SEITAN IS MY MOTOR

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mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 06:53:00 +0000

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Indian Week, Part II

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 13:58:00 +0000

This meal was based on the aloo gobi recipe from the book Asian Vegan Kitchen. I didn't have potatoes so I used chickpeas instead and voilà chana gobi. Of course this was served with parathas again.

Last time I mentioned that we have four Indian /Asian cookbooks. Apart from World Vegetarian and Asian Vegan Kitchen we also own Das große vegetarische indische Kochbuch (English version here) and Das große Buch der Asiatischen Küche (English version here). The first one is a vegetarian cookbook and lots of the recipes featured are vegan or easy to veganize. A recipe that I use pretty often is one for Ghia Kofta. It's a recipe for deep-fried dumplings made from bottle gourds. Because bottle gourds are not available in Dresden, I usually use zucchini. When cooked in a creamy tomato gravy, this dish is called Malai Kofta, which was one of my favourite dishes in my pre-vegan days.
If you have never made these dumplings, you really should. They taste amazing and don't take much time to be put together. You just have to mix shredded zucchini with chickpea flour, fresh ginger and spices and then deep-fry, fry, or bake the dumplings. There are many recipes for ghia kofta online. This one is pretty close to what I make from the cookbook. (Technically it is a recipe for Malai kofta as far as I know - It's ghia kofta plus gravy - and it's pretty easy to veganize as well.)

When I made the dumplings last week, I made them bigger than usual, fried them and served them with dal instead of the creamy tomato sauce.

The second cookbook I just mentioned is not vegan friendly at all. It's horribly meat ladden with only a few and boring vegetarian or vegan recipes. I think I've never really used that book and I don't understand how an Asian cookbook can contain so many meat dishes. I don't know much about Thai, Chinese, or Japanese cuisine, but I know that a lot if Indians are vegetarians and that there are many, many fantastic vegetarian or vegan Indian dishes around. The funny thing is that when you look at a lot of the pictures, the food that is shown doesn't really look like meat. The dead animal parts are covered in spicy and colourful sauces, gravies and pastes. So when I first thought that there wouldn't be much veganizing potential in the book I finally found a lot of possibilities. If you have to make a gravy or paste and then marinate the food, then why not use tofu or seitan instead? Here's my first veganized version of a vindaloo dish -

Tofu Vindaloo:
I made the vindaloo paste, marinated the tofu over night and baked it covered for 20 minutes and uncovered for another 10 minutes. Served with leftover rice, dal, and ghia kofta.

Indian Week, Part I

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 13:22:00 +0000

First of all, thanks to everybody who gave me tips and recipes for zucchini. So far I have made zucchini muffins, a savoury zucchini bread, zucchini stir fries, and a zucchini soup. I won't blog about these items today, but of course there will be some zucchini starring in this entry as well.

I don't know how it happened, but I ate Indian or Indian inspired food for one week straight. I think it all started when I was reading the Give our cookbooks some use thread on the ppk-forum. I wanted to take part and flipped though the suggested cookbook Voluptuos Vegan. I really like this book and have cooked from it various times, but I wasn't in the mood for anything in there, when I had a look at it a couple of days ago.
Of course I have a lot of cookbooks that I need to give some use and I realized that we have two Asian and two Indian cookbooks at home that we rarely use. I decided to change that and started the week with Dal with Panch Phoran and Gobi ka Paratha.

This dish is from the book The Asian Vegan Kitchen (A book I have blogged about before here.) It's called masoor ki dal and the original version in the book is made with red lentils and coriander. I only had regular brown lentils on hand and used them instead. I also used chives instead of the coriander and I fried the panch phoran mixture together with a couple of red peppers, which I pureed afterwards. Panch Phoran is one of my favourite spice mixes. It contains equal amounts of mustard, fenugreek, fennel, kalonji, and cumin seeds and adds a really unique flavour to dishes.
The dal was served with gobi paratha. Paratha is a flatbread that can be made plain or it can be filled. I chose the cauliflower filled version from Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian.

These breads are very easy to make, they are addictive, and a good way to hide veggies, if you have to. They are so addictive that I had to make them again, this time filled with a veggie I still have tons of: zucchini.

For the bread I used Madhur Jaffrey's recipe again, which makes eight parathas. If you don't have her book, you can find a similar version for parathas here, which calls for 250 g flour.
To make eight filled parathas you will need 300 g flour (I used 150 g white flour and 150 g whole wheat flour). Instead of butter/ghee I would recommend to use oil. I also didn't use any ajwain.

For the zucchini filling I chose a recipe from the great page Monsoon Spice. You can find the recipe for the filling here.

[Yes, I still copy recipes by hand]

My alterations:
Heat 1 t oil in a pan. Add ginger, garlic, onions, and chillies. Fry for 1-2 minutes.
Add garam masala, cumin, and salt, stir, and fry for another minute.
Add grated zucchini and fry until water has evaporated and mixture starts to brown. (Approx. 10 minutes over medium heat.)
Add amchoor powder.

To make the parathas, flour your working surface, knead the dough again and divide it into eight balls of the same size.

Roll each ball into a disk with a diameter of 11 cm or so.

Place equal amounts of filling in the centre of the disks.

Fold the dough over the filling and seal.

Turn the disk around (seem side down) and carefully roll into a disk again.

Heat a pan. You may sprinkle it with oil, but if you use a non-stick pan, no oil is neccessary for cooking the flatbreads. Cook over medium heat until both sides are browned. (Turning them around every 30 seconds.) Stack the breads of a plate and cover with a second plate or foil.

You can keep these an a fridge for up to three days and reheat them in a pan. You can serve these instead of rice with dal, aloo gobi or whatever your like. I will also try to give you some more ideas in the next post, in which I write about the rest of the Indian week.

