Healthier halava

Breakfast serial part xvi
August 19, 2012

   

Our vege boxes have recently tended towards more fruit than vegetables. Though I faithfully take an apple to work each day, bananas and oranges pile up in the fruit bowl, overflowing onto the table. Peeling and freezing bananas delayed the problem a while, but they still needed eating. It's too cold for smoothies and I wasn't in the mood for my usual banana baking... somehow I hit on the idea of mashing bananas into halava. 

This actually proved the perfect remedy for my reservations about the original recipe. The bananas' sweetness and smoothness meant I could cut the sugar by another half, and the butter by almost as much. The texture's different, too. Fresh out of the saucepan this halava is mushier and less fluffy than the original, and then it stays soft and silky after days in the fridge.instead of setting to a grainy fudge.

I've been eating my breakfast pudding alternately with a mug of hot tea or a glass of cold milk.

Healthier halava
(adapted from this recipe)

3 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup brown sugar
40g sultanas
grated zest of 2 oranges
100g butter
1 1/2 cups semolina
1/3 cup walnut pieces
3/4 cup dates, chopped
3 bananas

In a medium-large saucepan, stir together the water, sugar, sultanas and orange zest. Bring them to the boil, with a couple of stirs along the way to dissolve the sugar, then turn the heat off and set aside.

In a large saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the semolina and gently roast it in the butter for 20 minutes, stirring regularly for even cooking. Add the walnuts at the 10-minute mark. It should smell great once it's done!

Gradually pour the sugar syrup into the semolina, stirring as you go. Keep stirring the pudding, letting the grains soak up all the liquid. When it's all absorbed, mash the bananas and fold them in, then stir in the dates. Cover the saucepan with a lid and take it off the heat, allowing the pudding to steam like this for about 10 minutes before serving.

July 1, 2011: Road trip apple pies

We've done a pretty good job of breaking up this gloomy southern winter with weekend getaways. While jetting up to Sydney for some warmth was a real treat, I almost prefer hitting the road with our friends Mike and Jo. We have this rule that we have to stop at every open small-town op shop we pass, we eat and drink and walk and play cards, if we're lucky there's a fireplace. We can never agree on driving music.

Last weekend we set off to the west-northwest. I had a few hours in the lead-up to convert a couple of aging apples into free-form pies to eat on the way. I made a shortcrust pastry based on a Kurma Dasa recipe and free-styled the filling. They look oozy and collapsed when I check on the oven but the pastry held it together as they cooled; I didn't think I'd be blogging them. Michael shoved the pastries into a lunchbox while I panicked about toothbrushes and shoes.

Tired and coming down with a cold, I slept through the last couple hours of daylight. I awoke to quiet roads, a pretty sunset, and the last pie. It was pretty damn good! Worth a dim photo and slightly sappy blog post.

Road trip apple pies
(pastry based on this recipe by Kurma Dasa)

1 1/2 cups plain flour
2 tablespoons castor sugar
pinch of salt
125g butter
1 tablespoon cold water
2 teaspoons white vinegar
3 large apples
juice of half a lemon
pinch of ground star anise
larger pinch of ground ginger
2 tablespoons brown sugar

In a food processor combine the flour, castor sugar and salt. Add the butter in cubes and pulse the mixture until it resembles bread crumbs. Sprinkle over the water and vinegar and process the mixture until it comes together as a moist dough. Turn the dough onto a clean surface, bring it together into a ball with your hands, wrap it in plastic, and store it in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line a baking tray with paper. Peel the apples and roughly chop them. Stir through the lemon juice, star anise, ginger and brown sugar.

Divide the dough into quarters. Place a dough-ball between two sheets of plastic wrap and roll it into a rough circle 2-3mm thick. Spoon a quarter of the diced apples onto the pastry, leaving a 1-2cm wide perimeter clear. Fold up the edges and pinch them together so that they form a rough wall round the pie edge, and transfer the pie to the baking tray. Repeat with the remaining pastry and apples. Spoon over any sugary juice that might remain in the bottom of the bowl that held the apples.

Bake the pies until the pastry is firm and golden, 20-30 minutes. Allow them to cool a bit before packing them away to share on the road.

June 6, 2010: Paneer

On Sunday afternoon I had my own go at making the paneer I swooned over at Kurma Dasa's cooking class.  I planned it as a welcome-home gesture for Michael (he'd been working out of town for 10 days) and a time-to-stop-scavenging-and-actually-cook motivator for myself.  Not that too much planning seemed necessary - all it takes is milk, some lemon juice or vinegar, and a splash of water.  

Oh, how wrong I was.  As I began to heat the milk, I set up my colander over a bowl for the draining stage and rummaged in the drawers for the muslin.  You know, that muslin we used to make tofurkey?  Not in the drawer I expected it to be in.  Nor, seemingly, in any of the other drawers.  Not in the cupboards.  Not in any other place outside the kitchen where I could imagine possibly stashing muslin.

