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So. I promised to show you my animal friendly chocolate-beetroot pie once it was finished. Drumroll please..! :)
The recipe for this delicious-looking cake came from the Ecofabulous cookbook I mentioned earlier in my Cookbook Sunday Salon. It’s one of the reasons I had to bail out of the 24 Hour Readathon today! But there are worse things. Like, if this pie doesn’t taste as good as it looks.. :(
I deviated from the recipe only in its final stage, applying a couverture instead of the chocolate topping described by Lisette Kreischer. Baking time also took a while longer. In the end I didn’t dare keep it in the oven for a minute more, as I feared it would burn. Now I hope it’s got no soggy bottom ’cause I couldn’t take British Bakeoff judge Mary Berry’s look of disapproval. ;P
This cake is part of a present for Mr Gnoe’s foodie cousin, celebrating her 40th birthday tonight. I hope she’ll like it! She’s baking a (non-vegan) lime pie, carrotcake muffins, brownies and cheesecake herself right this minute. With a little help from a friend, I believe. ;)
I better not forget to take a photo of a slice tonight! Please remind me? There’s twitter, whatsapp, 4square.. Whatever social medium you like. ;)
With the risk of overdoing it, here’s another pic of the pie ready to go. See you later!
This food-related post is part of Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking!
On October 14th I had to travel directly from one event (the opening of the first Bartholomeus van der Helst solo exhibition in the world) to another (the ‘End of Lost-3′ dvd night at my cousin’s). So I got to have dinner on the train from Amsterdam to Utrecht. Poor me? Not at all!
This ‘ekiben‘ (that was made by myself and not bought on the train nor station; hence not a real ekibento) is all made up of leftovers.
In the left bottom corner is a SnackTaxi bag containing cassava crackers, accompanying coconutty tempeh terik and nasi goreng in the bottom tier. Sliced gherkin acting as baran for a sour touch. The tier above carries another Indonesian dish: sambal goreng cabbage. I’ll share the recipe as part of my cabbage favourites feature when I have more time on my hands!
Next to that is a delicious fennel & bean dish from the Puur Plantaardig cookbook by Jacinta Bokma (here’s the dish at dinner time), garnished with radish flowers and, after a lettuce divider, followed by the last bit of caramelised fennel also filling my previous bento.
Last but not least the side container holds cooking pears stewed in wine, sugar and cinnamon for dessert. There was a SMALL problem with the recipe as Mr Gnoe had jotted down 2 liters of red wine, which should have been deciliters — as I concluded when the first bottle of Rioja filled my pan to the brim. ;) Still, they were tasty and look gorgeous, don’t they?
That’s all about this autumn bento!
As I was planning on baking a chocolate-beetroot cake this weekend (!), I was hoping immensily for red beets among Wednesday’s CSA vegetable loot. And YAY — a wish come true!
Other nice veggies too, like fennel which I needed for a fennel-bean dish I meant to make that evening for my visiting brother: a surprisingly good recipe from the new Puur Plantaardig (‘Purely Plant-based‘) cookbook that I mentioned in my Cookbook Sunday Salon.
Here’s the complete list of this week’s greens.
- Dill
- Fennel
- Silver-stalked Swiss chard
- Bundel of young beetroot
- Lollo Rosso lettuce
- Goudreinette apples
I’ll leave you with a preview of my unfinished beetroot pie: only the chocolate couverture topping left to do. That’ll have to wait till morning — so you must have patience as well. I hope you can handle the suspense..? I know I’m finding it difficult! ;P
This food-related post is also submitted to Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking!
Lunch on October 13th: 2 sammies in a SnackTaxi bag and a bento box full of goodies. A picture of the sandwiches with hummus and vegan pate coming out of their bag can be found on Flickr.
The bento contains carrot-cabbage salad with apple, walnuts and curry dressing on a bed of lettuce. Next to that is a star container with fennel caramelised in balsamic vinegar (recipe from the Ecofabulous cookbook by Lisette Kreischer) and pistachio nuts for gap fillers. In the small white container on the lid is a mix of sunflower seeds and pepitas for my salad.
