Lemon, tomato & cardamom dhal

December 17, 2022

   

   

We're always on the lookout for more dhal recipes, and with the weather staying cool almost all the way to Christmas we delved back into Anna Jones' One Pot, Pan, Planet to try this one out. I made a lazy version of this recipe and basically skipped the fancy little topping, instead just sprinkling some roasted cashews on top with the curry leaves. I've reproduced the basic version below, but I'll probably try the proper version next time, incorporating finely chopped cashews, chilli, coriander and lemon on top. Even in easy mode this was an excellent addition to our dhal repertoire - full of flavour and easy to prepare. We made a bigger batch than the measurements below and the leftovers were perfect last-week-of-work lunches.

Lemon, tomato & cardamom dhal 

(adapted from a recipe in Anna Jones' One Pot, Plan, Planet)

2 tablespoons coconut oil

2 red onions, finely chopped

1 red chilli, finely chopped

1 green chilli, finely chopped

1 tablespoon cumin seeds

1 teaspoon coriander seeds

1 tablespoon black mustard seeds

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

200g dried split red lentils

400ml coconut milk

500ml vegetable stock

100g baby spinach

4 tomatoes, roughly chopped

juice of 2 lemons

20 or so curry leaves

oil

salt and pepper, to taste

roasted cashews

Heat the coconut oil in a saucepan and fry the onions with a sprinkle of salt until soft, about 5 minutes or so. Add the chillies and cook for a few more minutes before adding the cumin, coriander and mustard seeds. Once the seeds start to pop, stir in the the turmeric and cardamom - you should have a rich, fragrant spice paste going.

Add the lentils, stock and coconut milk and bring the mix to the boil. Simmer over low heat for 30 minutes or so, until the lentils are nice and soft.

Stir through the spinach and chopped tomatoes and the lemon juice, cooking for just a minute or two until the leaves are wilted. Taste and add salt and pepper as required.

Finally, make the crispy curry leaves - heat some oil in a small pan until it's nice and hot and quickly stir fry the leaves for 30 seconds or so until they crisp up. 

Serve the dhal on rice, topped with crispy curry leaves and some roasted cashews.

Chang-ed up wombok slaw with plum sauce

November 28, 2022

   

   

Cindy picked this crunchy noodle salad out of Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg partly because of a nostalgic enthusiasm for the classic side-of-the-packet Chang's noodle salad and partly because we had a bottle of plum sauce in the fridge that wasn't otherwise getting used. This is really only a slightly tweaked version of the original - the dressing leans on plum sauce rather than sugar and vinegar and you get a few fancier ingredients in the salad itself (radishes, honey cashews). Why mess with the best though, right? This has the same joyful combination of sweetness and crunch, and takes almost no time to throw together. The noodles loose their punch pretty quickly, so keep some spare to jazz up the leftovers.

Chang-ed up wombok slaw with plum sauce

(based on a recipe from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

3 spring onions, sliced on an angle

6 small radishes, thinly sliced and halved

1/2 a big wombok (about 600g), shredded

100g crispy fried noodles

50g honey roasted cashews

dressing

1/3 cup plum sauce

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

1 tablespoon tamari

2 teaspoons sesame oil

Soak the spring onions and radishes in cold water for 5 minutes and then drain and toss in a large bowl with the wombok.

Whisk together the dressing ingredients.

Scatter half the noodles and half the cashews over the salad and drizzle with half the dressing. 

Serve, topped with the remaining cashews and noodles and with the leftover dressing added to the plated salad.

Sautéed corn with chillies, radishes & pine nuts

November 27, 2022

   

Alongside the jalapeño poppers, I whipped up a serve of pretty basic nachos using this old BBQ beans recipe and Cindy suggested this simple corn side, from another cookbook she's been scanning through: Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg's Six Seasons. This is barely even worth a recipe: it's corn kernels fried in butter and then jazzed up with a few trimmings, but it's an excellent accompaniment to a Mexican-themed feast and has a very high reward to effort ratio.

Sautéed corn with chillies, radishes & pine nuts

(a recipe from Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg's Six Seasons)

1 tablespoon of butter

4 ears of corn, kernels cut off

1 large green chilli, seeded and sliced thinly

5 radishes, trimmed, scrubbed and cut into small chunks

1/2 cup toasted pine nuts

1 lime

salt and pepper

Melt the butter in a cast iron frying pan over high heat. Once it's all melted and stopped foaming, throw in the corn kernels and the green chilli with a pinch of salt and cook for 4-5 minutes, stirring the corn occasionally. You want the kernels to start caramelising a bit. 

Kill the heat and stir through the radishes and pine nuts, before squeezing a generous burst of lime juice over everything and adding a bit more salt. Serve.

Jalapeño poppers

 November 27, 2022

   

Cindy's been working her way through recipes she bookmarked from In Praise of Veg and, when a surprise delivery of fancy vegan cream cheese arrived at our house, she knew it was time to bust out these poppers. The original recipe takes regular dairy cream cheese and fancies it up with smoked paprika, garlic powder and coriander, but we just used the pickled red onion and dill Damona cream cheese. We lazily used real cheddar on top for guaranteed meltiness.

With the cream cheese substitution it's a very simple recipe, that really comes down to your dexterity in stuffing the little jalapeños -  I managed the stuffing reasonably well, but then half of them tipped over in the oven and needed a bit of emergency re-stuffing. The final result was great: our jalapeños still packed a bit of a punch, and the Damona and cheddar only partly smoothed it over, so it's a spicy treat, but definitely a treat.

Jalapeño poppers

(based on a recipe from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

12 jalapeño chillies

200g flavoured vegan cream cheese

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika (for sprinkling)

100g cheddar, grated

Preheat the oven to 200°C and line a baking tray with paper.

With a small knife cut a long panel out of one side of your chillies - a little pointy oval maybe 1-2cm wide at its widest point. Scrape out the seeds and innards - rinse them to make sure you get as many seeds out as possible.

Press the cream cheese into the peppers, trying to smush it right into the hollow, but leaving a little indent on top and then stuffing the cheddar into it.

Stand the poppers up on your baking tray - try to arrange them so they're supported by each other or the tray edge so they don't tip over and leak out all the melty cheese. Bake for about 15 minutes, until the cheese goes golden on top. 