By this stage my milk was threatening to boil over and I just went with it.  I curdled the milk and took a chance on the relatively small holes in my colander, pouring it all through without any finer straining.  And I pretty much got away with it!  There were just a few teeny curds floating in the yellow whey - they were easily strained with my finer tea strainer as I packaged the whey into jars to freeze for later (Kurma has some good ideas for using whey too!).  Then I just popped those escapee curds right back into the colander to be squished with the rest.

I was still a little nervous that my cheese might not compress into a neat slab without a cloth to keep it together.  In the end my paneer was a little crumbly round the edges but completely edible; first dressed with salt, pepper and lemon juice as we tasted it in class, then gently fried into golden cubes for a palak paneer.

I shared my paneer-straining woes with the twitterverse as my curds drained and received some great tips on substituting for muslin - clean Chux (@crazybrave), a linen tea towel (@tammois) and even 'heavy denier pantyhose' (@stickifingers)!  If only I'd run to the sock drawer instead of the kitchen drawer.

Paneer
(based on a recipe from Kurma Dasa, which appears on his website here)

~1/2 cup water
2L full-fat milk (preferably not homogenised)
juice of 1/2 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)

Set up a colander or sieve in a large bowl and line the colander with muslin or another clean cloth.  If the cloth is very thin, fold it to double thickness.  Also, make sure there's sufficient extra cloth hanging over the edges to fold in later.

Pour enough water into a large saucepan to completely cover the base (perhaps 5mm deep) and add the milk.  (The water, Kurma advised, will prevent the milk from burning and sticking to the bottom of the saucepan.)  Set the milk on a high heat and bring it to the boil, stirring it regularly along the way.

When the milk begins to foam, turn the heat down to low and add the lemon juice.  The milk should split into curds and whey.  Keep stirring the split mixture over the low heat for a few minutes to allow full separation.

Gently pour the curdled milk through the colander, so that the curds are caught in the cloth and the whey drains through into the bowl.  Pull up the sides of the cloth and twist them together, squeezing as much whey out of the cheese as possible.  Set something heavy (e.g. food cans held on an upturned plate) on the cheese for at least an hour to drain as much liquid from the cheese as possible.  When it's ready, gently unwrap the paneer to store or eat as you wish!

April 18, 2010: Cooking with Kurma

Recently we had the good fortune to attend a cooking class led by Kurma Dasa. I say 'good fortune' because our places in the class were a Christmas gift from Michael's mum Robyn. Kurma was a huge influence on our early days of vegetarian cooking, with Kurma's Vegetarian World Food being one of our first vego recipe books. (It was a gift too, from Michael's brother! You can find a few of those recipes in the archives here.)

Kurma's life as a chef is tied very closely to his involvement in the Hare Krishna movement and thus this class was held at Gopal's restaurant, where Kurma was head chef for many years. The foods we prepared, following the theme "Classics from the Subcontinent", were very much like the dishes I've enjoyed eating at various Krishna restaurants over the years.

As you can see above, our class began with litres and litres of milk. We'd be making panir!

This fresh cheese combines a lot of milk with a small amount of acid to create the curds. From there it's all about draining the whey from the curds, compressing the curd for at least an hour so that it forms a firm ball of cheese. Though most of the panir was destined for a curry, Kurma chopped up a little of it for us to taste as soon as it was ready. Drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice, seasoned with salt and pepper then sprinkled with fresh parsley, the still-warm cheese was incredible. I would make it again at home, just for that kind of snacking.

This is the hot and sweet apple chutney. For the 'hot' part, Kurma brought in some of his home grown habaneros (which I'd previously read about on his blog). He said that these were the second hottest variety in the world and that chutney should be "too hot to bear, yet too sweet to resist"! This chutney solidly hit both marks - it was terrific spread so, so sparingly on the pakoras.

You'll see the pakoras later in the post but here's the massive quantity of ghee that we cooked them in, which we started heating up around this time.

Next Kurma showed us how to make chapatis. These unleavened breads need no more than flour and water.


OK, and maybe also deft hands.


First they're fried in the pan...


... then directly on the flame where, if you're lucky, they'll puff up like starchy balloons.


There was plenty of space and dough for us all to have a go.

Kurma moved on to some of the other dishes - toor dal soup, lemon rice, matar panir, raita and then halava for dessert.

The absolute last thing we cooked was the pakoras, battered chunks of eggplant, cauliflower and potato.

While I was keenest to eat the cauliflower ones, to my surprise the eggplant pieces were my favourite.

After a 5-hour marathon of chopping, cooking and note-taking, we were all desperate to dig in. It was a feast well worth the effort!

The panir came up nicely in its tomato gravy and the lemon rice - dotted with cashews, mustard seeds and herbs - was a lovely change from the steamed rice I usually eat.

