November 15, 2009: Mango-coconut spliced icecream

This week was the optimal time to kick off a new season of icecream making. The weather was warm, a mango was ripening dangerously in the fruit bowl, and I wanted to make a light-ish dessert for our Sunday night guests. David Lebovitz’s Perfect Scoop index indicated that mango sorbet was the go, though I only had enough mango for a half-batch. David didn’t leave me hangin’, noting at the end of the recipe that it goes brilliantly swirled through his toasted coconut icecream. Sold! I stocked up on the required ingredients and only then felt the first pang of uncertainty when I read the recipe method properly.

There’s no coconut in the custard. I mean, there is coconut in the custard during the process, but it’s just supposed to infuse everything with its flavour and get strained out. I was skeptical, even when the coconut came out of the oven so fragrant, and an hour later when the coconut-custard mix tasted so golden-sweet. The flavour did dull down when it was diluted with more cream, but there was no denying that toasty tropical aftertaste. The infusion actually worked! (I’ll never doubt you again, David Lebovitz.)

A pastry chef by training and eternal connoisseur of all things sweet, David doesn’t do short cuts – his recipes involve an irritating number of saucepans and bowls and ice-baths. The rich custards of egg yolks, whole milk and cream seem distinctly French, and defy veganisation. But the superb results cannot be denied.

The mango sorbet on the other hand, is both vegan-friendly and lazy cook-friendly – everything just gets pureed together in a food processor. I didn’t even churn it, simply layering the mango between fluffy cream clouds. The sorbet was probably a little icier than it needed to be, but it made a refreshing contrast to the much heavier coconut custard.

Mango-coconut spliced icecream
(based on David Lebovitz's recipes for toasted coconut icecream and mango sorbet in The Perfect Scoop)

toasted coconut custard
1 cup dried shredded unsweetened coconut
1 cup milk
2 cups cream
3/4 cup castor sugar
generous pinch salt
5 egg yolks
1 teaspoon bourbon vanilla

mango sorbet swirl
1 large ripe mango
1/3 cup castor sugar
1/3 cup water
juice of one lime
2 teaspoons Cointreau
pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 175ºC. Spread the coconut on a baking tray and bake it for 5-8 minutes, stirring it at least twice, until it's fragrant and golden brown.

In a medium saucepan over gentle heat, stir together the milk, half of the cream, the sugar and salt, until the sugar has dissolved. Stir through the shredded coconut. Remove the mixture from the heat, cover it and allow it to infuse for an hour.

Reheat the coconut cream, then strain out the coconut - press down firmly on the coconut to extract as much liquid as possible. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the egg yolks. Whisk in a little of the warm coconut-infused cream, then pour it all back into the saucepan. Whisk the eggs through the cream mixture, returning this saucepan to medium heat and stirring until the custard thickens.

Pour the remaining cream into a large bowl and strain the custard into the bowl. Stir them together well, adding the bourbon vanilla along the way. Chill the mixture thoroughly.

Cut the mango flesh away from the pit and place it in a food processor. Add the remaining sorbet ingredients to the food processor and puree the lot until it's smooth.

Churn the toasted coconut custard in an icecream maker until fluffy (mine took 20 minutes). Layer the toasted coconut and mango mixtures in a container before freezing the icecream for at least 4 hours.

November 15, 2009: Sushi III

With the weather hotting up again and a handful of friends joining us for dinner, it seemed like it was time to bring out the Veganomicon sushi recipe again. We varied our toppings a little this time, in the process un-veganising things with the addition of Kewpie mayonnaise, which accompanied our standard spicy tofu, adding a slight twist on the always delicious recipe.

Cindy decided that Pandan 'chicken' would be a reasonable substitute for the KFC-style sushi rolls that used to be her favourite carriage on the sushi-train, so we baked up a batch and sliced them into sushi-size chunks. They were chunky, meaty and spicy - and no doubt far from authentic. Tasty though, very tasty.

Finally, something veg-tastic: marinated mushies, courtesy of Big Oven. This is super-simple: just chop up some mushrooms and soak them in a mix of rice vinegar, sake (we used dry sherry instead), a couple of shallots, some sugar, soy sauce and a dash of salt. Leave to soak for a few hours, stirring occasionally and you've got yourself a delicious Japanese-style mushroom mix. Combined with some sesame steamed spinach and some slices of avocado, this was an innovation that we'll no doubt return to.

Sushi has yet to let us down and, judging by the number of sushi rolls slammed down by our small group, it's a recipe that everyone enjoys. I thought we'd be eating sushi all week, but these were so successful that the leftovers were pretty limited. Ah well, we'll just have to make some more.

November 14, 2009: Soulmama II

It is testament to the vast array of veg-friendly eating in Melbourne (and probably to our northside bias) that it's taken us more than three years to revisit the popular St Kilda vegetarian restaurant, Soulmama. Our only other visit occurred during our first month living in Melbourne and there seem to have been few changes since then. The setting is lovely, especially on a sunny day such as this one - the restaurant is located on the second floor of the St Kilda baths, with much of the seating in the large, well lit space overlooking St Kilda Beach and Port Phillip Bay.

The menu style is a little odd, given the classy-casual atmosphere this restaurant is going for. While table service abounds, main meals are 'medium' or 'large' and selected by queuing up at a buffet. Since this meal was both our lunch and dinner Michael decided to live large ($19.50), selecting five dishes from the display:

• seasonal vegies and cauliflower in mushroom oyster sauce
  
• beans and greens salad
  
• eggplant, tempeh and noodle salad
  
• tofu in Japanese Amai sauce
  
• carrot and cauliflower hotpot
  

While he enjoyed them all, the tofu impressed him the most. I wondered, though, whether there was anything here that we couldn't cook at home.

