional)

Cook rice separately, as usual. Let cool a little bit. Heat up a pan and throw the cumin in. When it smells amazing, add the onions ,bay leaf and cardamom, and saute over low heat until the onions are (I did them in a bit of white wine). Add everything else up to the cinnamon and cook until combined. It should be dry, but not sticky. Add a splash of water or wine if it starts sticking to the pan. Add carrots and cover for a minute or two. You want them to steam, but not get mushy. When the carrots are ready, add lemon juice, pepper, and parsely and stir. Serve immediately. This is also really good as a cold salad, in which case I would garnish it with fresh pomegranate seeds. I served this with roasted okra (in pomegranite molasses and lemon vinegar).

homey, chill, and interesting music: the dubliners, played nice and quiet so that you can sing along without shouting and dance along while you cook in a peaceful candlelit kitchen.

Warm-me-up soup

It's rainy. It's dark. It's most definitely winter. And this soup, my friend, will warm you from your nose down to your toes! I just used the veg that I had lying around, and I imagine that almost any combination of root vegetables would work, along with almost any sturdy green. This isn't a fussy soup. Just throw everything thing in the pot and enjoy the wonderful smell in your kitchen as it simmers.

Warm-me-up soup

1 small red onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 medium turnip, peeled and chopped
about 2 cups of chopped cabbage (whatever kind you have around)
1 tbs fresh ginger, grated
3 cloves garlic, chopped
8 cherry tomatoes or 2 uncherry tomatoes, chopped
handful currants
1/2 cup dried sour apricots, chopped
1 scant tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp allspice
2 tbs cumin
1 bay leaf
as much chopped jalopeno as you want
about 6 cups of water or broth

2-3 tbs pomegranate molasses
salt to taste
at least 1 cup of fresh coriander, chopped
1/2 fresh pomegranate worth of pomegranate seeds

Combine everything up to and including the water in a large pot. Bring to a boil, and simmer until all the veg are done. Then add the pomegranate molassses and salt. Just before serving, stir in the coriander and fresh pomegranate seeds. If you have any greens lying around that need using, throw them in too. Serve with potato-mint quickbread (below) and olives.

Potato-mint quickbread

3 spuds, mashed and salted
1 heaping tsp dried mint
1 heaping tsp dried oregano
2 tbs lemon juice
1-2 cups of flour, depending on how wet your mashed spuds are
1 tsp baking soda

Mash the herbs and lemon juice into the spuds. Mix the baking soda with one cup of the flour, and mix that in. If more flour is needed, add it. The dough should be a little sticky, but you should be able to more or less form it into a round loaf. Place said round loaf in a greased and floured pid dish. Bake at 220C for 20 mins, and then 200C for another 10 mins. Let cool for at least 5 mins before liberating the loaf from the pie pan. Cut into wedges and serve.

An alternate way to warm up: "Gin" by the Kronos Quartet and the Tiger Lilies, on one of the bestest sing-along albums of all time: The Gorey End.

savoury blackberry preserves

I love blackberries, and we were out on the beach picking them. A lot of them. Lots and lots. While picking, I ate as many as possible. Usually I try to stick to the general rule of "don't eat anything larger than your own head", but I may have eaten more than one me-head worth of blackberries. However, since blackberry season is tragically short, I think an exception was in order. Plus, we were on our bikes all day, and you need energy, right? Upon arriving home with 4 L of blackberries, I made blackberry soda bread, and a few wee little adorable pots of blackberry jam (mostly for guests and gifts), but to be honest, jam doesn't really float my boat. I like all of my sweets to be in the form of actual fruit and/or chocolate. At this point, I should confess that my house is where jam comes to grow very interesting mould and then die. However, I do love berries with a wild passion, and miss the saskatoon berries that I grew up gorging on. Recently, I've been into making savoury dishes of things that are usually sweet (at least in western cuisine), and have pretty much fallen in love with this idea. This is a sauce that's good on rice, especially with marinated and baked tofu, or chickpeas and rice, or an omnisub such as that slightly bizarre yet yummy vegan duck that is *actually shaped like a duck* at the Chinese supermarket and travel agency near my place... Either way, there are lots of jam recipes out there for those with a sweet tooth. Here are some blackberry preserves for the rest of us:

2L blackberries (I only know this because we picked 2 1L containers)
6 cloves garlic, chopped fine
dash salt
1/2 tsp spanish paprika
dash chili flakes (I used about 1/2 tsp)
1 whole lemon, chopped, peel and all.
1 bunch coriander chopped (about 1.5 cups).

Combine everything except the coriander in a pot and simmer until the berries start to disintegrate and the lemon has lost all hope of remaining recognizably a lemon. Add coriander and simmer another few minutes. Pour into sterile jars and preserve using your favourite technique, or let cool and pack into freezable containers for the freezer. British freezers have a capacity of approximately 1 pint of very specific geometry, and I need that space for my cube of frozen edamame, so I went for the preserves. Here is a good explanation of making preserves if you don't know how.

music for berries with a hint of nostalgia: all you can eat, by kd lang.

beets, lentils, and homemade mustard.