Adventures in Tortilla-Making and Zucchini Overload

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:15:00 +0000

Two weeks ago P. and I (again) went to our favourite place, the mostly vegan restaurant Zest in Leipzig. This time I ordered a San Antonio Burrito, made from a guajillo tortilla, avocado, black beans, smoked paprika tofu balls, onion sprouts, plantainchips, and salsa. Need I say more? This was the best burrito I've ever had. It tasted wonderful, had all these different layers and textures and looked beautiful, too. Unfortunately I didn't bring my camera...The burrito was so good that I wanted to make something similar at home and because you can't buy any decent tortilla shells in this town, I had to make my own. (By decent I mean no preservatives and other funny E-numbers.)
Madhur Jaffrey has a very good recipe for wheat tortillas which never fails. (It's in her book World Vegetarian.) I made one version with half all purpose flour/half strong bread flour and another version with whole wheat flour. It's really amazing how easy it is to make your own tortillas and you can always adjust the taste or flour type.
For my first burrito I used ingredients that were similar to those in the San Antonio Burrito: black beans and my red pepper cream cheese.

For the second version, I added smoked salt, chipotle powder, and achiote to the tortilla dough, so that the tortillas came out red and had a nice smokey flavour. The burritos were filled with a lentil, seitan, and tomato stew, grilled zucchini, and eggplants. I served these with tofu cashew sour cream. So delicious!

Can you see how huge these zucchini-slices are? I have a very nice neighbour who gave me vegetables from her garden, because she had too many. She gave me 4 green zucchini and one beautiful yellow one plus tomatoes and Hungarian hot peppers. Which means I have my own CSA for free! But, the zucchini are huge! The first two green ones she gave me weighed 1.5 kg (3 lbs) each and the third and fourth one even 2 kg (4 lbs) each! I am not kidding.
Look how big they are:

[The zucchino next to an ambercup squash]

[This is the diameter in inches!]

[The yellow one, fortunately it is smaller!]

So, I've been eating zucchini for quite some time now. I fried, grilled, and roasted zucchini, I put them into salads, I ate them with rice and as a snack, I had them as an appetizer:

[With rice, fresh tomatoes, and hot Hungarian peppers from above]

And I had them raw with cauliflower cheese (raw cauliflower, nutritional yeast, spices) and green pea-hemp pesto (raw green peas, basil, hemp seeds, and spices):

[As zucchini noodles with cauliflower-cheese and green pea-hemp pesto]

No seriously, I ran out of ideas. But I didn't run out of zucchini. So, if you have any ideas what to do with them, please post. Please let me know about your favourite zucchini recipes. If not, I am going to throw a 4 lb zucchini at you :)

Hazelnut-Ginger Mini Pies with Figs

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 16:06:00 +0000

Last week the first Turkish figs found their way into the grocery stores around our place. I couldn't resist buying some, as I love fresh figs for their vibrant colours and their mild taste. I've eaten most of them as a snack or cut them into my breakfast muesli. But with their colourful appearance they also deserve someting special, don't you think? A couple of weeks ago I started experimenting a bit with making my own nut milks and with making healthier desserts. These mini pies are one of the results. In this recipe raw nuts are the base both for the custard-like filling in the pie and for the crust. That way you will have a use for the milk and for the nut pulp at the same time. The pie crusts are made from oats, nuts, and figs, so there's no refined sugar and no oil or margarine involved. The custard combines a mild hazelnut flavour with fresh yoghurt and a pinch of ginger.

Hazelnut-Ginger Mini Pies with Figs

Hazelnut Milk (yield: 1 2/3 cups)
70 g hazelnuts (1/2 cup), soaked over night in
480 ml (2 cups) water
1 T maple syrup

In your food processor, blend together hazelnuts and water. Line a strainer with cheesecloth and pour hazelnut mixture though the strainer into a bowl.

Press out as much liquid as possible and reserve pulp.

Hazelnut-Ginger Custard
240 ml (1 cup) hazelnut milk
2 T tapioca starch*
1/2 cup brown rice syrup
120 ml (1/2 cup) soy yoghurt
1/2 T bourbon vanilla powder (or 1 t vanilla extract)
1/4 t ginger powder

In a small saucepan combine milk, tapioca starch, and rice syrup in a saucepan. Cook for 2-3 minutes over medium heat until mixture thickens and gets a pudding-like consistency.
Remove from heat, stir in yoghurt, vanilla, and ginger. Let cool completely.

*This custard will come out quite runny, more like thin yoghurt. I like it that way, but if you want a thicker version, add another T of tapioca.

Mini Pie Shells (makes 4)
Preheat oven to 200°C (400°F)
4 mini pie pans, 10 cm diameter (4 inch)
55 g (1/2 cup) oats, ground into a course flour + 2 T oats, not ground.
reserved hazelnut pulp
100 g (1/2 cup packed) dates
4 T hazelnut milk
1 t lemon peel
1 T lime juice
1/4 t salt

In your food processor, puree dates and hazelnut milk until smooth. In a bowl, combine the other ingredients, stir, and add dates. Mix until thoroughly combined.
Divide the dough into four parts, grease pie pans, and press dough into pans.

Bake for 12-14 minutes and carefully remove crusts from their pans. Let cool.

Arrange pies:
Cut two figs into thin slices.
Fill the pie crusts with custard and top with three fig slices. Serve immediately.

Too many redcurrants?

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 17:09:00 +0000

No, there can never be too many redcurrants. As some might remember, I have blogged about these little berries before, I baked them into muffins and filled some delicious cookies with them. So of course, this summer they found their way into my kitchen again. Bring your popcorn, this is a double feature: Johannisbeer-Quark Eis (redcurrant-curd cheese ice cream) and Redcurrant Scones.

