white bean and basil presto

On an evening after a particularly hard days work, on a particularly hot day, baguettes stuffed with salad seemed like the best, can’t-be-fucked option for dinner.
We already had all the salad-ish type things, but I wanted some sort of spread to zazz it up (imagine I’m doing spirit fingers as I say that, please).
But…
Hommus, frickin sick of it.
Pesto, too unhealthy.
Tahini, fat jam.
As I’ve confessed before, I’m a bit of a fat-o-phobe with an extreme and undying guilt intimately related to eating anything oily or greasy.
I don’t mind eating fat, per se, I just don’t like seeing it. So, hommus is ok because the fat is emulsified, but pesto ew! all that oil is dripping everywhere. It makes no sense, I am fully aware, but hey, we all have our hang ups.
So, inspired by a few things I’ve seen around lately, I went about healthifying pesto.
And it sure came out pretty healthy. It has a bit of sneaky fat in it from the walnuts (which is super good for you!), but the bulk of it is cannelini beans and basil.
This spread is packed with omega 3, protein and B12.
And it tastes awesome.
It’s very much like a thick, creamy pesto- a garlic and basil orgy of flavour. Shit yeah :)
We ate it spread all thick like on our baguettes but you could easily eat this as a dip- I imagine it would be especially awesome if you added a few hundred grams of silken tofu into the mix if you were gonna go the dippy way.

White Bean and Basil Presto

1 bunch basil, picked
400g tin of canellini beans, drained and rinsed
2 smallish cloves garlic
1/2 cup crushed walnuts
juice of one lemon
1/4 cup water
1/2 tsp salt
pepper
2 tsp nutritional yeast

Put it all in a food processor and blend til it gets fairly smooth and creamy- it doesn’t have to be completely smooth, some chunks are good, I reckon. Add more water if it’s too thick for you.
Just so you know, I don’t have a food processor, I used my stick blender and a deep jug and just went for it, but if you have a food processor it would make the whole thing a whole lot quicker and less painful.

spiced chocolate, date and currant okara muffins

I had a shit ton of okara sitting in my fridge after making tofu.
Okara is the fibrous part of the soybean that is leftover after you extract the milk from them.
It is kind of dry, but moist at the same time (yeah, right, great description). It’s sort of like the bits you clean out of your juicer after making juice, except a bit chunkier.
I remembered reading some recipes which included okara as an ingredient and set about finding some, but got a little bored of the internetz and thought I’d just wing it.
What I ended up with is a great morning tea energy booster that’s pretty frickin healthy for you. Just barely sweet (exactly the way I like it) the little buggers are full of fibre, and they’re low fat and low sugar as well.
I was surprised at how moist they ended up- I had thought the okara would dry it out a bit- but they are surprisingly tender, fluffy, and not in the least dry.

Spiced chocolate, date and currant okara muffins
1 cup okara
1 1/2 cups soy milk
1 1/2 cups self raising flour (I would have used wholemeal but didn’t have any on hand)
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 cup currants
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup date puree* (or substitute 1/3 cup brown sugar + 2tbsp soy milk)
1 tbsp veg oil

Mix dry stuff together in a mixing bowl.
Make a well and stir in everything else. Stir until just combined. Spoon into muffin trays, cook for about 20 minutes at 220. Makes 12.

*I made this a little while back for sweetening my baking without adding cane sugar.
I had a bunch of dried dates and put them in a saucepan. I covered them with enough water to come about one centimetre over them, put the lid on and simmered very gently for about half an hour, until the dates were very, very soft. Then I jammed my stick blender in and blended it up to a paste. I keep it in the fridge in a jar and it has so far lasted about 6 weeks without any detriment to it.
You could substitute 1/3 cup brown sugar + 2tbsp extra soy milk for the puree.

rice paper rolls of ultimate health and supreme freshness

Yep, you’d better believe it, I’m the most avant garde rice paper roller around.
What started off as a whole bunch of fresh vegies in my fridge turning into not-so-fresh-vegies-still-in-my-fridge morphed into these kind of time consuming but super simple summery rolls of goodness. What a frickin long sentence. Ugh, I’m puffed just typing it, let alone saying it.
Basically, rice paper rolls are freshness of supreme awesome and as long as you have at least rice noodles, mint and coriander in them, and hoisin sauce to dip them in, they can do no wrong in my books.

