Vegan Dad's Hot Wings

Do you like seitan? Bake bread? Feed kids? If you answer yes to any of these, you have to go and see Vegan Dad's blog. His food is consistently amazing and appealing.

These are Vegan Dad's Hot Wings, with his Sweet and Sticky Sauce. In this meal from a while ago, I served them with peas, corn and homemade chips. They are little breaded seitan chunks served with a sweet tangy sauce. My kids love these with a passion. Try them. They are seriously good. They also freeze well for a quick meal. I always double the recipe and freeze half of them.

Spicy Chopped Salad

I made a big bowl of salad Last Friday and have been eating it ever since. It was great.

Spicy Chopped Salad

Serves 8 as a side salad (or it can be 4 lunches!)

Ingredients

• 1 tin 3 bean mix, drained
  
• 1 tin corn kernels, drained
• 1 apple chopped
• 4 spring onions chopped
• 1 apple diced
• 1 small carrot peeled and finely diced
• 2 tomatoes chopped
• 12 pitted olives halved
• 3 tablespoons flaked almonds
• 8-16 lettuce leaves to serve (or may be diced and added to salad for immediate use)
  

Dressing Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons sweet chilli sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seed
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 3 tablespoons lime juice
• Additional ground chilli or harissa paste to taste (I added a tablespoon of harissa, but this might be too much to serve to non-chilli lovers.)
• Salt and pepper to taste (about 1/4 teaspoon each for me)

Method

1. Combine all salad ingredients, other than the lettuce leaves, if you wish to serve them whole on a plate.
2. Combine all dressing ingredients and whisk or shake to combine.
3. Stir dressing well through salad.
4. You can serve this immediately, but it is good if allowed to sit in the fridge for a few hours at lease.
5. Serve with lettuce.

This would also be good with extra tomato, added grains, eg leftover rice, or a few teaspoons of olive oil in it.

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.

Been busy!

Just a quick note to say that I'm very busy at the moment with work and home. I'll be posting again properly soon. I have been taking blog photos for the last few weeks, but don't have time to do a full post.

Another salad lunch

Hot weather and cheap salad greens inspired this lunch from last weekend.

We went to Aldi on Sunday, to pick up a few things. While I was there, I saw salad greens for 99c for a big pack. I also got a Turkish bread, to put with some hommous I had at home.

I made this salad. It was mixed salad greens, grape tomatoes, 6 mushrooms sliced and grilled, some chopped cucumber, a spoonful of capers and some mustard dressing. The dressing was actually left over roumalade sauce from Vegan brunch, with a few tablespoons of cider vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar. (Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar, by heating it in the microwave.) It would also be good with the maple mustard dressing from Veganomnicon.

At the back, there is some toasted Turkish bread with hommous on it.

As an aside, I quite like shopping at Aldi. Many of their items are actually labelled "suitable for vegans." It takes a lot of the guess work out of shopping.

Noodle lunch

I was shopping the other day and decided to grab a few things for lunch. I made these noodles, which really hit the spot. I used the vegan oyster sauce which is available from the Cruelty Free Shop.

Lunch Noodles with Vegan Oyster Sauce

Serves 2

2 tablespoons neutral cooking oil (I used rice bran oil)
300 g tofu diced into 1-2 cm squares
1 cm knob ginger
2 chopped spring onions, sliced into 4 cm lengths
1 packet Heinz frozen steamed vegetables for one (cauliflower, broccoli and carrot)
200g ready to use udon noodles
3 tablespoons vegan oyster sauce
3 tablespoons water

Method

1. Fry the tofu squares in 1 tablespoon of oil in a skillet or wok.
   
2. Once the tofu is lightly browned, add the remaining oil, ginger and onions. Cook for about 1 minute, until fragrant.
   
3. Refresh the noodles in boiling water, while waiting for the ginger to cook.
4. Add the frozen vegetables to the pan and stir fry until hot.
5. Drain the noodles. Add the noodles, sauce and water.
6. Serve hot.
   

They were also great reheated for lunch at work the next day.

Apple and Sage Sausages and Caturday

Tonight we had homemade apple and sage sausages with mash, vegetables and gravy.

The sausages were a variation on Isa Chandra Moskowitz' cherry and sage sausages from Vegan Brunch. I replaced the dried cherries with a grated apple. I used powdered sage, despite Isa's instruction not to do it. I also replaced the all-spice and cloves with 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, because for some reason I was out of both all-spice and cloves. I really should check my spice cabinet before I cook.

It was really good. Even M, who is not a huge seitan sausage fan, liked these.

Caturday

Sisterly love!