...which is a lot for one little post, but they all go together. This lentil and beet dish is incredibly versatile. You can change the ratios to make it mostly beets, mostly lentils, mostly onions, or anything in between. You can also make it as simple or complex as you want by adding some or all of the extras.

For the lentil and beet salad:

3c cooked black beluga lentils

2 beets

1 large onion

1/2c dried mushrooms (nice strong ones, like porcini)

fresh dill, chopped (I used about 1/2c, but others are usually more, um, moderate with herbs. I don't see why.)

balsamic vinegar OR vincotto + a splash of lemon juice (I used my new favorite thing, which is vincotto with carob)

scant 1 tsp good carob powder

salt and pepper to taste

optional add-ins

any or all of: chopped walnuts or toasted hazelnuts or green olives or capers or chopped fresh parsley to taste.

Bake or caramelize the beets and onions. Rehydrate the mushrooms in as little hot water as possible. When the beets and onions are done, take them out of the oven to cool a bit, and simmer the mushrooms briefly in their own juice. Chop up the beets and onions. I like big slices. When the mushrooms are done, hopefully there will still be some liquid left. Combine everything, including the mushroom liquid. Add the optional add ins. Or don't. They are, after all, optional. Serve this salad warm (or cold) on chopped bitter greens and apples. Or just chopped bitter greens. Either way, you can schmancy it up if you toss the greens first with a mustard/agave/vinegar dressing (which is those three ingredients in a 1:1:1 ratio, using apple cider or red wine vinegar)

I like mustard, and it's insanely easy to make your own. Here, I used my homemade whiskey mustard. Yes, whiskey. Because what's the point of living in Scotland if you can't cook with whiskey? 

To make your own whiskey mustard: put mustard seeds of the colour(s) you want in a glass container and cover them with whiskey and leave it in the fridge for a day or two or three (the exact length of time will depend on whether or not you forget it's there). Then blend it to the smoothness you want, add apple cider vinegar until it's the right consistency (the consistency you want), and return it to the fridge for a week so that it can calm down a bit. Make sure you put a lid on it. There. Now you have mustard, made to your own taste. You can even add sugar (agave nectar) or salt or other flavours (tarragon is yummy, for example). Don't you feel smart?  

While your beets are baking and your mustard is mustarding, dance around wildly to whiskey-mustard music with a sweet side: The Pubcrawlers

parsnip plum pancake perfection

I had me some parsnips, but I wanted pancakes. Like, reeeeeally wanted pancakes. But the parsnips were getting kind of menacing. "Eat us now",  they were saying. "You've had pancakes for a few days in a row. Your vegbox will have more of us next week, and you have to keep up!" I've been on a okonomyiaki kick lately, since finding the perfect recipe for them in the Asian Vegan Kitchen cookbook (by the way, I can't say enough good things about this cookbook. It rocks.) Now, having figured out basically how to make *anything* in my veg box into scrumptious and highly addictive japanese/kitchendancing fusion pancake madness, I'm unstoppable. 

Unstoppable, yes. But I did pause when I realized that I had taken parsnips, leeks, some soaking shitake mushooms and umeboshi plum paste out of the fridge, plus the requisite greens, (because it's not dinner if it ain't got anything green).  Really? I thought. Is this a good idea? OH SWEET JEEBUS YES. This is heaven if you like foods where the flavours strongly contrast but still play nice together. The parsnips are sweet and earthy. The mushrooms pick up the earthy note and run with it,  the greens lighten up the dish a bit and the picked plum sour/salty/sharp just skips over the whole thing and somehow ties it together. It also keeps it from being too sweet to eat for dinner. I like sweet and savory together, but  at least for main dishes, I"m not a big fan of out-and-out sweet. Try this. You won't be sorry. By the way, you'll need 4 shitake mushrooms soaked in about a cup of water beforehand.

parnsnip rosti/okonomyiaki (makes 2 pan-size pancakes, or 4 smaller ones)

2 large grated parsnips (about 3c. grated parsnip)

1 smallish leek, chopped

1/3 c shittake mushroom stock (just the soaking water from the mushrooms)

2 heaping tbs chopped pickled ginger

1 heaping tablespoon white miso

dash shoyu

dash sake

salt

grind of black pepper

about 2/3c. ww flour mixed with 1 tbs baking powder

Mix all ingredients together. This should be a very thick batter, with the flour just barely present enough to hold the parsnip and leek together. This isn't a pancake batter that you can pour. It's more like rösti with a bit of adhesive. Adjust the liquid/flour if you have to.  Fire up a pan (if you have a nonstick, now is the time to use it), spray with oil, and spread/press one pancake of batter into it, smothing it out with the back of a spoon. Cook covered until the bottom is browned, then flip, and cook covered again until the other side is brown. Repeat for pancake number two.

ume-mushroom-spinach sauce

4 rehydrated shitake mushrooms

1/2 cup cooked spinach, chopped  (I just used frozen)

2/3 cup shitake stock (ie, the rest of the stock)

dash shoyu

1 heaping tbs umeboshi plum paste

Simmer the mushooms in the stock and shoyu. Let it simmer down until there isn't much liquid left.  About 2 mins before you want to serve the pancakes, add the cooked spinach into the mushrooms and stir to combine and heat  the spinach. When you're ready to serve, stir in the plum paste. 