Here’s what I filled mine with, clockwise from the far left:

coriander
mint
mushrooms sauteed in soy sauce
julienne carrot, red capsicum, cucumber, spring onion
grilled eggplant
julienne green beans
grilled pumpkin
rice noodles
dried tofu, soaked in hot water for 15 minutes

All you gotta do is soak a sheet of rice paper in warm water til it goes floppy (about 10-15 seconds), lift it out and make a line of your fillings, using the rice noodles as a base:

Roll it over once, then fold the sides in and continue rolling. Let them set for a few minutes before chowing down.

home made tofu one-oh-one

I have got a funny book called the magic of tofu.
The book includes at the beginning how to make your own tofu at home, and then goes on with recipes to use that tofu and it’s associated products- okara, soymilk and whey.
So when, for some unbeknownst reason the other day, I got the notion to try making my own tofu, it was to this book I turned.
The text on the front makes it look as if it’s actually a book about a glamourous roller derby, and the author photo indicates it was written by a fish. And a very long winded fish at that, who manages to give a suspenseful four page description of equipment, climaxing to a further EIGHTEEN steps on how to actually make the tofu.
The information given is all useful and relevant, but it is incredibly hard to follow a recipe that is laid out over no less than eleven pages. I shit you not.
Anyhow, for the ease of anyone out there thinking they might like to have a go at it, I documented my process in a hopefully less convoluted and lengthy way.
What I ended up with was a big mess, a LOT of okara, a small block of tofu, and a significant portion of my day gone.
It was time consuming, but it was fun and rewarding, and I dare say if you did this more than one and a half times you’d become much more efficient, making the whole deal much less of an epic adventure and more like a leisure cruise.

So, let’s get jiggy wit it:
Make sure you have about 50×50 cm calico, and 50×50cm muslin. I got both of these from spotlight, waaaaay more than I needed, for less than $5.

1. Rinse 2 cups of soy beans and cover with plenty of water for at least 10 hours.

2. Check the beans are ready by squeezing one in half. If the inner surface is smooth and flat and evenly coloured, you’re good to go. But if the inner surface is concave and darker in the centre, soak them for longer.

3. Drain the beans and put them in a big pot with 6 cups of freshly boiled water.
4. Blend the crap out of it with a stick blender. Alternatively, use a blender of food processor in batches. It will go foamy and smell like grass. Keep blending til you think it’s as blended as you can get it. It took me about 4 minutes.

The liquid will end up looking like this:

5. Put a colander over some sort of vessel (another big pot or a clean bucket or something.) Wet the calico, wring it out and lay it in the colander, hanging over the sides.
6. Pour the blended soybean mixture into the calico and gather it up at the edges. Squeeze the bag to extract the soy milk, letting it run through the colander into the vessel below. Squeeze out as much liquid as you can.


7. Open up the bag and add another 3 cups of freshly boiled water and repeat the squeezing process. Keep the okara (the stuff in the calico) to use for something else.
This is what the liquid will look like:

This is what the okara looks like:

8. Put the soymilk back in the big pot (which you should rinse out first. Bring the milk to the boil (careful! It almost boils over at first so keep a close eye on it). Turn it down to a simmer and simmer for 7 minutes, stirring occasionally.
9. While it’s simmering make a mixture of 200ml of water, 2 tbsp lemon juice and 3 tbsp white vinegar in a cup.
10. After 7 minutes of boiling turn the heat off and vigorously stir the soy milk as you pour in 1/3 of the lemon/vinegar mix. Stir for about 20 seconds, then sprinkle another 3rd of the lemon/vinegar mix over the top of the soymilk. Put the lid on and leave for 3 minutes.
11. Gently stir in the last 3rd of the lemon/vinegar and leave for another 3 minutes. It should be totally gross and curdled by now.