Sprinkle with smoked paprika and serve.

One For The Crow

November 26, 2022

   

When we and our friend Steph had some westside errands to run, we made time for lunch at One For The Crow. This vegan café has been running for over four years but this was our first visit. It's tucked unexpectedly into a suburban shopping strip and has a nice combination of indoor and outdoor seating.

The menu is an appetising mix of breakfast (bagels, granola, waffles, scrambled tofu) and lunch (sandwiches and toasties) with a trusty display cabinet of sweets to have you wondering if there's room for dessert. There's mock chicken, mock bacon, and a housemade vegan egg on the menu, and a few ways to focus just on veges if that's what you prefer. There's a decent proportion of well-marked gluten-free options.

   

Michael had a go at the 'egg' within a bakon n egg roll ($18.50). It didn't taste precisely of egg, but he was impressed with the runny yolk and said he'd be interested in ordering it again as part of their build-your-own breakfast option.

   

I seriously considered the apple pie waffles, but ultimately preferred a chick'n sandwich with avocado ($16 + $4 for avo). Every ingredient - the large chicken nuggets, the avocado wedges, the tomato and the lettuce - seemed determined to slide out one side or another, but it was a satisfying and balanced sandwich once wrangled.

One For The Crow is a surprise vegan treat on a westside suburban street. We only have occasional cause to be in the neighbourhood, but it'll be high up our list for a revisit when we are.

____________

One For The Crow received positive blog coverage when it opened in 2018 from messy veggies, Consider the Sauce, mamma knows west and TOT: HOT OR NOT.

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One for the Crow

9 Commercial St, Maidstone

9080 1806

food, drinks

facebook page

Accessibility: There is a small step on entry. Tables are regular height, chairs have backs, and they're quite densely arranged with a very wide pathway through the middle of the café. We ordered and paid at a high counter, and didn't visit the toilets.

Roasted butternut pumpkin with sage & macadamias

November 24, 2022

   

So here's the 'heftier side' we ate with our rhubarb-smothered haloumi: roasted butternut pumpkin topped with macadamia nuts, green olives and sage, all toasted in butter. (As with the fennel cacciatore, I chose green over kalamata olives as a personal preference.) Sage, butter and pumpkin are a pretty common combination, and I loved the extra toasty crunch of macadamias and piquance of olives in this version. The pumpkin's baking time was all I needed to get the haloumi recipe together, and we got two colourful and satisfying meals out of these two dishes for two people.

The red of the rhubarb and tomatoes, plus the green and gold here have me thinking that these two dishes could work well for a vegetarian Christmas meal. We'll definitely come back to both of them, regardless of what's on the menu on the 25th.

Roasted butternut pumpkin with sage & macadamias

(slightly adapted from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

1 butternut pumpkin

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

~1/3 cup olive oil

100g macadamia nuts, roughly chopped

80g butter

50g green olives, halved and pits removed

1 handful fresh sage leaves

Preheat an oven to 190°C. Line a large baking tray with paper.

Carefully slice the pumpkin in half lengthways. Scoop out the seeds. In the remaining hollow, mix together the sugar, salt and 2 tablespoons of the olive oil. Rub this mixture into the cut side of the pumpkin. Place the pumpkin pieces onto the baking tray, cut side down. Roast for 40-50 minutes, until tender.

When the pumpkin has about 15 minutes to go, place the macadamias, olives, butter, 1 teaspoon olive oil and sage leaves into a small saucepan. Heat, stirring regularly, until the butter is melted, the macadamias are golden and the sage is a bit crispy. 

To serve, spoon the macadamia-butter mixture over the cut-side-up pumpkin halves.

Haloumi with roasted rhubarb & tomatoes

November 24, 2022

   

Haloumi is so tasty straight up that I'm rarely inclined to do anything extra or new with it. We typically just tuck it into Turkish bread sandwiches with roasted veges, and sometimes put it in a salad. This In Praise of Veg recipe is another fantastic option that's just barely any extra effort: fried haloumi pieces topped with a sweet and sour medley of roasted rhubarb, sliced shallots and cherry tomatoes in red wine vinegar. It would make an excellent light meal with just a green salad on the side, but we ate it with a heftier side dish that will appear in my next post.

Haloumi with roasted rhubarb & tomatoes

(a recipe from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

4 rhubarb stalks (about 250g)

2 French shallots, thinly sliced

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

100g cherry tomatoes, halved

200g haloumi, sliced into 1cm thick pieces

2 tablespoons olive oil

Preheat an oven to 190°C. Line a baking tray with paper.

Wash and trim the rhubarb stalks. Cut them into 4cm lengths, and cut any thicker pieces in half lengthways so that they're all a similar size. Place them on the baking tray, along with the sliced shallots. Spread over the sugar, vinegar, salt and pepper and mix everything to combine. Cover the tray with foil and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the rhubarb is tender but still holding its shape.

Place the tomatoes in a bowl and pour the roasted rhubarb mixture over the top, so that the heat transfers to the tomatoes.

Fry the haloumi slices in the olive oil, until they're golden on each side. Serve the haloumi with the rhubarb mixture and all of its juices spooned on top.

Coconut sago sundaes

November 19-20, 2022

   

I can smell the mangos every time I visit our local fruit'n'veg shop lately, so I knew it was time to have a go at the coconut sago with lemongrass curd and fresh mango in In Praise of Veg.

I'll say up front that this is a recipe I'm happy to have made once, but I'm unlikely to return to it. Here's why:

• The kitchen mess. I knew this recipe would take time, but it also took heaps of dishes and a bunch of straining, leaving two distinct piles of slimey lemongrass to clean up.
• It's more time sensitive than I expected. This looks like something you could make hours before serving, and indeed I made a couple parts a day early. But this caused the sago to swell up and the coconut cream to harden - the texture really wasn't what Zaslavsky intended. My garnishing lime zest lost its... zest. On the other hand, you do need to get started 2-3 hours before you intend to serve it.
• Eggs. Three yolks and a whole egg? Weird. I don't love separating eggs, and I don't love dealing with the leftovers. (Though I will admit that this choc-date-almond meringue is a good solution for 3 egg whites, and I used it.)
• I couldn't taste the lemongrass, even though I used more than twice the recommended amount.