The pakoras and chutney were a deadly-delicious combination, and the raita was a cooling reprieve.

While Michael returned to the mains for more, I focused on dessert. This semolina pudding is great comfort food, though I was surprised at how much ghee went into it! Halava might make it onto our table a few times this winter.

This cooking class was an altogether different experience to the one we attended at LaZaT a couple of weeks earlier. With around 25 students attending over 5-6 hours, Kurma's class was much larger and longer. With more dishes and more people, the tasks were divided amongst us instead of each of us attempting everything for ourselves. Nevertheless, there was ample opportunity to observe the processes involved and question Kurma. He knows a lot about food and I learned much from him in person that I couldn't have just by reading his recipes.

November 23, 2009: Amish apple dumplings

The apples in our latest vege box were floury and not much fun to eat in their natural state. I was still optimistic that we might enjoy them cooked, so I pulled out a recipe that I made (badly) once before - Amish apple dumplings from Kurma Dasa's Vegetarian World Food. It's an ingenious way to make individual apple pies - just roll out some shortcrust pastry, peel an apple per person, and wrap each apple in pastry. Amazing! Who'd've thunk it? The Amish, apparently.

If you can manage to roll thin, flexible pastry and draw the pastry together at the bottom (not the top) of the apple, they work tremendously - with enough baking, the pastry and apple are tender enough to be scooped up with a spoon. I found this pastry recipe to be wonderfully moist and flexible, and used less per apple than Kurma advises. The one aspect I still haven't perfected is the butterscotch sauce, which is supposed to be poured over the dumplings before they go into the oven. I found that most of it burned in the bottom of the pan during baking. (Ever tried burned sugar? Not tasty.) In future, I'd try brushing the dumplings with just a little sauce, several times during the baking process (think of it - butterscotch varnish!) or just rolling the dumplings in a little sugar and skipping the sauce altogether.

Amish apple dumplings
(based on Kurma Dasa's recipe in Vegetarian World Food)

3/4 cup plain flour
pinch of salt
1/4 cup butter
2 teaspoons milk
2 tesaspoons water
1 teaspoon white vinegar
3 apples

for the sauce
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon water

In a food processor, combine the flour and salt. Add the butter in cubes and pulse the mixture until it resembles bread crumbs. Sprinkle over the milk, water and vinegar and process the mixture until it comes together as a moist dough. Turn the dough onto a clean surface, bring it together into a ball with your hands, wrap it in plastic, and store it in the fridge until you're ready for dessert.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Peel the apples. Divide the dough into thirds and on a clean, lightly floured surface, roll the three dough balls out to ~2mm thickness. Drop a dough sheet over each apple. Mould the pastry down around the apples until they're completely covered. (Pinch off some of the excess pastry and decorate the apple with it if you want.) Lightly grease a small baking tray and place the apples on it.

In a small saucepan, stir together the butter, sugar and water over medium heat. Bring them to the boil. Pour the sauce over the dumplings. (Next time I will try brushing the pastry with the sauce, and re-brushing several times during baking.)

Bake the dumplings for 40-50 minutes, until the pastry is golden brown and the apple yields easily to a knife.

February 19, 2009: Heaven-sent haloumi and the eat-anywhere quinoa salad

I'm not quite sure why, every Sunday without fail, I pick up and flick through The Age's Life magazine. Newspapers' glossy, coloured Sunday lift-outs are invariably trashy and superficial, I know, but there's something about this choice of title that really riles me. If vacuous interviews, pop statistics devoid of analysis, fashion spreads full of analysis and expensive techno-gadgets are truly the Stuff Of Life then kill me now. Maybe I persist in looking because it gets the blood pumping, and raging self-righteousness passion is actually the stuff of (my) life. Or it could just be the off-chance that Karen Martini has contributed an enticing vegetarian recipe.

And if you don't think that haloumi pictured up there looks enticing, then I'm not sure what I can do for you. (Just trying clicking that "next blog" button up top and put us both out of our misery.) You barely even need a recipe to make it, you just need some bright spark to put two already-awesome ingredients into one sentence for you. Haloumi, and pomegranate syrup. Kaboom! Sweet, sour, salty and fried. How could dinner get any better? Well, Karen also thought to sprinkle over chilli flakes, za'atar and thyme and they're certainly worth the effort, but it's the pomegranate syrup that still has me shaking my head in wonder.

Haloumi and pomegranate syrup could well be the Stuff Of Life, but they're probably not the Stuff Of A Well-Rounded Dinner. So I made this salad. It's based on a Middle Eastern couscous salad that Michael and I used to make all the time, back before we had a food blog or a life in Melbourne. From Kurma Dasa's Vegetarian World Food, it's filled with fresh herbs and vegetables, dried fruit and nuts, and has a dreamy tahini-lemon dressing. (It's also why this post, in spite of the featured slabs of cheese, earns a vegan-friendly tag.) It lasts for days in the fridge, tastes lovely at room temperature and is great for transporting to a picnic to share, or just for an ordinary workday lunch.

