Ginger Lychee Ice Cream & Posting Cookbook Recipes- Vegan Mofo Day 17

Yes it didn't take me long to continue with my ginger summer dessert theme. This is from Vegan Scoop I actually stuffed this up, I followed the recipe which consisted of heating a mixture of ingredients, adding arrowroot (mixed with soymilk) and then discovered that I was missing 2 cups of soy milk that were supposed to be heated before I put in the arrowroot mixture. I whisked it in though while it was still hot and it worked, yay!

I only used about half the ginger the recipe asked for, which I think is the perfect amount. The heat from the ginger just works really well with cold desserts. Why haven't I thought of ginger in ice cream before? Plus, it's so soothing for my sore throat. The lychee flavour is quite subtle though, so i think next time I might add more chopped lychees or just serve it with with lychees on top.

I'm not going to post the recipe since I've already posted a few from Vegan Scoop and it just seems wrong to post more. Actually I've been rethinking posting recipes from cookbooks. I never used to and then I started because I figured if people try recipes online from the cookbook it might inspire them to buy the cookbooks. Also I tend to skip over some posts without recipes. But if most are the best recipes from cookbooks are online, than don't some people think what's the point of buying it? Also I think vegan cookbooks are a niche market and most of the authors don't get enough money from the sales. I think I would probably be pretty annoyed if I was an author. What do you think?

Gluten Free Bubble Slice -Vegan MoFo day 16

This dish was inspired by Cindy in two ways. First, she blogged about the vegan bubble slice which I got try and it was delicious. Second, Cindy and Michael packed this amazing flight pack for us which combined magazines, snacks and more before our overseas flight last year. It was so so so thoughtful and sweet. It's so great to have vegan snacks on flights because we always tend to be starving and how I would like to repay the favour, or rather pay it forward.

I finally got the chance with some friends going overseas and I thought the bubble slice would be perfect flying snack.

Toby bought gluten free rice bubbles (or rice krispies as known in the US) because he thought that they sounded healthier, it did mean that they didn't hold together quite as well but tasted just as good, quick to make and I thought would make a good travelling snack.

Things didn't quite go to plan though. Yesterday I prepared everything and drove over to there house when I knew they weren't home and left the package all wrapped up on their front door step, expecting them to go home and find it. It got quite late and didn't hear anything back which I thought was a little weird, so I messaged one of them this morning and said "did you get it?" and got a reply "got what?", so I explained that the package that I left at their front door. They said that they didn't go home last night and were now at the airport. Arghhhhhhhhhhhh.

Vegan g/f bubble slice

5 cups gluten free rice bubbles (regular rice bubbles/krispies are superior but not g/f)
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
125g Nuttelex/margarine
4 tablespoons golden syrup
4 tablespoons peanut butter
1/2 cup brown sugar

In a large bowl, stir together the rice bubbles and coconut.

In a small-medium saucepan, melt the Nuttelex, golden syrup, peanut butter and sugar. Bring them to the boil, then simmer for 5 minutes. Pour the caramel mixture over the dry ingredients and combine thoroughly. Press the mixture into a small baking tray, using the back of a spoon to smooth over the surface. Refrigerate until set, then cut into squares.

 

Chan House Healthy Vegetarian Option - Vegan Mofo Day 15

I don't generally buy lunch when I go to work because there aren't much choices. I can either go downstairs to Satay Bar or do a quick Lord of the Fries run. Now I have the third option: Chan House Healthy Vegetarian Option.

They located in a mini food court on Little Collins st near Vue De Monde and RACV:


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Their lunch box is fast, delicious and cheap. The small box is $5.8 and the big box is $6.8. It includes two dishes and plain rice (fried rice $1 extra). There are 4 to 5 Chinese/South East Asian vegetarian dishes on the Bain-Marie to choose from and they change daily.

I have been there almost ten times and the food is always good. The staff are very helpful and know what is vegan. I asked them (in Cantonese) if there is any dairy and egg product in the food and they replied that all the Main-Marie food is vegan. (Last time I asked in Cantonese at Chatterbox they told me that there was milk in the laksa despite telling others in English that it was vegan.)




Both sweet and sour 'Pork' and mixed vegetable curry were pretty good. The curry wasn't too spicy.