Oddly enough, this is really good with a few spicy dill pickes on the side. 

plum-a-riffic music: My favorite plum by Suzanne Vega.

bittersweet

Ok folks, despite what the last few posts might suggest, I don't live on desserts, I promise.  So here's a dinner, albeit one that incorporates fruit. You see, the saffron was staring at me, and then all I wanted was saffron. And there were some greens that needed to be used up, like, yesterday. It ain't pretty, but it is super duper yummy. If you want pretty, use white rice, though I rather liked the dark red/orange combo, which just isn't done justice by my cheap camera. 

Baked cauliflower (1 head, including leaves), caramelized red onion (1), mint (1 tbs dry), oregano (1 tbs dry), chopped green olives (6), currants (small handful), dried sour apricots (6), some water and salt, garlic (2 cloves), saffron (more than I like to admit), bitter greens (a bunch, chopped). Add to the pan in that order, turn the heat off when you add the garlic.  Cover for a bit and let the flavours meld. Eat it all on red rice cooked with puy lentils, a few cardamom pods and a bay leaf.

...and as I was doing this, I was singing and kitchendancing along to Le Tigre. Nanny nanny boo boo. Lather, rinse, remix.  

stuffed shells

I've been wanting mole-inspired things ever since I made that chocolate dinner cake a while ago, but mole takes forever, and it was Friday night, and I was at work until 7:30 and had had a looooooooong week of being repeatedly struck down by the fickle and vindictive gods of molecular biology. So I wasn't up for making anything futzy and neat and delicate. On the other hand, I had spent the entire week being repeatedly struck down by the fickle and vindictive gods of molecular biology, so I wanted something cushy and comforting and chocolatey. So this is relatively easy, but still enough to feel like a celebratory dinner. After all, I suspect that the gods will eventually find a new victim. This was a very satisfying dinner, and since I already had cooked lentils in the fridge, only took about half an hour to pull together. I love how it looked so messy, especially after a week of extra carefully moving around microliters of ridiculously expensive enzymes, and taking care of microorganisms under sterile conditions, and keeping all the damn identical tiny tubes of minute amounts of clear liquid carefully labelled and organzied. A chocolatey mess was exactly what the doctor ordered.

Pasta shells stuffed with this:
In enough white wine to just cover , cook these (you can also use veg stock, or diluted white wine, or even a light beer):
a chopped onion
a chopped parsnip
some capers
some garlic (4-5 cloves)
some oregano
4-6 chopped sundried tomatoes (no need to rehydrate them first, they'll cook up)

When the onion is translucent, add:
2c cooked puy lentils
1/3 c cocoa nibs
1/2 tsp cinnamon
dash cloves
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp grated ginger
black pepper
a chopped chipotle pepper
dash smoked paprika
about a tbs of chopped capers
salt to taste

Simmer for a while (any liquid should evaporate) When it's all done, put your pasta on to cook. Once you have the pasta going, add 2-4 tbs flour dissolved in 1/2 c water to your hot lentils, keeping them on low heat. This will thicken them up. Once they thicken up, turn the heat off.

Sauce: 1 c balsamic vinegar, reduced to a third of a cup. Once reduced, add 15g good chocolate. It will just melt in. set aside.

When the pasta's done, stuff each shell with the lentil mixture. Drizzle with the balsamic sauce. If you want to make this fancier, make ravioli out of it using fresh pasta dough. Serve with steamed broccoli that's been doused with lemon juice. A carrot salad would also be nice, but I was out of carrots.

Ceci n'est pas un dessert.

Sometimes you just have to do this sort of thing. At least I do. This is a really involved dinner, but totally worth it to see people's faces when you serve them chocolate cake and ice cream for dinner (first photo). And dessert (second photo).




For the most confusing and fun effect, make the dessert cake first, then while it's cooling make the dinner cake in the same cake pan, so the two look nearly identical. Use the same colour ice creams and sauces for each. Both go well with sprinklings of cocoa nibs. Both of these are pretty heavy, so go easy on the serving sizes. The dinner below will comfortably serve 6-8 with a salad, and (light) starter.


Savory Chocolate Dinner Cake

Note that because a few of the ingredients need to be soaked, or blended and reduced, you're going to have to use some judgement with the liquid to dry ingredient ratio. I recorded the volumes I used, but you might have waterier tomatoes or meltier chocolate or whatever, so do go with your gut at the end and adjust. If you've never made cornbread before, and have no idea what the consistency of quickbread batter should be, this recipe probably isn't the best place to start. I love you all, but this is an unashamedly "advanced cooking" recipe.