It's also pretty forgiving of alterations, and I made a lot of them:

• quinoa is the new couscous, at least in this house.
• I don't buy this whole "1/4 cup finely chopped red capsicum, 1/4 cup finely chopped green capsicum, 1/2 cup finely chopped tomato" guff. I'm chopping one WHOLE red capsicum and an entire tomato, 'cause we can't abide leftover veges, and as many beans as Michael brought home.
• almonds > peanuts, even if the peanuts are roasted.
• currants are always, always > sultanas.

But, you know, do what you want. It'll probably still taste good and travel well.



Heaven-sent haloumi
(Based on Karen Martini's pan-fried haloumi with chilli, za'atar and pomegranate molasses, from the Age's Sunday Life magazine)

olive oil, for frying
300g haloumi, cut into 1cm thick pieces
3 sprigs thyme, leaves picked
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
2 tablespoons za'atar
2 tablespoons pomegranate molasses

Drizzle some olive oil into a frypan and bring to high heat. Fry the haloumi slices until golden brown on each side, then transfer them to absorbent paper.

Arrange the haloumi on the serving plate(s); sprinkle over the thyme, chilli and za'atar. Drizzle over the pomegranate molasses and serve immediately.

Eat-anywhere quinoa salad
(inspired by Kurma Dasa's couscous salad, published in his book Vegetarian World Food)

1 cup quinoa
2 1/2 cups water
4 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 teaspoons sugar
3 tablespoons tahini
4 tablespoons fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
1 tomato, diced finely
1 red capsicum, diced finely
a handful of green beans, cut into small lengths
1 x 400g can chickpeas
1 small Lebanese cucumber, diced finely
1/2 cup currants
1/4 cup green olives, chopped (I bought chilli-garlic marinated ones)
1/4 cup almonds, chopped roughly

Stir together the quinoa and water in a saucepan; bring them to the boil, then turn down the heat and cook them through on medium-low heat until the water is absorbed (about 15 minutes). While it's cooking, do all the vegetable chopping listed above.

In a small bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil, sugar, tahini, mint, salt, pepper and parsley.

In a large bowl, combine the cooked quinoa and the remaining ingredients. Stir through the tahini dressing and serve at your leisure.

August 16, 2008: Disaster dinner

   

Lest you think that it's all virtuous breakfasts, golden vegetables and effortless treats in our kitchen, let me tell you about our latest cooking failure. For some time I've been wanting to try making my own gnocchi. Keen to enjoy it while the weather's still cool, Michael and I used a spare Saturday to pick out a recipe, buy a cheap potato ricer and some groceries on Sydney Rd and set to work. Along the way we decided to invite my aunt Carol to share dinner with us - it's been a while since we last had a meal with her.

This was a team task, and Michael and I worked together well enough. We got started long before Carol was due to arrive but the hour-long baking that the potatoes required set us back. We'd chatted and prepped and drank for a good hour with Carol before we had the little pillows pictured above, ready for cooking. Sadly, cooking transformed them into this:

   

We called for pizza.

Pathetic as out not-cchi were, Michael and I weren't too embarrassed. Carol takes great pleasure in food but doesn't bother herself much with cooking at all. Our efforts were impressive enough, and the pizza we eventually ate was happily washed down with a glass of red.

Dessert was my chance to make amends - I'd chosen another hearty dish that I wanted to try before winter ended. The Amish apple dumpling (as interpreted by Kurma Dasa): a whole apple wrapped in homemade pastry and baked with a caramel sauce. With the pastry prepared in the early afternoon, they didn't require too much extra effort and looked rather cute. Here they are, about to go into the oven:

   

As they baked, I wondered aloud whether I was supposed to have peeled the apples. Yes, actually, confirmed the cookbook. This is probably why:

   

Scandalously disrobed as they were, these apple dumplings proved to be entirely edible. The fruit (including the skin!) was warm and tender, the pastry golden with scrumptious caramel edges. Phew! A night for humility but not despair.

   

Though our gnocchi were terrible, the thyme vinaigrette and lemon cashew cream we'd prepared to eat with them were sensational spooned over tagliatelle the following night. We'll be back for more!

May 22, 2008: Baked tomatillo salsa

On our recent visit to Casa Iberica I picked up a large can of tomatillos. My one previous brush with tomatillos, where they constituted a broth, didn't reveal much about the fruit's flavour. So the first step was undoubtedly to drain them and have a little taste! I've learned how my mind and senses combine to fool me, and it's difficult to know how the signals of tomato-texture and definitely-not-tomato-colour influenced my sense of taste. These canned tomatillos struck me as tangier than tomatoes, though otherwise very similar.

