My subconscious likes salads

Last night, I had a wonderful dream. Other people dream of world peace (which is a good thing) or dates with George Clooney (a date with George would be a good thing for sure), but that was not my dream. I dreamt that I was making a salad. It was beautiful. I created a new dressing and was raving about it. I had perfect butter lettuce leaves and buttery avocado.

Why yes, I am a complete food nerd and probably need to get out more. Why do you ask?

I woke up happy and hungry. I wrote down my subconscious' dressing recipe and resolved to make the dream salad for dinner tonight. I did and lo, it was good. So here it is:


Dream Salad

Makes 4 servings as a side salad. Double or quadruple for larger groups.

Butter lettuce (around 8 large leaves)
1/2 avocado, in 1-2 cm dice
Tomato, sliced in wedges
3 cm cucumber, sliced
2 radishes, sliced
1 large mushroom, sliced

Dressing Ingredients
(Makes 1 cup, enough for several salads, halve or quarter for smaller serves)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/4 cup good fruity extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon maple syrup
4 good pinches salt
2 pinches black pepper
enough white wine vinegar to make up to 1 cup

1. Put the all but the last dressing ingredient in a 1 cup (or more) measuring cup.
2. Add white wine wine vinegar until there is 1 cup of dressing.
3. Whisk dressing until oil is emulsified.
4. Put all salad ingredients in a salad bowl.
5. Add enough dressing to salad to coat (about 1/4 cup for the amount of vegetables above).
6. Toss until well coated.

You can refrigerate the remaining dressing. I imagine you would be able to keep it for several days.

Now I'm off to bed. I may even dream the secret coke recipe...

Green Mango Salad + Welcome to VeganMoFo

October is the worldwide Vegan Month of Food or VeganMoFo. It is an annual blogging event, created by Isa Chandra Moskowitz (cookbook author and creator of the amazing Post Punk Kitchen online community). VeganMoFo is now in its third year. The aim of VeganMoFo is for bloggers to write posts about vegan food each business day, or more, for the month of October. It is a celebration of the amazing range, creativity and geographical spread of vegan food. The list of participants is apparently more than 320 people. The amazing Kittee is doing most of the organisation for the event this year. You can find more information at her blog, Cake Maker to the Stars.

On to the food! As you have probably noticed from other posts on this blog, I love Asian food. It is delicious, easily made vegan, and relies on fresh vegetables, which are a big favourite for me in any meal. I also love salads in hot weather.

The two came together in a tangy green mango salad. I have been curious about green mango for years, since I had a student who had grown up in north Queensland and who raved about them. I had looked at many different recipes for green mango salad on the net. When I saw green mangoes at the Asian supermarket, I had to get them.

Here are the ingredients that I planned to use for the salad:


Ignore the carrot. I decided not to use it after trying the green mango and dressing. I used herbs from my garden, plus some nasturtium flowers for decoration. Use fresh store-bought herbs or minced herbs, if you don't grow them. I wouldn't use dried herbs for this one.



Green Mango Salad
Serves 4 as a side dish

2 green mangos, grated or julienned
2 spring onions, chopped
1 tablespoon of sugar (I used half palm and half white, but brown, all palm or all white would be good)
2 tablespoons of lime juice
1/2 - 1 tsp vegan balachan shrimp paste (Depending on your preferred saltiness. Replace with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce if you don't have balachan)
2 tablespoons of sweet chilli sauce
Small bunch of vietnamese mint (use mint if you don't have vietnamese mints), chopped
Small bunch coriander, chopped
2 tablespoons crushed peanuts
Nasturtium flowers or extra mint and coriander to garnish

1. Dissolve sugar in lime juice. I put them both in a cup in the microwave and heated them until the sugar dissolved.
2. Add the shrimp paste to the lime juice. Mix until dissolved.
3. Add sweet chilli sauce to dressing and set aside.
4. Mix the mango, spring onion and herbs well. Mound in a serving dish.
   
5. Pour dressing over salad.
6. Sprinkle nuts on centre of salad. Add garnish
7. Put salad in fridge for 1/2 hour to develop flavours. Serve.

I bought the vegan shrimp paste from the Cruelty Free Shop. It has the pungent scent and strong salty flavour of traditional shrimp paste. This was the first time that I used it. It worked very well. I have yet to try it in a Thai curry, but I suspect it will work very well.

Goodbye OzNZVeganMoFo & Bush Tucker

Today is the last day of OzNZVeganMoFo. Tomorrow there will be the start of the worldwide VeganMoFo, in which I also plan to participate.

