Thai Spiced Pumpkin Soup - THAILAND

I've been a little under the weather these last few days. There's a definite chill in the air and the flu is passing round, so this calls for a big bowl of soup.
Soup is a beautiful thing, almost every country has a soup with their own cultural flair. Minestrone, gazpacho, chowder.. the list goes on. I chose Thailand because I adore lemongrass and fancied it with some seasonal pumpkin.

THAI PUMPKIN SOUP WITH CORIANDER PESTO - THAILAND

Ingredients:

For the soup:

1 tbs vegetable oil

1 large onion, diced

3 stalks of lemon grass, diced

1 red chilli, minced

handful of ginger, minced

1 pumpkin, chopped

1 can coconut milk

3-4 cups of vegetable stock

salt and pepper

For the pesto:

handful of coriander, finely chopped

zest of one lemon

juice of one lemon

2 tbs olive oil

salt and pepper

a little water to add

Instructions:

Heat the oil in a pot, saute the onions, add the lemon grass, chilli and ginger, cook for a few more minutes until the aromas are released, add the pumpkin, then stock. Boil then reduce to a simmer until the pumpkin is tender, add the coconut milk and blend.

For the pesto just put all the ingredients into a blender.

When serving, just top the soup with a squirt of the coriander pesto and BAM it's done.

Spanakopita - GREECE

I took a break from Vegan MoFo yesterday, partly because it was my day off from work and it seems silly for a chef to be cooking on their only day off, but mainly because the night before I was introduced to a Scottish drink called Buckfast and I spent all of the next day nursing a hangover and wishing I hadn't. Today I'm back on track making an old childhood favourite of mine.
Spanakopita (or spinach pie) is a traditional Greek savory pastry, usually made with spinach, egg and a combination of feta and ricotta cheese. There are many vegan versions of Spanakopita but I made mine with a tofu ricotta recipe from my favourite cook book Veganomicon.

SPANAKOPITA - GREECE

 

Ingredients:

1 pack of filo pastry

500 grams spinach, washed

tbs margarine, melted or olive oil

1 pack firm tofu

1 clove garlic, minced

2 tsp lemon juice

1 tbs olive oil

1/4 nutritional yeast

salt and pepper

chives, finely chopped

Instructions:

To make the tofu ricotta, first roughly mash the tofu up with a fork, leave it a little lumpy, add the minced garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, nutritional yeast, chives salt and pepper and mix together. 

Then blanch the spinach in boiling water, drain well and roughly chop, add to the tofu ricotta and mix. Taste and add more seasoning if needed.

For the filo, measure using the size of the oven dish you are using and cut them to fit the bottom. Grease the oven dish. Add the filo, piece by piece using a pastry brush to grease with the melted margarine to each piece of filo before adding the next, use about half of the filo for the bottom. Add the spinach and ricotta mixture. Then layer the rest of the filo on top using the same method. Bake at 180 degrees for 30 - 40 minutes.

Scones - ENGLAND

Today it was such a beautiful sunny day, I went for a walk down the canals to feed the ducks, it felt like such a lazy Sunday day (yes I'm aware it's Friday), that I decided scones and jam for lunch would be perfect. The weather here in Scotland doesn't stay sunny for long so we had an afternoon picnic inside with fresh mint tea and Turkish jam my friend brought back from Istanbul.

SCONES - ENGLAND

Ingredients:

3 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

pinch of salt

50 gram margarine

about 1/4 cup of soy milk

1 tsp vanilla extract - optional

1/2 tsp cinnamon - optional

Instructions:

Heat oven to 180 degrees. Sift flour and baking powder, add salt, then rub into butter, if you want to add anything extra like vanilla and cinnamon or chopped dates, add milk and knead into a soft dough, divide and shape into 6 - 8 scones, place on a tray and bake for 12 minutes until brown. Serve with jam, tea and friends.

Anpan - JAPAN

Anpan is a bun filled with sweet red bean paste from Japan, It has a pretty rad history, it was invented by a man called Yasubei Kimurain in 1874 who lost his job as a samurai and started a bakery. Can you imagine how disappointed his parents must have been, "Hey Yasu, what are you up to today? Fighting crime? Ninja stuff?"... "Nah, just gunna bake some bread eh..." 

Anyway, he wanted to introduce some western food that was more appealing to Japanese tastebuds and Anpan was the result. It became popular very quickly, soon the emperor was addicted and there was even a cartoon named after it called 'Apanpan Man', a superhero with a head made from Anpan. Awesome.

ANPAN - JAPAN

Ingredients:

For the dough:

4 cups of flour

1 1/4 cups of soy milk

1/4 cup caster sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tsp active yeast

For the paste:

1 cup adzuki beans, soaked over night

1/2 cup caster sugar

4 cups water

Instructions:

For the paste, cook the adzuki beans for about 1 hour until soft, drain then mash the beans, add sugar and return to the heat for 10-15 minutes.

For the dough, mix the dry ingredients together, warm the milk and add to the dry ingredients with the olive oil. Kneed well and leave to rest for 2 hours until it doubles in size.