Michael prepared a dinner of black bean tofu tacos, while I decided to adapt Kurma's easy-bake salsa recipe to my green alternative. Mashing the tomatillos roughly; combining them with a chopped green chilli, a glug of olive oil and a few spoonfuls of brown sugar; baking the lot in a hot oven for half an hour; this was all it took to achieve the sweet and sour condiment you see above.

May 28, 2007: Laksa

Michael's birthday was actually on Monday and he requested a fairly heavy dessert for the occasion. The dinner decision was left up to me and so I put my mind to finding a meal that would be warming and a bit special yet still leave room for cake. Mindful of Michael's long love of all things curry, I soon realised that laksa could be everything I was looking for. This recipe comes from Kurma Dasa's Vegetarian World Food, a favourite source of inspiration in this house for several years before I became addicted to blogs and bookmarking. There's a lot of chopping, grating and grinding involved but the reward is a huge pot of food (even with the halved quantity I made!), kaleidoscopic with flavours and textures, spices, veges and noodles. On the side were unnecessary but indulgent taro paratha - I've been a fan of the flaky, pastry-like paratha since I first encountered it, but the subtle sweetness of a taro one is new to me and just perfect for a coconut milk curry like this.

Laksa

1/2 cup beans, cut into short lengths
1/2 tablespoon cumin seeds
1/2 tablespoon coriander seeds
3 dried red chillis
1 1/2 tablespoons oil
1 inch length ginger, peeled and minced
1 inch length galangal, peeled and minced
1 stalk lemongrass, the white inner stem, finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tomatoes, peeled and chopped
1/2 tablespoon curry powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup potatoes, cut into cubes
3/4 cup carrot, cut into circles
1 cup vege stock
175g dried rice vermicelli noodles
3/8 cup tamarind puree
1 tablespoon palm sugar
1 teaspoon salt
200g fried tofu, cut into cubes
2 cups coconut milk
To garnish (optional): beansprouts, cucumber cut into matchsticks, lime wedges, sambal oelek (chilli paste)

Steam the beans for ten minutes and drain (or not, if you like them crunchy - I probably won't bother next time).

Roast the cumin seeds, coriander seeds and chillis in a small saucepan over low-medium heat for about 5 minutes. Use a spice grinder or mortar and pestle to grind them to a powder.

Heat the oil in a very large saucepan, then add the ginger and galangal, stir-frying for a few minutes. Add the lemongrass and fry for a further minute. Smells pretty good, huh? Unfortunately dinner's still a fair way off. Add the garlic, give it another minute, then pour in the tomato mush. Cook the tomatoes for 5-10 minutes so that they break down a bit.

Add the roasted spice powder, curry powder, black pepper, potato, carrot and vege stock. Cover and bring to the boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for 5-10 more minutes, until the veges are at your preferred tenderness.

Cover the noodles with boiling water and let them sit until tender. Drain.

Add the tamarind puree to the curry, then the beans, sugar, salt, tofu and coconut milk. Bring it all to the boil again then take it off the heat. Time to serve up! Put a scoop-full of noodles in each bowl, then ladle the curry over. Garnish and enjoy.

April 4, 2007: Wednesday night Mexican

It's been a while since we entertained anyone in our home, but some newcomers to my workplace provided a good reason to pull out the biggest saucepan and buy an extra 6-pack of beer. Tracy and her partner Lee are the latest Brisbane migrants to Melbourne's inner north and from even further afield (the Northern Territory!), Beth has now taken up residence at a desk adjacent to mine. On Wednesday evening they gave me an hour or so head start from the office to cook up a Mexican-themed dinner at home.

On my previous night's planning, I made the decision to keep this weeknight meal quite casual and low-stress. This meant no-fuss appetisers and desserts, and a serve-yourself main course. Michael had picked out some perfectly ripe avocadoes and it didn't take too long to mash them with a very juicy lime and stir in some finely chopped red onion and a bit of sour cream. Voila! Tangy guacamole. I brought out the Chilli Factory salsa as a spicy side, and there were Coronas all round.

Michael can take most of the credit for dinner - an enormous pot of TVP/red bean chilli. This is the kind of hearty vegetarian dish that ensures we'll never hanker for spag bol: thick tomato sauce with chopped veges, red kidney beans and our favourite pseudo-mince ladled into bowls and garnished with a dab of sour cream. My contribution was to whip up a cheesy cornbread batter and bake it in a muffin tray. We kept the chilli and cornbread minimally spicy, offering pickled jalapenos and finely diced chipotles to cater for the varying tastes and tolerances among us.