So, it was all a bit much effort, and didn't serve the lemongrass flavour I was hoping for. That said, the lime curd was a hit! It's a lovely smooth contrast to the bubbly sago. (I long for a vegan-friendly alternative to get away from those egg yolks, but I haven't achieved it yet.) And we're so ready for the taste of summer we get from mangos. These sundaes skated into the right space - successful enough that I wasn't mad about the effort I put into them, but not so mind-blowing that I'll go to the trouble again.

Coconut sago sundaes

(slightly adapted from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

coconut sago

150g dried white sago pearls or seed tapioca

green part of 3 lemongrass stems

400mL can coconut cream

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon caster sugar

lime curd

white part of 3 lemongrass stems, chopped

zest of 3 limes

1/2 cup lime juice

1/2 cup caster sugar

3 egg yolks

1 whole egg

80g butter, diced

topping

diced mango, or other fresh fruit

lime zest

Place 12 cups water in a very large saucepan and bring it to the boil. Add the sago. Smash around the green lemongrass stems a bit and add them too. Simmer the sago over medium heat for 20-30 minutes, until soft and almost clear. Discard the lemongrass and drain the sago, rinsing it with cold water.

In a medium bowl, stir together the coconut cream, salt and sugar. Stir through the sago and refrigerate the mixture for an hour. (Note that if you store it overnight, like I did, the sago will expand further and the coconut fat will become more firm.)

Place the chopped white lemongrass in a small saucepan with the lime zest, lime juice and sugar. Bring it just to the boil, then turn off the heat and let the mixture infuse for 20 minutes. Strain the mixture and return it to the saucepan. Over low heat, whisk in the egg yolks and whole egg, and continuously stir until the mixture thickens to a custard. Pour the mixture into a food processor or blender and let it sit for 5 minutes or so to cool a bit. Commence blending, and gradually add in the butter chunks. Keep blending until the mixture is completely smooth. Spoon the curd into the bottom of four serving glasses and refrigerate for at least an hour (storing this overnight won't do it any harm).

When you're ready to serve the sundaes, spoon the sago mixture over the curd in the glasses, then garnish with chopped fruit and lime zest.

Fennel cacciatore with polenta dumplings

November 17, 2022

   

I think of fennel as a winter vegetable, but I recently noticed a couple of fennel recipes pop up (one was definitely this salad on I Spy Plum Pie) and learned that it sticks around through spring. This allowed me to try the fennel cacciatore recipe in In Praise of Veg, which I'd mentally filed away for next year.

This is another neat case of dropping a simple dumpling dough on top of a bubbling main meal. Here it's cheesy polenta dollops on top of a tomato-sauced fennel base! If you own the kind of casserole dish that can also be used on the stovetop, it's also a one-pot-wonder. I don't; instead I seared the fennel in two batches in a cast-iron frypan, transferred them to a larger frypan to simmer in their tomato sauce, and transferred them again to a baking dish to cook the dumplings through.

That sounds like a lot of effort, but it really was fine (perhaps Michael, who washed up, would disagree). My polenta-water mixture didn't entirely meld, yet it puffed up well in the oven; its texture was unsurprisingly a little coarse. I used green olives instead of kalamata out of personal preference, and forgot to buy pitted ones. In future, I'd use crushed instead of whole tomatoes and remove the cores of the fennel bulbs for a more even texture.

The recipe made four decent servings - enough to feel satisfied, and gone before we had a chance to become bored with it. I hope we'll remember to revisit it when fennel season rolls around again.

Fennel cacciatore with polenta dumplings

(slightly adapted from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg)

1 cup polenta

3-4 medium fennel bulbs, stalks and fronds trimmed

2 tablespoons olive oil

3/4 cup pitted olives

2-3 cloves garlic, minced

400g can tomatoes

1 teaspoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 sprigs rosemary

grated parmesan, to garnish

Place the polenta in a small-medium bowl and stir in 1 cup water. Set the mixture aside to meld.

Cut the bulbs into big, chunky quarters; remove the cores if you like. Heat the olive oil up in a frypan over medium heat. Add the fennel and sear it on each side. Turn down the heat and add the olives and garlic, stirring for just a minute or two. Pour in the canned tomatoes plus at least a half-can of water, smashing up the tomatoes a bit if they need it. Sprinkle over the sugar and salt, and simmer everything for 10 minutes. Start heating up an oven to 190°C during the simmer.

When the mixture is done simmering, carefully transfer it to a high-walled baking tray. Drop tablespoonfuls of the polenta mixture onto the top to form dumplings. Cover the dish with foil or a lid and bake for 40 minutes. Retrieve the tray from the oven and remove the covering. Turn the oven up to 220°C. Sprinkle the parmesan over the cacciatore and add the rosemary sprigs. Bake uncovered for 5 more minutes, then serve.

Nico's

November 12, 2022

   

During my many lockdown walks through Fitzroy, I noticed lots of people loitering around a bright blue sandwich shop; more recently Michael noticed the same phenomenon in Brunswick. It looks like Nico's veg*n options have expanded with time and we've joined the queue for a couple of weekend lunches this month.

Up on the right is the most notable veg*n option, the vegan schnitzel ($15). The schnitzel looks deceptively thin within such a stacked sandwich, but there's actually plenty to sink your teeth into and it has an ultra-crispy crumbing. And don't let the volume of cos lettuce lead you to thinking that this will be bland: it's a festival of condiments with salad cream, nori, koji chimichurri, dill pickles and basil. There's a standard slice of plasticky vegan cheese too.

Nico's salad sandwich ($13, pictured above left) is stuffed to bursting with butter lettuce, cucumber, red onion (OK, I picked this out), tomato, sprouts, dill pickles and a sharp cheddar. It had me nostalgic for the salad sandwiches I'd make at my grandparents' place as a kid, and that I've had since in country bakeries, even though none of those have included sesame tofu dressing, Kewpie mayo, and koji chimichurri like this one.

Both sandwiches used a sourdough loaf that was super-soft, but hardy enough to hold the fillings together. The last vegetarian option that we've yet to try is a truffle mushroom melt ($16) - we haven't been ready for the richness of black truffle paste and two kinds of cheese.