12. Wet the muslin and use it to line a takeaway container (material hanging over the edges, like with the calico) you have pierced with lots of little holes. Sit the takeaway container in a colander and sit the colander on top of a vessel (bucket or pot). You don’t really need the colander here but I just found it made it easier to manage the whole set-up.
I used a container that I bought some delicious fancy mushrooms in, and jabbed a knife point through it about 30 times:

13. Gently pour the curds and whey into the muslin lined container. Fold the cloth over the tofu and press it with your hand to get lots of the whey out. Put a weight on top of it (I used another takeaway container filled with rice) to press the rest of the whey out.


Check periodically til it’s reached a consistency that you like. I think minimum time would be about 20 minutes, but I left it over night.

I marinated it in some water and soy sauce and grilled it to go on some summery wraps with tahini, salad and gherkins. So, so satisfying :)

currant and potato tea bun

A few weeks ago there, I saw Johanna’s post on Potato Boston Bun.
I am not one for bookmarking recipes. Well, I was for a while and then realised I’d just sort of been forgetting about them all tucked away and hidden in their little bookmark land so I gave it up.
So when I see a recipe I really wanna try I leave it open in a tab, so that every time I use the internet I am reminded (or as I like to say, remound) of it.
So I’ve had this tab sitting there, begging me to bake it every time I check my email or the weather radar (essential for not-wet-bum cycling), but somehow it took me quite a while to get around to it.
Mainly because I kept forgetting to buy the potatoes.
But glory, glory, one day I did buy those potatoes.
Yes you heard right, I bought the shit out of them. I know, simply marvellous, right?

Here’s the thing though. By the time I got around to purchasing those wonderful starchy hunks, the Potato Boston Bun Johanna made had somehow transformed itself in my mind, into a huge yeasted bun studded with currants and indensified (you like that one? Yeah! It’s a cross between intensified and dense! Whoa!) with some mashy potato, much like the finger buns I used to eat as a kid, but way, way huger. Not really much like the original at all. I blame it on a brain fart. But I tell you what, I have never smelled such a delicious fart. This big bun is awesome.
It is based vaguely on the original recipe, but tweaked and twiddled to my liking.
It’s very moist and kind of dense due to the potato, but it’s still bread-like and fluffy.
It is exactly the perfectly right and correct-a-mundo sweetness for my ever so light sweet tooth, with the currants providing most of the sugar in a gently spiced dough.
YUM! Today I had this for breakfast! With nuttelex all over it, it is frickin’ yeasty heaven.

Currant and Potato Tea Bun

1 sachet dry yeast
1 cup warm water
pinch of salt
2 tbsp raw sugar

1 cup hot mashed potato
1 cup cold soy milk

5 cups plain flour (I used 1 cup wholemeal, 4 cups normal)
1 tsp each cinnamon, mixed spice
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup currants

Mix the first 4 ingredients in a mixing bowl and leave in a warm place til it’s nice and frothy.
Mix the piping hot potatoes with the cold milk (so the temperature is warm- if you are using leftover mashed taters heat them up a little bit so it’s not cold casue if it is the bread won’t rise and that’ll be shit).
Add the potato/milk mix to the yeast mix and combine.
Add 3 cups of flour and the spices and work it all together.
Add the remaining flour gradually as you knead the dough for 5-8 minutes.
Knead in the currants.
Put the dough back in the bowl and allow to rise for half an hour.
Knead gently and plonk into a cake tin lined high with paper.
Allow to rise for 15 minutes and then bake for about 45 mins at 220.
Check with a skewer to make sure it’s cooked all the way through.
Allow to coo for at least an hour before trying to cut it or else you’ll crumb the crap out of it :)

ps, I would actually go as far to say that this is one of my best recipes ever. I don’t want to get all blowing-my-own-pipe on you, but with a name like Currant and Potato Tea Bun, this recipe needs all the support it can get. It is really, truly, good. So make it!
pps, I’m sorry lena.