Liquid goo:
1 large mango chopped
3 medium tomatoes, chopped
(blend and simmer until reduced to a paste)

Mole fixins:
(note that this is a fairly modified/simplified mole recipe, that would not be suitable for use on it's own. it works well in this cake though. if you want to make stupendous mole that can be enjoyed as a real sauce, suck it up and do it properly. The cocoa is added in addition to the nibs so that your cake looks like chocolate cake. If you don't care about that, just double the cocoa nibs and leave the cocoa out.)
1/2 c raisins, soaked in enough water to cover (keep and use water)
1 tbs crushed peanuts
1tbs sesame seeds or pepita
1-2 large ancho chiles, soaked and seeded (discard soaking water)
1 chipotle chile in adobo sauce (optional, seeded if you want)
2 heaping tbs cocoa nibs (or some unsweetened chocolate)
1-3 heaping tsp cocoa powder (depends on how much chocolate you used, and personal taste)
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground aniseed
1/2 tsp cinnamon

puree all of this in a blender with half of the liquid goo.

you may need to supplement with 1/2 cup water or veg broth. At this stage, you should have something the consistency of slightly-too-thin chocolate pudding.

mix dry ingredients and then add them to the mole + liquid goo:
2c maize meal
1 tbs baking powder
dash salt

You should now have something the wetness of cornbread batter (or other quickbread, if you've never made cornbread. You might need to add more liquid or more maizemeal. However, this will be considerably heavier than normal cornbread. This extra heavyness is why you need the vinegar.

stir in
1 large onion, baked and chopped finely (bake it while you're baking your dessert cake)
1 large bunch spinach, steamed and chopped finely, water squeezed out
1 tbs balsamic vinegar

Bake in an oiled and cornfloured cake tin at 180C for 30-40 mins.

Ice with black bean hummous (cooked black beans with the rest of the liquid goo, pepita butter or tahini, garlic, some annatto, a squeeze of lime, and some salt)

serve warm with vegan sour cream ice cream, roasted red pepper and cilantro puree.


Sour Cream Ice Cream

1 batch of your favorite vegan sour cream (about 1 block silken tofu worth)
1 cup soy yogurt
1 tbs sweet white miso
lime zest
dash salt
1/4 tsp guar or xanthan gum.
additonal lime juice to taste

Mix everything together in a blender or with a hand mixer and freeze, stirring every hour or so for 4-5 hours, or use an ice cream maker if you have one.


Chocolate Whiskey Dessert Cake

A.
1 and 1/4 cup okara or soy yogurt
1/2 cup chopped chocolate
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2-1 cup of sugar, depending on the sweetness of your chocolate
3/4 cup whiskey
orange zest

B.
1 - 1.5 cups flour (this will depend on if you used soy yogurt or okara, and how watery it was to start with)
1 tbs baking powder
dash salt

1 tbs apple cider vinegar

Mix list A. Mix list B. Add B to A. Mix well. Stir in the vinegar just before pouring into cake pan.

bake in an oiled and floured cake pan at 180C for 30 mins. Let cool . Serve with vegan citrusy ice cream and raspberry, lemon and mint puree. The lemon is key, as it really brings out the whiskey flavour. This cake is ridiculously rich and doesn't actually need icing, but if you must, just use a simple ganache.


This dinner has enough steps that I thought I'd actually give a timeline for it.
fimeline:
-night before: put black beans to soak.
-early in the day: start the ice creams, put raisins and chillies to soak, cook black beans
-about 3 hours before dinner: start liquid goo reducing, then prep the dessert cake
-While the dessert cake (and onion) is baking, roast red peppers, make the sauces (pureed roasted red peppers with chopped cilantro, pureed raspberries with lemon and chopped mint)
-Rescue dessert cake, remove from tin, leave to cool
-Prepare mole, then dinner cake. You may want to begin drinking at this point. If you want to serve some veg with dinner, I recommend a raw jerusalem artichoke salad (grated jerusalem artichokes and carrots, chopped olives and capers, lemon juice, salt). Something crispy and light.
-While dinner cake is in the oven, make black bean hummous.

Note: you want to serve the dinner cake warm, so put it in the oven as your guests arrive.

Double-take music: One. By U2, then by Johnny Cash.

Vegetable love: beets gone wild.

This year, for valentine's day, and for Vegetable Love I created these crepes: savory chocolate crepes filled with bloo pate, baked beets and apples, all served on a salad of bitter greens dressed with chocolate-balsamic sauce. My love of savory chocolate dishes continues. I just can't help myself. And what could be more romantic than beets? They're like beautiful rubies, except you can eat them! The bloo pate, beets and apples play on the classic trick of juxtaposing very strong fermented salty flavours (the pate) with sweet (the beets) and fresh (the apples). The bitter green salad keeps the whole thing from being cloying or too heavy. I tried to think of a clever name for them, but all I could come up with was "from russia, with love", which kinda sucks. Also, I just couldn't get a good photo of it. It's winter. It's dark. The kitchendancing cave is not brightly lit. More importantly, we were too hungry to fuss over the camera. And yes, as per the rules for Vegetable Love this is virtually fat free, clocking it at a whopping 1 square of chocolate per 4 servings as the only source of added fat in the whole thing. Saunter on over to the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen to see what this whole Vegetable Love thing is about. Feel free to vote for me if you think this looks as yummy as I can assure you it was.

