Ⓥ Semi Raw Banoffee Pie

I remembered that I had a tin of soy condensed milk to use up, but really wanted to make a more healthy version of the banoffee pie that I liked so much last time.  So, I thought I would do a nut and date base with soy condensed milk, banana, and a raw coconut cream topping.

For the base I blended together

1.5 Cups walnuts
1 Cup dates
3 Tablespoons of Cocoa
3 Tablespoons agave syrup

I put this in a flan dish and squashed it down, then put it in the fridge.
 

For the topping I put a tin of coconut milk in the fridge for 24 hours and separated the solid cream from the liquid, I put the liquid in the fridge to use in something else later

I blended the coconut cream together with
0.25 Cups melted coconut oil
3 Tablespoons agave syrup
1 Banana
Pinch salt
1 Teaspoon xanthan gum powder
 

To be honest, I blended all the above ingredients bar the xanthan gum first and found that it separated.  I wasn't sure why but thought the gum might do the trick to get it back on track, it did.  If anything, I might have overdone it with the gum, as the cream topping was a tad thick, so I have reduced the amount in this recipe.

I had simmered the soy condensed milk in the unopened tin for four hours the day before and put the unopened tin in the fridge.

So, now I put a layer of banana on top of the walnut base, poured over the soy condensed cream and spooned on the topping.

It is now two days later and I have just had my second piece.  It is great, the base has got a sticky quality about it and the soy condensed milk, although I imagine full of sugar is lovely.  I have done an hour on my bike turbo today so what the hell, maybe I will have another piece, and it is mainly raw too!

Ⓥ Our Trip To Falmouth's First Vegan Cafe/Bar - Wildebeest

Visit No.1: Wednesday 12th March 2014
We journeyed down through Cornwall from Vegan Chat Room HQ on a trip to Wildebeest, Falmouth's first vegan cafe/bar.  The cafe had opened it's doors for the first time on Monday 10th March, and we were keen to sample their food.  We found it quite easily, on Arwenack Street, one of the main streets through Falmouth.

We had been trawling the charity shops of Falmouth, so were keener than ever to get stuck into some vegan grub.  The cafe is very smart and clean, with pine benches and tables, together with a few green stools and food bar. I checked out the toilets, one for each sex which is great and very clean. I think there were around seven tables, so a fair size cafe really.  There is also a chalk board for anyone feeling artistic, who wants to sketch down their vegan thoughts.  On the shelves are mini cacti/succulent worlds.

 

We selected two main meals from the selection on the chalk board - Chestnut, Fennel and Tarragon Ravioli and Pumpkin Quesadillas with Refried Beans, Salsa and Guacamole (gluten free).  We waited with drooling mouths for our food to arrive.

Very soon, our food arrived from the friendly staff, together with our cutlery which was contained in cleaned, reused and polished up tin cans, with recycled napkins.

Now, I have forgotten the times that I have sat wn in a veggie or vegan cafe or restaurant, awaiting the arrival of my food, keen to tuck into the selection of vegan fayre that I had selected from the menu, only to be disappointed to various degrees.  I can honestly say, that this was the very first time that I have not been disappointed to even one percent of a degree.  We shared both main meals, and tried the ravioli first.  Rose told me later that they make and dehydrate their own cashew cheese and that was sprinkled on top of the ravioli.  It was a dish comprising of a few ingredients, but those ingredients worked so well together.  The fennel was a wonderful, mild aniseed flavour, it went so well with the tarragon and chestnut.  The ravioli pasta was cooked really well, really light and with the cashew cheese on top melted in the mouth.  Then, we were onto the Pumpkin Quesadillas dish.  All four parts of the dish were very tasty independently as well as complementing each other.  The pumpkin Quesadillas were a new one for me, they were also nice and light filled with a great flavourful pumpkin centre.  We had all too soon reached the end of our meals.

Rose recommended two of the ice creams and sorbets for us to try, Giandina ice cream made with hazelnuts and BBQ pineapple and black pepper sorbet.  We thought we would try a giant cranberry, oat and almond cookie each to go with it.

The Giandina was really rich and sooo, hazel-nutty, just like a cruelty free version of Nutella in an ice cream. The sorbet was really fresh and with such a wonderful pineapple hit.  The fruity/nutty cookies were wonderful and went really well with the scoops, I did wonder how they fitted them in their oven though.

