I'm ba-a-a-ack! (Spinach Calzones)

Two months?! I can't believe that I have ignored this poor blog for that long. Life stuff has been hectic, but still ... two months!

Anyway, I'm back with mini spinach calzones. I needed to take a plate* to a party last night, so I threw these together quickly. I had the dough for a pizza base in the freezer, as well as some spinach and some Cheezley cream cheese, so I decided to combine a couple of favourites, spinach and calzones. I also like my party nibbles small and not too messy, so these worked well.


Mini Spinach Calzones

Makes 24.

Ingredients

• Pizza dough for 1 base, uncooked. (I used some from the Vegan with a Vengeance recipe, with whole wheat flour swapped for about about 1/3 of the plain flour in the recipe. I always make extra when I make pizza and freeze it in 1 pizza batches. Use whatever pizza base recipe you like)
• 250g frozen spinach
• 2 large spring onions chopped
• 75 grams vegan cream cheese (I used Cheezley Sour Cream and Chives variety that I found in my freezer)
• 2 tablespoons nutritional yeast (also called savoury yeast) (optional)
• Salt and pepper to taste
  

Method

1. Preheat oven to 240 degrees centigrade.
   
2. After you have prepared your pizza dough, cover it and put it aside.
3. Defrost and drain the spinach.
4. Add cream cheese, yeast and spring onions to spinach. Mix well.
   
5. Add salt and pepper to spinach mix to taste. Mix again.
6. Using a rolling pin, roll pizza dough very thin, about 1/2 cm (1/4 inch).
7. Cut 7 cm circles of dough from the rolled dough. I used the top of a skinny glass, but a round biscuit cutter would work well.
8. Consolidate remaining dough, roll and cut again. Keep doing this until you have used all the dough.
   
9. Divide the spinach mixture between the circles of dough, leaving a clear rim of dough to use to shut the calzone.
10. For each circle, wet the rim of the circle and fold it over into a half circle over the filling. Seal the edge.
11. Place calzones on two baking trays. Leave a little space (1/2 - 1 cm at least) between the calzones.
12. Bake until gently browned, turning once. (Approx 10 - 15 minutes)
13. Serve hot or cold.
    

I served them cold, in a large bowl. They were delicious and popular. They had a thin crust of pizza bread with a nice substantial serve of savoury spinach filling. I think that they would also be good in lunch boxes or made into approximately 6 larger calzones as part of a meal. The kids loved them, so I'll be making these again.

Caturday


Why would you want to use the printer? Why would you want the contents of your canvas satchel? Cat sleep is far more important than your paltry human concerns. (Featuring Berry sleeping on a satchel and wedged onto the printer tray. Bonus Switch staring at moths out the door.)

Note
* For the non-Australians, the Australian phrase "bring a plate" means to bring food to share appropriate to the type of event. It can mean to bring a main dish, a side, a salad, a dessert, finger food or any similar item to share. I'm told this phrase is far from universal and that it has led to confusion for non-Australians in the past.

Spaghetti Bolognaise

Ah, pasta, the perennial favourite. Easy to serve omnis, a favourite with children, how many meals has it saved?

Here is a quick spaghetti bolognaise that I made the a few nights ago.

Spaghetti Bolognaise

Serves 8 - 10 (halve for 4)

Ingredients

1-2 tablespoons olive oil
2 small onions
4 cloves garlic
2 tins of Sanitarium Casserole Mince (or 3 cups reconstituted TVP)
1 grated zucchini
1 400g tin diced tomatoes
200 g tomato paste
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 generous tablespoons fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste
500g spaghetti (or pasta of your choice)

Method

1. In a large skillet or saucepan, heat the olive oil.
   
2. Add onion and fry gently until translucent.
3. Add garlic and fry for 2 minutes.
4. Add remaining ingredients to pan.
5. Bring to boil. Reduce to simmer. Simmer 20 - 30 minutes.
6. Prepare 500 g spaghetti according to packet directions. (We use 500 g for 5 people, which lets the boys have seconds. I suggest 60g each for small serves, up to 125 g each for large serves of pasta.)
7. Once the pasta is ready, place desired amount of pasta on plate or in bowl. Add 1 large ladle of bolognaise sauce to each serve. Enjoy!