Tabbouleh in the other tier, tomato & basil, grilled oyster mushroom, green olive on usagi pick, half a spicy veggie sausage with roasted paprika sauce to dip (leftover from last night’s pizza), chigai-giri banana and a slice of my first ever tempeh bacon cut in three pieces (recipe from Vegetarian Food for Thought podcast by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau.
Clicking on the photo above will give you a little more of a close-up of this bento box.
October 3rd’s Sort-a-Bento is almost the last in row of my bento post backlog. I only need to write about the one I forgot in August (!): Hartpad Bento #151 — but I’m going to cheat and predate that one to keep things in a neat order. ;)
After that I’m up-to-date and ready to share this week’s bentos!
Monday’s working lunch didn’t start out as a bento but turned into one anyway on its own accord. As you can see there’s a fall theme going on, with a hint of lingering summer!
Upper container: fruit salad (raspberries, apple, pear, banana) with a dressing of lemon juice, agave nectar, cinnamon, black pepper, sereh, fresh ginger and dry mint leaves.
Sammy box on the right: Flemish Christoph bread for a sandwich with hummus, lettuce, tomato, radish and garlic olive.
Lower container: vegetable salad of lettuce & broad-leaved endive topped with a mix of radish, cucumber, gherkin, avocado, steamed green beans, oven-roasted pumpkin and ‘carrot confetti’. Red miso-sesame dressing.
I don’t often bring sweets but this time I had a yummy homebaked pumpkin-ginger cupcake with cinnamon-vanilla frosting for dessert!!!
Not only am I working to tackle my bento back(b)log; same goes for my CSA vegetable bag(log). I don’t think anyone noticed but I haven’t posted my loot for nine weeks!
Now remember those ceramic tiles with veggies that were used to decorate kitchens? It inspired me to follow the same principle using Mosaic Maker. A list of 9 separate photos & descriptions would be just too much of an overkill. ;)
You can click the links below to the original pictures on Flickr for details.
Hooray, now I’m up-to-date again!
My menu plans with this week’s greens include Taze Fasulye (Turkish beans) and a veggie stirfry with pak choi, beans, the last bit of previous week’s cabbage, carrot & tempeh bacon. Yes, I’ve made my first batch of tempeh bacon with the liquid smoke I was finally able to get at the September Streekmarkt!
Tackling my back(b)log with a double bento post.
Sunny Gado-Gado Bento #155
I left summer in style with a Sunny Gado-Gado Bento. It was a lousy summertime — the more reason to brighten up my working days with a colourful lunch!
Gado-gado is eaten at room temperature so it’s perfect for bento, as I’ve shared before. I bring it every once in a while; easy, ’cause it’s made quickly steamed or cooked veggies. My only condition is that I have some leftover peanut sauce. :)
In this case there’s purple potato, cauliflower, green beans, carrots and baked plain tofu. I like to have something sour with it, hence the gherkin slices pushed aside in the corner. A cute curly chili pepper harvested from my balcony is resting on a dollop of compulsory peanut sauce.
Salad vegetables are corn on the cob, yellow bell pepper, red and orange cherry tomatoes & lettuce. More peanut sauce in the little container and homemade sambal bawang in a small holder of The Body Shop. I’ve almost ran out of my shallot sambal and got a huge harvest of peppers so I plan on making some more sambal upcoming weekend. Yay!
The SnackTaxi bag contains emping and cassava krupuk. Oh I felt like such a lucky grrl on September 1st! I just looooooove Indonesian food. :)
Fall Picnic Bento #156
The first bento of fall came along for a picnic in the park on a suddenly gorgeous autumn day (September 25th). Still, the flavours of this snack-for-two are obviously earthier in accordance with the season. It’s quite the carbo-bento!
Upper tier
Radishes with skordaliá (Greek garlic-potato dip) from the Ecofabulous cookbook I borrowed from the library, on a bed of lettuce.
Lower tier
Sundried-tomato hummus for the rosemary & thyme crackers on the side, pesto and cucumber slices to dip, a few pieces of apple.
On the side (next to the already mentioned crackers): cashews and a bottle of bubbly (not shown ;)
The skordaliá was nice but a bit weird as well. It had a gooey texture and tasted VERY strongly of garlic. That did go well with the radishes but I had much left and I threw it away (which I don’t like to do) so I’m not sure whether I’ll make this again. Could be that I did something wrong though, because I didn’t make the full recipe. One should never gamble with ingredients. ;)
Anyway, it was a yummy picnic and I got to bring it in my new carrier bag that I really like! Do you?