For once, I showed a bit of restraint on the dessert front. Rather than poring over cookbooks for days and baking something rich and labour-intensive, I turned to Allergy Block for some theme-appropriate chocolate. I found the Green and Black's Maya Gold I was after and also picked up another doozy - dark chocolate with cayenne! Good news that it's organic, vegan and made with ethically-purchased cocoa. It was a pleasant 70% cocoa block and a slow burner - I was chewing for a good five seconds before I detected the cayenne, but it's an unmistakable heat at the back of the throat once it does arrive. The G&B's was everything I remembered it to be: smooth but not waxy and with an intensely orange and subtly spiced edge.

Admittedly this was a bit more involved than our usual weeknight meal, but we lost nothing in stripping the menu back from my more elaborate efforts of the past. When the guests have left and I'm stacking the dishwasher, I feel more satisfied from having spent time in good company than I ever will from huddling in the kitchen for hours on end, trying to impress with risky and complicated food.



Chilli with TVP
(from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics)

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1-2 teaspoons chilli powder
1 medium zucchini, diced
1 large red capsicum, diced
2 cups of TVP, re-hydrated in 2 cups of hot water
2 x 800g cans crushed tomatoes
2 x 800g cans red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
2/3 cup tomato paste
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, finely chopped
Tabasco or other hot sauce to taste
salt, to taste
optional garnish of grated cheese or sour cream

Heat the oil in a large saucepan, frying the onions and garlic until soft. Add the cumin, coriander and chilli powder and stir well. Next add the diced zucchini and capsicum, cover and cook for 3 minutes. Stir in the TVP and cook for a few more minutes until it's heated through. The canned tomatoes and beans go in next, then finally the parsley and seasonings. The chilli can remain covered on a low to medium heat, with occasional stirs, if you are preparing other food (such as delicious cornbread!). If the chilli is thicker than you prefer, thin it out with a little water or stock just a minute or two before serving. To serve, ladle the chilli into bowls or mugs and garnish if you wish.


Cajun Cornbread
(from Kurma Dasa's World Vegetarian Food)

1 cup polenta
1/2 cup plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika (substitute some or all of this with cayenne if you like)
1/4 teaspoon dried oregano
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons minced green chillies (optional)
1 cup buttermilk
3 tablespoons oil
3/4 cup grated tasty cheese

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees C. Combine the dry ingredients, polenta through to the optional chillies, in a bowl and mix well. In a separate small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk and oil. Combine the dry and wet ingredients (don't over-mix) and fold in the grated cheese. Spoon the mixture into a greased loaf pan, pie dish or muffin tray (I made 8 small muffin portions). Bake for about 20 minutes or until golden on top. Serve warm.

December 7, 2006: Panir Steaks with Maple Syrup Marinade

In an attempt to use up a chunk of paneer left over from our Doof-inspired Indian night, Cindy decided to make marinated panir steaks from Kurma's 'Vegetarian World Food'. This had been our plan on Tuesday night, but this time we remembered to buy some fresh salad to accompany things. The marinade was delicious - sweet and a bit spicy, but we could probably have used tofu rather than paneer to improve the nutritional value without a big sacrifice in taste. Still, it was a speedy meal, and gave us another flavour to add to our salad rotation.

Panir steaks with maple syrup marinade
2 blocks panir chopped into triangles
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon asafetida powder

Marinade
3 tablespoons maple syrup
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon tomato paste (preferably from a bottle without mold on the top layer, but you do what you can)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablepoon dijon mustard
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Whisk all the marinade ingredients together in a bowl. Heat the oil in a frypan and sprinkle in the asafetida powder. After frying the asafetida briefly, add in the panir triangles. Fry the panir in the oil and asafetida for a while until they start to get crispy and brown on the outside.

Add in the marinade and keep cooking the panirs, turning fairly often, until the liquid thickens and reduces a little. Once they're done, serve them with a fresh salad (Kurma suggests a sweet potato mash as well, which would be pretty fantastic) and use any leftover marinade as dressing.

Categories:

• Recipes
• Savoury
• Cooking

November 11-12, 2006: Tapas

Our swag of goodies from the Collingwood markets had me pulled in all sorts of directions for the rest of the weekend's eating. Once I'd hit upon it, I become set on the idea of preparing a series of tapas-style tasting plates for the evening. Michael was feeling lazier, but kindly chipped in anyway.

Round 1: strips of home-roasted capsicum with Holy Goat silk cheese, torn basil leaves, black pepper and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. The capsicum and cheese were a perfect pair, the cheese being as smooth as the name suggests and very mild in taste. The balsamic added the acidity it needed, as did the tiny glass of iced limoncello I had on the side. A fabulous start, inspiring me to return to the kitchen for...

Round 2: shitake mushrooms fried in a little butter, flavoured with garlic, chilli and parsley. I intended to buy Swiss brown mushrooms but was careless at the shops (wish we'd hit the markets before the mushroom stand closed). I found the shitakes too rubbery in texture for this dish, but the flavour was spot-on.