Between Nico's and Rusty's, I wonder if there's a little sandwich trend rising (with Smith & Deli well ahead of the curve). Perhaps it's the natural blend of the decade-old reign of the burger and more recent wellness kicks. I'm more interested in this than either of those predecessors! And even if it's just a little local coincidence, I like it. 

   

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Nico's

1 Piera St, Brunswick East

menu

https://www.nicos.melbourne/

Accessibility: Nico's has a wide, flat entry. Furniture is a series of medium-spaced, medium-height tables and backless stools located outdoors. We ordered, paid and picked up our food from a medium-height counter. We didn't seek out toilets.

Silverbeet khachapuri

November 6, 2022

   

My friend Erin and I recently traded some things that we can't/won't use anymore, and thus I've acquired three new cookbooks. I want to be realistic about how well I might use these books, too, so I've flicked through each one and bookmarked the recipes I'm most excited to make. (There are plenty more that I'd be excited to eat if somebody else cooked them, but I'm strictly ignoring those!)

This recipe for silverbeet khachapuri is one of the more effortful ones in Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg, but it looked so good that it earned a bookmark. I was in self-imposed kind-of-sick isolation on the weekend, and had enough energy to make a Sunday project of the khachapuri.

Khachapuri are Georgian cheese breads - this version boasts three kinds of cheese, sautéed onion and silverbeet, and a baked egg, all baked into a bread dough that's enriched with milk and eggs. I tried to stay true to the recipe, but ended up using almost an extra cup of flour in my very sticky bread dough and an extra-large bunch of silverbeet. I was intrigued by the fenugreek sprinkle on the original version (and I've included it below), but it wasn't convenient for me this time and I used some oregano-sesame salt instead.

As you can see from the photo above, the results are spectacular, and I especially liked this with a squeeze of lime. The recipe makes far more than the two of us can eat in a sitting, so we made use of Zaslavsky's best tip: you can half-bake the khachapuri, store them in the fridge, then just add the egg and do the final bake when you're ready for seconds.

Silverbeet khachapuri

(slightly adapted from Alice Zaslavsky's In Praise of Veg) 

dough

1 cup milk, lukewarm

7g sachet instant dried yeast

1/2 teaspoon sugar

3-4 cups bread flour, plus extra for dusting 

2 eggs

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

sesame seeds

filling

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 onion, diced

1-2 cloves garlic, minced

leaves from 1 bunch silverbeet (265-300g), chopped

200g cottage cheese

200-250g mozzarella, grated

200g feta

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground fenugreek

4 eggs

to serve

40g butter

lemon wedges

Stir together the milk, yeast and sugar in a bowl and set them aside to let the powders dissolve. Place 25g of the flour and 100mL of water into a small saucepan and stir them over medium heat until thickened. Take them off the heat and allow them to cool slightly. Whisk the olive oil and 1 egg into the milk-yeast mixture, then whisk in the flour slurry.

In a large bowl, stir together 3 cups of flour with the salt. Slowly pour in the milk mixture and stir until well combined. Continue to knead the mixture to form a dough, adding flour as needed (Zaslavsky assures us that this dough cannot be overworked!). It's ready when the dough springs back from a finger-poke. Drip a little olive oil in a clean large bowl, roll the dough around to lightly coat it, then place a tea towel over the top and let the dough rest in a warm place for an hour.

Use this time to make the filling. Pour the olive oil into a frypan set over medium heat and add the onion. Cook the onion for around 10 minutes, mostly with the lid on, until it's well softened but not browned. Add the garlic and silverbeet, give everything a stir, then pop the lid back on to cook for 5-10 minutes, until the silverbeet has reduced. Transfer the silverbeet mixture to a large bowl. Stir through the cottage cheese, then the mozzarella, then crumble over the feta and stir everything to combine. 

Preheat an oven to 240°C. The aim next is to make four khachapuri, and I laid out one sheet of baking paper for each one. Lightly flour one sheet. Punch down the dough and take a quarter of it to roll out on this sheet. Roll out the dough to roughly a 17cm x 35cm rectangle, continuing to sprinkle flour as needed to keep everything from sticking. Spoon a quarter of the silverbeet-cheese filling onto the dough, spreading it out but leaving 1cm clear on the long sides and 1-2 inches clear on the short sides. Gather the long sides in towards the filling, allowing some of the filling to be captured under the dough. Pinch together and twist the short sides to form an overall boat shape. Cover the khachapuri with a tea towel to prove for a further 15 minutes, and work your way through the remaining three.

Use the baking paper sheets to carefully transfer however many khachapuri you can fit onto baking trays. Beat one egg and brush it onto the visible dough, then sprinkle the egg wash with sesame seeds. Sprinkle the khachapuri fillings with salt and fenugreek. Turn the oven down to 180°C and bake the khachapuri for 10-15 minutes, until the crusts are just starting to turn golden.

Press the base of a 1/3 cup measuring cup into the centre of the khachapuri filling to form a little well. Crack an egg into a glass and gently pour it into the well, repeating for the other half-baked khachapuri. Return them to the oven for 10-15 minutes, until the eggs are just set and the crust is thoroughly golden brown. (Repeat the baking process with any khachapuri you couldn't yet fit into your oven.)

Serve the khachapuri with a 10g slab of butter melting on top, and a wedge of lemon on the side.    

White bean soup with pesto dumplings

November 5, 2022

   

We've been home-cooking plenty in the past few months - it's just been focused on tried and true recipes more than anything new. But I was moved to browse my soup-tagged bookmarks this week when Michael came down with a cold, and he picked out this Heidi Swanson recipe for white bean soup with pesto dumplings.

Dumplings sound comforting but also like a lot of effort; I'm happy to report that only the first point is true in this recipe! They're just a simple floury batter that's dropped directly into the soup one big spoonful at a time, with no fiddly rolling or folding in their construction. An egg (and possibly the pesto available to you) get in the way of this being vegan, but I agree with Swanson that the egg could simply be substituted with a bit of extra liquid as it's not supplying crucial binding here. 

