Plum & Almond Crumble Slice

I went to a BBQ the other day, and my host had this tree laden with the most delightfully tiny plums I have ever seen. He let me pick a bag of them to take home with me.

At first I wasn't sure what I wanted to make with them. My cookbooks weren't offering any inspiration in this case, and when my aunt offered to make her plum platt (known amongst family members as plum plops), my mother's horrified expression made me think that maybe I needed to find something new for us to do with plums.

Enter the Plum & Almond Crumble Slice from the BBC's website....

I adapted the recipe a little bit to make it vegan and here is what I came up with:

Plum & Almond Crumble Slice

Yield: 16 slices according to the original recipe, but I managed 40 squares from this.

250 g. soy margarine or shortening (or half of each), chilled
225 g. confectioner's sugar
300 g. ground nuts (I used walnuts)

140 g. + 25 g. (1 oz) of flour
2 tsp of ground flax seed mixed with 3 tbsp water
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking soda

6 plums, stoned and cut into 6ths
(I ended up using about 50 cherry plums, cut in half and stoned)

50 g. flaked almonds
1 cup oatmeal flakes (don't have a measuring cup? Just throw in a couple of handfuls!)

Preheat the oven to 350 Fahrenheit (180 Celsius or gas 4).
Take a large baking tin (8 x 11 inches or 9 x 13 inches – 20 x 30 cm) and line it with parchment paper. Grease it with oil.

In the food processor, blend the margarine, sugar, and ground nuts. Scoop about half of this into a bowl and set it aside.

Add 140 g. of flour to the food processor and blend until it just forms a dough. Scoop this into the baking tin and spread it out with a spoon or your fingers until it is level. Bake this for 15 minutes, then let it cool for about 10 minutes.

To make the filling, add the reserved flour/sugar/nuts mixture back into the food processor, except for 2 tbsp or so to reserve for the topping. Into the food processor, add the flax mixture, the cinnamon, the baking powder, and the vanilla. Blend until a soft batter forms. Spread this over the base.

Spread the plum pieces on top of the batter. I thought that my plum skins were too chunky, so I whizzed my plums in the processor for a second to get them well chopped before I spread them on the filling. Sprinkle with some more sugar and cinnamon and then put the tin back in the oven to bake for 15 minutes.

Take the 2 tbsp of reserved flour/sugar/nuts mixture and add in the flaked almonds and the oatmeal flakes. Mix this well. When the timer goes, sprinkle this mixture on top and pop it back in the oven for another 15 minutes.

It's tricky to check when this is done and it might need about 10 more minutes than I've called for (I cut my baking time a bit shorter than the original recipe). Since the fruit layer prevents the toothpick test, probably the best way to check this is to keep an eye on it and take it out when it starts to brown around the edges.

Adapted from Good Food Magazine, September 2006.

The plum crumble slices are tart and sweet and the base is rich and melts in your mouth like shortbread. My mom and my aunt both gave it their approval.

When I went outside with the camera, Toby came to check out what I was doing. He isn't sure what to make of the tiny plums.

Foods That Don't Bite Back by Sue Donaldson

The book I've been cooking my way through most recently is Foods That Don't Bite Back; Vegan Cooking Made Simple by Sue Donaldson.

I borrowed this from the library and was amused to see that someone had borrowed it before me and put little checkmarks on the recipes they tried. I love when people do that! Although I wish they had given an indication of whether the recipes had worked for them; a little smiley face or something would have been nice. I had to laugh, then, when I opened up a Punjabi vegetarian cookbook and saw that the Checkmarker had been there, too. We have the same taste in books!


Pissaladiere - This is the first thing I made from this book, and holy crap am I glad that I made it. This is France's answer to pizza; imagine a soft thin, yet fluffy crust with just the right amount of chewiness and just firm enough to support a thick creamy layer of sweet, caramelised onions. A colourful lattice of roasted peppers (a vegan substitute for anchovies, in this case) and a final sprinkle of pine nuts, capers, and kalamata olives elevates this to Special Occasion status; but it's easy enough to make that I think a weekly pizza night should be declared a special occasion.