I had sweet and sour 'pork' again the second time and tried the BBQ 'pork'. The BBQ 'pork' coated in sesame seeds was full of flavour and crispy.



Honey 'chicken' came with deep-fried rice noodles and the curry 'fish balls' were amazing. The curry, again, wasn't overly spicy. They don't use honey in the 'chicken'.


I had the sesame 'chicken' and satay 'fish' ball for lunch last week. Both dishes are fantastic. The satay was a bit spicy for me and I needed lots of water to wash it down. But I guess it is just me. Yes, I'm a wuss.

Apart form the lunch box, they also have steamed buns, generic Chinese deep fried stuff and one noodle soup dish on rotation on the weekdays. They also serve lunch banquet on Saturday.

You can also read Michael's write up.

Chan House Healthy Vegetarian Option
Address: Shop 10, 422 Little Collins Street
Ph: 0402798748


On my walkman:
Serena Maneesh 2: Abyss in B Minor by Serena Maneesh

Movida Aqui- Vegan Mofo Day 14

After many glowing reviews from Carla about Movida Aqui, Toby decided to go there for his birthday (back in September) and I think we got so caught up on all the Sydney posts that we forgot to go back and post about it. So better late than never right?

Movida Aqui is one of 4 Movida restaurants in Melbourne. Movida Aqui is an upmarket tapas style place. I think it's cheaper than Movida and easy to get into with shorter notice. When I called up and made the reservation I advised them that we were vegan and so the waiter gave us this copy of the menu. All of the green highlighted items were or could be made vegan and the yellow highlighted items were parts of the dish that would be removed to make it vegan. This made ordering much easier and we were really grateful which has why we have chose to share these pics despite their blurriness.

We were served some amazing bread, which I gobbled up way too quickly, I had just started eating gluten again and it was good bread. For some reason, I thought they would bring us more but they didn't and I felt silly for thinking that they would and guilty since I also ate some of Toby's.

Our definite favourite dish of the night was the Alacharas, crispy fried artichokes with lemon and roasted almonds. This was a perfect dish, great texture, taste and combination of flavours. I think we located this recipe in our friends Movida cookbook and discovered that it was deep fried, such a shame as we would love to recreate this at home but hate deep frying.

Next up was the Bravas, fried potatoes with a tomato sauce. I enjoyed this dish but didn't love it as much I expected to. I though it could have done with some more spices or something.

The setas consisted of fried mushrooms with garlic and sherry vinegar. I normally hate the texture of mushrooms these tasted great and the texture was better than usual.Toby thought they were a little too acidic if they are not eaten with bread.

And we had the Asadillo- roasted capscium and tomato salad. The tomatoes and capscium were both so tender that it was hard to distinguish one from the other, this was served with a subtle vinegar.

And finally, fruit sorbet for dessert, served with chocolate biscotti, which wasn't actually vegan so Toby took it home and gave it to his colleague. The three flavours of the sorbet were blood orange, mandarin and apple. They were delicious and richer than normal sorbets, we loved the mandarin flavour.

Overall, Toby and I were pretty impressed that they were able to cater for vegans. Our bill at the end of the night come to $80.50 which included one class of wine, I thought that was pretty reasonable. According to gluten savvy they have gluten free options too. Toby said it would be great for having drinks and snacks rather than a big dinner because there wasn't any protein in the dishes.
 

Movida Acqui
Levle 1, Bourke St (access via Lt Bourke St)
9663 3038

P.S: This post is my 14th post in a row, a record for me. It's not easy, last night Toby had to go outside to get phone reception so that we could click post at a wedding. Hopefully with the help of Toby we can keep it up for the rest of the month.

Thai Noodles with "Hotdogs:- Vegan Mofo Day 13

Despite the name of this blog, I noticed we rarely tend to blog noodles dishes, possibly because we have them so often that we don't think they are blog worthy.

