French food dinner & Julie and Julia

A few weeks ago, I saw Julie and Julia, the moving about a blogger, Julie Powell, who decided to blog her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French of French Cooking. Julie made all 500+ recipes in the cookbook in one year, while blogging her progress. Her very successful blog was published as a book, which was the basis of her story in the movie. The movie also told Julia Child's story from her first cooking lessons in France through to her cookbook publication and eventual successful TV career. The Julia story was based on her autobiography.

The movie was a fairly light romp. Meryl Streep was excellent as Julia Child. I don't know how they made her look so tall, but she embodied Child well, awkward tallness, irritating voice, joie de vivre and all. The other actors were appealing and did well in their roles. The stories appealed to the feminist in me, showing two women engaging in what could have been seen as trivial women's occupations (cooking plus blogging for Julie) and turning it into wild successes. The story telling was kind to the protaganists, while avoiding the hyperbolic conventions of many success stories.

The down side of the movie was the amount of dead animal food discussed and handled. I don't find corpses fun, but realise that most of the rest of the cinema would have seen the very real dead bodies as no more than another prop or meal. I handled it by closing my eyes in a couple of spots.

The concentration of the moving on Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French of French Cooking, led to me checking it out from the library. In the movie, Julie raved about her mother making Boeuf Bouguignon. As a result I decided to give it a veganised try.

To go with my version, I decided to make a 3 course french meal.

First course, not pictured, was an omelette aux fines herbs, using the omelette recipe from Vegan Brunch, filled with fresh chopped herbs, rolled, sliced and served with a small green salad. I also served sliced french stick with it. This is an amazing omelette. I will blog it further soon.


It was followed by mushroom stick bourguignon, which was better than it looks in this photo. I substituted Lamyong vegan ham for the bacon in the original recipe, nuttelex for butter, Massel beef style stock for the stock and mushroom sticks for the beef. I made a 2/3 sized recipe, with only 300g of mushroom sticks in place of 1kg meat, as it appeared to be around that volume, though it was lighter. I frequently use mushroom sticks in the place of beef in any recipe where it calls for small chunks. Mr Brisvegan loves them, as do the children.

It worked really well. As you can see, I served it with baked potato, cauliflower gratin and baked asparagus. Everyone other than Z liked it. Z likes his mushroom sticks with a more subtle sauce apparently.


To follow, I made my first tarte tatin. It was as easy as it looks on TV cooking shows.

Apple Tarte Tatin

Ingredients

1 tablespoon Nuttelex
2 Tablespoons white sugar
pinch each cloves and cinnamon
3 - 4 apples, cored and sliced
1 sheet vegan puff pasty

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees centigrade.
   
2. Line a pie dish with non-stick baking paper. In the dish, melt the nuttelex. You can do this by popping it in the oven for a few minutes.
3. Sprinkle the sugar and spices over the sugar.
4. Add apples. Return to oven for 20 minutes or until apples are just tender.
5. Remove dish from oven. You can leave it to cool if you wish to serve the pie hot later in the day.
   
6. 30 minutes before you want to serve a hot tarte tatin, cover the apples with the puff pastry. Trim and tuck the edges around the apples.
7. Return to oven. Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 30 minutes or until the pastry is puffed and golden.
8. Once the pasty is cooked, invert the tart onto a serving dish. Viola!

Everyone loved the tart. It was so simple and easy, I will be using this method again.

Quick Microwave Baba Ganouj and Caturday

I have taken a week away from blogger after the intensity of VeganMofo. But now I'm back!


The other day we were having Middle Eastern food. I wanted to increase the amount of vegetables on the children's plates. So, at the last minute, I decided to use some eggplant that I had in the fridge to produce baba ganouj. I find that my children will eat many things in dips that they would never eat alone. Baba ganouj and hommous are big favourites in our house, even though the children aren't fond of either eggplant or chickpeas.

I only used half an eggplant, but I have scaled the recipe up to feed a bigger group. I also threw it together, so the amounts of some items are estimated from dashes. Feel free to adjust them to taste. Also, if you like a darker baba ganouj, don't peel the eggplant and cook it a little longer.

Quick Microwave Baba Ganouj

Makes one medium bowl of dip.

Ingredients

1 large eggplant (around 400-500g when whole)
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt for eggplant and to taste at the end

Method

1. Peel eggplant and cut into large (3-4 cm) cubes. Salt eggplant and leave to drain for 15 minutes.
2. Rinse eggplant
3. Put eggplant in a microwave proof dish with a cover.
4. Microwave until eggplant is very tender, about 5 - 7 minutes (longer if needed).
5. Add all ingredients in a blender, food processor or large container, if you only have a stab blender.
   