Round 3: white bean and roasted garlic spread on toasted rye and caraway sourdough, with baby spinach leaves on the side. The dip comes from The Bold Vegetarian Chef and it's made by processing a head of roasted garlic, 2 cups of cooked white beans, 2 teaspoons of ground cumin, 3 tablespoons of lemon juice, 3 or 4 dashes of Tabasco sauce, 3 tablespoons of chopped parsley and basil, salt, pepper, and a bit of milk to thin it out. I found the fresh herbs a bit overpowering, and a bad clash with the caraway seeds in the bread. We'll know what to do on our next attempt!

By this time Michael and I were well fed and not inclined to make our final dish. We saved it up for lunch on Sunday:

Round 4: Steamed aparagus with lemon dressing and a sprinkle of parmesan. Sensational, especially with a bit of bread to mop up the leftover dressing. You can make the dressing by whisking together the juice of one lemon, 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, 1/4 of a teaspoon of pepper, and a 1/4 of a teaspoon of nutmeg. (Kudos to Kurma Dasa and World Vegetarian Food for that recipe.)

Categories:

• Cooking
• Recipes
• Savoury

October 29, 2006: Black bean tofu tacos

I ate lots of candy during and after the Halloween party, resulting in a craving for something fresh to eat and plenty of excess energy with which to prepare it. We had a can of black beans in the cupboard that Michael picked up at Piedemontes, so we searched through our recipe books for something new and Mexican-themed to try. Eventually we picked out black bean tofu tacos from Ken Charney's The Bold Vegetarian Chef, extending ourselves to some salsa too.

The salsa recipe is inspired by one in Kurma Dasa's World Vegetarian Food, my main alteration being to use canned chipotles and half a teaspoon of their abodo sauce. The abodo sauce adds a fantastic smoky flavour to everything it touches but packs a mighty chili punch, so its use is always a delicate balance. The black bean tofu taco filling also had a bit of bite: thus the accompanying salad of iceberg lettuce, red capsicum and avocado was a fresh and cooling contrast. I dressed the salad with a bit of pepper and lots of lemon juice, and washed it all down with a Corona (with another lemon wedge floating in the bottle neck, of course). Michael and I were both thoroughly satisfied by this meal, and we'll certainly be making it again in the future.

Easy-Bake Salsa

(inspired by New Mexico Chili and Tomato Salsa in Vegetarian World Food by Kurma Dasa)

Preheat the oven to 220 degrees. Mix a 400g can of crushed tomatoes, one finely chopped chipotle, half a teaspoon of abodo sauce, a tablespoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of brown sugar in an oven-proof dish. (Substitute other chilli options as convenient.) Bake for about half an hour, until the mixture thickens and caramelises slightly. Stir regularly as it bakes, scraping the darkened bits back into the salsa.

Black Bean Tofu Tacos

(based on a recipe from The Bold Vegetarian Chef by Ken Charney)

650g tomatoes
4 garlic cloves, unpeeled
2 large green chilies
1 large onion, sliced finely
2 tablespoons oil
2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons raw sugar
1 teaspoon salt
400g can black beans
300g firm silken tofu, cut into cubes
6-8 tortillas

Cut the tomatoes in half and remove the core. Place the tomato halves cut side down on a tray and grill on a rack about 30cm from the heat source, until the skins blacken. Once they're cool, pull off the skins and coarsely chop, keeping all the juice.

Dry-roast the garlic and chilies in a frypan. Take the garlic out when the skin gets brown spots, and then the chilies after the skin's blackening all over. Cool and peel, remove the chili stems and finely chop them. Mush up the garlic and chilies with a mortar and pestle.

Saute the onion in the olive oil until it's soft and starting to brown. Add the garlic/chili mix, along with the oregano, cumin seeds, sugar and salt. Stir it all up for about a minute, then add the beans and tomatoes (and all of the tomato juice). Keep cooking until you're happy with the thickness of the mix.

Gently stir in the tofu and simmer for a couple of minutes. While this is happening heat up the tortillas, either in a hot frypan or microwave. To serve, spoon the bean tofu mixture onto the totillas and roll them up. Garnish with salsa and get some fresh salad going on the side.

Categories

• Cooking
• Recipes
• Savoury

October 14, 2006: Khichari

To celebrate our mid-afternoon Indian Film Festival outing (we saw Koi Aap Sa, which is passable, but definitely no Lagaan), we planned an Indian-themed evening of food. I'd already filled up on the Indian chips we'd smuggled into the cinema, so it was quite late by the time I got cracking on my task: Khichari. This is another of Kurma's fine recipes, with a few alterations (for instance, we failed to find mung beans at Piedemontes, and opted for lentils instead). This recipe makes heaps - probably enough for 5 or 6 meals.