A few of you may have noticed recently on facebook that I commented that "best dinner made by best husband, made me forget i'm sick" well this is what I was referring to: Thai stir fried noodles from Asian Vegan Kitchen. It was actually a convenient thing rather than on purpose. We always make enough dinner so that we both have leftovers for lunch and only had 1 container of tofu, so Toby decided to add some leftover frys 'hotdogs'. But this was amazing, slightly greasy in a good way, smokey from the 'hotdogs', salty, sour, mild (we used less cayenne pepper than the recipe asked for). So so so good. The very small downside we ate so much that the size of the leftovers for lunch the following day was a tad on the small size.




To add to the excitement, I was able to use some of garlic chives that I have been growing to the dish.This is super exciting because I have tried to grow herbs on numerous occasions and always managed to kill them but this time I have manged to keep all four that a colleague gave me alive: garlic chives, Vietnamese basil, thyme and basil. The garlic chives are the first one to have grown so much that I had to cut some. Here it is after I gave it a bit of a trim.





I noticed that Steph also posted this dish but didn't seem to enjoy it as much as we did, but we will certainly be making it again.

Ginger Choc Mousse- Vegan Mofo day 12

I've been unwell this week with crazy fatigue, nausea and a throat infection. I try not to eat dessert when I'm sick but as long as I'm not vomiting I can't really stay away. I know ginger is supposed to be good for nausea and sore throats so decided to make an easy dessert which includes ginger. When I mean make, I really just mean open a carton but anyway.....

I discovered isola bio cacao rice based dessert al riso at the gluten free expo and soon after at radical grocery store. It's a tad on the pricey range but given that it tastes amazing, is organic and made from fair trade cocoa, rice, agave and not much else I don't mind paying a bit more for the occasional indulgence. Besides rice is good for your stomach, right?

So I added some grated ginger using the microplane grater and mixed it all together. I then added more so that the ginger flavour was noticeable without being overpowering. The ginger paired really nicely with the chocolate and had me thinking of other ginger based desserts including an ice cream recipe that I'm going to try. Can you think of any other summery ginger desserts?

And because this is a bit of a short post, here's a pic of button.

Chickpea Burgers with Cucumber Sauce-Vegan Mofo Day 11

We recently got a slab of chickpeas from costco, so was looking for some new and different ways to use them. I quickly stumbled across this recipe from vegan mouse for chickpea and fava bean burgers which solved our dilemma of what to eat for dinner on Monday night. We decided to ditch the fava beans all together and used a combination of masa harina with some buckwheat flour. Because masa harina is considered sacred in this house.  We also skipped the baking part because it was hot, which I don't recommend.

The result was easy to make tasty g/f vegan burgers that didn't fall apart. The only downside was that the onion and garlic in the middle felt a little raw because we failed to bake them, so make sure you bake them or skip the onion and garlic. The cucumber sauce was nice and refreshing on a warm day, yes finally we have warm weather in Melbourne! We will certainly make them again.

Chickpea & Fava Bean Burgers (or in our case just chickpea burgers) from Vegan Mouse
1 15 oz. can chickpeas (garbanzo beans), drained and rinsed
1 15 oz. can foul mudammas (cooked fava beans), drained and rinsed
1 small onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
handful cilantro, chopped
1 TB nutritional yeast (totally optional)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp Trader Joe's 21 salute seasoning (or any salt free all purpose seasoning blend- we used a but it stock powder)
1/2 tsp salt
freshly cracked black pepper
1/4 cup corn flour (masa harina) or all purpose flour for binding
canola oil for frying

Cucumber sauce:
3 TB vegan mayo (or more if you like)
1/2 cup finely chopped cucumber
1 clove garlic, minced
1-2 tsp fresh lemon juice
salt and pepper to taste
Stir to combine all ingredients and chill.

Drain and rinse beans. Put them into a large bowl and with a potato masher or fork, mash the beans until there are no whole beans left. Add the remaining ingredients and using your hands, mix the ingredients until they are all combined. If you find the mixture a little wet or sticky, use a little more flour to bind it together. Form into 6 or 7 medium sized patties and place them on a plate and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for about 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray.
On the stove, heat a shallow layer of oil in a frying pan on medium heat. Fry the patties about 2 minutes on each side, just until they are browned. Then transfer patties onto the baking sheet and finish cooking them in the oven for about 10-15 minutes. Serve with cucumber sauce as is or as a sandwich inside of a pita pocket with lettuce and tomato.