Passover seder cooking

Yes, again, it's been a while since I last posted but I've got good excuses: I actually really started working in that vegan restaurant (the one in Tel Aviv) in the kitchen, finally, and am on my way to becoming a true vegan chef.

In he meantime, my favorite hobby - experiments on human beings, weee!!

And this time, I've made three courses for this year' passover sedder which is held at my folks' place. One main course and two desserts:



Italic green beans and seitan:

Working at the restaurant really brought my faith back in tofu and saiten as I have pretty much given up on making them taste like anything other than tasteless soy cheese and a rubber lump of protein. I learned some very nifty ways of greatly improving the taste and texture of both.

ingredients:

500 gr frozen green beans chopped
500 gr seitan
Soy sauce
Liquid Smoke
7 tomatoes diced
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 tbs oregano
1 1/2 tbs thyme
1 1/2 tbs dry basil
1 tbs black pepper
1 tbs salt
1/2 cup water
1 cup cooking wine
3 medium onions, diced
20 gralics, crushed
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 cup dry shiitake mushrooms

How to prepare:
In advance dice seitan to roughly 1cm by 1cm pieces. Soak them in a bowl or box filled with 1/4 soy sauce and 3/4 water with quite a few squirts of Liquid Smoke. Leave seitan to soak for at least an hour.

Fry onions and garlic until onion becomes golden. Add wine and continue to fry until all the liquid evaporates. Add tomatoes, green beans and water then cook to boil. Add spices and taste to adjust taste. Add shiitake and set aside.

When it's time, prepare a pan (or wok, it takes much less time) with a very thin coating of oil and fry seitan until it browns and changes texture. Add to the saucepan wih the tomatoes and beans with half a cup of the soaking water.

I know seitan is wheat and thus not very passover-friendly but my family doesn't really observe that bit...



Gluten-free banana icecream cake:

It was supposed to be completely raw but I added too much water to the dough mix so I had to bake it...Oh well...

Ingredients:

6 bananas, frozen
1 cup soaked brazil nuts
1 1/2 cup dry dates
1 cup oats
1/2 cup fresh mint leafs
1/2 tahini
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla extract
cinnamon

How to prepare:

In a blender or food processor, grind dates, nuts and oats with water until mix is liquid but not watery. Add vanilla extract and baking soda. Thinly oil a cake pan or baking dish and pour dough mixture into it. Place in oven preheated to 180c for 10-15 minutes until a toothpick stuck into the dough comes out dry.

Put bananas, tahini and mint into blender and turn into a thick paste. Pour paste over the dough you just made, even top and lightly sprinkle cinnamon. Cover with cling film and stick into freezer until cake is served.



Raw strawberry-Almond dessert:

The dish I'm least happy with because the irish moss didn't give me the result I quite wanted, you can drop it all together if you want. It's tasty, don't get me wrong, it just the second time irish moss dissappoints me *goes off to corner to cry*

Ingredients:

300 gr strawberries
3 cups almonds soaked overnight
1/2 cup fresh mind leafs
3 tbs irish moss soaked overnight, two water replacements
2 tbs vanilla sugar
2 tbs lemon juice
3 tbs brown sugar

How to prepare:

Prepare almond milk from soaked almonds. In a blender, mash strawberries, lemon juice and brown sugar. Taste and adjust sugar and juice levels. Add the strawberries to the milk and in a blender, mix with irish moss. Add vanilla sugar and mint and blend. Keep in freezer if dessert is served a couple of hours from making or keep in refrigerator until served.

Here's a little buddy I met while making this dessert. I love being vegan.


Pessach sameakh!!

Choco-Cranny-Nutty cookies

Hello!!
Again, long time no post. I'm currently brewing something up but it's a three months' project so be patient :)

Anyway, I work in an alternative medicine college now and recently we've had an open day - a day candidates come to the college to hear about the various stuff we teach etc. So, the boss and other workers got all kinds of food lined up afor the buffet - fruits, vegetables, crackers and super-processed-food-cakes . I thought 'hang on, one of our majore diplomas are in healthy nutrition and here we are with these lumps of white flour and processed sugars? Nah!' so I made cookies, to balance it off.

