Sticky Rice Pikelets

Hi I'm Troy, 

K suggested that I do a post as a guest (I don't usually blog) so I jumped at the chance to try Thai Sticky Rice Pikelets that I had seen in a friends "Thai Street Food" book by David Thompson and a slight variation over at Daily food adventure. I am not gluten free but am vegan and enjoy the challenge of g/f cooking and using different ingredients. Thanks to K for letting me invade for a day. 

(Thai) Sticky Rice Pikelets 

1/2 cup of mung bean starch

1/2 cup of glutinous rice flour 

(I used white sticky rice flour but black is suggested) 

Pinch of lime paste 

(I realised later that I used the wrong one, I used citrus but it called for Calcium Carbonate aka chalk!

which is used a lot in Thai Cooking I read) 

1/2 cup of water, halved into two 1/4 portions 

1/4 cup of white sugar

Pinch of salt 

1 cup of fresh grated coconut

(I just used shredded) 

Combine the flour/starches with 1/4 water, Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate over night.

I only set aside for a few hours as I didn't have the time. It makes for a quicksand like consistency. 

As I mentioned I added some lime juice to the remaining 1/4 cup of water, when it should of been the white stuff for the next step, ah well. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and return to room temperature. Mix in lime water, sugar and salt followed by the coconut. The mixture should have a thick pancake batter like consistency. 

Spoon the mixture onto an oiled pan about 60-75mm, roughly the size of a drinking glass opening. 

Cook for 2-5 minutes each side until golden brown. 

Toby was a bit enthusiastic and poured half of the mixture into the pan like a pancake. 

We topped them with maple syrup, bananas and some raspberry's currently growing crazy in my garden 

K and I quite liked them, Toby and Bec not so much. They really took on the coconut flavour and had a nice crispiness. I would try again but with white lime as I would dare say they would have a different texture, also with black sticky rice instead. 

K also mentioned they might work as a bread to dip in a curry if you omitted the sugar. 

Has anyone used white lime? 

Lucuma Choc Chip Ice Cream

 Lucuma is a tropical fruit from south america and lucuma powder seems to be a popular raw food product. I bought some to make the raw pops and then wondered what to do with the rest? Of course my first instict was to make ice cream, this blog really could be called in the mood for ice cream. I made up this recipe:

Lucuma Chocolate Chip Ice Cream
2 cans of coconut milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon of arrowroot
1.5 Tablespoons of Lucuma Powder (taste accordingly)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a small bowl combine about 1/4 cup of coconut milk with arrowroot.

Combine remaining coconut milk, sugar and lucuma powder in saucepan and cook over low heat until begins to boil. Put aside and whisk in arrowroot mixture and extract and place in fridge too cool, approximately 3 hours.

Place in ice cream maker and freeze.



The flavour is quite hard to describe, its got a fruity but also caramel flavour. It goes really well with banana. I think I would omit the choc chips next time.

Shake and Bake Tofu

Sometimes the best ideas come out of failed recipes. I tried to follow recipe from don't feed the bears 2 as seen on  Cake Maker to the Stars a few weeks ago. Sadly my attempt at roux kind of sucked and I didn't know how to get the right seasoning but I come up with another idea for tofu. This recipe involves breading tofu. I followed the recipe but used a mix of cajun and nooch but after breading several thought this must be an quicker way. Putting them in a ziplock bag and shaking was actually fun. It's not a completely original idea as I saw another blog do the same thing about a week after I made it but I recommend giving it a go. Here is the loose recipe:

Shake and Bake Tofu
1 container of tofu, drained
About a tablespoon of soy sauce (gluten free of course)
Use a ratio of 3 tablespoons of nooch-1 tablespoon cajun spices until all tofu is covered


Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 F).

Brush baking sheet with oil.

Cut Tofu into cubes, then add soy sauce until all covered. Put a large handful of tofu, nooch and cajun spices into zip lock bag and shake til it is evenly covered. Then repeat, until all covered.

Place in tray and bake in oven for approximately 30 minutes, turning about half way through until quite crispy.




Here is it prebaked. 
 

I think it could work well in a range of dishes. We had similar noochy tofu in a stir fry in Portland. This didn't last long at our household with Toby and I served it with rice and dipped some in mayo and sweet chilli sauce, so damn additive.

Kimchi Noodles

I'm sure this isn't authentic at all but it was a quick and tasty dish which was very loosely inspired from meet me at mikes kimchi salad.

Kimchi Noodles
serves 4-6 (4 for us because Toby is a massive eater)

1 package of sweet potato noodles
2 cups chopped kimchi
1 Tablespoon lime juice
2 T soy sauce plus splash of soy
2 Packets of Fried Tofu, chopped
1/2 T vinegar
1/2 T sugar
handful of fried onions -the ones you get from asian supermarket in a packet (optional)

Boil water, cook noodles until tender about 8 minutes. Strain noodles.