The soup itself is a simple mixture dotted with onion, carrots and white beans, thickened with a lot of flour. The flavour is really governed by your choice of herbs and pesto. I reckon that a bit of lemon rind, parmesan or nooch in the dumpling batter would brighten up the dish; I notice that Swanson included lemongrass in her herb mix and that probably served a similar purpose. In the bowl, the soft scone-like dumplings dominate the broth - they're perfect sick-time food and something we'll enjoy while well in winter too.

White bean soup with pesto herb dumplings

(a recipe from 101 Cookbooks)

soup

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, diced finely

2 carrots, diced

1 teaspoon caraway seeds

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

5 cups water or vegetable stock

salt, to taste

1 x 400g can cannellini beans, drained

dumplings

1 egg

2 tablespoons pesto

1 cup milk (Swanson used almond; I used soy)

1 cup chopped herbs, plus more for garnish (I used chives, parsley and dill)

1 1/2 cups wholemeal flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

Heat up the oil in a very large saucepan and sauté the onions and carrots until tender, about 5-7 minutes. Stir in the caraway seeds and flour and continue stirring for a couple of minutes to gently toast the flour. Add the water/stock and salt and bring it all to a gentle simmer, stirring regularly until thickened. Add the beans and continue to gently simmer and occasionally stir the soup while you prepare the dumplings.

In a small-medium bowl, whisk together the egg, pesto and milk until well mixed. Fold in the herbs. In a separate medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt. Pour in the egg-herb liquid and mix until just combined. Drop generous tablespoonfuls of the dumpling mixture into the soup. (Swanson warns us several times not to be tempted to go larger! And she's right, they do expand.) Cover the saucepan and simmer the dumplings for around 7 minutes; gently flip them over in the soup and give them another 7 minutes of covered cooking. Serve garnished with the extra chopped herbs.

Kale Mary

Update 21/01/2023: Kale Mary has now closed.

September 18 & October 22, 2022

   

Kale Mary is a vegan café recently opened in residential Albert St, where a Lentil As Anything outlet traded for a while. Although it's not near any other shops, it's right on my favourite quiet route for cycling and walking through Brunswick, so I spotted it rapidly and made it in for brunch on their opening weekend.

   

The menu is moderately sized, includes a couple of gluten-free options, and is really distinct from the usual brunch menus around town. There's granola, toast and smashed avo, but also gado gado, soba salad and a soup of the day.

   

On that original menu, the smashed avocado was the secret superstar. For just $10, it was a decent serve on a single slice of sourdough, generously augmented with tomatoes, radishes, seeds and a black tahini and yoghurt dressing.

   

The smashed chickpeas ($23) were tasty, filling, and equally original. Here the sourdough toast was battered in chickpea flour, as well as being piled with whole chickpeas, broccolini, kale, and a fermented harissa dressing.

   

Full but still curious, our table of four split two of the Chinese doughnuts ($6 each). I'm more familiar with these as a savoury food (e.g. in jianbing or hot pot) and this sweet version didn't improve on those experiences. Though their rose petal and sesame seed garnishes were pretty, the doughnuts had been on display in the open and were tough to chew.

   

Having established how much we liked Kale Mary's savoury food, we returned for lunch a month later. Without really planning to, Michael and I switched orders! He loved the spiciness of the smashed chickpeas. Meanwhile, the renamed bruschetta avocado had risen in price to a very defensible $18. The avocado bruschetta served to neighbouring tables looked enormous, and the staff kindly allowed me to order a half-serve at a discount. This still seemed to include half an avocado atop my half-toast, lots of blended basil sauce, a bit of lettuce, and a dollop of cashew cheese. I loved how citrus-bright and herbal it tasted.

   

There were a few interesting cakes and muffins at the counter, but this just wasn't the day for it. We'll revisit their sweet options at some point, but for now we're impressed enough with Kale Mary's all-vegan savoury meals, relaxed atmosphere, and friendly service.

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Kale Mary

207 Albert St, Brunswick

0493 572 466

September menu, October menu

https://www.kalemary.com.au/

Accessibility: Entry is flat and and two doors wide. Furniture is well spaces throughout the café, mostly regular-height tables and chairs with backs, although a couple of high tables with backless stools and low lounge chairs are visible in the top photo. The toilet is an ungendered spacious cubicle with handrails and menstrual products available. 

Stir-fried cauliflower with fermented bean curd

September 2, 2022

   

Recently a friend passed a jar of fermented bean curd to me in a swap of a few household bits and pieces. I'd never used it before but was interested in giving it a go, and quickly found a simple vegan-friendly recipe on Serious Eats to get to know this ingredient better.

This stir-fry really is so simple, that's it's just granted me permission to apply the fermented bean curd as a condiment to any stir-fried veges. The bean curd has a savoury, slightly funky flavour that reminds me most of fermented black beans. The squares have the texture of cream cheese, so rather than being chopped they are easily mashed and spread around to coat the vegetables evenly. I was cautious about how spicy it might be, but it was milder than I expected and I've been spreading the curd around more generously in subsequent stir-fries.

In this original batch, with cauliflower, the bean curd and its chilli flecks are barely visible in the photos. The recipe includes a neat steaming technique for the cauliflower that won't always be needed for other veges. I skipped it a couple of days later, when I flavoured mixed green vegetables with the bean curd and served them with Anna Jones' sticky-soy cauliflower and rice. 

Stir-fried cauliflower with fermented bean curd

(a recipe from Serious Eats)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 head cauliflower, broken/chopped into large bite-sized pieces

3 cloves garlic, minced

3 tablespoons water

3 cubes fermented bean curd

salt

Heat the oil in a wok until it is smoking. Add the cauliflower and stir-fry for a few minutes, until browning at the edges and becoming tender. Add the garlic and stir-fry for a further 30 seconds.

Add the water and cover the wok to steam the cauliflower for a couple of minutes. Remove the lid and stir through the bean curd, until it has evenly coated the cauliflower. Add salt and serve.

Peanut butter & cardamom thumbprint cookies

September 1, 2022

   

I no longer work my job on Thursdays. I often have errands to run, but sometimes I have time to bake. Last week I had time to spare and wanted something sweet but not chocolatey, so I pulled up a recipe for peanut butter and cardamom cookies from The First Mess. 