I know that valentine's dinners are typically for 2, but this easily serves 4, because I like to spread the love, dammit, and hate the couple-obsessedness of the world. If you're good at making crepes, there will be extras that you can just have for breakfast the next day (you can fill them with bananas or any other fruit). For the whole sordid uncouply affair, you need crepes, 1 batch bloo pate (without the optional tahini), 4 medium beets, 1 apple, 4c washed and chopped arugula and 2 cups washed and chopped red chard, 1 batch balsamic dressing and lots of looooooove. Music and whiskey also help. The recipes are all below, followed by the assembly method. This dinner takes a bit of advance planning (the bloo pate really is much much much better if it sits overnight), but the time actually spent cooking is pretty low given how fancy this looks. Once you get the hang of making the crepes, this is an easy (though involved) dinner to make. If you've decided to make this and want it *now*, you can make a faster version of the bloo pate (though it won't be as nice, and will be quite a lot sharper): use well-rinsed canned pinto beans, cut the ume paste down to about half, add about 1/2 tsp of salt, and use a full tsp of agave.

For the crepes:
1.5 cups whole wheat spelt or buckwheat flour
1 tbs arrowroot powder
1/2 tsp xanthan or guar gum
1-2 tbs unsweetened cacao powder (darker is better)
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2-1 tsp black pepper, depending on how much you love black pepper
pinch salt
pinch sugar or 1/2 tsp of agave
1.5 c usweetened soy or rice milk
1.5 c water

Mix all dry ingredients well. Add wet ingredients and mix very well (I use a whisk). Let stand for at least 30 min. Your batter should be the consistency of heavy cream. If it's too thick to pour easily, add more water to thin it out. Heat a nonstick pan on medium heat and pour 3 tbs of batter into it. Immediately spread the batter out as best you can into a very thin layer using the back of a spoon. (This takes practice). Turn heat down and wait until crepe is cooked through. You shouldn't need to flip it. The trick is to get the heat just right, and to spread the crepe out very quickly. This makes about 12 crepes, assuming that all of them survive. If you've never made crepes before, expect to lose the first 3 or 4...or 5. Make pancrepe scramble with them later. Stack all your surviving crepes up in a plate.

The recipe for the bloo pate is here. Ironically, the bloo pate is very pale pink. This amuses me.

The beets are simply washed and roasted in their skins for 40 minutes at 400F, then cooled, peeled and sliced.

The apple is just sliced.

For the chocolate-balsamic dressing:

1 c balsamic vinegar, reduced to 1/3 c.
Remove from heat, and melt 1/10th of a (about 10 grammes) very good, very dark chocolate bar into it.
Cool.


To assemble, put 1/4 of the chopped greens (arugula and chard) on each plate, assuming there are 4 people around. Drizzle with balsamic dressing (the arugula, not the people, though if you double the recipe for the dressing, you should have enough for both). Now, heat your nonstick pan up again on low heat, and add one of the cooked crepes to it. Spread the crepe with about 2-4 tbs of bloo pate (the more you add, the heavier and saltier the crepes will be). On half the crepe, add slices of apple and slices of beet. Add a little bit of black pepper and/or a sprinkle of lemon juice if you're so inclined. This is also amazing with a few toasted walnuts added, but they're by no means necessary. Cover the pan and let everything heat through. Fold crepe in half and lay it on top of the salad. Garnish with a fresh fig, or some coriander, mint, or dill. Repeat for the other three plates.

See? Easy. Leaves lots of time for making out and slow dancing.

Slow dancing music: One night with you. The King crooned it first and best. And it still gets the girls.

amuse bouche

Mmmmmm... swellegant. Fig, bloo pate and a sliver of the deepest darkest chocolate. Perfect for serving before a dinner party. Or just before dinner.

Bloo pate is reminiscent of blue cheese. It doesn't taste like cheese, but it does go well where blue cheese would, and is (as a bonus), minus the suffering and grossness of actual cheese. Bloo plate is strong, salty and fermenty. It's not for the weak of palate. The ingredients are: 1.5c of pinto beans, blended til smooth, 3-4 tbs of ume paste, 1 tbs of white miso, 2-4 tbs of nutritional yeast, pepper, a sprinkle of garlic salt, about a tbs of apple cider vinegar and a touch of agave. Optional tablespoon of tahini if you'd like this a wee bit creamier. Let sit overnight in the fridge. The next day, stir in 1/3-1/2c chopped seaweeds (I scored some fresh sea veg, but you could use rehydrated and chopped wakame). Taste. You might want to add a little salt, but I seriously doubt it.

Since we can't eat everything on figs and topped with chocolate all the time, here are some alternate suggestions: Bloo pate is great on sandwiches with apples and walnuts, on pizzas with pears and arugula, and in ravioli with either spinach or butternut squash. You can also stir it into tomato sauce to make a very rich rose sauce for pasta.

Swelligant music: Well did you evah? Written by the inimitable Cole Porter, but sung by Debby Harry and Iggy Pop.

sprouts and mangoes and kale, oh my!

As promised... here's a fast sprout salad, ready to come to work with me. It's hardly a recipe at all, but it is one of my favorite way to eat sprouted chickpeas. Any orange fruit (or even grated carrots, or apples if you want) can stand in for the mango. The idea is to get something that's sweet in there to offset all the other crunchy, slightly bitter ingredients.

Kale and sprouts, blanched and cooled (you can blanch it the night before and put it in the fridge, or just run it under cold water if you're making this in the morning. 1 small mango, chopped and half an endive (uh, I just had half an endive lying around and it had to be used), I scallion, also chopped. Lime juice, roasted and ground cumin, sweet chili sauce, salt.

note: you don't have to blanch the sprouts and kale, but I sometimes prefer them this way. Sometimes not.