I am sorry for the bad condition of the ice cream. I don't have an ice cream scooper
and the ice cream was still very hard when I tried to get it out of the box. It's still VERY good.

Johannisbeer-Quark Eis
Redcurrant-Curd Cheese Ice Cream

Wordexplanation: Quark (curd cheese) is a fresh dairy cheese which is very popular in Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, and several other Eastern European countries. Although it looks similar to cream cheese and ricotta, it is not the same. It has a creamy texture and a slightly sour taste. The original version contains almost no fat, but you can find versions with a fat content up to 40 % or even more. (These are made with additional cream)
Quark is used for a lot of desserts. Mixed with fruit you can eat it instead of yoghurt (you can buy processed versions of this in almost every supermarket), mixed with herbs it is a great spread for bread. Quark is also the main ingredient for German cheese cake.

Although you find vegan yoghurt almost everywhere in Germany, vegan quark is hard to find and the only version I've ever tried tasted like something straight from the chemical lab.
I've always liked quark and always believed that there had to be a possibility to create a vegan version.
Taste and texture have to be somewhere between cream cheese and yoghurt, so why not combine these two? I started out with a simple nut cheese and added some yoghurt. This "quark-base" had a very bland taste and this makes it very versatile. I haven't tried to make something savoury with this yet, but I am sure that with some herbs, salt and pepper, this would make a pretty good spread as well. But my first homemade quark went into some ice cream.
Even if you have never had any quark, you should really make this ice cream. (And if it was only to say the word quark.) It has a very refreshing taste, it's similar to yoghurt ice cream or frozen yoghurt made with fruits. Although redcurrants are pretty sour this ice cream isn't. It's not to sweet either. It's perfectly fresh and creamy. (Even though the photo doesn't show.)

Redcurrant-Quark Ice Cream

For the quark-base:
Soak 75 g (1/2 cup) raw macadamia nuts in 1 1/2 cups water overnight.
Drain the nuts and place them in a blender or food processor.
Add 1/2 cup vanilla soy yoghurt, 1/2 cup water, and the seeds of half a vanilla bean. (Or 1 t vanilla extract.)
Process until creamy and set aside.

To make the ice cream:
Place 160g (1 cup) redcurrants in a saucepan, add 75 g sugar (1/4 cup + 2 T), 1/2 cup water, and 1 t lemon peel. Cook over medium heat for two minutes.
Dissolve 1 T potato starch in 1/4 cup water and add to the saucepan. Cook mixture for two more minutes until it has thickened. Let cool a bit and press though a strainer to get rid of the currant seeds. Discard the seeds.
Pour the redcurrants into the quark-base, mix well and place in the refrigerator until completely cool. Freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.

Low-Fat Red Currant Drop-Scones (makes 12)

In this recipe I substituted some yoghurt for most of the fat, so maybe these don't count as scones and indeed their texture is more muffin like. But at least they have the (British?) scone look :)

180 g (1 1/2 cups) whole wheat flour
180 g (1 1/2 cups) all purpose flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
40 g (3 T) coconut oil, not melted. (I use this instead of shortening)
75 g ( 1/4 cup + 2 T) sugar
180 ml (3/4 cup) vanilla soy milk mixed with
2 T lemon juice & peel of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup soy yoghurt
160 g (1 cup) redcurrants.

Mix together: flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
Cream together sugar, coconut oil, and yoghurt. Add soy milk. Carefully mix together wet and dry ingredients and don't overmix. If there are still little lumps from the coconut oil, that's okay. Carefully fold in redcurrants.
Refrigerate for 1 hour. Meanwhile preheat oven to 200°C (400°F) and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Drop batter onto the baking sheets. For 12 scones each should have a diameter of 2 1/2 inch.
Bake for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
Serve warm or cool with a scoop of redcurrant-curd cheese ice cream.

Hummus Nori Rolls & Cookbook Testing

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:46:00 +0000

I didn't feel like cooking rice, so I filled my nori rolls with carrots, cabbage, chard, and hummus with some extra lemon juice added to it. A very easy and fast to prepare snack. Or you could serve it with some rice on the side instead of inside the roll...

Apart from the rolls I've been doing a lot of testing for Joy Tienzo lately. I mentioned before that I am a tester for her cookbook which will be out in autumn. It will be called called Cook, Eat, Live: Vegan Recipes from Everyday to Exotic. And that is exactly what you can expect. Very easy, everyday, and fast to prepare recipes followed by very exotic, creative, surprising, and impressive ones. If you want to know how Joy's cooking is like, check out her blog veganjoy. And you might also want to check out the latest veganfreak podcast episode, where Dreena Burton, Dino Sarma and Joy talk a bit about food, summer cooking, their latest projects and Joy's cookbook. I am really happy that I could be a tester for the book, as I have enjoyed a lot of tasty food, was able to try many new foods and recipes, and had a lot of fun cooking. Joy's recipes are something very special and even the simple ones will surprise you.
Some of the latest recipes I've been trying are:

Italian Cornmeal Cake:
served with lemon curd and crème Anglaise. Great combination of sour and sweet tastes!

Cornbread:
with seeds!

Chocolate Chai Cookies:
Great combination of chocolate and spices. Crunchy on the outside but with a soft centre. I munched on these for a whole week and was very sad when the batch was gone!

And this one you might recall from my party food post:
Fruit and Cream Tart:
What you can't really see in the picture is the cream that is under the fruit: A creamy vanilla custard made with almond and coconut milk. Perfect for a hot summer's afternoon.
As you can see, Joy is a great cook and I was so glad that I could be a part of the project!

