walnut + mushroom pasta (with bonus tempeh)

I was skeptical, at first, but it turns out a creamy pasta made from walnuts and featuring soy sauce is actually really delicious! I saw this originally at Seitan is my Motor and have modified it a bit, but I suspect the original deliciousness is still there! This wasn't too complicated, though it did make quite a few dishes.



walnut + mushroom pasta
modified from seitan is my motor

ingredients
quarter of a cup of light soy sauce or tamari sauce
200g plain tempeh
three quarters of a cup of walnut halves or walnut pieces
1 chilli
just over half a cup of rice milk
1 clove garlic (minced) (or a teaspoonish of minced jarred garlic)
some oil (canola is fine, though olive is better. margarine/nuttelex is also okay)
1 teaspoon paprika
a shake of thyme
a shake of marjoram
350 - 400g fettucine
eta: and mushrooms!

method
Dice the tempeh small, then soak in the soy sauce for about half an hour. If it soaks up all the soy sauce, add a little bit more. Make sure it's light soy! If you use dark soy then there will be tears. Sometime during this half an hour, set the pasta on to boil. When the pasta is done, drain, but reserve a smidge of the water.

In a blender, blend the walnuts with the milk, the garlic and the chilli. Slice the mushrooms. In a pan, saute the tempeh (with any leftover soy sauce in which it was soaking) in a little oil or nuttelex, until it starts crisping, then add the mushrooms. Saute these until they are almost cooked through, then throw in the walnut mixture, plus the paprika, thyme and marjoram. Simmer for five minutes or so, until it has started to thicken (...more) and then throw in the reserved pasta water. Let it all simmer through, then combine with the pasta and a swish of lemon juice, and serve piping hot.

The soy sauce combined with the tempeh and the walnuts to be amazing, and the addition of the chilli was perfect! If you want to reheat it, toss through a little lemon juice.

mushroom + roast pumpkin lasagna

The weather has suddenly jumped from long coats and scarves to ice creams and trying to stay cool, but one of the last things I wanted to do before the weather changed was to cook a lasagna. Lasagna is not really a great thing to cook in summer, not only because it needs to be baked in the oven; this lasagna featured roasted pumpkin, so it required an extra long oven time.



This lasanga is a sum of things that I love in lasagna, and rather than overwhelming with flavour, I found that the textures and flavours worked together to make something totally delicious. There are two distinct layers, a fried mushroom layer and a roasted pumpkin layer, and these two layers are padded with lasagna sheets, sun-dried tomato pesto, and a tomato sauce. So it goes sauce, pasta, pesto (spread thinly across the entire sheet/s), mushrooms, sauce, pasta, pesto, roasted pumpkin sliced, sauce, pasta, and the rest of the source. This was all topped with a mixture of Cheezely and nutritional yeast.

It wasn't too complex; the sauce was a very simple one, made using about 800g (two tins) of tinned tomatoes and some fresh and dried herbs, though I do wish I'd used maybe an extra half a can. Ordinarily I'd make the pesto, but I'd picked up some pesto from world vegan day, and worked that in. Roasting pumpkins is always a delight, and it's no trouble for me to slice and fry the mushrooms.

I sort of wish I'd made some sort of cheeze sauce, combining the Cheezely and the nutritional yeast with some tofu and milk or something, just to make it a little more moist; but the Cheezley and nutritional yeast combination was a perfectly serviceable last minute topping.

brunch at source foods, highgate

My favourite place to have brunch in Perth is Source Foods. They know what vegan means (they call it 'NAP' - No Animal Products), which is rare enough in Perth; and they serve tempeh, which is also pretty unusual.

Anyway, it's my favourite, so Alexa and I went there on Saturday morning.

We took advantage of the lovely Perth weather to sit outside. Usually in winter I find it too cold to sit outside in Perth, but one winter in Melbourne and suddenly it is glorious! I didn't even have to wear a scarf! Or a coat! It was amazing!



I ordered, as I have many times before, the vegan heaven: tomato, two (two!) types of mushrooms, wilted spinach and baked beans, served on crisp bread with hommus. I also ordered it with a side of soy-marinated tempeh. It was so amazing. SO AMAZING. I ate it all up.

Alexa ordered the mushroom crostini, mushrooms with wilted spinach on hommus and crisp breadishness. She was indulging in mushrooms in her mushroom-hating housemate's absence.