My children and omni husband love this. I am however hesitant to serve it to other omnis, as I find that TVP and similar products simply taste "fake" to the omnis that I know. (This may be entirely in their head, but I do recall disliking vegetarian burgers, sausages and so on when I first went vegetarian.) If you have more broad minded omnis in you life, they may enjoy the familiar texture and rich flavour.

Quick Pizza

This is a quick pizza that we had for lunch today. The base was a small pita bread. They are a convenient, low fat, thin base, with a bit of a crunch, if you bake them right.

I used Mediterranean relish for a sauce. It is tangy and a bit sweet. I then topped it with olives, mushroom, roasted pumpkin, fresh oregano and some small chunks of Cheezely garlic and herb vegan cheese.

It hit the spot. The children had variations on this. J had the same as me. M had only sauce, olives and cheese. Z had only sauce and olives. It was gone in no time.

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.

Birthday party food

Last night M had a sleepover/dinner party for her 7th birthday.

She asked if the food could be a make-your-own pizza, followed by make-your-own ice-cream Sundays. That sounded easy, so that was our menu. We also put out some chips (crisps for any non-Australia readers) and had a cake.

I used the recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance for the pizza bases. I made a triple batch. I made two large pizzas for Mr Brisvegan, J and I. I then made 8 little,15-20 cm pizza bases for the children to decorate. It went really well. I put out BBQ sauce, tomato paste and a range of toppings. Each child had their own base, on oven paper with their name on it. They each made their own pizza and I put it in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes (3 to a tray) until it was cooked. I think that next time, I would make even smaller bases, as most of the kids only ate around 1/2 their pizza as they were busy playing and talking. Though they did not eat everything, they loved the idea and happily ate their own creations.

I caved and put out cow cheese, as most of the children are not veg*n and I wanted M's party to go smoothly. The children, Mr Brisvegan and J had cow cheese pizzas, so I did not take a photo for the blog.

I had this one:



It was topped with mediterranean relish, vege dogs, zucchini, yellow capsicum, mushroom, kalamata olives, jalapenos, grape tomatoes and a scattering of Tofutti american cheese slices, broken into little pieces.

They followed the pizzas with icecream (again, cow-milk cased), with a selection of toppings. No-one was game to try the So-good icecream, though my kids are likely to eat it all today. For toppings, I hit the Cruelty Free Shop website last week. We had chocolate buttons, chocolate sprinkles, vegan strawberry jelly, strawberries. We also had supermarket icecream topping. Again, the children loved this idea.

Finally, we had this cake:



M wanted a chocolate cake with strawberries. It was the basic chocolate cupcake recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I doubled it. I then used the strawberry filling that Isa suggests for strawberry tall cakes (under the recipe for basic vanilla cupcakes, in the same book), which is basically strawberries with a little maple syrup, let sit for half an hour. I layered the cake with the macerated strawberries and vanilla "buttercreme". I topped it with more "buttercreme," fresh strawberries and some vegan chocolate sprinkles. The buttercreme is based on Rene's Vanilla Frosting from La Dolce Vegan. I used an extra 2/3 cup icing mixture, a good large pinch of salt and less vanilla. I find that the frosting is too soft if you follow the 2 cup recipe.

After a movie (Bedtime Stories) some children went home and some children stayed overnight for a sleepover. The sleepover crew had another movie and giggled and talked until 11pm. There will be several sleepy people in some Brisbane homes today!

M just typed "I loved it."

Easy Minestrone

A few nights ago, I made a big pot of minestrone. It is not the most authentic recipe, but it is popular in our house.