I relaxed on some of the wholefoods ingredients in the original recipe. I didn't have spelt flour on hand, so I relied on plain wheat flour. Instead of almond flour I used the coarser almond meal in my pantry. Golden syrup instead of maple syrup. And, for all my airs and graces, I just really prefer the most processed peanut butter on the supermarket shelf over the 'natural' kind listed in this recipe.

In spite of all these substitutions, these cookies still have a 'wholefoods' texture to them - I credit the flaxseeds for it. I erred on the side of underbaking, and they were comforting and almost fudgy. I couldn't detect the cardamom and would double it in any future batches. 

The peanut butter caramel is very sweet and rich, and there's double the quantity here than I could fit into the cookies. I probably will halve the quantity, but this time around I followed Wright's serving suggestion of dabbing the extra on at serving time and I must admit it was pretty great. So retain or halve the caramel recipe, to taste!

Peanut butter & cardamom thumbprint cookies

(slightly adapted from a recipe on The First Mess)

peanut butter caramel (could be halved)

2 tablespoons peanut butter

2 tablespoons maple or golden syrup

1 tablespoon non-dairy milk

pinch of salt if peanut butter is unsalted

cookie dough

1 tablespoon flaxseeds

1 cup spelt or plain wheat flour

1/2 cup almond flour or meal

1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom (I would double this)

1/4 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons maple or golden syrup

2 tablespoons peanut butter

2 tablespoons melted coconut oil

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line two baking trays with paper.

In a small bowl, whisk together all of the peanut butter caramel ingredients until smooth.

Grind the flaxseeds to a powder and blend in 3 tablespoons of water (I did this all using a spice grinder attachment to my blender). Set aside for 5 minutes.

In a medium bowl, stir together the spelt/wheat flour, almond flour, cardamom and salt. Add the flaxseed mixture, syrup, peanut butter, coconut oil and vanilla; stir well to combine. Roll tablespoonfuls of the dough into balls and place them on the baking trays. Use a finger, 1/4 teaspoon measure, or the handle end of a wooden spoon to form an indentation in each dough ball. Spoon some peanut butter caramel into each indentation. Bake the cookies until golden brown, 10-12 minutes.

Allow the cookies to cool, and if you have leftover caramel you can spoon it on top when serving.

Vegan potato gratin with miso cashew cream

August 29, 2022

   

Cindy's been subscribed to the ABC Everyday newsletter since they started regularly including Hetty McKinnon recipes. She spotted this vegan miso potato gratin recently and we made it an immediate cooking priority. It takes a good chunk of time to cook this, but it's remarkably easy: blend up the cashew cream, slice up the potatoes and then combine them and bake. The end result is great - maybe not quite as creamy as a classic gratin, but rich and delicious, with the miso adding a subtle savoury note to the cashew cream base. The recipe as written makes heaps, so you might want to halve it unless you've got a big gang around for dinner or an insatiable appetite for potatoes. We used dried thyme instead of fresh because it was more convenient and it worked a treat, so don't be afraid to sub it in for the fresh.

    

   

Vegan potato gratin with miso cashew cream

(based on this Hetty McKinnon recipe)

1.5kg starchy potatoes, cut into 1/2cm wide discs

Olive oil

2 sprigs fresh thyme (we used a teaspoon of dried thyme)

salt and pepper

cashew cream

2 cups of raw cashews

3 garlic cloves

2 tablespoons white miso

1 cup stock

1 cup soy milk

4 sprigs thyme/2 teaspoons dried thyme

1 teaspoon salt

Preheat your oven to 180°C.

Whiz all the cashew cream ingredients in a blender until it's as smooth as possible

Drizzle a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into the base of a large baking dish (Hetty recommends 25 x 25cm, we wound up using two smaller ones)

Lay out the sliced potato in the baking dish so that they're overlapping - it's okay to crowd them in pretty tight.

Pour over the cashew cream and bake, covered, for 65 minutes - the potatoes should be pretty soft.

Take the lid off the baking dish and drizzle in a bit more oil, before baking for another 10-15 minutes at 220°C to finish.

Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before serving.

Small Graces

August 28, 2022

   

The weather was glorious on Sunday, so we lined up a westside lunch with our friends formally known as the Moody Noodles (... then added time to deliver a few of Michael's calendars by bike, and refill the pannier with groceries from Vincent Vegetarian Food). They suggested Small Graces, a café with plenty of outdoor seating in the heart of Footscray. It has the polished concrete, varnished wood and pastel accents common to so many Melbourne cafés, but the menu sets it apart. That menu starts with a long list of build-your-own elements: toast, eggs, bacon and avocado to be sure but also hummus with hazelnut dukkah, arepas, wilted greens in shiro miso, relish, and almond feta - all made in-house.

There are composed plates as well, with plenty of well-marked vegan and gluten-free options. In spite of all this variety, three of us made the same order! We just couldn't get past the arepas con frijoles ($20) and each added potato hash ($4.50) on the side. None of us were disappointed: the stout little arepas were so pillowy, and I piled mine with the accompanying avocado. The slow-cooked beans were thick savoury comfort topped with crumbled almond feta, and and all this creaminess was cut through by the jalapeno-spiced escabeche pickles. The potato hash swung back to rich comfort food, smeared with a vegan-friendly aioli and rosemary salt. Few things can persuade me away from sourdough waffles (with apple crumble and cashew icecream, no less!) but this meal did it and I felt no regret. 

   

I usually like to order an iced chai when I see it on offer, but the agua de panela (described as Colombian 'lemonade'; $5.50) was a better match for beans and arepas. Even Michael ordered one to follow his coffee.

Small Graces' staff were friendly and attentive, and there's so much more on the menu that I'd like to try. It's an instant addition to my mental list of Footscray favourites.

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Small Graces has already won fans on Mamma Knows West, TOT: HOT OR NOT, and Consider the Sauce.

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Small Graces

57 Byron St, Footscray

9912 6429

food, drinks

https://www.smallgraces.com.au/

Accessibility: There's a narrow, flat entry. Indoor and outdoor furniture is densely arranged and regular height with a mixture of backed chairs and backless stools. We ordered at our table and paid at a low counter. Toilets require swipe card access on request from the staff; the loos are located around the corner, through a heavy door and down a hallway. I noticed gendered narrow cubicles and one ungendered, labelled-accessible cubicle with a baby change station.