Not pictured: our juices. Alexa ordered orange + ginger, and I ordered the 'zinger,' which contains orange and ginger and asomething else that I can never remember, maybe apple.

After brunch we went adventuring: to North Perth, where we visited Little Design Horse; and then in to Mount Lawley, where we visited Planet, primarily so we could visit the greatest bookstore in the world. I know some people prefer Oxford St Books in Leederville, but I can never go past Planet.




Previous visit: here.


Source Foods
289 Beaufort St
Highgate

gf available (this post is tagged gf because the menu can be very gf)

tofu, mushroom and spinach pot pie

Earlier this week, Danni was inspired to cook some pot pies. Neither of us have a huge amount of pot pie experience, but this was gooooood. The gravy that developed was so thick and mushroomy and super delicious. OH YEAH. And it was a lot easier than I expected it to be! Not that I contributed at all to this, except to the eatering, and the checking of it in the oven.



tofu, mushroom and spinach pot pie

ingredients
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbl olive oil
some dried basil, oregano, marjoram and paprika, about half a teaspoon of each
1 tomato (diced)
300 grams firm tofu (diced)
1 dash light soy sauce
1 tbl tomato sauce
half a teaspoon of vegie stock powder
1 bunch spinach
half a dozen button mushrooms, sliced
150g golden boy mushrooms, halved
some squares of puff pastry

method
In the olive oil, fry the garlic, basil, oregano, marjoram, and paprika for a minute or two, then add the tomato and the tofu, and push it around a little bit before leaving it to simmer in the pot with the vegie stock powder, soy sauce and tomato sauce. After about six or seven minutes, add the mushrooms, stir it around some more, put the lid back on and simmer for a while, about fifteen or so minutes. You want the mushrooms to start releasing liquid.

Prep spinach (wash and chop roughly), then chuck it in, let it wilt through. Simmer with the lid off for another ten minutes.

Scoop the mixture into ramekins, put puff pastry on top (I trim to size), brush with soy milk and poppy seeds.

Bake 15 minutes at 190C.

mushrooms in a red wine jus

I'm convinced that a potato and cauliflower mash could be totally, wonderfully light and fluffy and delicious, so I keep designing meals around mash that aren't (mock)meat + veg - despite being of a somewhat Anglo-English background, Danni doesn't like these sorts of meals, though I find them a fun novelty! I never got those sorts of meals as a kid!

Anyway, so this means I have to rack my brains for a meal that goes well with mash, and then I try it, and every time, the mash is nothing exciting. Maybe it's my proportions, maybe it's how I'm cooking it (I'd love to try roasting the potato and cauliflower first one time), but I keep trying, and I'll get there eventually.

This time, I served the (unexciting) potato and cauliflower mash with mushrooms in a red wine jus. It was simple and delicious and very exciting!



mushrooms in a red wine jus

this takes a while to simmer down, but is easy to prepare.

ingredients
200ish grams of fresh mushrooms (sliced)
2 tablespoons Nuttelex (or vegan butter)
1 clove garlic (minced)
third of a cup of red wine
a tablespoon of dried basil
fresh parsley and oregano
a tablespoon of lemon juice

method
Melt the Nuttelex in a fry pan on high, then add the garlic and the dried oregano. Fry for a minute or two, then add the sliced mushrooms. Saute until the mushrooms begin to soften and release their own juices (this is why I have allowed myself to call this a jus...), then add the red wine. Leave to simmer for about ten to fifteen minutes, or until the red wine has drastically reduced. Then add the parsley, oregano and lemon juice, and simmer for another five minutes.

Serve on top of something that will soak in that liquid.

CNY mushrooms and noodles (chap chye)

And now some food!

The theme for yesterday's potluck was 'new,' to go with Miss T's newly renovated house. There was lots of awesome food, including delicious sausage rolls, rice paper rolls, a savoury watermelon salad, an array of dips, and other delicious savoury goodies. There was a whole table of sweet goodies as well, my personal favourite was the homemade chocolate icecream, but there was also gingerbread, chocolate balls, lots of cookies, and a fantastic apple risotto thing. It was fantastic! I'm so enthused by our first proper vegan potluck experience that I totally want to hold one soon at House of Penguin!

I was concerned that if I took the 'new' theme to mean new dish, or new ingredient, there might be some sort of unexpected culinary failure and then we'd have to turn up with no dish to share and I'd be all embarrassed, so we went an alternative route and took the new theme as '新年,' or Chinese New Year.