Not having fond memories of the hot-box approach, I looked to the small list of made-to-order entrees, picking out the rice balls ($9.50) and gyoza ($9.50). The rice balls arrived first, hot and crisp out of the fryer, rich with a cheese-and-basil pesto flavour. I particularly liked the creamy mustard dipping sauce on the side (the other appeared to be stock standard sweet chilli).

The gyoza charmed me as soon as they arrived. Presented elegantly, the skins were perfectly seared on one side and steamed all over. If I hadn't been eating them at a vegetarian restaurant, the filling's resemblance to pork mince might have had me nervous - as it was, I simply relished some fine tofu preparation.

I couldn't resist a peek at the dessert menu and cajoled Michael into sharing a jaffa honeycomb truffle ($9.50). I'm not sure exactly what we expected, but it probably wasn't this - a ridiculously dense and sweet segment of orange-scented chocolate, eerily posed like the black monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, flecked with small crunches of honeycomb. (As an aside - this dessert was marked vegan and though I'm not certain, it's plausible that this is honey-free honeycomb... I certainly couldn't detect its flavour.) This is truly for the most die-hard dessert-lovers out there - we couldn't finish it and even yours 'chocoholic' truly wouldn't order it again.

My first reaction to the Soulmama experience is that it's overpriced, but on further reflection that's difficult to justify. The $20 mains, while not sophisticated, are generously portioned; the entrees and fresh and well executed. And the seaview setting is surely worth a few dollars. Regardless of our irregular patronage, Soulmama seems to be serving up something the St Kilda set likes with the restaurant booked out in the hours following our visit.

____________

You can read about our previous visit to Soulmama here.

____________

Other bloggers who've visited Soulmama: Vegan Foodie Adventures, Foodie Wanderings, The Daily Veg, Gaztronomy, Off the Spork, Vegan Family vs Omni World, This is Vegan Melbourne and Veggie Friendly

November 4 and 13, 2009: Funky Pies

I've been hearing good things about Sydney's Funky Pies for some time, with murmering that they outshine other vegan pies on the market. For a month or two they were near-mythical objects, with Radical Grocery selling out of a batch in no time and our quest to get some from their World Vegan Day stall also coming up empty. I was beginning to wonder if we'd ever get to try them. And then bam: they're everywhere. The East Brunswick Club added to them to the menu, and Radical Grocery ordered in a massive batch. It was time to try them out.

Rather than forgo Philly cheese steaks or parmas, Cindy and I grabbed a handful from Anikee and took them home to prepare ourselves. We picked up two varieties: the Funky Chunky and the No Wurry Curry, kicking off our pie-tasting with the shitake-based chunky variety.

Awful name aside, this is one impressive pie. Large shitake chunks that have the texture of faux-meat (are they actually some sort of combo of soy protein and mushies? It's hard to imagine getting such meaty chunks just from mushrooms) and the gravy-tastic taste that you expect from a good pie. The pastry is top-notch as well, taking these pies straight to the top of my pie ranking table.


A week or so later and it was time to try our second batch - the No Wurry Curry pies. These are filled with a lentil, chickpea and coconut curry, which is nicely spiced but a tad on the dry side - the impressive pastry needs a more liquidy gravy inside to satisfy my pie cravings.

At $5.95 each to take home and bake, these aren't cheap pies (well above La Panella and Ykillamoocow), but the Funky Chunky pie is well worth the expense, with better pastry and a more delicious filling than any of the other options. The curry pie was a bit of a letdown in comparison, but I've heard good things about the Spicy Thai Pie so we won't settle on just the one variety just yet.

Radical Grocery is the best place to get them in Melbourne, although their stock tends to get bought up quite quickly. Funky Pies are also now available for $12 with chips and salad at the EBC, for those of you who'd rather someone else prepared your meat-pie fix for you.

November 10, 2009: East Brunswick Club VII

I suppose I could pass off these photos as dessert following the EBC Philly Cheese Steak in my last post. I had no chance of fitting such a thing in on that night; actually we revisited this vegan-friendly pub a mere five days later, but with good reason! This time Michael and I were accompanying a larger crowd, all of us wanting to squeeze in some time with Liz before she moves further south to the Apple Isle.

Tuesday at the EBC is $12 parma night, and Michael and I didn't deliberate long before agreeing that we'd both order the discount option. The size of the cheap parmas is also discounted on the $18 variety but we didn't mind a bit - there's still plenty of food on the plate and, I couldn't help noticing, just that little more room for dessert (or beer, I guess, if that's your preference).

With Kristy at the table, I wasn't the only one preferring dessert over beer. The night's sweet options were 'peanut butter chzcake' and 'cherry vanilla' (both vegan, both $8) and we happily ordered one of each to split. We were even happier to discover that the 'cherry vanilla' dessert wasn't just fruit doused it vanilla essence, as we'd joked, but another dairy-free cheesecake-style slice.

These chzcakes do a stellar impression of the real thing, perfectly smooth and creamy without any untoward soy flavour. The cherry one was a little bland (especially considering how much it impressed us a year ago) but Kristy and I, united in our love of chocolate-peanut butter desserts, had no such complaint about the peanut butter chzcake. It's a super-rich slab of salty-sweet heaven, best shared with a fellow connoisseur.

Managing to sample the full dessert menu had me feeling pretty smart, and I soon discovered the table's collective cleverness extended to pub trivia too! Our impromptu EBC Tuesday Trivia team earned a repectable 2nd place and a cheeky bottle o' red.

____________

You also can read about our previous visits to the EBC: one, two, three, four, five, six.