Must get to work on time music: Manic Monday, by the Bangles. Yes. I listen to the Bangles. I keep hoping someone will remake/remix walk like an egyptian (keeping the lovely grindy chords).

roasty toasty smoky parsnips

This was perfect for a dark rainy night...approaching the darkest of the year, in fact. I made chipotle parsnips using the recipe for carrot oven fries from Tofu for Two, doubling the chipotle and adding a squeeze of lime at the end. I topped that with blended firm silken tofu with lemon, salt, a bit of agave, espazote, nutritional yeast. The rice is brown basmati rice cooked with puy lentils and dark tvp (about 1.5 c rice, 1/2 c lentils and 1/2 c tvp...just throw it all in the pot together with some water) and then 2 chopped caramelized onions + toasted cumin seeds + salt mixed in at the end. The salad is mixed bitter greens + pears + a dressing of miso mustard, maple syrup, vinegar, salt and pepper. I love this salad dressing. I make it all the time. It takes about ten seconds, and tastes like heaven. Before I discovered miso mustard, I just used whatever mustard I had around, usually just plain non-dijon (because the greens are bitter enough without the added heat of the dijon, though go for it on a milder salad). The dinner was a wonderful blend of spicy, sweet, salty, vinagery and starchy. There are lots and lots of leftovers, which is good, because we need lunches for work, and lentil rice is wonderful cold. Just add some chopped raw bell peppers or carrots or whatever other veg you have lying around, and a squeeze of lemon (maybe some chopped cilantro or parsely if you have it on hand...I don't, and I'm not going out in the rain to get it) and it's magically lentil salad.

I filed this under quickie even though it takes a while to cook, because really, you don't actually have to do anything while the parsnips bake and the rice cooks. Read a book. Have a wee dram of whiskey. Listen to music.

i wanna be a chocolate god post 7: alien appendages

You know sometimes food is good just because it reminds you of something gross. Or fun. Or both. If it tastes really good, then you know you have a winning situation. This is one such situation. This is basically a rolled version of lasagna, and the three concentric layers kind of make it look like a severed limb. Now, because of the colours, it's clearly vulcan (red bone, green blood, brown skin). Orrrr...it might just be lasagna. Vulcans are vegan, but eating them isn't. Though I seem to be a little obsessed with it (see this post).

First, find a Vulcan. Lure them into a false sense of security. Then steal their arms. This is difficult, because the average vulcan will see right through your ruse. So alternately, try this:

I batch chocolate pasta

beet filling: cooked beets, red chard stems (or more beets), okara riccotta (okara, lemon juice, maple syrup, salt, sweet miso, chickpea flour, vinegar)

chard layer: chopped chard leaves, rocket, blue Sheese, nutmeg, pepper

mushroom layer: onion, mushroom, white wine, oregano, thyme, marmite, pepper, truffle oil, flour to thicken.

Roll out the pasta dough into a ginormous rectangle on a peice of waxed paper. Lay three stripes of filling (in the order above) onto the rectangle. leaving room to seal the edges. Roll up like a giant sushi roll (making sure not to roll the paper into the thing) cursing if necessary. Cut into two. Use the paper to hoist the arms up and place them in a dutch oven. Inundate with white wine and water, drizzle with olive oil, and bake at 375 for about an hour, covered. Check periodically to make sure that the arms aren't welding themselves to the pan. Serve slices sprinkled with toasted pine nuts, cocoa nibs and pumpkin seeds, a bit of truffle/olive oil, and some parsley. We also had salad with it. On the salad was reduced balsamic vinegar with a square of dark chocolate melted into the reduction. because sometimes things really do get that decadent. Oh yes.

You can also use any of these fillings alone as ravioli filling.

Coming soon: post 8: whiskey....

i wanna be a chocolate god post 6: fall

Fall food: Fry onions (2 small) and itsy-bitsy cubes of smoked tofu in a little bit of olive oil on low heat until they're done-ish. Add veg broth, water, smoked paprika, achiote and thyme (maybe some salt depending on the saltiness of your veg broth). Add a layer of green beans, and then a layer of whole cored nearly-ripe pears. Do not stir. Cover and simmer until everything is done.

Once this is done, make the sauce: Carefully pour any remaining liquid out of the pan into a small pot (hold the contents of the pan in place with the lid. Add an equal volume balsamic vinegar to the cooking broth and reduce by at least half. Add a few squares dark dark chocolate, and pour over the layered, simmered yum.

We ate this on mashed spuds/parsnips and a tomato and herb salad.

Also, a while ago I mentioned that I would send off microbreads (or other baked goodies) in returen for salmiakki... and someone took me up on it! Anni from Tofu for Two sent me a package of sweets in exchange for some truffles! Apparently there ARE finnish vegans who read my blog! Yay! Thanks Anni.

dancing to: it was an inpromptu dinner party. we did the "good friends, good conversation thing" or maybe we just talked about how airplane bathrooms are really much to small to have sex in. you'll never know.

Ducky's culinary school: synergistic mole pancakes...with chard

Spanky named these himself.