I can't remember what this dish is actually called, so perhaps my sister will read this and remind me - it's something my mum cooks for CNY, and it's delicious. It's also a bit modified - it should have three types of mushrooms, but I only had two, so I went with what I had. ETA: hooray for J! It's chap chye.



CNY mushrooms and noodles

The secret to this is not to soak the noodles for too long - I always do and it messes with the consistency of the dish, but it's still delicious!

ingredients
1 pack bean/cellophane noodles
lots of dried chinese mushrooms
lots of dried black fungus
small piece of fresh ginger, minced or chopped small
one clove of garlic, minced or chopped small
half a cup of stock
half a teaspoon of chilli flakes
1 tbl of dark soy sauce
pepper

method
Soak the mushrooms in hot water for at least an hour, preferably two. Top up with more hot water if they expand so much they're no longer covered.

Soak the bean noodles until soft, then drain.

In a hot wok, heat a teaspoon of peanut oil. Throw in the ginger and garlic, toss through, then drain the mushrooms and throw them in. Toss a few times, then pour in the stock and the chilli flakes. Toss through, then cover and leave to sit for about five minutes. Lift the lid and add the noodles, as well as the soy sauce. Mix through, so that the noodles are all consistently coloured. Put the lid on and leave to simmer until it has soaked up the rest of the stock and sauce - this is a dry dish, it shouldn't drip at all whilst serving.

It's for longevity, you know.

spinach pesto pasta with mushrooms, baby roma tomatoes, and wilted spinach

One of the awesome things about staying with friends is getting to use their kitchen to cook, instead of having to rely on constant takeout. One night it was just D and I pottering around, so I nipped out and picked up some spinach, mushrooms and tomatoes, for a quick and rich pesto pasta. I'm totally in love with pesto pastas at the moment.



spinach pesto pasta with mushrooms, baby roma tomatoes, and wilted spinach

ingredients
one bushel spinach
handful pinenuts
one clove garlic
olive oil
half a dozen mushrooms
one pack of baby roma tomatoes
half a pack of fettuccine

method
Put the pasta on to cook. Take a handful of spinach leaves (no stalk), and pound (or blend), gradually adding the pinenuts, garlic, and olive oil, as well as more spinach (about a quarter to a half of the bushel), until a rich, goopy texture is achieved.

Slice the mushrooms, and saute in some olive oil. When they are soft and have released a lot of liquid, throw in the tomatoes (halved), and some more of the spinach. Stir for a minute or three, until the spinach has wilted and the tomatoes are looking a little bit wrinkly, but don't overcook them!

Drain the pasta, and combine with the pesto, and stir through the mushrooms, spinach and tomatoes. Serve hot.

mushroom and spinach lasagna with tofu bechamel sauce and sundried tomato pesto

One of the last things I made before we left Perth was a mushroom and spinach lasagna with a tofu bechamel sauce. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out, but I really liked it.



mushroom and spinach lasagna with tofu bechamel sauce and sundried tomato pesto

I used a sundried tomato pesto for this, because I had sundried tomatoes on hand, and I like the stronger taste. A basil pesto would also work.

ingredients
large handful or two of mushrooms
one bushel spinach
five tomatoes
one red onion
three cloves garlic
lasagna sheets to make three layers (I use san remo, I find I need six sheets to fill my tray)
one square tofu
1 half tsp nutritional yeast (heaped)
1 half cup soy milk
1 half tsp chili flakes
oregano
marjoram
olive oil
1 cup sundried tomatoes
quarter cup pine nuts

method
In a lot of olive oil, heat some marjoram and oregano. Dice the onion, and fry in olive oil over low heat for eight or nine minutes, until they are quite soft. Dice two cloves of the garlic, and add to heat, fry for a few more minutes. Add the tomato (diced) and all the juice, fry on high for a few minutes then reduce and simmer, covered, for twenty minutes, or until the tomatoes have reduced to a mushy sauce.

In the meantime, slice and fry the mushrooms in olive oil or a vegan margarine. Set aside.

Pound together the sundried tomatoes, pine nuts, and remaining garlic, and drizzle olive oil through as required. As an alternative, the oil in which the sundried tomatoes sat could be used.

In a blender, mix together soy milk, nutritional yeast, chili flakes, and tofu, and some pepper if required.