Ginger-Coconut-Pear Ice Cream

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:24:00 +0000

Last year we had a very rainy summer, the year before summer was very hot and this year it's a mixture of both, which I like very much. But sometimes it still gets too hot. After a week of rainy days and colder temperatures we had temperatures around 30°C again. I am from the North of Germany and seriously I can't stand it when temperatures get that high. Whenever I have to go out on these days (and usually I have because I start work at 2 or 3 pm) I feel like my body and brain are melting. I am much better when I can stay inside a shady room with a huge bowl of ice cream.

Fresh ginger and coconut give this frozen dessert a slightly Asian touch and the smell of the fruit and spice mixture is really hard to resist!

Ginger-Coconut-Pear Ice Cream (yield 1 pint)

1 t finely diced fresh ginger root
240 g ( 2 small or 1 2/3 cup) pear, finely diced
1 cup sesame milk (or almond)
1 cup coconut milk
75 g ( 1/4 cup + 2 T) sugar
1 T tapioca starch
1/2 t guar gum
2 T fresh lime juice

Reserve 1/4 cup of the coconut milk and mix with tapioca.
Combine ginger, pear, and remaining milk in a saucepan.
Add sugar and simmer for five minutes. Remove from heat, let cool a bit, and purée with an immersion blender (or in your blender/food processor).
Add tapioca milk mixture, carefully stir in guar gum, and bring to another boil. Cook for another 2-3 minutes until the mixture thickens. (Purée again if guar gum lumps remain.) Stir in lime juice and let cool completely. Place in your fridge over night and freeze in your ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions.
Enjoy with some fresh fruit or hazelnut brittle.

Party Food, Finally!

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 11:44:00 +0000

Time is passing by so quicky these days. I turn around and and another week is over. I promised to write about P's party a long time ago but never wrote a single sentence. We had this party a month ago and you might think that I forgot about it completely, but I didn't.

I still remember it quite clearly because it was very special to me. I am the only vegan in our household and all of or friends around here are omnis. (Yep, not even a vegetarian!) When P. mentioned that he might celebrate his birthday and invite a bunch of people I happily agreed to host a party. A big buffet popped into my mind and I couldn't stop thinking about tons of food. I suggested to plan and prepare the food and started asking P. what kind of food he would like. I said that I would take care of everything food related and if he would mind if it was vegan. He didn't mind and so I started planning. Around the same time I found out that Herbstsonne from Herbstsonne and The Sisters Vegan was planning a trip to Germany and I sent her an email to ask her where exactly she was going. I was totally surprised and exited when I found out that she was staying two hours away from Dresden. I asked her if she liked to come over and although she barely knew me, she agreed. She arrived at the day of our party and had to spend the whole day chopping vegetables and frosting cake!

In the end I messed up my time plan a bit because we spent most of the time chatting. Herbstsonne was such great company and I really enjoyed the time I spent with her. Then P. and a friend of his came to our rescue to chop the last vegetables, fry some green pea patties, assemble a cake and a lasagna and carry everything into a car. When the party started P.'s friend, Herbstsonne, and me assembled everything and waited for the guests.
We had two kinds of bread (Home style potato rolls made into a bread from Veganomicon and parsley and garlic bread from The Village Vegan.) We also had the Roasted Red Pepper Hummus from The Alternative Vegan, Red Pepper Cream Cheese, Walnut Mushroom Pâté from Veganomicon, a polenta lasagne with tomatoes and eggplants, Isa's quiche, an orzo salad, tabbouleh, a nut roast and a coconut curry soup. The pictures were all made by Herbstsonne. I left my camera in the flat. But Herbstsonne did a great job as a photographer. You can see more of her pictures of her flickr page.

[click the picture to enlarge]

And of course there were cakes! We made the Mocha Devastation Cake from My Sweet Vegan and a Fruit and Cream Tart which was another test recipe for Joy. Although I enjoyed all foods I liked the cakes best. The Mocha Devastation Cake was moist and fluffy and really rich at the same time and the Fruit and Cream Tart was just the perfect summer treat with its light cream and all those fruits on top.

[click to enlarge]

I didn't tell a lot of people in advance that all the food was vegan, so we got a lot of "oh, this is really good!" and "oh, this is really vegan? How did you make it?" comments. Honestly I am so sick of the "So what do you eat?" question that I always feed the people first and then tell them the food was vegan and, yes, full of tofu. One girl, who told me that she's a real meat and potatoes girl asked for the mocha cake recipe and when I told her that it included a whole package of tofu she wouldn't believe me. It took me five minutes to convince her I wasn't joking. In the end this was a very nice, cruelty free evening with lots of delicious food and contend and very full guests. And nobody asked me what a vegan eats.

Chocolate Ice Cream and Coconut-Carrot Muffins

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 08:27:00 +0000

It's summer over here although it feels like autumn some days. The temperatures are around 20°C and I rarely go out without a jacket and an umbrella just to be safe. But I don't care so much about the weather. As long as I can have my usual summer treats I feel fine. One of them is chocolate ice cream.
To me a good chocolate ice cream has to be rich and creamy and I am quite sure that with this recipe I found what I was looking for. I often make ice creams which look fine but after freezing them properly they come out a bit watery. Instead this one is very creamy and has a deep chocolate flavour. To make this I started with half of the fancy pants vanilla ice cream recipe from a vegan ice cream paradise. (I used a soy creamer with a fat content of 17 % and I used caramel syrup instead of the sugar.
I also stirred in:
4 T natural unsweetened cocoa powder
75 g (3/4 of a Ritter Sport chocolate bar) dark chocolate, melted
1/2 t guar gum*
*I've been experimenting with this gum a lot over the last year and if you have never used it before I would recommend to start with 1/4 t and see how it works for you. If you use too much of the guar, the texture of the ice cream gets sort of grainy and gummy.)

When the ice cream was completely cooled, I poured it into big silicone ice cube moulds. But of course you can also just pour it into your favourite air-tight container and scoop it out with a spoon afterwards.