Stir fry tofu with splash of soy sauce. Add in kimchi, vinegar and sugar and cook for a few more minutes. Mix in tofu/kimchi to noodles and add lime juice and soy sauce. Stir and serve with some fried onions sprinkled on top. I am addicted to fried onions at the moment!

Toby and I was quiet pleased with this dish, and will certainly be making it again. It's a great weeknight dinner and is slightly salty, sour and spicy.

Am still looking for Korean inspired dessert recipes, any suggestions?

Australian cooking conversions- shocking revelations

I thought I had my head around most conversions particularly in regard to US versus Australian names for ingredients but have come across some new facts recently.

My friend Erin just shared a fact with me in regards to Australian standards which I find shocking, our tablespoons are bigger than the rest of the world. Yes according to wikipedia, most tablespoons are 15ml but in Australia out tablespoons are 20ml. Isn't that just crazy, particularly if most of your  recipes are outside of Australia! I just ran around and checked and all of mine measure 20ml but I think they are all made overseas. You might want to check though particularly before following US baking recipes.

And then I discovered that our measuring cup size varies too, here it is is 250ml, in the US it is 236.59ml and the UK it is: 284.1. Why are they all different?

Recently Matt posted about the differences in chili powder between Australia and America, basically their chili powder contains other things which means ours is much hotter and we are not all wusses.

Any other things I should be aware of?

Easy Gluten Free Kimchi Pancakes

The inspiration for this recipe come from your hairdresser and friend Jilly, while she was colouring my hair a few weeks ago we were discussing dinner options and she told me that she regularly makes kimchi pancakes and adds whatever vegies inside and they are super easy to make. Sometimes inspiration comes form unusual places and situations. This was made last night when we had run out of vegies so I kept it simple but it was still delicious.

I got some vegetarian kimchi from the korean supermarket opposite the victoria market on elizabeth street since my lost asian supermarket only stocked non veg kimchi. It's huge but I wanted to make a few things with it!



Kimchi Pancakes - Kimchijeon from maagnchi. She has a video too!


Directions:
1 cup of chopped kimchi
3 tbs of kimchi juice (I used about 1 and half)
2 tbs chopped onion ( I skipped this)
½ ts salt
½ ts sugar
½ cup flour (all purpose flour) (I used brown rice flour to make it gluten free)
¼ cup of water

1. Mix all ingredients in bowl
2. Heat up a non-stick pan over medium high heat and drizzle about 2 tbs oil.
3. Place the mixture of kimchi pancake batter on the pan and spread it thinly and evenly with a spoon.
4. Cook it for 1-1 ½ minutes until the bottom gets golden brown and crispy.
5. Turn it over with a spatula or flip it.
6. Lower the heat to medium and cook for another 1½ minutes.
7. Turn it over one more time and cook for 30 seconds before transfering it to a serving plate.
   
   

 

Mine kind of fell apart a little when I tried to flip it which just meant that I didn't need to cut it. I served it with mayo and fried onions. I would love some spring onions on it though like maanghci did. Next time I might also use a little less kimchi as it was slightly too spicy for Toby and more veggies, am thinking shredded carrots, zuhhini etc. I really can't believe how easy it is though!

My next post is korean inspired too, just need some korean desserts to keep with this weeks theme, any suggestions?

Yong's Green Food- New Menu

We went to Yong's on Sunday night with Bec and Troy and discovered that they have a new menu with plenty of gluten free options.

Phone picture warning

Toby and I decided to share the buckwheat crepes, the crepes were delicious and didn't have a strong buckwheat flavor, the filling felt quite healthy with wasabi mayo which not spicy at all and plenty of fresh vegies.



I also got the kimchi fried rice, this was delicious, the kimchi wasn't too spicy and just added a slight kick to the dish and I love the addition of the creamy cashew sauce. I wouldn't have thought of combining the two things but it worked!



I also couldn't resist getting a shake, have become obsessed with almond and cashew milk lately but don't currently have a blender. I chose the cacao shake with had a nice choc banana taste but did leave me filling super full. I sadly didn't take a pic of the shake but did get a picture of Troy's kombucha, he let me have a sip, it was my first time trying it and better than I thought, with a slight sour flavour.



Yong's Green Food
421 Brunswick Street
Fitzroy

The service was great and I do enoy going there, its got such cute surroundings. Although I wonder if they tense up when they see me coming due to our first review which was negative. I certainly don't have any ill feelings for them as the issue was well and truly resolved and I respect how seriously they took me and how quickly it was fixed up. In fact I probably feel safer going there now when it comes to gluten free food then other places as i'm sure they learnt from their mistake and I haven't had any other issues in the numerous times that I have gone back.