I have quite a backlog in posting bentos: I’m currently at number 157 and haven’t even posted no.154 yet. So you know what to expect in the next couple of days! ;)
Bento lunches are perfect for vegans. For one thing: you don’t have to worry that there’s nothing to eat. Even though a plantbased diet really isn’t that hard, our society is so used to dairy that it can be a hassle to eat outdoors at times. But bringing a bento can also assure having a balanced meal: it has just that little extra compared to your common sandwich. Not that my lunches are always perfect ;) But at least it helps me to eat enough veggies etc in the course of a day.
August 29th’ Purple Kimono Bento (named after the box it was packed in — one of my favourites) contained a dinner leftover from the previous night: vegetables roasted with balsamic vinegar on a bed of lettuce. There’s cauliflower, eggplant, red onion, yellow bell pepper, black olives, caper berries and parsley.
If I look closely (6 weeks back is too much for my memory..) the rest of the bento contains steamed or grilled courgette and salad greens: red & orange cherry tomatoes, radish, parsley and chigai-giri style cucumber. I can see no proteins. No carbohydrates. So I’m betting I also took two sammies. ;)
Have you tried a bento yet?
It’s been a long time since I posted a Sunday Salon. But today I wanted to share my growing pile of vegan cookbooks for VeganMoFo.
When I started ExtraVeganza! in January I didn’t have a vegan cookbook worth mentioning. That wasn’t a problem since I managed quite well with my vegetarian cookery books and the Web. I hadn’t used my World Food Cookbook as intensively before and was very content with the amount of vegan recipes! The Vegetarian Table: Japan turned out a faithful companion to my journey as well.
Still, it’s no fun picking a recipe and having to think if, and how, it can be veganised. Especially when you have to conclude it’s no use trying… Remember I am just a beginner!
Also, even though much of your regular cooking can easily be made animal-free, there are some basics that make life as a vegan easier. My silent wish for a completely plant-based reference book was quickly granted by my sister-in-law, who gave me Sarah Kramer’s La Dolce Vegan!
It was an instant success (which I’ve raved about but still need to expand upon) but while looking for another appropriate handbook something else hit me: the difference in American and European cooking, especially concerning ingredient availability.
So today I own no less than 3 Dutch vegan cookbooks! Antoinette Herzenberg & Jacinta Bokma’s Puur Plantaardig, Lisette Kreischer’s Lisette in Luilekkerland and Non*fish*a*li*cious (admittedly the latter contains 1 non-vegan recipe which uses a vegetarian tuna-substitute).
I haven’t really cooked from these yet, but that’s because I thoroughly had to explore my library copy of Ecofabulous first.
This 2009 publication is out of print already and I wanted to find out whether I should preorder the 2nd edition, coming out in December. Hell yes! :) Even if it’s only for Veggie in Pumps‘ AMAZING pumpkin-ginger cupcakes… :)
I’m eagerly awaiting the ‘ecofabulous’ *drop* into my mailbox and from that moment I guess I’ll own about all the Dutch vegan cookbooks existing on the planet. But as Puur Plantaardig was only published last month (!) and Non*fish*a*li*cious in June this year, it’s safe to conclude that green living & vegan eating is gaining popularity!
Two other vegan (cook)books that I actually did own already before ExtraVeganza! are Akasha Richmond’s The Art of Tofu and Living Among Meat Eaters by Carol J. Adams.
The first is a kind of promotional publication for Mori-Nu tofu, the latter a nonfiction book about how to handle aggressive questions about your strict vegetarian (= vegan) lifestyle. 
I bought ‘Meat Eaters’ years ago but didn’t really get around to reading and certainly didn’t try any of the recipes at the end of the volume since they all contained one or more ingredients not commonplace as far as my kitchen cupboards are concerned. Now they are. ;) The same goes for The Art of Tofu. So I’ll probably be checking their indexes out again in the near future. I’m specifically interested in Akasha’s baking blend that works as an egg-replacer. There are several easier egg-substitutes around so I’m curious if this one’s better than the others.
Let’s hope I’ll manage to review all of these vegan cookbooks in the near future!