The recipe that I use is one that I read ages ago in a women's magazine. Unfortunately, I can't remember which one and now just make the soup from memory, so I have tweaked it a bit anyway.

I used the left-over cabbage from the cabbage roles that I made a few weeks ago. When I made them, I chopped the remaining steamed cabbage and put it in the freezer. The cabbage amount below is just an estimate based on about how much was left.

Easy Minestrone

2 medium onions
2 cloves garlic (more if you like)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 800g(?) tin backed beans
1 440g tin crushed tomatoes
1/4 cabbage
2 sticks celery
2 carrots
1 teaspoon dried thyme
dash black pepper (or more to taste)
2 vegan stock cubes (your choice of flavour)
250g short shapes pasta
water to cover well.

1. Chop the fresh vegetables. Gently fry them in a large soup pot with the oil.
2. Once the onion is translucent, add all remaining ingredients except the pasta. Add water to desired soup consistency.
3. Bring to boil and then simmer 20 minutes.
4. Add pasta. Bring soup back to boil. Reduce to a simmer and simmer until pasta is tender (10-15 minutes).
5. Add extra water if the soup has become too thick as the pasta cooked. Reheat it if you do this.
6. Serve with crusty bread.

This recipe freezes well. It is usually popular with everyone, including omnis.

Random Food Roundup

I have taken heaps of food photos, but not had long to blog. So here are some meals we have enjoyed in the last few weeks.


Savoury pastry, with agave glazed carrots and mixed stirfry veges with peanut sauce. The pasty is a square of puff pastry topped by home-made rocket pesto, Redwood Cheatin' Ham (vegan - pretty good flavour, though the texture is a bit more luncheon meat than ham). Both Borg's and Aldi puff pastry are marked vegan.


Pizza with 3 toppings. There are spinach and toffuti mozzarella, Mediterranean vegetables and pumpkin with Cheezly herb and garlic vegan cheese, ham and pineapple, also with Cheezly.


Quick cannelloni with a medley of baked vegetables. The cannelloni is just 20 instant cannelloni tubes stuffed with a mixture of 500g frozen spinach, 1/2 container of Toffutti Better Than Cream Cheese and finely diced onion. I then put a little oil and a layer of home-brand pasta sauce in a lasagne dish. After putting in the stuffed cannelloni tubes, I covered them well with more of the sauce and scattered over some small chunks of Cheezly Herb and Garlic cheese. Baked for 40 minutes and it's ready.


La Dolce Vegan biryani (pretty good), plus some mushroom chunk curry (the one on front right - I love mushroom chunks to replace dead cow in recipes) and a quick salad of onion, tomato, cucumber, coriander leaves (cilantro) and a little lemon juice.


Sausage roll, chips and veges. I made the sausage rolls with Borg's vegan puff pastry and a filling of Vegemeal Herb Vegetable Sausage Mix. Everyone over 10 loved the sausage rolls. The younger 2 hated them. No idea why the difference of opinion. I thought they were great.

Risotto: Easier Than You Think

I don't know why risotto has a reputation as a difficult dish to prepare. Once you get the hang of it, it is surprisingly easy.

Tonight we had roasted pumpkin risotto for dinner. Everyone enjoyed it. My carbo-holic kids are generally big fans of rice, though they are not fond of every type of risotto. The younger two also will not normally eat roast pumpkin. However, they liked this one. Z asked if there was any left for seconds.

I served it with grilled grape tomatoes, peas and carrots, for an extra vegie and protein boost.

The concept of risotto based on pumpkin broth with oregano is based in part on a recipe I saw years ago in an Echo Bistro cookbook. I haven't got a copy of the book, so I am not sure how close this is to theirs. I do know that this omits all the cheese and feta cheese from the original, as well as a lot of fat. They also used matchsticks of pumpkin rather than roast pumpkin.