almond citrus shortbread sammies

You may have noticed I’ve been gone for a while.
Or….you may not have.
But I’d like to flatter myself by pretending that you did indeed notice and proceed to indulge myself in telling you why.
I moved house. It’s very exciting. We have an itty bitty backyard now, but it is big enough to start a little garden. We have ordered lots of seedling from Diggers, but we haven’t got them yet so are busying ourselves with trips to Bunnings to buy shovels and pitchforks and the like.
Also, my poor lover Simon broke his wrist so my cooking has been limited to food you can eat with one utensil, and which produces the least amount for washing up possible (since he can’t get his cast wet the duty-sharing equality business previously operating in this household has ceased to exist and I have to do all the washing up).
And lastly, I’ve just finished writing a business plan which was consuming pretty much all my spare time for the past 6 weeks or so.
Business plans truly are a motherfucker.
There is so much detail required, so much research, so much fiddling with figures and cash flows and blah blah blah blah blah.
It is truly one of the most draining things I have ever done (beside donate blood- ahahah thanks Dad).
Anyway, the point of all this whinging about business plans is that I had a very lovely friend help me out with all the financial stuff, which is extremely hard and confusing (if you’re me, at least), and these cookies are a gift from me to him to show my thanks.
The shortbread itself is light, sandy and delicately flavoured. Add a big kapow of zingy citrus icing between two of them and your in rich, rich crumbly heaven.

Almond Citrus Shortbread Sammies
Shortbread
250g Nuttelex
1 1/2 cups almond meal (150g)
2 cups plain flour
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tbsp rice flour

Sweet, sweet citrus butter
3 1/2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp lemon rind
1 tsp orange rind
2 tbsp orange juice

For the shortbread:
Preheat your oven to 200.
Beat the Nuttelex til it’s creamy and pale (I used an electric beater).
Carefully mix everything else in so it doesn’t all puff out over the top of the bowl.
Press together gently with your hands so the dough is smooth.
Roll out between two sheets of greaseproof paper to about 7mm thick.
Cut out small round shapes (I used a 5cm cookie cutter, dipped in plain flour).
Transfer to a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and prick with a fork.
Bake for 10-20 minutes, checking every now and then to make sure they aren’t browning too much.
When they are done they should be ever so slightly yellow on the bottom. There shouldn’t be any brown bits on them (I got a few but a few is ok, I can live with that).
Cool on the tray then transfer to a cake rack to cool completely before sandwiching them.

For the butter:
Put everything in a bowl and gently beat til combined and fluffy. I used my electric beater, again.

To finish:
Lay half of the cookies out on a bench, pricked side down.
Spoon about 2/3 teaspoon of icing in the centre of each.
Squish down lightly with the remaining cookies, pricked side up.

Wintery McSoupface

At work this week I had to make a chicken and vege soup.
Obviously I had to get someone else to taste it for me, and they assured me it was delicious. And despite it’s chickeny strings floating around in there, the soup looked fucking fantastic, and it even smelled good. And it made me all want-ish for broth with little diced goodies floating around in it.
So I made a fairly simple vege soup with some lentils and rice and it was very good.
It’s not really the most complicated meal, which makes me feel like a bit of a cop-out posting the recipe, but it was damn good and I’ve been eating it for the past few days and I’m not even sick of it yet! Woop!
It’s not overwhelmed with spices or ‘erbs or anything, just a nice salty brothy warming bowl’o'veg. YUM! And it’s super duper healthy too, with no added fat, and tons of veg.
It’s perfect for wintery soup faced days like today, a balmy 13 degrees, with some home made bread or a super crusty store bought something.
By the way, in a fit of proudness I’d like to announce that we haven’t turned our heater on yet this Winter- even though it has only been Winter for 8 days, officially, it has been pretty nippy and has been a multi-layered feat of excess clothing and restraint not to turn it on. Yay for being a tight-assed enviro hippy!
In other news, real estate agents suck balls.