So what is the ultimate Aussie food for the final Australian MoFo post? I haven't covered so many foods and traditions. (Oh well, there is always next year.) However, I do want to mention a very important and overlooked Australian food tradition.

Tonight, I thought I would mention bush tucker. I am not an indigenous Australia, so I am not familiar with much of Australia's food history. Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders have food traditions that reach back over 40,000 years. Their land use, including the use of fire to encourage favourable plants, changed the Australian landscape in a form of land management which preserved the land, resources, flora and fauna far better than European settlers have managed in the last 200 odd years.

In parts of Australia, Indigenous people traded over hundred of kilometres (central Australia, evidenced by rock items displaced by almost the length of the continent). Aboriginal people sent carved message stick invitations to other nations, over similar distances in a form of recorded communication. (The writing-like nature of these permanently recorded messages have been ignored in a privileging of written forms, by many European discussion of Aboriginal culture.) Some groups hosted food festivals like the Bunya nut celebrations for groups from all around their region.

Other than the ever popular macadamia nut, it is only in the last few years that non-indigenous people have paid much attention to this rich tradition. It is now possible to buy wattle seed and lemon myrtle based seasoning. You can also buy bush lime and other traditional fruits in jams, chutneys and sauces.

Well, here are my approaches to bush tucker plants, from my garden. They are all native to the Brisbane area, as well as other areas of Australia.

Midyin berry (Austromyrtus dulcis) amongst my beans and nasturtiums. This low shrub will have red sweet, ginger-flavoured berries later.


Native ginger (Alpinea Caerulea). This tall quick-growing plant will have blue edible berry and leaves which can be used to wrap food for cooking.


Lilly pilly (Syzygium australe), which is a small tree/large shrub with more edible berries.

I haven't had any crop from these young plants yet, but I am hoping for fruit this season and will blog about them if I get them.

Goodbye Aussie MoFo!

Aussie Burger

We have burgers for dinner about once a month at the BrisVegan house. It is a quick and easy dinner. The children like burgers. It is a great way to get the younger two to eat salad. They are made with whatever burgers I buy at the shops, which are often Frys or Sanitarium products. Occasionally, I will make chickpea cutlet or bean burgers.


So what makes this an Aussie burger? Beetroot! It seems to be an Australian thing to eat tinned, sliced beetroot on burgers. I love it.

You will also see a Sanitarium NotBurger, which until recently contained egg white. I used to love them as a vegetarian. Fortunately, there has been a change of recipe and they no longer list egg (or dairy) as an ingredient. They are a vaguely meaty texture and flavour, though not as close as a Fry's product. They are a light, savoury flavour, with sesame seeds for a pleasant nuttiness.

Sanitarium is an Australian company, owned by the Seven Day Adventist church. All of their products, including their popular breakfast cereals are vegetarian. Some of their products contain egg or milk, but some are vegan. Their tinned and cold items are widely available in supermarkets and come to the rescue of many hungry vegans.

The burger is made with a white bun, onion, the burger, beetroot, tomato, lettuce and BBQ sauce. It was served with McCain Original oven chips. This is my type of junk food!

Sausages and Vege

Growing up, my parents lived a very Anglo lifestyle. My father was a meat and 3 vege man, which, due to the very sexist dynamic in my family, meant that almost every dinner was meat and 3 vege. I obviously don't eat that way any more!

However, occasionally I feel like the stereotypical protein and 3 vege Anglo-Australian standard. Here is my version, which is bangers and mash with onion gravy, corn, cauliflower gratin and garlic sauté spinach.


The sausages are Sanitarium BBQ sausages. The mash is potato, Nuttelex margarine, soy milk and a dash of onion powder, salt and pepper. The onion gravy is Massel premix, with onions, a teaspoon of soy sauce, teaspoon of tomato sauce and a pinch each of sage and rosemary. The spinach is baby spinach sautéed in a dash of good olive oil and couple of cloves of garlic. I will feature the cauliflower in a future post. It is such a family favourite it deserves a post of its own.

Yes, I did add tomato sauce before eating. What?! It's traditional!

Marriott Breakfast

On Friday morning, I attended a breakfast for the University of Queensland's Justice and the Law group. It was a very well run, well attended event. The speakers were interesting and topical, with Stephen Keim SC as the main speaker. (Mr Keim SC was the barrister for Dr Mohamed Haneef, in the well publicised scandal of Dr Haneef's arrest on terrorism charges with almost no evidence.) The JATL group, which includes the amazing Amy of Iron Chef Vegan, did a great job, securing interesting speakers and illustrious attendees, planning the event and running it. They are to be congratulated.