Divide the dough into about 6 - 8 portions and roll into balls. Leave for another 10 minutes.

Flatten and stretch dough into a circle about 3-4 inches in diameter.

Place a ball of the paste in the center and close the edges together and roll into a ball. Seal side down, Leave to rest for another 30 minutes, then bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes until brown.

Basbousa - EGYPT

At the moment I'm trying to work crazy hours at work to save for my trip to Ghana, so finding time to cook something each day and blog about is a little bit tricky. Tonight I'm doing a bit of midnight baking, which is actually one of my favourite times to cook... a bit of jazz playing on the laptop, no need to wear pants, it makes me feel a bit free and eccentric.
Unfortunately though, this means that when you've forgotten to buy a vital ingredient, everything is already closed and your a wee bit screwed. I forgot sugar. 

BASBOUSA - EGYPT

Basbousa is a sweet cake made from semolina, soaked in syrup, sometimes with the addition of rose water and/or flaked coconut. Also known as herissa in Alexandria, namoura in Syria or revani in Turkey and Greece, the history behind it's hazy but hey, it's sweet, it's easy to make and deliciously bad for you so lets just thank all the countries for this sweet treat.

Ingredients:

For the cake:

1 cup semolina

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup of sugar (phew glad at least I had this much left in the cupboard)

1 tbs melted margarine

1/2 cup soy milk

1/3 cup chopped and roasted pistachios or almonds

For the syrup:

1 cup water

1 cup sugar (I'm all out at this stage so I used 2 tbs golden syrup)

1 tsp lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions:

Heat the oven to 190 degrees and grease a tin. 

Mix the semolina, baking powder, sugar, melted margarine and soy milk together. tip evenly into the tin. Roast your nuts of choice, sprinkle over top the cake mixture, Now I looked at a few different recipes for Basbousa and some say to leave to sit for an hour before cooking and others don't. I got confused and settled for 30 minutes. Cook for 30 minutes until golden.

While it's cooking, heat the water and sugar for the syrup and bring to the boil, add the lemon juice and vanilla, cook for around 5 minutes. Now I think the difference between using sugar and golden syrup, is that the syrup is meant to thicken as you cook it.. and mine did not.

But honestly I don't think it made much difference. Let the syrup cool and pour it over the cake when it's warm just out of the oven.

Pierogi - POLAND

I've been trying to think of a theme for Vegan MoFo over the last couple of days, I wanted to choose something I won't get bored of, that will allow flexibility in what I'll want to cook and eat over the course of the month.
I thought about the type of recipes I'm usually interested in and seen a pattern that they are usually alterations of dishes I've seen while travelling and wanted to try but that always contain meat or dairy.
And so a theme was born.. 

Global dishes with a vegan twist

PIEROGI - POLAND

Todays country of choice is Poland. Never been there, always wanted to, so here we go..
Pierogi is a Polish form of a homemade dumpling, filled with various stuffings, boiled then sometimes fried. 

Although one of the tradition Pierogi fillings is cabbage and mushroom, unfortunately it's not vegan - it's quite often made with animal fat and eggs in the pasta (Boo!).

Luckily for me, I happen to work with a few Polish chefs and asked them to show me how to make Pierogi without using any animal products.
Ok I'll admit, it takes a little time and it definitely helps to have a pasta machine handy, but if you don't you can just roll the pasta by hand and get a work out whilst you do it.. bonus.

Ingredients:

2 cups Pasta flour
1 cup warm water (add slowly and stop once its made a firm dough)
1 tbs olive oil
2 cups chopped mushrooms
2 gloves garlic
1 onion
1 jar of sauerkraut

Instructions:

Lets start with the dough. Simple recipe, grab some pasta flour, a pinch of salt and warm water, mix together, really knead that dough until your arms get tired. Place it in the fridge while you make your filling.

For the filling you'll want to pick up a jar of sauerkraut (sour cabbage) from your local Polish store, chuck it in a pot with about a cup of water and simmer. 

In a separate pan, heat a little oil, saute the onions, add garlic and chopped mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are tender. Add the sauerkraut once all the water has simmered away.

Set aside and once it has cooled chopped it up finely so that you have a nice wee minced up mix of goodness, season with salt and pepper.

Now you want to roll out your pasta (super thankful at this stage for the pasta machine at work) til it's about 1/2 cm thick, use a cookie cutter to cut the pasta into circles, feel free to make them as big or as small as you fancy.

Place the filling in the center and fold over to make a semi circle. Press the edges firmly shut.

Boil the Pierogi for 3-4 minutes. After they cool you can lightly fry them or just serve them as they are. 

There are many different things you can serve Pierogi with, I went with fried onions, and they were delicious, they only disappointing thing about Pierogi is how fast they're eaten.

Vegan MoFo

This is my first year entered in Vegan Month of Food and I have got absolutely no idea what I've got myself into. 
I have a complete lack of commitment for doing anything everyday for a month other than eat and sleep but I'm going to have a real crack at it.
For anyone who doesn't know what it involves, basically I will cook something vegan, eat something vegan or just ramble about something vegan everyday (hopefully) this month.
Wish me luck!