In a square dish, about 25 x 25 cm, spread a thin layer of tomato mixture. Cover with lasagna sheets, then cover lasagna sheets with half of the pesto. Place mushrooms onto this layer. Drizzle with some of the tomato sauce mixture, then cover with lasagna sheets. Repeat with pesto, spinach, tomato sauce and final lasagna sheets. Spread across remaining tomato mixture, and cover completely with tofu sauce.

Bake in oven at 200C for about 40 minutes, or until lasagna sheets are easy to slice through.

roasted pumpkin and mushroom risotto

We had a whole butternut sitting in the bottom drawer, and half a bag of mushrooms, so rather than venture outside in the horrible weather to get provisions, I decided to make a pumpkin and mushroom risotto - but not just any pumpkin and mushroom risotto. This delicious, creamy, flavoursome risotto was comprised of roasted pumpkin and roasted mushrooms. Roasting them before adding them to the risotto added an amazing flavour to the risotto, and filled the kitchen with the smell of roasting pumpkin.

I served this with some garlic bread. It was quite perfectly timed, I put the garlic bread in at the same time as adding the pumpkin and mushroom to the rice, and pulled it out just as the risotto was ready. I used some left over turkish bread for this, sliced thinly into fingers and funny shapes and baked for about fifteen to twenty minutes.



roast pumpkin and mushroom risotto

ingredients
one butternut pumpkin
two handfuls of mushrooms (i used a mixture of portobello and button)
quarter of a red onion, diced evenly
tablespoon of oregano
shake or three of rosemary
half a tablespoon of parsley
one clove garlic (minced)
2 cups arborio rice
five cups of vegetable stock
half a cup of white wine
salt + pepper
shake of nutmeg
three shakes of ground sage

method
Cut butternut pumpkin in half lengthways. Lightly oil a baking tray with olive oil, and place pumpkin cut side down. Roast at 175C for about forty-five minutes. In the meantime, pat down the mushrooms. After thirty minutes of roasting, pull the pumpkin out, and add the mushrooms to the tray. You can remove the stalks (this is my preference), and throw them into the tray also. Drizzle mushrooms lightly with olive oil, and sprinkle with dried oregano. Put tray back into the oven, and continue baking for remaining pumpkin time.

After returning the pumpkin and mushroom to the oven, heat some oil in a pot, and add the red onion. Fry with oregano, rosemary and parsley until the onion starts to soften, then add the garlic. Stir through, and add in the arborio rice and a cup of stock. Stir continuously, adding more stock and the wine, as necessary.

When the pumpkin is ready, remove from oven. Remove the skin from the pumpkin immediately, roughly chop the mushrooms into large chunks, and add all, including the liquid in the tray, into the risotto. Also add the salt, pepper, nutmeg and sage.

Allow all the stock to soak into the rice, and continue stirring, for about another fifteen minutes, or until the rice is done deliciously.

a weekend getaway of in-house noms

Went down South to Eagle Bay for the weekend, it was awesome.

The plan for the weekend was to hang out with fabulous friends, play games, and eat a lot of food, and that is exactly what we did.

We started our long weekend of noms on Thursday evening, with some pizza. Gilli made the pizza base in Perth, and it rose on the drive down. We ended up with four pizzas, two vegan and two not-vegan.
Our pizzas were delicious, I love a good home made pizza. Gilli had made two different types of base, one herbed and one plain, and we covered them with awesome things like pumpkin, fresh basil, and avocado. We also had this amazing tomato and cashew pesto that Greg had picked up from a craft fair earlier this year, it was a little spicy and delicious on the pizza, and as a spread on bread!



Friday’s breakfast was all vegan but for the ice-cream. I made pancakes, and Kandace made waffles, and Gilli stewed some apples, which was awesome. We supplemented with banana, golden syrup, and nuttelex. The waffle mix was new, and wasn’t quite viscous enough to work properly in the waffle maker, but it was still awesome!



At lunch we went to Samudra, a vegetarian restaurant in Dunsborough. Review to follow! (It was delicious) ETA review here.

Friday dinner was a roasted extravaganza, featuring roast pumpkin, roast potato, roast sweet potato, roasted carrot, roast mushrooms and roasted beetroot. Roasted mushrooms are amazing. Amazing! They were field mushrooms, stems removed, sprinkled with oregano and parsley and some other herbs, and I am absolutely going to roast mushrooms from now on. It also included beans, peas, carrots, and one of those Sanitarium roast things.