The breakfast was at the Marriott, which I blogged about for another recent function. So, was the vegan breakfast any better than the vegan dinner? Unfortunately, not really. I had hoped it would be good, so that I could balance my earlier review with a better one. In all honesty, I can't.

While omnis were served a first course of waffles (admittedly with oddly brown bananas), vegans and gluten free folks had the ubiquitous fruit plate. This was 3 types of melon, pineapple and strawberries. It was mostly tasty and fresh (one piece of strawberry had an unpleasant large bruised/off mark on it), but arrived at our table after the omni's plates for the first course were being cleared away.

The second vegan course was baked beans. No toast, no sides. Just a bowl of beans. They were obviously not just from a can, as there were a few pieces of carrot and celery in them. They were nice baked beans. However, they were a bit bland to be an entire course. It appeared that vegetarians were served the beans with egg and mushroom. I am not sure why the two vegans at my table could not have had a few mushrooms, tomato or greens sautéed in olive oil, to go with the beans. The beans also came out significantly after the other meals for the table.

So, once again, the meal was a bit bland and lacking in imagination. There was also no need for the food, especially the fruit plate, to be served much later than other meals. As we had booked well ahead, with the dietary needs of guests well explained, it was not like the chefs had to make something at the last minute.

I regretfully have to advise vegans against expecting great food at Marriott Brisbane functions. This is not a whole Marriott issue, as I have seen an Irish poster on the PPK be offered amazing food at a Belfast Marriott. However, it appears from the two functions I attended, that the kitchens at the Brisbane Marriot simply don't know what to offer a vegan guest. As there are so many other Brisbane venues that can do amazing food for vegans, I would not have a function at the Marriott.

However, the rest of the function, the company, speakers and organisation more than made up for an unimaginative breakfast. Thanks to Amy and the whole JATL organisation for inviting us to a very enjoyable function!

Food at Mt Tambourine

What can a vegan eat at the mountain holiday resort town of Mt Tamborine? As you saw from my previous post, the food at our B&B was plentiful, fresh and delicious.

However, the vegan options for the rest of the town were varied.

(Please forgive the poor quality mobile phone photos, but our camera died.)

On our first night, we ate picked up takeaway pizza at Tamborine Mountain Pizza. They make small, medium and large pizzas. We had a small pizza each. I had a vegetarian pizza with no cheese. The chef confirmed that the base was vegan. They also offered to use a clean cutter for my pizza, without being asked. The base was splendid, crisp, light and chewy all at once. The toppings were plentiful and fresh. The sauce was a tangy tomato sauce. I would have liked a bit more sauce, but it was a very good pizza. Mr BrisVegan had a similar opinion of his non-vegan option.

On Tuesday, we cruised gallery row, which is the main craft sales area of Mt Tambourine. I found a lovely little spice store, Gourmet Spice Blends, where I got some Szechwan pepper, sea salt, dukkah and other items. We visited a few winery outlets. We also went to the MT brewery, which had a tasting platter for $10, which gives 4 small beers.



I had the Mountain Bitter (a Yorkshire style with caramel overtones), the moderation pale ale (US style with fresh citrus and tropical fruit scents), the 0909 Cuvee Blonde (Belgian style with raisin and hops notes) and the Katya Imperial Stout (black stout with chocolate flavours in a full bodied yeasty stout). I loved the Mountain Bitter and Moderation Pale Ale. The others were also very good. There are many other options to try.

On Tuesday night, we went to the local Thai restaurant, Eagle Thai. They were happy to give us a list of menu items that did not contain fish sauce. They had quite a few vegan and vegetarian options. We had the deep fried tofu, followed by a Thai tofu salad with peanut sauce and a green curry, with steamed jasmine rice.



The deep fried tofu was firm tofu, deep fried and served with a nice sweet chilli sauce. The tofu was firm, rather than soft, which I have had deep fried in the past. It was nice for a tofu lover like me, but not the best tofu for the dish.

The curry showed some heat and the fresh spiciness of a green curry. However, it was not particularly full flavoured and did not show the full coconut creaminess that you would expect from this type of curry. It also had a lot of wombok, which was an odd vegetable for a Thai curry. The salad had very little tofu and a lot of iceberg lettuce. The peanut sauce was sweet, nutty and good.

I really wanted to like all of this. I love Thai food and the staff were very obliging. However, after dinner, Mr Brisvegan said "Would you recommend the restaurant to your friends?" We both had to answer "No." We have both had better Thai food at a lot of other places. However, the staff seem to understand the concept of vegan food and have a lot of vegan options, so you know that, as a vegan, you will have a lot of choices.

There are a lot of other restaurants at Mt Tamborine, many of which had vegetarian and maybe even vegan options. I would like to explore further in the future.