Ratatouille - This is a dish to celebrate the summer harvest; tomatoes, eggplant, bell pepper, and zucchini, all stewed together with fragrant seasonings like garlic and basil. I served it with fresh corn on the cob and a big platter of garlic bread, and my family enjoyed it very much. I re-worked the leftovers by mixing in cumin and curry and serving it on a plate of gai lan with mock mutton from the Chinese grocery store. Good stuff. My only complaint is that I think the zucchini should be added closer to the end of the cooking time, since I'm not a fan of soft zucchini. I also feel that the dish benefits more from fresh herbs, rather than dried.


Korean Tofu - This dish is amazing! Tofu is marinated in a mixture of tamari, sugar, garlic, onion, and mustard, fried until browned, and then the marinade is added to the pan to make a glaze for the tofu. I used minced fresh onion instead of powder, and wet mustard instead of dry, but I think the result would have been delicious either way. Even my mom enjoyed this stuff and getting her to try tofu is no small feat. This made very pretty meal on a bed on greens, and the leftovers were great cold.


Mexican Corn Salad - Oof, this is the one recipe I did not like. The only change I made was to put onion instead of cilantro. The flavour was great, but the issue I had was texture; the soft black beans, the soft cooked corn, the soft tomato, the soft avocado....The recipe suggested using fresh corn, but it actually should have demanded it since maybe that would have brought in more texture. If I were to make it again (and I might, since the flavour was fine) I would introduce some chopped celery or cucumber to bring in some crunchy elements. Bell pepper, too. As it is, though, the salad does make a good salsa for burritos, but I wasn't able to make enough burritos to get through it all.


sorry, this would have been prettier with more lettuce


Carrot Tahini Sandwich Filling - Ah, here's a different sandwich filling. I'm used to making a sort of fake chicken salad sandwich by mixing vegenaise and relish with coarsely mashed chickpeas; that and hummus are really the only savoury sandwich spread recipes I know, so this was something new for me to try. Shredded carrots are mixed with tahini, vegenaise, nutritional yeast, and some diced green onion. The end result is a vibrant spread that was delicious on toast with some shredded lettuce. I can't wait to throw this in a wrap with a handful of sprouts and some julienned bell pepper. This'll be great for work lunches; the only thing is that it seems to have a tendancy to turn the bread orange, but that's easily bypassed by putting it in a little jar and spreading it on the bread just before I eat it.


Creamy Chocolate Pudding - First of all, I should mention that I think every vegan should have a tofu-based chocolate pudding recipe up their sleeve. It's so easy to blend firm silken tofu into a creamy dessert, and omnivores will never guess that it's actually made from tofu. The recipe I've long been making consists of melted chocolate chips blended with tofu. It's rich and chocolatey and sets up firm enough to make a chocolate pudding pie that you can slice into and serve with some soy ice cream if you so desire. So, since I already had such a good recipe, I was wondering if this new recipe could stand up to it. In the Foods That Don't Bite Back version of chocolate pudding, firm silken tofu is blended up with granulated sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, and just a little bit of oil. The result was so much richer and chocolatier than I expected. It even passed the Mom test. I'm still going to use melted chocolate for my pies, but I think I'm going to make it this way from now on when I want a straight-up creamy chocolatey pudding.


Recipes: 4 out of 5 stars. The flavours were excellent throughout, but the textures of the corn salad and the ratatouille were just a little too soft for me.

Extras: The book has an excellent introduction and a great section for sample menus. It's too bad that there aren't any photos or nutritional analyses, and I was excited to see a chapter about vegan pets but a little disappointed to see that she reccomends seeing a homeopathic vet. 2.5 stars.


Final grade: 6.5 stars


Would I reccomend it? Yes, I think it's a pretty good book overall, and probably worth it just for the pissaladiere recipe. There's a lot of good standard recipes from a variety of cultures here.

Little Buddy checkin' out my meal. As I type this, he's curled up in the laundry basket and kicking a pair of blue-jeans repeatedly. Weirdo.

Doughnuts! And Bunnies.

As much as I intend to keep this blog strictly focussed on reviews of vegan cookbooks, today I'm going off on a little bit of a tangent to talk briefly about two of my favourite things:

Doughnuts, and bunnies.

Liberation BC held a bake sale recently as part of fundraising efforts to neuter and relocate feral rabbits that are over-running the campus of University of Victoria. I haven't been to the UVic campus personally, but I've seen photos of it. In one photo, I counted 20 rabbits hanging out in front of a building. While this would be my dream come true, campus officials are concerned because the rabbits are damaging the landscaping and leaving droppings all over the athletic fields.