Confit chickpeas

August 20, 2022

   

I saw Kylie tweeting about an easy chickpea recipe that she'd fallen in love with and immediately downloaded the badly photographed recipe to add to our rotation. I should have known immediately it was an Ottolenghi - ludicrously precise instructions like "11 garlic cloves" alongside big flavours? It has his fingerprints all over it.

It's also, somewhat surprisingly, incredibly simple - the confit takes a long time to bake, but preparation work is super minimal and the pay-off predictably wonderful. It's an oily, spicy delight, with the herby yoghurt providing a bit of freshness to cut through. We served it with paratha from the freezer, but something a bit more absorbent would really hit the spot I think. This is up there with Yotam's orecchiette for me, in terms of maximising simplicity and deliciousness. We'll definitely make it again!

    

   

Confit chickpeas

(based on this recipe by Yotam Ottolenghi)

chickpeas

2 x 400g cans of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

11 cloves of garlic, peeled

thumb-sized piece of ginger, peeled and julienned

400g cherry tomatoes

3 red chillies, with a slit cut down the side

1 tablespoon tomato paste

2 teaspoons cumin seeds, roughly crushed in a mortar and pestle

2 teaspoons coriander seeds, roughly crushed in a mortar and pestle

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes

2 teaspoons hot paprika

1 teaspoon caster sugar

200ml olive oil

salt

dressing

small bunch mint, leaves only

small bunch coriander, leaves only

200g yoghurt

1 tablespoon lime juice, plus bonus lime wedges to serve

Preheat the oven to 170°C.

In a casserole dish or other ovenproof pan that has a lid, combine all the chickpea ingredients, stirring thoroughly to mix everything together. Cover and cook for 70-80 minutes, stirring everything at the halfway point - you want the tomatoes to almost completely break down by the end.

When the chickpeas are nearly done, whiz together the dressing ingredients in a food processor.

Serve, with bread or rice and with yoghurt dressing and lime wedges.

Creamy vegan pasta with smoky tempeh

August 18, 2022

   

This week I pulled a pasta recipe up from way back in my archives - Dr Ricki published it in 2010 back when her blog was called 'Diet, Dessert & Dogs'. Her recipes focused primarily on the anti-candida diet, and this was her adaptation of carbonara. You can see that I'm holding back on that name: carbonara is a dish that is wrapped up in tradition, nostalgia, and opinions around 'authenticity'. Dr Ricki composed something that was accessible and nostalgic for her, and with a couple of adjustments it's now become an enjoyable meal for me, too.

This recipe combines two styles of vegan cooking that I'm already familiar with. The creamy sauce sits easily alongside the ones I make for macaroni and fettuccine, flavoured with cashews, tahini, miso and mustard. This one is coloured with a little turmeric, and I probably won't do that again as I think its subtle flavour still managed to overwhelm the nutmeg.

Meanwhile, the tempeh is flavoured with tamari, sweetener (no stevia for me!) and liquid smoke as I know well from other vegan 'bacon' recipes. The interesting trick here is that instead of being marinated, the tempeh is braised in a more watery version of the liquid, with excellent (if not bacony) results.

Preparation calls for three pots on the go, and my timing meant that I had to call on Michael to drain the pasta and mix in the peas while I was carefully stirring the sauce. I'm sure I can refine the scheduling and manage it on my own in future. I served the tempeh plate by plate, expecting it to colour the sauce brown, and forgot my parsley the first time around (it went double on the leftovers!). This was a really nice variation on a couple of old favourite foods, and likely to stick around in our dinner rotation.

Creamy vegan pasta with smoky tempeh

(slightly adapted from a recipe by Dr Ricki)

braised tempeh

225g packet tempeh

3 tablespoons tamari

juice of 1 small lemon, topped up with water to make 1/3 cup liquid

1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon golden syrup 

2 tablespoons olive oil

1/2 cup water

creamy pasta

500g pasta

3/4 cup peas, fresh or frozen

2 tablespoons smooth cashew butter

1 tablespoon white miso

1 tablespoon tahini

1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

1 clove garlic, minced

1/2 teaspoon turmeric (for colour, optional)

pinch of nutmeg

salt and pepper, to taste

1 cup soy or almond milk

1 cup vege stock

1 tablespoons arrowroot or potato starch

3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Fill a large saucepan with water and bring it to the boil for the pasta. 

Slice the tempeh into bite-sized pieces. Place all of the braising ingredients in a medium-sized frypan, whisking with a fork to combine. Add the tempeh pieces and swish them around to coat them in the liquid. Set the frypan over medium heat and cook the tempeh, flipping them occasionally, until most of the liquid has evaporated; this will probably take 15-25 minutes.

When the saucepan of water is ready, add the pasta and cook it according to its directions. When it's finished cooking, drain the pasta, return it to its saucepan, and stir through the peas. Even if the peas are frozen, this should be enough heat to defrost them.

While the tempeh and the pasta are both cooking, get to work on the sauce. In a small-medium saucepan, stir together the cashew butter, miso, tahini, mustard, garlic, turmeric, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Gradually whisk in the milk and stock to make a smooth sauce. Whisk in the arrowroot. Set the sauce over medium heat and stir continuously until thickened, about 10 minutes. Pour the sauce over the cooked pasta and peas, and stir to combine. When the tempeh is ready, gently fold that through the mixture, too. Serve garnished with fresh parsley.

Rice Paper Scissors II

August 7, 2022

   

We visited Rice Paper Scissors three years ago during a bumper Melbourne International Film Festival experience. It's been a couple of quiet intervening years, and we're tentatively heading out for a few masked movies again in 2022 - this jogged my memory that Rice Paper Scissors might make for a nice lunch in a long break between sessions. I easily secured us a booking a couple days in advance, and noticed that the restaurant had moved roughly a kilometre west, from Liverpool St to Hardware Lane.