I like to get all the chopping out of the way first, so I started out by cutting up a couple of washed potatoes, a big head of broccoli, two tomatoes and a large carrot into bite sized pieces and slicing a green chilli and some ginger finely. You could probably optimise your cooking time by doing most of this while the lentils are boiling, but I'm easily stressed when something's on the stove. Once you're all prepared, throw about 2/3 cup of lentils, a couple of bay leaves, the ginger, chilli, a teaspoon of turmeric and 2 teaspoons of ground coriander seeds into a large saucepan along with 6 cups of water.

Cook for about 15 minutes, until the lentils have softened up nicely and then throw in a cup of rice, all the chopped vegetables and about a teaspoon of salt. Bring it back to the boil and stir everything together, and then leave it simmering for about 15 minutes. In the meantime, heat about 1 tablespoon of ghee in a small saucepan and sprinkle in 2 teaspoons of cumin seeds. Frying until the seeds darken slightly and then throw in a generous handful of fresh curry leaves - they'll make a terrifying crackling noise, but don't panic, they're supposed to. Quickly add in a couple of teaspoons of asafetida and stir it all together before taking it off the heat. Throw the seasonings into the big stew pot and stir it all together - gauge the moistness of the whole thing now, if you want your mush to be mushier, you can add in some more hot water. Cook for another few minutes and then stir in some fresh coriander and serve on chapatis with a slice of lemon.

I've made this a few times before and it's always been pretty enjoyable, but for some reason this time it was a little bland - I was probably a bit cautious with the chilli, but I think maybe I just left it all boiling for a bit long. Ah well, nothing a little lime chilli pickle can't fix.

Categories

• Cooking
• Recipes
• Savoury

October 5, 2006: Tostadas

After enjoying Carol's last visit so much, we invited her back again. This time we decided to go beyond the nibbly approach and tackle two proper dishes - I was responsible for the main and Cindy, inevitably, took charge of the sweets. I'd previously used Kurma's tostada recipe as inspiration for a sweet potato based Mexican dinner, and decided that this time I'd just stick to the basics: refried beans, spicy tomato sauce and guacamole, all served on a shallow-fried tortilla with cheese and a smattering of salad. Nothing in the recipe is too complicated, but with a couple of frypans and a saucepan on the go, things can get a little frazzled. The best approach is to just make things one at a time - guacamole first, then the tomato sauce, followed by the beans and finally the tortilla frying.

The guacamole can be done well ahead of time, and is really, really easy. Find two perfectly ripe avocados and mash them up with a fork. Add in half a cup of finely chopped salad onion, a dash of tobasco sauce, a lime's worth of lime juice and as much black pepper as you feel like and stir. Voila - guacamole!

The spicy tomato sauce is simple: throw a can of crushed tomatoes and some olive oil in a saucepan, add a teaspoon of asafetida powder, some lemon juice and a pinch of salt as well as some sort of spicing agent - the recipe suggested fresh green chillis, but I just sprinkled in some chilli powder instead. Because the sauce starts out pretty liquidy, there's no harm in leaving it simmering while you do the beans.

Having always enjoyed refried beans at Mexican restaurants, I was impressed with how easy Kurma's recipe for them is. Heat about 2 tablespoons of butter in a fry pan and sprinkle in 1/2 a teaspoon of asafetida (Kurma, being a Krishna cook, doesn't believe in using garlic or onions, but I'm sure you could replace the asafetida with garlic in both these recipes), a teaspoon of chilli powder and a teaspoon of cumin powder. Almost immediately throw in the beans and fry them for a while (until the pan starts to dry out and the beans start to stick). Once the beans are nicely fried, pour in about 1/4 cup of water and mash them up with a potato masher until they're a fairly uniform texture. I call it 'mush'. At this point, they're basically ready, but if you want to keep them on the heat while you're chopping salad or frying tortillas, you just need to stir a little water through every so often to stop them drying out.


Hopefully while you've been making the beans and sauce, someone else has helpfully grated some carrot and cheese (thanks Cindy!), meaning all that's left to do is shred some lettuce and chop up some capsicum (or tomato if you'd prefer). If everything's in place, it's time to fire up stove element #3 and fry up some tortillas. Liberally cover the bottom of a fry pan with oil and wait for it to get pretty hot. Drop in a tortilla, fry for about 20 seconds on each side and then take it out and shake off as much oil as you can. The aim with the tostadas is to end up with a slightly concave tortilla bowl - it's not essential, so you can just drop the tortilla on a plate now and start stacking - but if you want to do it properly, you drop it in a shallow bowl and give it about 30 seconds to 'set'. Once it's ready (and you're ready to shape the next tortilla) you pull it out of the bowl and set it on a plate for stacking.

Kurma has a strict order for stacking his tostadas, but I don't think it's particularly important. As long as your cheese is close to your beans (for maximum melting) and you've got as much guacamole as you can possibly fit on top, you can't really go wrong.

Categories:

• Recipes
• Savoury
• Cooking