6. Blend or process until smooth
   
7. Taste. Add salt if desired. Add small additional amount of other ingredients (eg if you think it needs more of any particular flavour).
8. Refrigerate until cold (10 minutes in the freezer was good for a small serve, but an hour in the fridge would be ideal).
9. Serve with pita bread, other bread or crackers.

Caturday

How do two cats deal with cold weather? Snuggle under a blanket, of course:


This photo was taken at the end of winter. I think we put the blanket over them, but they often squirm in under loose blankets all by themselves. Berry in particular is good at getting almost entirely under a blanket, with only a nose sticking out.

Quick Ad!

Next weekend, on 14 November 2009, there will be a vegan nutrition DVD viewing, panel and discussion at the Albion Peace Centre, 102 McDonald Rd, Windsor. It will kick off at 1.00pm and run for most of the afternoon. There will be dinner for $10 from the Loving Hut, served from 6.00pm. There will also be food for sale, during the day.

It is $5 per head for a half day session.

The panel will include Amanda Benham (a nutritionist), Tracey-Lynne Greyson (animal lawyer), Cameron Blewett (Sea Shepherd) and me. I think that I got asked, because I had previously volunteered to be a contact for a survey process for the Vegan and Vegetarian Society Queensland and have a healthy, mostly veg*n family. I am certainly not up to the expertise of the other panellists. However, I do have a big mouth and like to talk about veganism, so maybe that was why I got the call.

For more details, please see: http://greenearthfestival.net/events/events/34-clinical-nutrition-2009.html

Maybe I'll see you there :)

Veganmofo Final Salad and Caturday

So here it is: The last post of VeganMoFo III. I have enjoyed the blogathon, but feel that I wasn't able to keep up with everyone else's posts. I promise to stop by your blogs in the near future and read through any posts I missed.

Here is my final food post:


This is a salad that we had a little while ago. There is falafel, vege seafood sticks, Changs noodle salad, home grown radishes, pasta salad with home-made pesto dressing, pita bread, hommous and waldorf salad. All of it was good and fit with my ongoing salad obsession.

Caturday: Berry on the rolltop desk


Last week I showed you a picture of Switch asleep on the top of our rolltop desk. This is her sister Berry, showing how she approaches napping on a desk. As you can see, she is a sprawler!

Pumpkin and Lentil Soup

A little while ago, I decided to make pumpkin soup for dinner again. However, I wanted to make sure that we had a bit of protein to make it more filling. What to do? Add red lentils!

Pumpkin and Lentil Soup

Ingredients

1 small pumpkin, peeled, seeded and chopped into 5 cm pieces (butternut is very good)
1 large onion chopped
1 tablespoon vegan margarine
1 cup dry red lentils
water sufficient to cover (over 1 litre)
2 vegan stock cubes (I used Massel Chicken Style cubes)
1/4 teaspoon dry ground ginger

Method

1. Heat margarine in a soup pot. Add onion and sweat until translucent.
2. Add remaining ingredients.
3. Cook 30 minutes or until pumpkin and lentils are tender.
4. Blend until smooth. I used a stab blender in the pot for convenience.
5. Serve with bread and enjoy.

Happily, everyone loved it, including the normally lentil averse children. The dominant flavour is the pumpkin, with a hint of creamy lentil savouriness. It hit the spot on a cold night. I would happily serve it to omnivorous guests.

Way too much gravy...

This picture shows my crazy love of Isa's Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy, from Vegan With a Vengeance. It shows roast vegetables, cauliflower gratin and Sanitarium Roast, all smothered with the amazing gravy. There is also a bit of cranberry sauce on the roast.

Try this gravy if you dare. It is seriously addictive.

Quick Lower Fat Garlic Bread

Who doesn't love garlic bread? Buttery, garlicky, savoury carbs. Mmmmhhh (Homer Simpson drool).

As a vegan, there are very few options for pre-packaged garlic bread. I also think that most contain a bit too much fat (including trans fat) to be a good food choice. So, I make my own all the time.

Basically, I split a roll, spread it with Nuttelex and crushed garlic and sprinkle it with herbs. I then pop it under the grill until it is lightly browned.

Everyone in the family loves it. Omnivores love it. It is a universal favourite. It's great as a side dish with pasta, salad or BBQ food.

Quick and Easy Red Thai Curry

This is a very simple curry. I used a Maesri curry paste, coconut cream and vegan fish paste to create the sauce. In the curry is tofu, mushroom, zucchini, carrot, bamboo shoots, tomato and capsicum. I used a whole tin of the curry paste. It was a bit hot, even though I like hot food, and not creamy enough for me. Next time I would use half a tin and freeze half.

We served it with rice for an easy spicy dinner.