Vege, Lentil and Rice Soup
(By the way, this recipe makes a buttload, like 10 servings, so cut the amounts down if you’re not keen on leftovers forever.)
1 stick celery
1 onion
2 potatoes
1 carrot
big handful green beans
250 mushrooms
3 large tomatoes
1 head of garlic (once I’d chopped it up I had about 3 heaped tbsp)

400g tin lentils, drained and rinsed well
2 tbsp white miso
2/3 cup brown rice
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp “beef” stock
pepper
bouquet garni
3 bay leaves
6 cups water

1 cup fresh parley, chopped

Chop up all the vegies into small dice.
In a big pot saute them all up with the garlic for about 5 minutes. You don’t need to add oil cause the tomatoes will ooze out enough liquid so that nothing sticks.
Add everything else except the parsley and simmer for about an hour.
Stir in the parsley just before serving.

wholemeal gingery date cake

I’ve been busy and it’s been making me cranky.
For the past few weeks I haven’t really had a night to myself. A first world problem, I know, but I’ve had so many social events to attend and so much extra homework to do that I’ve had nary a chance to cook. It’s quite hilarious that you can be in such high demand for a few weeks and then all of a sudden there’s no openings, no parties, no catch-up coffees dahling. I am looking forward to that lull, I tell you what, Good Sir.
Also, when I have been cooking, it has been too dark to take photos! How do you guys cope with this Nasty Winter Light, that which warrants the use of capital letters in it’s name?
For this cake, that I managed to squeeze in on possibly the only night I haven’t had prior engagements for about 3 weeks, I waited til morning to take the photos. But for dinner-time photos…? I’m certainly not gonna keep a portion of my dinner til the next day when I can photograph it in better light. Sheesh. Any first world problem solvers out there got a clever answer for me? Please?

Ok so let’s stop with the complaining and get started with the praising.
Cake anyone?

YEAH, YUM! DELICIOUS CAKE!
This cake is actually pretty ace. Yeah!
It’s got only the teensiest bit of fat and sugar and it’s got the fibre-power of a motherfucking haystack, but somehow it still manages to taste quite good. Woo!
Moist, yet fairly fluffy, this cake is ultra wholesome. Sick to the power of rad!
The cakey part is not too sweet, but the little hunks of date you get to chomp on complement it perfectly. OMG, how good is that?!
This would be excellent baked as a loaf and swathed in nuttelex.
Praise the cake!
(I am hoping the exclamations/caps/italics/inappropriate emphases make up for my lack of enthusiasm before.)

Gingery Date Cake
1 1/2 cups chopped dates
1 cup boiling water
1 tsp bi-carb soda
1 tsp vanilla

3/4 cup soy milk
1 tsp balsamic vinegar
a big pinch of salt
1 tbsp golden syrup (optional)
1 tbsp olive oil (optional)

2 1/2 tsp ground ginger
dash cinnamon
2 cups wholemeal flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Mix the first 4 ingredients together in a mixing bowl and let sit for about an hour, until the dates are nice and plump.
Add the next set of ingredients and mix through, and then mix in the dry ingredients.
Pour into a loaf tin or small cake tin and bake for about 45 minutes at 200C.
It should feel firm to the touch when it’s cooked, but you can test it with a skewer too if you’re not sure.

emergency bean salad

This was a super super uuuuuuuuber fast lunch, made from stuff I had laying around my house, cause I had no time and no money and was frickin starving.
If I’d had some, it would have been fantastic paired with some crusty bread and a few lettuce leaves. But alas, no crusty bread and just a big ol’ bowl of beans. Really tasty and really fast (should I say how fast it was again? It was fast). Ok, you get it.