After we paid, we were given a loyalty card, which gives you one free drink after you have five stamps and a generous offer of 2 meals for 1 after you have ten stamps on your card.

Rose told us, that they having regular vegan sushi nights and they plan to have monthly events.  My only complaint, is that Vegan Chat Room HQ is too far away from Falmouth and more importantly from Wildebeest.

Website:  www.wildebeestcafe.com

Twitter: @wildebeestcafe

Facebook: www.facebook.com/wildebeestfalmouth

Visit No.2: Wednesday 18th June 2014
We decided to test out our new tent and go on a camping holiday further down into Cornwall near the Lizard.  We planned our return journey to take in a visit to Falmouth and Wildebeest.  We arrived in the late morning, before the lunchtime kitchen had opened, so we had a little walk around Falmouth harbour in the sunshine.

From the menu this time we chose Gnocchi and Mex Mix, with a slice of Raspberry Cheesecake each for dessert.

The Gnocchi dish came with asparagus, capers, sage sauce, cashew parmesan, roast tomatoes and rocket.

The Mex Mix came with salsa, guacamole, refried beans, sticky onions, cashew cheese and home made tortillas.

Both meals were up to the high standards already set during our first visit, full of flavour and mouth-watering.  This left just enough space in our bellies for dessert...

The Raspberry Cheesecake was, again, delicious.  It all worked well together and was a treat for our taste-buds.

 

We remembered to take our loyalty card with us, so we've collected another stamp for our collection... and we'll back for more :)

Website:  www.wildebeestcafe.com

Twitter: @wildebeestcafe

Facebook: www.facebook.com/wildebeestfalmouth

Ⓥ Organic Vegan Raspberry, Date, Cacao & Cashew Love Truffles

Being the season of love, I thought I would try to concoct some truffles for myself.  Gramondo could have a few as well, if there were any left over.

First, using my Excalibur Dehydrator I dehydrated around 200g of raspberries, forgetting of course to take any photographs of this stage of the proceedings.  It took around 16 hours to get them nice and crisp and dry.

Then I soaked a cup of organic cashew nuts for about one hour.

I chopped up a cup of organic dates and processed them with the nuts, raspberries, 1/4 cup of organic cacao and four table spoons of organic maple syrup.

I rolled the mixture into small truffle sized balls and placed them on a board, then put them in the freezer.  I thought freezing them would help later when covering them in chocolate.

Around one hour later, I melted various chocolate (including an Organica Chocolate Couverture bar) that I had managed not to scoff; it was around 140g in total.

Then I rolled each truffle, coating it in chocolate. Freezing them did help a great deal here I think. The chocolate hardened very quickly.

There you have it, fairly healthy, truffles, made from lots of raw organic ingredients, that take less than 30 minutes to make.  The raspberry is really intense, and works well with all the other ingredients.

Ⓥ Organic Dehydrated Kale Crackers with Engevita Yeast Flakes

I found a raw Cheezy Kale Crackers recipe a few weeks back and eventually got around to giving it a go today.

As usual for dehydrated cracker recipes, it's very easy to make. The worst problem I have is my blender is total rubbish. Anyway, I won't dwell on my blender.

So, the ingredients are:

Kale, Almonds, Nutritional Yeast Flakes, Coconut Flour, Flax, Paprika and Chili

First you have to soak the almonds over night, then rinse and then blend them. Stick them in a bowl. Put the flax and water in a bowl and leave it to thicken up.  Then blend the kale up. Add all the other ingredients to the ground almonds, add the kale to the almonds, mix well.

Then finally, add the gloopy flax mixture and mix well again.

Then you spread it out on parchment paper and score it. Unfortunately I don't have a fancy pants cutter so I used a knife. Mine are nowhere near as neat as on Susan's blog on Rawmazing.com.

Then you dehydrate it. It smells really good.

Ⓥ Vegan Christmas Nut Roast Recipe

This recipe is one that Gramondo's dad makes every Christmas for their family meal (it serves 6).  It uses 3 types of nuts, but you could substitute 100% peanuts instead.  You don't have to wait until Christmas as this nut roast recipe is enjoyable anytime of the year.