Talking about autumn. This picture looks a lot as if it was taken on a sunny day in autumn, doesn't it? But in fact it was just the evening light.
Last week I heard people talk about carrot halva. Dino of the Alternative Vegan podcast talked a bit on how to veganize this Indian dish and loveliebutterfly blogged about her mother making such a treat for her. Now carrots in deserts scare me a bit and I think I couldn't handle all those carrots that would be necesarry for such a carrot halva. But as you see I am working on it and so I tried to create a muffin which might imitate the carrot halva taste. (Even if only in my fantasy because I never had carrot halva) Dino suggested to veganize it with the help of some coconut milk and I think the idea of combining coconuts and carrots finally got me.

Golden Coconut Carrot Muffins (makes 6)
loosely adapted from Susan's Carrot Spice Muffins

Preheat oven to 200°C /400°F and grease a muffin pan.

sift together in a bowl:
120 g ( 1 cup)flour
10 g (1 T) soy flour
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 pinch salt

in your food processor or blender combine and blend until creamy:
60 g (1/4 cup) silken tofu
130 g (1/4 cup) brown rice syrup*
70 ml (1/3 cup) plain or vanilla soy milk

*These muffins are just slightly sweet. If you want them sweeter fell free to add more sweetener or replace the rice syrup with agave syrup.

add wet to dry ingredients and add:
2 T slivered almonds
50 g (1/2 cup) grated carrots
45 g (1/2 cup) dried, shredded coconut
1/2 t almond extract

Mix everything until combined but to not overmix. Pour into prepared muffin pan and bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.

By the way, you can also find some of my recipes on Wanda Embar's awesome site vegan peace.
Even if you are not looking for my recipes, check out vegan peace as it offers not only recipes but also an abundance of information on veganism and related issues and also lists a huge amount of resources.

Chocolate Coffee Cookies

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 16:49:00 +0000

I know, I promised pictures from P.'s birthday party. But I haven't got them yet. We prepared the food all day long and when it was time to take everything to the car and transport it to the place we were having our party at, I forgot the camera. But someone else took some great photos of everything and I hope she will send them to me soon. "She" is herbstsonne from the great sistersvegan blog, wo came over for our party. She is in Germany right now and not too far away from Dresden. I invited her over and we had the most awesome weekend which I will tell you more about when I can get hold of the photos. Herbstsonne and a friend of P.'s helped me cook all the things that my crazy vegan brain had made up. Okay, I will tell you more about that when I actually have some photos. What about some cookies and some other food in the meantime? Yes? Cookies first? Okay, here they are. These cookies have a very deep dark chocolate flavour enhanced by coffee powder and rum. Trust me, they taste awesome!

Chocolate Coffee Cookies with Rum (makes 30 cookies)
adapted from this recipe

100 g margarine (7 T)
110 g packed brown sugar (1/2 cup)
100 g white sugar (1/2 cup)
1/4 cup soy milk
2 T rum (or 2 T soy milk)
1 t rum extract
1 1/2 t vanilla extract
2 T instant coffee powder
180 g flour (1 1/2 cups)
50g white rice flour (1/4 cup)
20 g cocoa powder (1/4 cup)
1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1 pinch salt

Preheat oven to 200 ° C, line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
Cream together margarine, sugars, milk, rum, extracts and coffee powder.
Mix in flours, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix until you get a firm dough, if too firm add some more soy milk.
Shape dough into balls and flatten with your hands or a glass. Bake for 5-8 minutes and let cool completely on a rack.

After these cookies, let me present you something more healthy:
Finally, it's berry season over here and after I have eaten strawberries for quite some time now, they are replaced by raspberries, blueberries and blackberries in the grocery stores. So no more strawberries for breakfast. But aren't blueberries as good?

Look at this. It's Isa's tofu scramble from Vegan with a Vengeance. I am addicted. I had it three days in a row and it totally cured my strange craving for cheese. (Take this, stupid cheese craving!) I've had it for breafast, took it to work and served it to P. My favourite version is made with some red peppers and 1/2 teaspoon of chipotle powder.

And this is what I had for breakfast today:

Celine's Dijon Thyme Spelt Buns. Go. Make. These! They are slightly sweet and still savoury, very soft and have a professional texture (like straight from the bakery). I made mine with equal amounts of whole wheat and rye flour instead of the spelt and washed them with a mixture of agave nectar and mustard. Yes, that's why they look so dark. Nothing burned. (At least not this time.)
Today I also munched on these bread sticks:

And had gnocchi with mashed butternut squash for dinner:

Both are pretty awesome recipes that I have been testing over at the VFF for Joy. I will tell you when her cookbook is out, because you will need to buy it. Joy's recipes are amazing, very tasty, surprising and creative.
Now, back to unhealthy stuff. I made the basic chocolate cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and topped them with some coffee-caramel buttercream. Then I fed them to my coworkers who polished them off in seconds. Even although a new collegue wondered how I did that without eggs and why you couldn't taste the soy milk in the cupcakes...

And now look came in the mail today (Or better, who travelled with my carrots):

I took him out to gnaw on some basil...

Time flies...