We have a surplus of chocolate stout. Oh the horror! Actually, it's a batch of homemade chocolate stout that didn't carbonate quite enough, so it's cooking stout. And while cooking with alcohol is fun, this doesn't have a flavour that can just dissappear into the background. So we decided to feature it in this fancy-looking but actually really easy dinner. We plan to use this to impress people in the future.

Pancakes (6): 2 cups buckwheat flour, 400-500 mL chocolate stout, salt, 1 tbs flax, baking powder. Sauce: 3 small but powerful onions, 2 cloves chopped garlic, 5 or so large mushrooms, all cooked in white wine. When the onions are translucent add: 1tbs cumin, 1tbs coriander, 1 tsp oregano, black pepper, salt, a whack of chipotle in adobo sauce, 4 chopped tomatoes, tiny bit of pomegranite molasses (because we didn't have any limes). Simmer. Just before you're ready to eat, add chard. We used red chard. It was pretty. Sprinkle with toasted pumpkin seeds and cocoa nibs. Drink ginger beer. Bitch about useless safety regulations.

Question: What could be better than pancakes for dinner? Answer: N0thing. Pancakes for dinner are pretty much the bestest thing ever.

just cook.

I very often hear people complain that they don't have the time or skills to cook. But everyone with an opposable thumb, passable hand-eye coordination and a few basic implements can cook. So I thought I'd take the time to write why I actually enjoy cooking, why I think it's worth the time, and what I do to make it something to look forward to rather than a chore.

First off, when I cooks, I cooks. I don't do a million other things at the same time. I may listen to music or a podcast, but I don't email, read, do work that I've taken home, fix the sink and change my bike tires while I cook dinner. I usually give cooking my full attention when I'm doing it. I don't rush (which means if i only have time to make pasta and chopped tomatoes, that's what I make, rather than trying to fit a dish with a 45 minute prep time into 10 minutes). Studies show that the more you take notice of an activity, the more you enjoy it. Cooking has lovely textures and smells and colours and tastes, and at the end of it, you have food! How satisfying is that? Cooking and eating are incredibly sensual things that offer so much pleasure if you just take a little time to actually notice them. You get to be creative, and with a little practice, you get to make things exactly the way you like them. Besides, what are you going to do with the half hour you would "save" by not cooking for yourself? Watch tv? Text message? Surf the internets?

Second, I have a realistic expectation of what I'm going to eat on a day to day basis. If you eat out all the time, every meal is Christmas-fancy. If you cook, much of the time food is plainer, in that I rarely make more than a single dish at once. Add salad, and you have a dinner. There is a reason things like lasagna, pilaf and biyriani tend to be featured on special-occasion menus in the backs of cookbooks. They take more time (and sometimes more money) than can be invested on most Wednesday nights. In this post, the soup is a weekday dinner. The pilaf (which was followed by cake and homemade sorbet) was a mini-dinner party that I spent about 2 hours cooking for, including making the seitan the night before). Many of the things in this blog are tagged "quickie". Those are simple things, as in they involve little time (though I do have a very well stocked spice cabinet).

Also, I accept and enjoy that there is a learning curve. When I'm just figuring out how to make a particular kind of dish, or working with spices that are new to me, I don't expect perfection right away. Remember when you were a kid and it was fun to see yourself improve? Well, cooking new stuff is like that. I ate a lot of misshapen and oddly-spiced potato roti while I was working out how to make them. Not that they were *bad*. They were fine, though one memorable batch required vast amounts of mango chutney.... and another batch simply got magically transformed into pizza crusts. But now they're better. When I was learning to make truffles, I botched a few batches and ended up with very very very expensive brownies. Some people (like me) are very adventurous cooks who don't really use recipes and don't mind the occasional disaster. Some cooks stick to a few basic techniques that they know well and follow recipes carefully when they deviate from it. Find a style that works for you. But if you want to know how to cook for everyday life, you have to learn to eat for everyday life. I don't know how people have the expectation that every day should be fancy food. Especially if you are just beginning to cook, start simple. Get good ingredients and appreciate everyday food.

Third, cooking lets you eat real food, not processed crap. What could possibly be more important than taking care of your basic health? Is taking half an hour a day to take care of yourself too inconvenient? Hmmmm.... last time I checked, being in bad health and having no energy was also inconvenient. (Plus, need I remind you that more energy and well-being equals better sex?) My health and sanity are non-negotiable. I will not give them up to crappy "food" and a lifestyle that makes exercise and downtime impossible.

Last, we have to eat. And life is short. If you can't take joy in everyday things, than what the hell is the point of life anyway? If there's something that gets done every day, several times a day (eating, moving from place to place, working), I *make* it enjoyable (cooking, riding my bike, having a job I love even though it pays less and is less stable than many other jobs I could have). I absolutely refuse to spend most of my life doing things I dislike, or even things that I'm indifferent to. That would just be a stupid waste. Those of us that are lucky enough to have the means (financial and mental) to be happy should. I have zero sympathy for those who live in self-imposed misery.