2 tbsp oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 leek, finely chopped
75g/3oz shelled brazil nuts
75g/3oz shelled cashew nuts
75g/3oz shelled unsalted peanuts
175g/6oz wholemeal breadcrumbs
2 tbsp chopped fresh sage
a few drops of Tabasco sauce
salt and ground black pepper
3 tbsp tomato puree
150ml/¼ pint vegetable stock
450g/1lb puff pastry (or use rough puff pastry - see below)

1. Fry up the onion and leeks in the oil for about 5 minutes.  Chop up the nuts by hand or if you want to be lazy use a food processor.  Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and toast them under a pre heated grill for about 3 minutes.

2. Mix together the onion and leek, toasted nuts, breadcrumbs, sage, Tabasco sauce and seasoning.  Dissolve the tomato puree in the vegetable stock and stir it into the dry ingredients.

3. Preheat your oven to 220C/425F/Mark 7.  Roll out the pastry to 30 x 38cm/12 x 15inch rectangle.  Spoon the filling lengthways down the centre of the pastry, leaving a border of around 11.5cm/4.5inches down the long sides and 6.5cm/2.5inches at the short ends.

4. Cut out 4 squares from each of the corners of the pastry, almost to the edge of the filling. Use some
soy/rice/etc milk to brush around the edges of the pastry.

5. Fold the short sides of the pastry over the filling, and then fold the long edges over the filling, forming a sealed oblong parcel.  Place the nut roasts on a heated baking tray seams underneath. Brush the tops with more milk.  Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown.

Individual Nut Roasts

You could also make smaller individual nut roasts, which you can then freeze and cook later.  Gramondo's dad makes about 9 from the same ingredient.  He uses a rough puff pastry recipe...

1lb self raising flour
5oz vegetable shortening/fat
5oz vegetable margarine
½ pint of cold water
tsp salt

1. Add flour into bowl, mix the flour and salt.  Add fat cut in small pieces, stir in with knife (do not rub in).  Mix to a stiff paste with water.

2. Roll out to a narrow strip. fold in three turn one of the open towards you,and repeat three times. Put it in the fridge for 20 minutes.

3. Take out and divide into 2, place 1 back into the fridge.  Divide into 4 and roll out into mini nut roasts.  The bits that you trim off make another one.  Then take the other pastry out of fridge and repeat.

Ⓥ Spinach and Potato Pie

Today we had a Spinach and Potato Pie with Aubergine and Sweet Potato Curry. For the pie ingredients I use potatoes, mushroom and spinach - the quantities vary each time I make it depending on how much of each ingredient I have.  I tend to make up the flavours as I go along from a collection of spices.

Dough ingredients

8oz plain flour
125ml warm water
1 teaspoon yeast
Quarter teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil

Mix yeast, salt into flour, mix in oil, gradually mix in water, form a dough, kneed, leave for one hour to rise.

Steam the potato cubes. Fry the curry powder, onion seeds, chili powder, asafoetida, ginger, garlic, curry leaves, cumin seeds and garam masala.

Add chopped mushrooms. Add potato, fry for a bit.  Add chopped spinach, add half tin coconut milk (200ml ish).  Let it cook for a bit more, until it's tender.

Stick the mixture into a cake tin (8inch approx).  Form the dough to fit over the top and plop it on.  Stick in oven for about 30 minutes on 180c.

Aubergine and Sweet Potato Curry

For this I stuck two aubergines in the oven for half an hour then blasted their skin until it was black.  I then removed the skin. I steamed some round beans, carrot and sweet potato.  Then I fried ginger, garlic, onion, asafoetida, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, curry leaves,  bit of salt.  I added the aubergine, sweet potato and beans and then the rest of the coconut milk.  Slapped it on a plate.  Took only 10 minutes to eat it after taking 2 hours to cook it.  Oh well, at least there is some left for tomorrow's dinner.

Ⓥ My cheese free vegan pizza on Vegan Pizza Day

Yesterday, Gramondo told me that it was Vegan Pizza Day on Saturday 29th June. So, I thought it was as good a reason as any to have another pizza. Recently I have stopped using vegan cheese on my pizza and have found that I don't miss it at all.

Last week we put in an order with Essential Trading Coop and amongst other things ordered Sunita organic olives and Organico organic artichokes. So, I put some of those on, together with only basic ingredients, tomato puree, onion, garlic, red pepper, mushroom, olive oil and seasoning. I keep telling myself that in regards to pizza, less is definitely more. Most of the time, I usually end up putting too much on, but this time I think I nearly cracked it.

For the base, I use my Panasonic bread making machine, which always makes a consistently good dough, without much effort from myself.