When the university announced that the feral rabbits would be culled, Earth Animal Rights responded with a letter offering to capture the rabbits, have them spayed and neutered, and moved to a rabbit sanctuary. The university gave them until the end of July to figure out how many rabbits they'd be able to afford to take. Hence, the bakesale.

According to a newspaper article in The Examiner, 40 bakers and hundreds of attendees showed up to participate in vegan bakesale goodness. Additionally, they were selling ballons and toy rabbits, and 3G restaurant graciously hosted the event and offered to donate 20% of their dinner proceeds from that day to the fundraising effort. Go 3G!

Vegan baking happens to be one of my favourite things in the world. Normally, I do cupcakes and candies for these sorts of events, but I decided to try something new this time.



That's right. Freakin' doughnuts.

I tried out two recipes for this experiment; Vegan Dad's doughnuts, which are yeasted and deep-fried, and Lolo from VeganYumYum's doughnuts, which are baked cake doughnuts.

I had made Lolo's doughnuts before, and knew that it was a good recipe, so I experimented with that one by adding different types of frostings and fillings. The VeganDad recipe was new to me, and I was apprehensive about trying a new recipe when I was already making so many other doughnuts, so I kept it simple; I added a bit of nutmeg and vanilla to the batter, and rolled the doughnuts into little balls instead of taking the time to cut them into doughnut shapes. Once they were cooked and the oil was blotted, I rolled them in cinnamon sugar and called them Bit Bits.

Being a dork, I came up with names for the other flavours, too;

Happy Vanilla Glazed Doughnuts - I used Lolo's glaze recipe and kept adding sugar until it looked thick enough. Once those doughnuts were frosted, I added colourful sugar sprinkles to pretty them up a bit.

Sammies - My first batch of doughnuts was too flat. I doubled the batter recipe for the remaining doughnuts, but what was I going to do with the flat ones? Glue'em together with chocolate to make sammiches, that's what!

Jammies - I made some chocolate doughnuts without holes (hole-less doughnuts? Unholy doughnuts?) so I dipped them in chocolate and injected them with strawberry jam. I decorated them with little chocolate turtle candies that I made.

Jimmies - For the sake of alliteration, my New Jersey friends have finally won the sprinkles vs. jimmies debate. I dipped these chocolate doughnuts in more chocolate, and covered them in candy sprinkles.

Lovely Lemon Lumps - Vanilla doughnuts with lemon glaze and a vegan lemon curd filling. Yellow sugar sprinkles gave them their sunny appearance.

I think they went over well. They sold out, and I had one person profess their love to me over facebook, so I think this means that vegan doughnuts are a success. If you need a vegan doughnut recipe, VeganDad and VeganYumYum are your people.

The last thing I want to say in this post here is that the bakesale alone raised over $8300 for the rabbits. Apparently this is a record for vegan bake sales. Additionally, Fur Bearer Defenders stepped in with a donation of $50 000 to donate to the cause. Thanks to them and the donations of many individuals, there is now enough money to save the rabbits! Hopefully UVic gives EARS enough time to come in and capture them.

I'm so happy I had the oppurtunity to participate in this awesome bake sale. Even though my contribution was small, it was part of something big, and it was wonderful seeing so many people coming together to participate.

There are more photos and information about the bakesale at the Liberation BC Blog.

And just to toot my own horn (because what's a vegan blog without food porn?) here are those doughnuts again:



Nom!

Vegetarian Burgers by Bharti Kirchner

Vegetarian Burgers
The Healthy, Delicious Way to Eat America's Favorite Food
by Bharti Kirchner

I always had trouble making a decent veggie burger from scratch. Until I got this book, I'd tried one good recipe and tons of mediocre ones, so when my mom found this one at a thrift store, I was immediately intrigued – especially after a cursory glance through the book showed that all of the burgers are either vegan or can be made vegan.

This cookbook has a chapter devoted to each of five different types of burgers; grain and bean, vegetable, nut and seed, tofu, and stuffed burgers. Additionally, there's a chapter for side-dishes and one for condiments. Overall, the recipes look creative and they seem to draw inspiration from lots of different cultures, all united under one theme – they all have ingredients that can be thrown into a food processor and made into a burger.