A couple of welcome constants are that the staff are very friendly, and the vegan and gluten-free options are clearly marked across the menu. We started out with fancy drinks: a lemongrass Tom Collins ($22; lemongrass gin, cucumber syrup, lemon soda) for Michael, and an alcohol-free No-long Tea Sour ($16) for me. I noticed just as the staff were taking my order away that there's also a selection of cheaper house-made sodas ($7) and felt a pang of regret... but only until I tasted my mocktail. Its refreshing tea base, sweet (most likely eggy) foam, garnishing dried herbs and dehydrated orange slice formed a rare and complex drink that I was happy to pay extra for.

   

The encouraged approach to the menu is to choose 5 dishes for two people, at a cost of $45 per person. This made for a slight saving compared to ordering one dish at a time, but it would also be possible to cobble together a smaller, still-filling vegan meal for a bit less. We started with nam prik hed, an intensely sweet and sour caramelised mushroom relish spooned onto light and crunchy soy bean crackers. We also received a complimentary bowl of roasted peanuts (... perhaps some extra consolation protein for the vegos?).

   

The yum broccoli rom khwan was my surprise favourite of the meal - here the broccoli retained a bit of crunch, and was served on an exceptional coconut-pea puree, with a smoky almond dressing.

   

The salapao pak tod had more flavour tucked away than I initially noticed - the tempura-battered eggplant was equal parts crisp and tender, with a cooling cucumber garnish, then a burst of spicy mayonnaise sitting deeper within the steamed bun.

   

The kui chai were very similar to the chive cakes we're fond of ordering at Rin Sura. Here they come with wrap-around lettuce leaves and herbs, and they're a little more difficult to bite through.

   

Though we were already full, our final dish of dau hu sot tuong was irresistible - large, spongey tofu cubes thickly battered and coated in a sweet soy glaze, with plenty of flavour to spill over onto fragrant jasmine rice.

The dessert menu was attractive - it was tempting to split a 'terrarium' (Vietnamese coffee mousse with peanut and chocolate soil), and I was glad to see a vegan option (tofu and ginger brulee with lychee and mint). But we really were very full, and had an hour to pass before our next film, so we agreed to a river walk and an icecream later on.

I'll just have to tuck that dessert menu away for another time. Without a doubt, Rice Paper Scissors is now firmly imprinted on my mind as a reliable spot for a special meal in the city.

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You can read about our first visit to Rice Paper Scissors here. Since then it's been blogged on A Chronicle of Gastronomy.

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Rice Paper Scissors

15 Hardware Lane, Melbourne

9663 9890

main menu, desserts

https://ricepaperscissors.com.au/

Accessibility: RPS is located in a cobbled laneway, and the outdoor seating is on a slightly sloping floor.  Outdoor furniture included regular-height (but wobbly) tables and chairs with backs, arranged in medium to high density. We ordered and paid at our table. Toilets are ungendered cubicles located upstairs next door.

Quince & browned butter tart

July 26-30, 2022

   

Our friend Danni gave us a single large quince. I knew I could simply poach it and eat it for breakfast, or make a cake or salad we'd made before, but I had the energy to try something new. If I don't use my Stephanie Alexander book for this, I thought, it's probably time to acknowledge that I'll never use the Stephanie Alexander book and get rid of it.

Sure enough, Stephanie Alexander had plenty of ideas for quince and at least two of them were credited to Maggie Beer. The book has a nested approach such that I settled on the quince and browned butter tart, then had to refer back to recipes for shortcrust pastry, poached quinces, and sugar syrup to sort out my full ingredient list. As I incorporated each new recipe into the fold, I adapted a bit further, borrowing from my previous experience poaching quinces, substituting apple cider vinegar for the usual lemon juice, and making my pastry by food processor instead of by hand. The original recipe earns credit for having me brown the butter - without anything added, it already smelled deliciously of caramel.

I've made dozens of shortcrust pastries and this one wasn't my best - it was undercooked on the base and shrank away from the edge of the dish, even though I tried to crimp it on, such that it was extra-thick where the base sloped up to the side. The crust was still flaky and toasty at its edges, deep enough to accommodate the filling, and sturdy enough to hold its shape - Michael even said he preferred this texture before I'd mentioned a word about my errors.

As a whole, the pie still worked. The quince was tender and floral-scented, surrounded by a small quantity of just-set custard, and the crust provided buttery but unsweetened support. There remained just enough poached quince for one breakfast, and we shared the poaching syrup as a drink with soda water.

   

Quince & browned butter tart

(adapted from Stephanie Alexander's The Cook's Companion,

borrowing a little from Cook (almost) Anything)

poached quinces

~500mL water

65g caster sugar

2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar (or juice of half a lemon)

1 large (450g) quince

1 cinnamon stick

shortcrust pastry

240g plain flour

pinch of salt

180g butter

1/4 cup water

filling

125g butter

2 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1 heaped tablespoon plain flour

In a saucepan, stir together the water, sugar and vinegar. Work as quickly as you can to minimise browning: peel the quince, remove its core, chop its flesh into pieces, and drop the pieces into the saucepan. Top up the water if the quince pieces aren't fully submerged and add the cinnamon stick. Set the saucepan over medium-high heat and bring it all to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer the quinces until they're tender. Allow them to cool to room temperature. 

For the pastry, place the flour and salt in a food processor. Dice the butter and drop it into the processor too. Blend the mixture until it resembles coarse sand. With the motor running, add the water a tablespoon at a time, until the mixture starts binding together. Turn the dough out onto plastic wrap and bring it together into a ball. Wrap up the pastry and refrigerate it for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 200°C. Roll out the pastry and ease it into a pie dish, trimming the edges. Line the pastry with paper, add pie weights, and blind bake the pastry for 20 minutes. (I would perhaps try 15 minutes with paper and weights, plus 10 minutes without paper and weights next time.) Remove the crust from the oven and reduce the oven heat to 180°C; allow the pastry base to cool.

Melt the butter for the filling and cook it until it turns a deep gold; turn off the heat and set aside. Drain the quinces from their syrup and reserve the syrup for another use (we drank ours with soda water). Arrange the quince pieces across the pastry base. Beat together the eggs and sugar, then stir in the flour and the butter. Gently pour the mixture over the quinces. Bake the tart until set, 30-40 minutes. Serve warm or cold.