Emergency Bean Salad
Mix together in a bowl:
1 big can (400g) five-bean mix, rinsed well
4 spring onions, chopped (white and green bits, please)
2-3 button mushrooms, thinly sliced
2 tbsp flaked almonds, dry toasted in a frypan
1/2 small red chilli, chopped (less or more depending on how hot the chilli is and how wussy you are)
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
pepper and a little salt

rap snitch knishes

I’ve always wanted to make knishes so I could play this and cook at the same time and be all self-referential and shit.
And last night I did it. And boy what a time I had. You should see me rap. I am positively awesome.

Knishes are a traditional Jewish pastry- the dough of which is made of potatoes and flour, and the filling, according to wikipedia (the truth-teller of ALL), can be pretty much anything.
I was worried the dough would be cakey and too potato-ey, but it wasn’t. Rolled very thinly, the dough reminded me of a cross between a pasty and a calzone.
This filling is absolutely awesome. Salty, salty salty and lightly herby, this spinach, tofu and potato goodness is pretty bloody delicious even when it’s not wrapped in dough, so just imagine how extra delicious it is all cosied up inside some tater and flour dough.
Ooooh yeah.
That’s right.
By the way, this was a fairly time consuming meal, what with pastry-making etc, but well worth it if you’re like me (ie, someone who would fill all their spare time with baking if it wasn’t for stuff like friends, alcohol and sci-fi action movies), and have a lazy Sunday afternoon ahead of you.

Tofu and Spinach Rap Snitch Knishes

Start by peeling and boiling about 4-5 medium potatoes until soft. Mash well with a little soy milk til it’s as smooth as you can be bothered.
Hopefully by now you will have about 3 1/2 cups of mashed potatoes.

Dough
2 cups mashed potatoes
1 tbsp oil
2 tsp salt
4 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup cold water

Filling
1 onion, diced
2 tsp dried mint
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp onion powder
125 g tofu, crumbled
4 tsp chicken style stock powder
1/2 cup water
2 tsp salt (omit if you’re stock powder is real salty, or if you aren’t a big fan of super saltiness)
pepper
250g spinach (I used frozen, chopped)
3/4 cup soy milk
2 tbsp nooch
1 1/2 cups mashed potato
1 tbsp dill, chopped
juice of half a lemon

For the dough:
Mix the potato, oil and salt together and then work in the flour with your hands til it is evenly distributed.
Add a little of the water at a time and bring the dough together with your hands.
It shouldn’t be dry, but it shouldn’t be wet, either. Just a nice firm ball of dough with no bits flaking off. Knead it for a minute or so until it is all well incorporated and elastic. Put it back in your mixing bowl, cover and let it rest for about 1/2 an hour, while you make the filling.

For the filling:
Saute the first 5 ingredients in a little bit of water until the onion starts to go transluscent.
Add the tofu, stock powder, salt + pepper and water and cook for a minute or so.
Add the spinach, soy milk and nooch, and cook til the liquid has evaporated/been soaked up and the mix is quite dry.
Take off the heat and stir in the potato, dill and lemon juice.

To make:
Divide the dough into six pieces and roll out on a floured board as thinly as possible (mine was about 1-2 mm thick), in as squarish a shape as you can (mine still turned out fairly round so don’t worry too much).
Place a 6th of the filling in the middle of the dough, fold the sides in first, then the ends. Sometimes I needed to cut off little chunks of pastry before I folded them so there wasn’t a pastry orgy going on.
Bake at 220 for about 30 mins, brushed with a little soy milk if you could be bothered, til golden brown.

You can get the gist of how it’s folded from this picture, hopefully.