Here are the recipes I tried:

Earthy Burgers with Buttery Beans - Kirchner describes them as follows; “These robust burgers composed of earthy kasha, buttery lima beans, and rich-tasting walnuts have a smooth, delicate texture.” I found them to be easy to make, and despite the delicate texture, they are hardy enough to hold their shape in a bun. The flavour is great; tasty enough that I could eat them plain, but unobtrusive enough that I can happily bury them in condiments without feeling like the flavours are clashing. They even taste good cold! I like how they're not super-fragile or gooey like other veggie burger recipes I've tried in my life. I also like how they got me to eat kasha and lima beans. Very sneaky.

Three-pepper-saute – Well, that's weird, the recipe actually calls for 4 peppers, but I'm not going to quibble since I guess I was only supposed to use three colours of peppers. Ultimately, I used red, green, yellow, and orange bell peppers. This simple dish was really fresh and vibrant looking, and was great as a side-dish and as a burger topping.

Wine-glazed mushrooms – This is a simple dish of chopped scallions and mushrooms glazed with Japanese rice wine. I had to substitute with some ordinary white wine, but I'm assuming it would have turned out just as deliciously either way. Great burger topping.

Saffron Rice Pilaf – Described in the book as “a fragrant combination of basmati rice, saffron, cinnamon, and cardamom.” This is very mildly spiced with little bursts of sweetness from golden raisins. I don't think I'd eat a bowl of it straight up, but it was the perfect foil to the spicy curry my mother made for dinner last night.

Tahini mustard – I made a half-batch of this since I'm the only one here who eats mustard. I really like the ingenious combination of Dijon mustard, tahini, garlic, and lime. I'm looking forward to eating another veggie burger with this. I might turn what's left over into a marinade for tofu!

Caramelized onion – I'd never caramelized an onion before, but it turned out to be super easy, if a little time-consuming. I'm glad I took the time to do it, though, because the onions were great on the veggie burgers and also on baked potatoes.

Recipes: All good. 5 out of 5 stars.

Extras: The book is lacking photos and nutritional information, but the book and each chapter has an introduction, each burger comes with serving suggestions, and there is a nice glossary to explain any “weird” ingredients you may encounter. The introduction gives a lot of useful information about various aspects of veggie burger preparation.
3 out of 5 stars.

Final grade: 8/10

Would I recommend someone to buy it? Yes! Eat veggie burgers and be happy!

Introduction

Ahh, the inaugural post of a brand spankin' new blog.

So, my name is Kay, I'm 26, and I just moved to the west coast of Canada. I have been vegan since June 2003 and over the years I have managed to amass quite a collection of vegan and vegetarian cookbooks. Unfortunately, when I need a recipe, I have this habit of turning to the Internet instead of to my cookbooks. I think the reason for this is that recipe websites often have sections for comments and ratings; I can tell right away if it's a 5-star recipe that people are raving about, or a 1-star flop that leaves people reeling in horror. With cookbooks, though, there's no such luck unless it's a second-hand cookbook and the previous owner was prone to scribbling notes in the margins (a practice I heartily endorse, by the way.)

This project is my attempt to change that – and to justify the number of cookbooks I own. It's about time I start using them more! I haven't decided yet how often I'll update this thing, but every so often, I'll grab one of my cookbooks at random, pick 5 or more recipes from it, cook up a great big meal, and tell you how it went. If you own the book and have been hesitant to use it, at least you'll find out here if some of the recipes worked for one person.

So, here's the deal. Each cookbook is going to get two ratings, a recipe rating, and a rating for extras.

Recipe rating: Out of five stars. If I test five recipes, then each recipe will potentially earn one star depending on whether or not my family and friends and I enjoyed eating it. If I test more than five recipes, I'll bust out my math skills and make it work.

Extras: Also out of 5 stars. I'm looking for the things I want to see in cookbooks;

1. A kick-ass introduction
2. Nutritional information for each recipe
3. Photographs
4. Sample menus, a meal plan, or serving suggestions
5. This last point will be a little arbitrary, but I'm looking for things like clear instructions, easy-to-find ingredients, a nice layout, etc. This point will allow me to reward anything that really stands out, or deduct if something random gets under my skin.

Then I'll add the two up for a final grade out of 10. Ta-da!

So that's it. Hope you'll have fun reading about this project. If it inspires you to buy a book, or avoid a book, or use a book that you already own, or try a recipe that you've been meaning to, then I'll know that I've done a good job here.