Ⓥ Artisan Vegan Cheese: Following Miyoko Schinner's Air-Dried Cheddar Recipe

I've invested in a new vegan cheese book called "Artisan Vegan Cheese" by Miyoko Schinner and I thought I would blog my voyage into the land of vegan cheese production.

To begin with I am at a disadvantage as I am living in a house with no heating, and vegan cheese needs warmth to ferment.  So I've invested in a brew belt to keep my creation warm.  Not ideal, but it seems to do the trick.

First I have to track my ingredients down.

Quinoa - To make the rejuvelac - easy to find in any wholefood shop.
Yogurt  - I need to start making my own but this time around I've bought some Sojasun.
Cashews - Easy to find, I used organic ones.
Nutritional yeast flakes - I used B12 version that I already had in.
Brown miso - Easy to find in any wholefood shop.
Canola (rapeseed) oil - Bit tricky finding this until I found out that it was rapeseed oil.
Tapioca flour - I eventually found this in an international food store. I bought tapioca starch, I checked on line and it seems they are one and the same.
Agar agar powder - I gave up tracking this down locally and ordered it through Ebay.

The vegan cheese I have selected to make is called "Air-Dried Cheddar"

It has quite a few stages to its production, but I'm getting ahead of myself, first I need to make my rejuvelac.

Rejuvelac is basically the fermented juice from sprouted seeds, in my case I used quinoa.  I need to put a cup of quinoa in a jar with a small amount of water in a warm place, that's were my brew belt came into play.  For three days I need to keep the seeds wet and warm and change the water twice a day rinsing them before I put them back.  They will sprout and then I need to add a measured amount of spring water and wait again for two days.  At the end of this time if the Vegan Gods are smiling down on me, rejuvelac will be born.  This makes about a litre of fluid, it can be kept in the fridge for up to 4 weeks so it can last for several batches of vegan cheese.

So I have my rejuvelac and my ingredients and I'm now ready to start on my vegan cheese.

First stage is to soak the cashews from 3 to 8 hours.

Second stage is the blend - cashews, rejuvelac, yogurt, yeast flakes, miso, oil, salt.  I then have to keep this mixture nice and warm for 48 hours.  The photo below is after about 4 hours, it's already fermenting and smells great.

Two long days later and I'm ready to go to the third stage, adding the agar agar and the tapioca flour (or starch).

After whisking in the agar and the tapioca I use a wooden spoon (don't ask me why this is important, I'm just following instructions) to stir the mixture over a moderate heat for several minutes.  The sauce then becomes elastic and glossy.

I then transfer it to a glass bowl where I press it in and smooth off the top, it very quickly becomes a rubbery solid form.  You really need to act quickly here before it cools and goes rubbery, press it in firmly into your mould.  With retrospect I would possibly recommend that you use maybe three moulds so that you can make three smaller vegan cheeses instead of one big one.  Then you could freeze two and keep one in your fridge.

At this stage I had the opportunity to sample the vegan cheese from the remnants in the pan.
I am rubbish at describing how food tastes, so all I can say is that it tasted very good.

I then allow it to cool completely before covering it and refrigerate it for at least four hours.  Then I am ready for stage four.  I need to take the vegan cheese out of the bowl and then after washing my hands, sprinkle on to my wet hands some salt.  I then pat my salty hands all over the cheese.

Then its a case of waiting another four days.  The vegan cheese is placed on a cooling rack and left in a room with good air flow to do its thing.  If you did decide to make multiple smaller cheeses, you might not need to leave them for four days, maybe just three days, just taste them and see what you think.  Or give Miyoko a ring.

It's the end of the fourth day.  The vegan cheese has completed its voyage and has come to rest on my kitchen work top.  Gramondo said it tasted like a strong soft cheese, not too cheesy.  He liked it.  I liked it.  It was worth the effort.  It was easy to make.  Give it a go.

I've ordered some liquid smoke from America so I will be making "Smoked provolone" next from the same book.

The vegan cheese I've made above can kept for one month wrapped up in the fridge or four months in the freezer.  Not sure if mine will last that long with Gramondo around.  Thanks Miyoko!!

Related Links:

• Amazon - Buy the book online
• Artisan Vegan Life - Miyoko's website
• Facebook - Artisan Vegan Cheese
• Twitter - Follow Miyoko @miyokoskitchen