Roast Pumpkin Risotto

Serves 6 with side dishes or 4 larger serves

500g pumpkin (more if you want a stronger pumpkin flavour)
3 Massel salt-reduced chicken style vegan stock cubes (2 if you don't like much salt)
1/4 cup cooking sherry
5 cups water
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon Nuttelex vegan margarine
1 diced onion
500g arborio rice
1 small bunch oregano (eg small supermarket bunch - I actually used fresh leaves from the garden), with the leaves stripped from the stems
dash finely ground black pepper
2 tablespoons vegan cream cheese (optional)

1. Cut 250 g pumpkin into approx 1 cm pieces. Roast until soft. (Mine was precooked on a previous night when I made roast vegetables for dinner)
   
2. Boil water with the stock cubes, the sherry and the other 250g pumpkin, also cut into smaller chunks.
3. When the boiled pumpkin is cooking in the water, put oil and margarine into a large saucepan and heat until margarine is melted.
4. Add diced onion to oil mixture. Cook gently until onion softens and becomes translucent.
5. Check if pumpkin is cooked. Once it is cooked, mash or blend the pumpkin into the liquid. I simply used a stab blender for this step. It will become a pumpkin broth. Return it to the heat.
   
6. Add rice to the oil and onion mixture. Mix thoroughly into oil.
7. Gently heat the rice, onion and oil mixture for a few minutes, while stirring it often. You want the rice to become translucent at its tip and to lightly seal it. There will be a faint fragrance of toasting rice. However, you do not want to colour the rice, so keep it moving and not too hot.
8. Add 2 soup ladles of pumpkin broth into the rice. Stir through. Turn down the heat to low, so the risotto does not catch on the bottom of the pot.
   
9. At this point, some people say you should continuously stir the risotto until it is cooked in about 20 minutes. I however, don't always have that much time or patience. I simply make sure that I stir it well, often enough so that it does not stick to the bottom of the pan. This is about every 30-60 seconds. Apparently continuous stirring will give you an even creamier texture, as it breaks up the starch even more. I actually prepared the other vegetables in between stirs.
10. As the liquid is absorbed, add an extra ladle or two of broth. The liquid does not have to be completely absorbed. Once the rice starts to clump together rather than be loose in the liquid, you should add more liquid.
11. Keep adding liquid and stirring regularly until most of the broth has been used.
12. When the rice is almost al dente and you are down to the final ladle fulls of broth, add the roast pumpkin, oregano leaves and vegan cream cheese, if you are using it. Also add pepper to taste. Add final amount broth.
13. Heat until the rice is just al dente. You want a little bit of bite in the texture of the rice, but no hardness. You don't want it completely mushy.
14. If you want a little more liquid in the mix, add a little boiling water.

Basically, for any risotto, you seal arborio rice in oil or margarine, add liquid in ladles, stir regularly and add most of the non-rice ingredients at the end. It must be arborio rice to get the right toothsome texture and creamy mouth feel. If using onion or garlic, gently cook it in the oil before adding the rice. Most of the other non-rice ingredients can be added at the end. You can use plain stock, stock and wine, stock and tomato puree etc as the liquid. Add liquid until the rice is cooked. You generally need liquid which is at least 2-3 times the amount of rice you use. If you don't have enough liquid, boil the kettle and add boiling water. You can add all sorts of vegetables or protein foods at the end. The non-rice ingredient might be asparagus, sundried tomatoes, peas (good with a touch of mint in the liquid), zucchini, mushroom or any other vegetable or protein that you fancy. If the add-in will not cook in a couple of minutes at the end of cooking, precook it. Basically the trick is to keep adding liquid and keep stirring regularly until it is ready.

Risotto is an easy dish to serve omnis, as it is something that many people will be familiar with. Many will have eaten vegetarian risotto. It doesn't rely on the unfamiliar proteins that bother many omnis, like tofu, seitan or tempeh. It also has a reputation of being tricky, so you will look clever if you make it.