Do you have any recommendations on books I should add to this collection?
It goes without saying that they don’t need to be Dutch!
Currently reading
Of course there’s other bookish news as well. I’m currently reading Tinkers by Paul Harding; a recommendation on Books on the Nightstand (a podcast I like to listen to). I first started reading about 2 months ago but couldn’t get into it, even though the starting point is pretty interesting. The first line of the book:
George Washington Crosby began to hallucinate eight days before he died.
After finishing all 3 volumes of Haruki Murakami’s 1q84 last week I decided to give Tinkers another try. It’s a quick read and didn’t win last year’s Pulitzer Prize for nothing, right?!
I’m about a third in and this time I actually like it! :) That just goes to show you the moment or emotional state in which you read a work of fiction does influence your appreciation. At least it does with me. :)
24 hour readathon
And yay, it’s that time of year again! Dewey’s semi-annual 24 hour readathon runs on Saturday October 22nd. I usually just join the fall edition and I’m a bit sad that I can only partly participate this time because of an important birthday party I’m going to.
So here’s what I’m going to do.
- The official starting time in my area is 2pm (GMT+1). That would hardly leave me any time to read so I’ll be beginning my readathon at 8am.
- As I will be staying over after the party I’ll stop the readathon at the beginning of the evening (before or during our trip) and write a wrap-up post on Sunday afternoon when I’m back home.
- Due to this I don’t think I’ll be participating in (m)any mini-challenges…
Next Sunday I’ll show you the books I plan to pick from! Are you joining in as well? Reading rules!
The Sunday Salon is a virtual gathering of book lovers on the web, blogging about bookish things of the past week, visiting each others weblogs, and oh — reading books of course ;)
This post is also submitted to Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking.
During my ExtraVeganza! pilot project in January this year I purchased some foods I hadn’t used before — and can’t live without now!
Today I’ll share my top-5 for VeganMoFo.
In no particular order:
- agave syrup
- nutritional yeast
- apple vinegar
- soy milk (Provamel)
- vanilla extract
And yes, all of these favs are organic. ;)
Agave syrup
Agave nectar is a sweetener with a taste renimiscent of honey, often used in vegan baking. It’s pretty expensive but you only use a little at a time as it is sweeter than regular sugar. It’s easy to imagine in which situations I pick up this bottle.
Apple vinegar
Our kitchen cupboards have always been filled with several kinds of vinegar, but never apple cider vinegar. And now it’s a must-have! The acetic acids in vinegar help activate baking powder and baking soda, which enhance the leavening or rising of baked foods; making a better crumb and also improving the flavour. But apple cider vinegar is also nice in a salad dressing. ;)
Nutritional yeast
I had never heard of nutritional yeast before and thought it similar to active yeast used in bread baking… But it’s not. Nutritional yeast is a fungus and a source of (complete) protein and B-vitamins. It can be used as a condiment and has a hearty, umami, flavour: great for ‘rawmezan’ (mixed with finely chopped pine nuts and pecans or walnuts a nice topping for pasta & salads), a cheese-like taste in bechamel sauce, a savoury mushroom gravy or tofu scramble. I’m sure there are plenty of uses I haven’t discovered yet!
Soy milk
Soy milk is (as far as I know) the fattest of plant-based milks and therefor great for a frothy vegan cappuccino. ;) Wouldn’t want to miss it in the world! I’ve tried several brands of soy milk and not all of them taste that good… Personally I like Provamel best and I buy the supplemented type (extra calcium, B12 etc.) — just to be on the safe side. You can also find soy- or nut milk among the ingredients in vegan baking recipes.
With soy ilk, apple vinegar and agave syrup are essential in making my marvellous mayonnaise. Next to that you only need sunflower oil, salt and mustard to whip up a fantastic vegenaise in only 5 minutes. I always have a jar of it on standby in my fridge. Not just as a condiment but also for dips and sauces, or as a creme fraiche substitute in cold dishes.
Vanilla Extract
Vanilla extract is another ingredient mostly used in baking; you must think I’m quite a patissier by now — and I wish I was! ;) But vanilla extract also gives just that bit of extra to my hot chocolate!
So. These five ingredients are my recent loyal companions. Did you know them?
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Join Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking with a food-related post!
My BX bookshelf