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:20:00 +0000

Oh yes, it does. I whish I could update this blog more often, but the "real life" has been absorbing most of my time. I still owe you some bits from my past and I need to write about food again, right?
If you wondered why there was not vacation food in my last post, I will give you the explanation now. We stayed in a very small village with restaurants that had traditional German (meat and potatoes) or regional (seafood and fish) dishes on their menus. We had a look at the vegetarian options at one menu and they managed to put dairy into everything. So we decided to use the awesome kitchen in our nice and cosy apartment instead. P. did most of the cooking, and we had simple and tasty dinners (spaghetti, stuffed pitas, fried vegetables) and awesome breakfasts (strawberries, vegan pates, fresh bread) there. But wait, besides from all that fish there is something completely vegan that I have to share with you and which is a very "typical" and "traditional" food mostly to be found in the coastal areas in Germany. It comes in juice, alcoholic beverages, jellies, jams and even candies. It's the sea-buckthorn berry which I adore and which only grows at the sea. This is what I got at the local grocery stores in Rerik:
Sea-buckthorn liqueur, juice, and jam. The berries are bright orange in colour, very high in vitamin C, and have a very sour and slightly astringent taste with a hint of fir (as if there was some essential oil mixed in). I haven't decided what to do with these goodies yet, but I am thinking of cupcakes!

Another thing we bought was this home-made thyme jelly. We found it at a small farm that sold local foods. Because I had never seen this before I had to buy a jar. Usually I am a bit conservative when it comes to unusual taste combinations. Conservative meaning I refuse to try them. My thoughts would centre around thyme being a slightly bitter herb and then they would lead me to the conclusion that you shouldn't pair such a bitter herb with sugar. You shouldn't? Yes you should! I thought of Celine's lemon thyme cake and took the jar with me. And now I am thinking of spreading the jelly on top of Celine's dijon thyme spelt buns.

On the way back from our vacation, P. suggested that we should stop in Berlin to have some good vegan food. So we stopped our rental car and turned on P.'s laptop. (I know) I looked up Melisser's awesome blog about vegan eats in Berlin. Because we were hungry we drove straight to the Boxhagenerstraße in Berlin Friedrichshain. Our mission was to eat the vegan döner as praised by Melisser.
We came with high expectations to this place.
Only to be immediately dissapointed:

"On vacation" when I am in Berlin to indulge in vegan food?
P. and I decided that we should skip lunch and have dessert instead. Right around the corner we found a small cafe that was also praised over at Melisser's blog. It's called Cupcake and it sells vegan and non-vegan cupcakes.
On our way to Berlin I had our vegan feast all planned out. Vegan Döner first and then a cupcake. The "perfectly peanut" cupcake to be exact. When we finally arrived at cupcake and I had a look at the selection of cupcakes in the store, I realized that there was no peanut butter perfection. They only had a cupcake called "raspberry swirl". Did I say only? I think this is the first shop I've ever visited that sells actual cupcakes and no oversized and too sweet muffins enriched with chemicals. And this shop has vegan cupcakes. So, yeah, I take back the "only" and have a raspberry swirl instead, please. And what can I say, it was awesome. A chocolate cupcake with some raspberry buttercream. Look at this awesomeness:

After this heavenly sugar overload we left the store with some real food on our mind. I thought of buying some plain bread rolls at a bakery or something similar simple. I am used to have simple food on the road because there are rarely any fancy vegan options. But then we turned around the corner and spotted a small hot dog corner shop. It had a large sign outside and imagine my surprise when I read the words "vegan/vegetarian" on it. That weekend I had my first hot dog. Yes, that's right. It was my first vegan hot dog and my first hot dog ever all at once.
I chose the Hot Dog Brasil with hot tomato salsa plus chopped peppers, cucumbers, onions, and cilantro:
(The place is called Hot Dog Soup and is located at Grünberger Str. 69 in Berlin Friedrichshain).
I already thought that this was the best day of our vacation (food wise) when it got even better. P. declared he wanted some ice cream and ran into a small ice cream shop. I prepared to wait outside but then P. came back in a second to inform me that they had vegan options too.
This is my very creamy coconut ice cream at the end of a very happy afternoon in the vegan paradise of Berlin Friedrichshain:

Rostock, Wismar and Heiligendamm

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 15:31:00 +0000

As I promised in my last blog entry, here's a bit more about our vacation at the Baltic Sea. As I said before, we stayed in a small village very close to ocean. You can see a map of the village here. It was a five minute walk to the beach from our apartment and we enjoyed being that close to the ocean very much. But we didn't spend too much time there as we had to explore the landscape of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and some of its towns.
But right before we got our bikes out and rode them on the beach and though the fields we discovered a secret. If you walk around on the beach in Rerik you are suddenly stopped by a fence. This fence protects the peninsula Wustrow which once belonged to the village. Parts of Wustrow were used for military purposes in the "Third Reich" and in the German Democratic Republic the island became a Sovjet garrison. After the last Sovjet soldiers left in 1993 Wustrow became property of the Federal Republic of Germany which sold it to a private owner. The people from Rerik who have lived on the island before it was occupied by the army were not allowed to come back and Wustrow is a "forbidden island" now. (The group that owns it wants to prepare it for tourism.) Parts of the peninsula also are a nature reserve and lots of different animals and plants live and grow there. In the picture you can see some of the empty houses close to the fence.

Rerik is not only situated very close to the ocean, it's also close to the Salzhaff (salty lagoon). This is where the harbour of Rerik is situated:

More pictures taken in Rerik or close to the village:
Rerik is situated at the bay of Wismar and Wismar was one of the towns we visited:

Wismar is a beautiful old town. It's history is visible all over the place, you can see old ships in the harbour and buildings representing various architectures like brick renaissance, brick gothic or classicism and lots of half-timbered houses. Wismar was once part of the Haseatic League and therefore a rich trade town. It also belonged to Sweden from 1632-1803. If you are interested in the history of this beautiful hanseatic town, herre's the wikipedia link.
The next town on or list was Rostock, another Hanseatic league member.
As you can see it was as beautiful as Wismar, but there were lots of funny things to discover as well.
Like this shop window:
Or this sign which said, "Patriotic path blocked"

But as you can see here, the patriotic path wasn't blocked at all:

This was in Rerik on the beach. I hope the European soccer championchip was the reason and no beach-imperialism.
One one day we also visited Heiligendamm, the town where the G8 summit took place in 2007.
If you enlarge this picture you can see very beautiful examples of classicism architecture. Heiligendamm was the first seaside resort in Germany and very famous. Right in the centre of the mosaic above, you can see the Kempinski hotel, the place of the G8 summit in 2007. This quote from wikipedia tells you a bit about the history of this hotel:

After the German reunification in 1989/1990, a group of investors bought most of the buildings and undertook a major programme of refurbishment. A new company, the Kempinski Grand Hotel, opened in spring of 2003 - it uses six historical buildings. Development has led to some conflict with residents, as main streets and cycle paths have been removed or rerouted. Also again some of the famous buildings were demolished - more than in GDR-time (for detailed information see the German wikipedia).