Okay, now the food. All I had left in the veg box was parsnips, spuds and a really sad looking carrot. I picked up some spinach on the way home and made this soup, which isn't terribly photogenic, but it was oh-so yummy. I didn't really know what I was going to do with the parsnips, except roast them, because I looooove roasted parsnips and am ambivalent at best about non-roasted parsnips. Soup: parsnips, sad carrot, onions and garlic, all coated with ras-el-hanout and roasted in the oven. Then I dumped the veggies into a pot, deglazed the roasting dish with some water and added that too, blended the whole thing, added some lemon juice and chopped spinach and topped it with pomegranite molasses. Yum. I ate it with potato roti, because I apparently can't get enough potato roti these days.

Also, apple pilaf from a bike-y dyke-y dinner this weekend: wheatberries and spuds boiled with cinnamon, cardamom and bay leaves. Apples (6), caramelized onions(2), toasted and ground cumin and coriander, mexican oregano, zuchinni (1 small), carrot (1 small, happy), maplesmokey seitan crumbles (homemade), toasted walnuts (generous handful). Served with salad.

mole,magic yuba, vast amounts of Dutch junk food.

Oh my. I met up with Tulmeltje, who was in Scotland on a piping gig. We did an exchange of fun and junk foods, as vegans are prone to doing when they meet up. Part of the fun is that somebody else has read all the ingredients for you and you can just eat the stuff with reckless abandon (though that would cause some sort of insulin coma in this case... it would be a vegan coma). I had mentioned a few posts back that I love salt licorice, and I think she brought me enough to last several lifetimes. Thanks! Also, what you see in that jar at the back is *spreadable cookies*. I kid you not. Aaaaaand, a tote bag with a viking playing the bagpipes!!!! Oooooh! All the other kids in the veg store are going to be so jealous! I am so cool! Yay for vegan meetups! It was a lovely afternoon and even though I have an unreasonable fear of meeting new people and have been called "a bit much" on more than one occasion, it all went swimmingly. Tulmeltje was nice and not scary at all and funny and smart and everything. We climbed Arthur's Seat, which seems to be what I do with all my visitors. 

Other than that,... I made mole and magic yuba for a dinner party this weekend. What you see here are the leftovers... Mole: dry roast about 2 tbs each of ground sesame seeds, ground almonds, and crushed coriander seeds, along with 5-6 crushed black peppercorns, 2 crushed cloves, and 1tbs of crushed cumin seeds. Throw in a few crushed peanuts if you want. Oh come on, you know you want to. If you plan on using dry chillies (smoked ones), you can add them here. When that's all toasted, put in in a bowl and set it aside. Then fry up one chopped onion and 3 cloves of chopped garlic. When the onion gets translucent, add 4 tbs unsweetened cocoa, half a tsp of cinnamon powder and the spices/nuts from earlier. Keep frying until it starts sticking, then add either a can of chopped tomatoes, or 5-7 actual chopped tomatoes, plus enough veg stock to make a nice thick sauce. Add a handful of raisins. If you're using canned chipotle (in adobo sauce...yum), add 5 or so of them here, plus a goodly amount of sauce. Add some salt. Chuckle to yourself at how good the kitchen smells. Let that simmer until it's all reduced and yum (about 30 mins), and then blend the whole mess. Take out some or all of the chilies beforehand if you want it less hot. Return the whole blended mess to a pot and add in 30-50 grammes dark chocolate, stirring until it melts. Done. This is best done the night before, because it tastes SO MUCH BETTER the next day.

I served this over magic yuba, which is not actually magic, but IS actually yuba (dried tofu skin). It's available in most asian supermarkets. Rehydrate a package of it in water. Drain. Make the following marinade: 1/4 cup soy sauce or tamari, just less than 1/4 cup maple syrup or agave, a tsp of mustard, a tsp of marmite, some oregano, about 2 tbs balsamic vinegar, 1 tbs really olive-ish olive oil. Also, make the following filling in a bowl: 1 block smoked tofu, frozen, thawed and crumbled (or plain tofu mixed with smoked paprika), 1 tbs capers, choppped, a bit of marmite (scant tsp), smoked salt, pepper, a heaping tbs of tahini, some nutritional yeast if you have it (in that case skip the marmite) and enough rice flour to soak up any liquid. You now need a pan with a tight-fitting lid. Now, using half the yuba, layer a few sheets of yuba in a pan, a bit of marinade, a few more sheets, a bit more marinade.. when you've used half the yuba, put the filling on it and fold the edges around the filling. Top with the rest of the yuba sheets, layering with marinade. Dump the rest of the marinade on top. Add a bit of water, and cover with the lid and cook/steam for a good half hour. Check periodically to make sure you haven't run out of liquid and begun welding the yuba to the pan. Then, if you have a broiler, drizzle olive oil on the top and stick under the broiler. If you have no broiler, you will have to pan-fry the whole mess. Good luck. It will kind of look like mock duck. Flip it over, drizzle, and broil the other side. Done. It's sort of stuffed mock duck-ish, but better. Some day, I may get around to posting a more picture-heavy how-to on this one. Anyway, put mole sauce on it, and sprinkle everything with cacao nibs and eat it on rice or with corn tortillas. We also had olives and the most lovely green salad ever (with flowers!).

A confession: Day to day, I mostly cook indian-ish or japanesey food. Oddly, I don't seem to post much of that. Huh. I mean, I make mole about twice a year. Sheesh. But it is yummerific.