I used a recipie for chocolate chip cookies I found on the net, changed the spicing and reduced the amount on chocolate chips to a third, replacing it with walnuts and cranberries to make it healthier. Here's what came out:



Choco-Cranny-Nutty cookies:

Pre-heat oven to 180c

Ingredients:
2 cups whole flour
1.5 teaspoons baking soda
0.5 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoon coffee hawaij
1 cup brown sugar
0.5 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
0.25 cup water
1 handful of crushed walnuts
1 handful unsweetened dry cranberries
1 handful vegan chocolate chips

How to:

Easy peasy - mix dry ingredients (minus the chocolate, crannies and nuts) in one bowl, mix wet ingredients in another. Make a well in the middle of the dry bowl and slowely pour the wet ingredients in. Work the whole mixture together until it becomes a moist dark dough. Add yummies and keep stirring.
Thoroughly clean a large square of your cooking work station and flour it lightly (you can also use a sheet of cooking paper instead, I did as my roomates are extremely unhygenic in the kitchen). Plop the dough on it and flatten it with a roller. Use a cookiecutter (don't they look cheerful?) and place cookies on a baking sheet.
Now here's the tricky part. All I've got in my rented flat's kitchen (which is rather big, I'll give it that) is a toaster-oven with a heating coil on the top of the over and another on the bottom. What I did was switch the two baking rakes' places after five minutes so the cookies will get a baking from bottom to top for another six minutes. If you have a proper oven you don't need to do that. Around ten to twelve minutes would get the job done.
Take out the baking sheet and let the cookies cool before moving them to a box, plate or tummy.

P.S: sorry I haven't got any more pictures, I forgot to take some of the finished product :)

Graduation lunch for the parents

Well, I didn't go through the graduation ceremony yet because it's in may, but I finished all my chores, tests and papers for my Bs.c (in Biology) and I owe a lot of it to my parents who not only paid my tuition for two of the four years, but also helped me financially between jobs and in difficult semesters and generally were very supportive and helpful. So I threw them a festive lunch!
The lunch had three courses of my creation and included the following dishes

First course: Simple Med Salad


Ingredients: for three people
2 medium tomatoes
1 cucumber
1 bell pepper (preferably yellow or red)
1 carrot
10 green olives
1 1/2 handful of cranberries or pomegranate seeds (that's what I used)
1/2 glass of a mixture of sesame seeds, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 flat teaspoon of salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 round tablespoon crushed garlic

How to:
chop, drop and roll ha ha! The seed mix should be added last and mixed into the rest of the salad just before people start eating or they'd soak the liquid and lose their crunch




Second course: 'meatloaf’ quiche



This one took me a little longer to make because I have the tiniest blender but with a sanely-sized one you'll be fine. The meatloaf mixture turned out to be A LOT so either use this recipe for a big meal or freeze the leftover mix for any other uses. I'm planning on using mine for a taco night with some friends :)

Ingredients:
6-5 medium potatoes
300gr black beans, sprouted (they were 300gr before sprouting...)
100gr shiitake mushrooms
1 large onion
2 bags of Mozzarella Chreese Sauce Mix (or any odd hard 'cheese' you can find as long as it's thinly sliced)
100gr walnuts
3 tablespoons wheat gluten
400ml water
10 tablespoons canola oil
1 tablespoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 bottle of Liquid Smoke
5 cloves of garlic sliced
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons white cooking wine
1 teaspoon cumin

How to:
If shiitake are dry, soak them in hot water while pealing potatoes. cut potatoes in half and cook them until they're no longer starchy but not mushy yet. Slice them into 1cm thick slices.
Cook beans while chopping shiitake and onion. Lightly sauté shiitake and onion in 3 of the canola oil tablespoons and 3 of the Liquid Smoke and mix until onions are soft and slightly golden. Pre-heat over to 180c
smash walnuts into pieces and when the beans are ready, add the onions, shiitake, nuts and remaining spices to the beans, mix and start blending. Taste the blended mix and make sure it acquired a rich, meaty flavor, if not, correct spicing.
Take your quiche dish (it rhymes!!)of choice (I've got English cake ones but a wider glass dish would do great) and, unless it's a non-stick surface, lightly oil it with canola oil. Tile the bottom with the potato slices and above them, spread the meatloaf mix, then another layer of potatoes and another of mix etc. preferably ending with a layer of potatoes.
Prepare the Chreese sauce and pour it over the top layer. If using other hard "cheeses" then sprinkle or cover top layer of quiche with slices of the "cheese". You can also make the quiche a potato-meatloaf-cheese arrangement, as you please.
Stick in over for 30-45 minutes, sticking a toothpick after 30 minutes to see if deeper layers are dry enough already.



Dessert: Heavenly pudding



This is a very filling dessert and extremely tasty!

Ingredients: for each person dining!
4 teaspoons of chia seeds
1 nice and ripe banana
handful of pecans
5 dates of majhul or halawi kind, pitted
1/2 glass vanilla flavored soy milk or coconut milk
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

How to:
An hour before making the pudding, soak chia seeds in the milk. place ingredients in mixer and mix one by one, starting with the nuts and dates. The ingredients should be mixed alone, be persistent with the dates. Pour all the ingredients, including chia mix and cinnamon into bowl and mix thoroughly. If you want it to be really jell-like, you can stick it in the refrigerator for until served.



The parents were very pleased and very, very full from their meal. Thanks mom and dad!