By the way, the "group of investors" is the same group that bought the peninsula of Wustrow which was mentioned above. In Heiligendamm some streets and parts of the beach were closed as well and the hotel is surrounded by a fence. There is a huge difference between the refurbished buildings which are all bright and shiny and some other buildings next to them which look old and rotten and which are not inhabitable. (Some of them are pictured in the mosaic above as well.)

This is a house we saw at the beach of Kühlungsborn, another sea resort. The house is thatched with water reed. These houses used to be very common all over Northern Germany and my parents used to have such a roof on their house, too. When thatching became too expensive they replaced the water reed with regular roof tiles.
I hope this blog entry gave you a nice impression of our vacation. My next entry will be about sea buchthorn, the vegan Paradise Berlin and P's birthday party.

The Baltic Sea

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:36:00 +0000

I just wanted to let you know that I am still there, just very busy. Thank you very much for your comments and please forgive me my lack of updating! Our vacation was great but when I came home I had to dive right back into work. I hope I can catch up with all of your blog posts next week. I promise to blog about our vacation and include lots of pictures.
By the way, this weekend P. is celebrating his birthday and all the food will be homemade and vegan. And we're having a special guest. So yeah, there will be much to blog about soon. Here are some Baltic Sea impressions from the place where we stayed. (Please click on the picture to enlarge as it is not fully displayed) A quiet and small village with lots of water around. For more pictures, you can also check out my flickr-account.

Picture heavy pre-vacation post

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:51:00 +0000

Tomorrow P. and I will spend a week at the Baltic Sea, but I won't leave without a presentation of the latest eats and test-recipes!

I am going to start with some muffins, of which some were fed to co-workers, some eaten all by P. and me and some packed for the trip:

Pepper-Corn-Chipotle Muffins

I am very thankful that we have Mexican store not far away from where I live. It's a small, family run shop (and the only Mexican store in Dresden) that carries things like all kinds of dried chiles, masa harina, spices, and my all time favourite chipotles in adobo. Mexican or Latin American produce is hard to find in Germany and smoked jalapeños is a food that most people over here have never heard of. I also learned about chipotles while blogging.
Seriously, this is something we have to change! Because the whole world should know how great chipotles are. Whenever I buy a can or two I add them to everything. This time I made some corn muffins and served them with rice and beans:

Next are Megan's Cherry Almond Muffins. On her blog Megan writes: "A few months ago I discovered the wonders that are dried cherries, but I also discovered the price tag, ouch! Sour cherries pitted and packed in liquid are much less expensive, so I decided to give them a shot in some cherry-almond muffins." I love cherries in every form and in Germany dried cherries are very expensive too, but every grocery store carries canned and inexpensive sour cherries which I adore. Megan convinced me in a second. I topped my muffins with cherry compote thickened with agar-agar and some caramelized hazelnuts and took them to work the other day. My co-workers raved about them and I have to rave about them too! They are not too sweet and the combination of almonds and cherries is nothing but perfect!

Remember how everyone raved and still raves about Hannah's My Sweet Vegan?
All the time people were buying the book, raving, testing Hannah's recipes, eating and posting about them, I was sitting in front of my computer screen and biting my thumb nail. Why? Because the book just wasn't available in Germany! I didn't want to go though the trouble and borrow someone else's credit card to order directly from the USA, so I had to wait. I checked amazon.de and bol.de and other online bookstores from time to time and couldn't believe my eyes, when it finally was available though amazon marketplace. I ordered and the book was shipped to me directly from New York and arrived within three weeks.

I don't have to tell you how amazing the book is, because all of you already know. There are so many amazing and mouthwatering recipes in the book that I didn't know where to start. I definitely want to make some of the cake recipes but they will have to wait until next month, when we're going to celebrate P.'s birthday.
Today was the day to finally break open my copy for something else than decadent cakes, because I wanted to prepare some nice snacks for our trip. Here's what I chose:

Oatmeal Raisin Rolls:
Strawberry Love Muffins:

I changed the filling for the Oatmeal Raisin Rolls a bit, by using brown rice syrup for the filling instead of brown sugar and I used only two tablespoons of that syrup. This might be the reason why the edges didn't hold together very nicely. These rolls are totally delicious and the dough is very easy to handle. It's as siple and fast to put them together as Hannah writes and they will definitely provide P. and me with lots of energy while travelling to the sea.
The Strawberry Love Muffins also had to undergo some small changes: whole wheat flour and agave syrup instead of all purpose and white sugar. (Which made their appearance a bit darker than usual.) And of course I chose fresh strawberries, because my favourite fruit is in season! These are very delicious too and I am glad I chose this recipe.