It has recently been blogged about by my mini manifesto, mariecitadelle and sneakylily.

World Vegan day 2011

Phone pics warning

I think this year was my favourite, it was at the abbotsford convent again but they opened up a whole other section so you could sit and eat food and/or watch the live acts, as well as the two halls and normal middle section. It was excellent space wise and there was plenty of new stalls but it didn't feel crowded. The gf savoury options were a bit limited but I didn't mind because I ate plenty of desserts including a gluten  chocolate cherry cupcake from mr nice guy, you really couldn't tell it was gluten free:

raw cashew coconut soft serve from loving hut, this was great, I just wanted more:

Cookies including amazing mini gluten free oreos from saf patisserie, so sad though that I missed their rocky road though which appetite affliction raved about.

I had half of my friend Eve's raw mango cheesecake from las vegan bakery, they sold out before I could get mine but thanks for sharing with me Eve, it was tangy and sweet, perfect really. I also got some honeycomb raw chocolate from luna marie chocolates to take home (although it only made it to the car ) which I also raved about last year.

I watched a demonstration of how to make brazil nut milk and I found my fave chocolate bars from the US called eli's earth bars from the uproar store and I picked up a cat hammock. I come across lots of new stores including the artic vegan store selling vegan shoes and the vegan baby store. Well done organisers, was an excellent day!

Balsamic Strawberry Ice Cream and eat.drink.picnic

There was a bloggers conference this weekend in Sydney called eat.drink.blog. Sadly one of the major sponsors was Meat and Livestock Australia with meat masterclass events which is disappointing on so many levels including health, environmental, corporation supporting independent bloggers etc and is really not inclusive for vegetarian bloggers. Thankfully Jill from confessions of a food nazi decided to organise an alternative event for those in Melbourne which she named eat.drink.picnic for those who couldn't attend the Sydney event with more of a focus on vegetables.

I've been to countless vegan potlucks but never been to an omni picnic potluck until yesterday. I have to admit I was a bit nervous, I mean not only am I vegan but also gluten free. I thought these people are really going to think I'm a freak and worst of all there will be nothing for me to eat. I also wasn't sure if I was going to get the barrage of annoying questions such as 'how do you get your protein?' etc or more aggressive attacks that I occasionally get. There is a misconception that vegans are argumentative but I often find it is the other way around. Thankfully none of that happened, I was pleasantly surprised with lots of food for me to eat and about an equal number of vegetarians including 2 other vegans and some friendly accepting omni bloggers.

I met western suburbs food blogger Kenny from consider the sauce and we both discussed the disappointing food scene in williamstown and Jill was super friendly and within minutes of me arriving allowed me to use her towel to clean my grease stained fingers from fixing my bike chain. I also learnt about the use of coconut powder in making ice cream from essjayeats and I had fun catching up with those already familar to me like Cindy and Michael from wheres the beef, Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe and Lisa Dempster. I didn't get a chance to have a proper chat with Ed from Tomato, Carla from Easy as Vegan Pie or Claire from Melbourne Gastronome but I did enjoy playing a few games with Claire's bocce set. These was so much yummy food, highlights included Jill's refreshing watermelon salad, Michael's caeser salad, Carla's risotto balls and both Johanna and Lisa's chocolate desserts. The picnic was lots of fun and left me filling super full and sluggish as all good potlucks show. It was also a great example of what a community building activity blogging can be and for once Melbourne behaved and gave us a nice summer day.

I took along some dips and this ice cream. Unfortunately I didn't have enough spoons or any bowls so resorted to serving ice cream on plates with plastic knifes. I really enjoyed the tanginess of the balsamic vinegar paired with the organic strawberries. I don't think many people sampled it or enjoyed it because it was the first time that one of my ice cream dishes wasn't completely finished at a potluck. Although Lisa gave it the thumbs up and Toby loved the leftovers.

Balsamic Strawberry Ice Cream adapted from Spabettie

3 cups soy milk
3/4 cup sugar2 tablespoons of tapioca flour
1 punnet of strawberries, sliced
1/3 cup balsamic vinegar
1 Tablespoon of vanilla essence

Mix 1/4 cup soy milk with tapioca flour, stir until blended and set aside. Combine remaining soy milk and sugar saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove from heat, add tapioca mixture and vanilla essence. Place in fridge to cool completely- it takes a few hours.

Meanwhile, bring balsamic vinegar to a boil in a small saucepan, watch closely and stir occasionally. Reduce to a simmer and continue to stir until it reaches desired thickness, about 8 minutes or so. Set aside to cool.

Pour ice cream base into maker and prepare according to manufacturer directions. Add strawberries in the last few minutes and then mix in balsamic glaze to give it a swirly effect. Transfer to freezer til firm.

Read about Kenny's account of the event here.