On Saturday morning Greg and I baked jam thumbprint cookies and lemon and poppy seed muffins. Of course, this delayed breakfast somewhat, but it was worth it.



We finally started cooking a massive fry up for breakfast, including hashbrowns, sausages (vegan and not), toast, tomatoes, mushrooms, and sweet potato hash browns. There was also tea, and jam, and more of the awesome pesto, which featured heavily throughout the weekend.



The sweet potato hash browns were an experiment, and it wasn’t until I started googling that I discovered ‘hash’ means so many different cooking related things! But we wanted hashbrowns, delicious fried flat goodness, and they were fantastic, crisp on the outside and soft on the inside. The recipe needs some tweaking, but in general we boiled the potato (peeled and diced) until it was soft but not super soft, then roughly mashed with five tablespoons of plain flour, combined them into cakes and fried them in the frypan for a few minutes. Incredibly delicious!



Saturday dinner was nachos and tacos, simple and fun. I like seeing what toppings people pick.



In preparation for Sunday breakfast, late Saturday night I cooked a pumpkin saag and some dahl. The dahl was my usual recipe, which I know without looking and is so tasty, so my favourite. The saag was an attempt at the pumpkin saag from Veganomicon, but we’d left the recipe on the kitchen counter at home and so I worked from memory. I added a sliced chilli, seeds out, to give it some flavour, and forgot the cinnamon and whatever dried herbs go in it, and I added garlic and ginger. It was different, but still tasty. We served the curry with roti and rice.



Before we left on Sunday afternoon, more baking was to be had, for the trip back to Perth, and I made a whole lot of sushi.

An awesome weekend of noms. D and I were also very appreciative of our friends, not just for their awesomeness in general, but for their awesomeness in ensuring strict separation between vegan implements and non-vegan implements, to minimise cross-contamination.



If you are interested in photos of other parts of our weekend, you can find them here

mushroom stroganoff

This was great, with a rich mushroom flavour and huge chunks of mushroom. Cooked by D, based on this recipe from yeah that vegan shit.




mushroom stroganoff
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 onion, finely chopped
2 tablespoons nuttelex (or vegan margarine)
3 cloves garlic, minced
shake or two of salt, a shake of pepper
dash of dried parsley, dried thyme
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon chives
2 big field mushrooms, cut in to eighths (like a pizza)
3 or 4 largeish whatever mushrooms are there, chopped
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 cup soy milk
half a cup of white wine


about 400gm of fettucine

method
Heat a little olive oil, and add in the flour, stirring on a medium heat for a few minutes. Melt in nuttelex, add garlic, onion, salt and pepper, and keep stirring for a few more minutes. Add everything else (except the fettucine), bring to a boil, and reduce heat to simmer with the lid on for about twenty minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the fettucine. Serve hot!

Single Penguin Food – Days Five to Seven

On Thursday I had to brave the hordes going late night shopping, as I tried to find new clothes for Chinese New Year. My parents have been known to be some of those hordes, so I met up with them and my sister for dinner at Chatters restaurant, just outside Morley Galleria. It was standard pan-Asian food, leaning slightly towards Thai but still with that Malaysian-Chinese bent that is so common in Perth’s Asian restaurants.





We ordered a char kuay teow, slightly oily and not quite enough vegies for my preference, but still pretty tasty. The waitress assured us that the sauce for the satay vegetables was shrimp and fish oil free, so we ordered that. There was a wide array of delicious vegetables involved, baby corn and bok choy and bamboo and carrot and lots of my favourite things, and that was pretty tasty. We also ordered a claypot vegetables (a little cornstarchy but overall okay) and some spring rolls. The spring rolls were not my thing, very OTT with the pepper filling, but my sister seemed to quite like them.



On Friday I tried this mushroom masala recipe, and added some gailan in soy sauce as a side. I was so intrigued, it sounded like a great combination, but ultimately the flavour was too rich for me, and I had to cover it with my gailan in order to disguise the strong flavour. I’m not sure what created this, perhaps the addition of tahini. At least my roti was very delicious, as always.



On Saturday I ventured Very North to A Curry Affair, an Indian restaurant in Malaga. All the vegetarian curries they had on for the evening were vegan, so we tried the dhal, a potato curry and, at their insistence, the vegetable sambal. The dhal was okay, the potato was pretty good and sambal was awesome. Price was okay, but it was in Malaga.