One last muffin before I change the (food)subject. May I present these Avocado-Walnut Muffins?
They are a veganized and adapted version from a avocado-pecan bread recipe, which you can find here. I had half an avocado left after making half a batch of Celine's Rich & Thick (Nut Butter Free) Chocolate Mousse. These muffins are not very sweet, have a light avocado taste and are awesome with some melted vegan margarine on top. But of course they can't compete with Celine's mousse, which has a rich chocolate taste and a creamy texture. Talk about awesome chocolate ice cream:
Rich & Thick (Nut Butter Free) Chocolate Mousse:

Oh, and I also ate something else than sweets this week (but not much):

Tahini-Lime Crusted Tofu:

I served this with freshly grilled corn on the cob and white bean aioli from Veganomicon. The tofu and aioli was served cold and the corn was only luke-warm, which resulted in a great and light meal for a hot day!
I will give you the recipe for this awesome baked tofu in one of my next posts along with the pepper-corn-chipotle muffins and the avocado-walnut-muffin recipe if you are interested.
Finally here's another test recipe for the Joy's cookbook: Stuffed Peppers with an awesome Cashew Creme:

Chocolate Almond Swirl Bread

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:06:00 +0000

I never was a nutella kid. Don't get me wrong, when I was a kid I loved the spread which consists mainly of sugar and fat, but I didn't like it on my bread. My parents never bought sweet bread and nutella + rye sourdough bread is not a good combination. Whenever we had a glass of nutella around, I would eat it straight from the jar. And that's why my parents thought it wasn't such a good idea to buy nutella. That's why I never was a nutella kid.
Since going vegan I have tried some vegan chocolate spreads like chocoreale or Dr. Ritter Schokocreme and they were all great. But the problem remains, I still like the spread straight from the jar. Which means I don't buy them any more. Now, whenever I want some chocolate on my bread, I make this bread and it is as great as a slice of white bread with some chocolate spread on top. Only a bit healthier.

Almond Chocolate Swirl Bread with Raisins (makes one loaf)

For the bread:
520 g (4 1/3 cup) whole wheat flour
20 g ( 2 T) soy flour
370 ml (1 1/2 cups + 1 T) vanilla soy milk, room temperature
70 g (1/3 cup) light sugar syrup (use corn syrup or regular sugar instead, if you don't have any)
30 g (2 T) margarine, room temperature
1/2 yeast cake or 1 package dry yeast

Dissolve yeast in soy milk and let proof for 15 minutes.
Combine flours in a bowl and add milk mixture. Add rest of the ingredients and mix until well combined. Flour working surface and knead dough for 10 minutes. Transfer back to bowl, cover with clean, damp kitchen towel and let rise for 1 1/2 hours.

Prepare the filling by creaming together:
15 g (2 T) Dutch processed cocoa powder
1 T granulated sugar
3 T vanilla soy milk
1 T Amaretto (or 1 T vanilla soy milk)
45 g almonds ( roughly 1/2 cup)

Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F
Shape your dough into a rectangle (25 x 35 cm) and spread the chocolate mixture over your dough. Sprinkle 50 g (1/3 cup) raisins on top (optional, you can also use chocolate chips) . Roll the dough into a log shape. Don't start with the long edge but with the short, this way your swirl will turn out nicer. Seal the edges with sole soy milk and transfer to a greased loaf pan, sealed side down.

Bake your bread for 30-40 minutes until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Check the bread every 10 minutes and if the top gets too dark, cover it with aluminium foil.

Legs in Wraps

mihlsens@yahoo.no (Mihl) — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:04:00 +0000

Well, although this picture might look as if I have caught someone and wrapped him in a crepe, I can assure you that these are no legs but "only" some white asparagus stalks. In Germany asparagus is one of the few vegetables left, that have a real season. Although you can find Dutch, Spanish or even Egyptian asparagus in most supermarkets and grocery stores, most people buy local asparagus from little booths or from farmers markets. German asparagus is in season from April 24th until June 24th and German asparagus is white. The taste is slightly different from green asparagus, the green one is a little bit crispier and its taste is a bit closer to broccoli, I think.
I served this asparagus with chickpea crepes and horseradish cream, both recipes taken from The Voluptuous Vegan.

Because summer arrived last week and the temperatures rose to 30°C I didn't feel much like eating hot food. These dolmas or dolmades are filled with sushi rice mixed with lemon juice, dill, fried onions and some garlic. I served them with lemony cucumber salad, which resulted in a very refreshing meal.

A couple of weeks ago a vegan freaks radio episode focused on vegan products and cookbooks. On book Jenna and Bob recommended was The Asian Vegan Kitchen by Hema Parekh. This book includes recipes from all over Asia, and because I don't know much about Asian cooking, I decided to order it. So far I've only tried the Indian recipes, because I had most of the spices on hand, but I will definitely go for all the other ones as well. I can really recommend the book, but if you don't have an Asian supermarket somewhere around your place, you will have a hard time finding some ingredients. The picture above shows Navratna korma or Assorted Vegetables in Cashew Gravy, one of my favourite recipes from the book so far. It calls for fresh vegetables like cauliflower and peas and the flavour of the sauce is provided by ginger, garlic, cashews and lots of coriander leaves. Very delicious.

Another thing I tried were Hannah's sourdough waffles. I had been feeding my sourdough for a week and right before the growing amounts of batter started to take over our flat, this recipe came to rescue. I have to mention that my waffle iron is not one of the nicest. It can be very mean and some waffles stick to the iron like mad. But not Hannah's waffles. They came out nicely browned and with a very, very subtle sourdough flavour. What a great breakfast! (By the way, I made these with whole wheat flour.)

Oh, and last but not least, I was chosen to be a cookbook tester by Joy of veganjoy.blogspot. Some of her amazing recipes can be found on the blog, which you definitely should check out. So far I made a baked tofu recipe and some scones. Both recipes were a total hit, especially those scones, which come very close to British or Irish ones as P. assured me. And the tofu recipe included some artichokes which I never had before. I am looking forward to some great new recipes, cooking and taste experiences. And I will tell you when the book is out.