Vegan Roast Masterclass with Green Renters featuring Tofurky

After attending the Green Renters soy beans and nuts masterclass a fortnight ago, I was very much looking forward to today’s class on vegan roasts.

Cate from Green Renters first took the class through what we would be making.  Desserts were up first as they needed time in the fridge and freezer.  You could hear all the “phwoaaaarrr” sounds because we had tiramisu, a chocolate peppermint torte, lemon pie and ice creams! We broke up in to groups of four and made our way to the kitchen:

As I’m a big big fan of anything lemon pie, that was the choice for me:

After we made our desserts it was time for morning tea.  Cate had made some lovely donuts and baklava.  I went back for another donut and piece of baklava.  Twice.  Okay, three times (but the last time was kinda sneaky):

For the roast part, I teamed up with Johanna from Green Gourmet Giraffe and L. for a tofurky. I’ve never made a tofurky but I’ve attended a demonstration in the past.  The tofurky involved making a marinade, the turkey part and the stuffing:

The stuffing is rolled in to a log and placed on the tofu mixture (which has been flattened down on some baking paper):

You then roll it all up, luckily it all held together:

Johanna expertly crafted some drumsticks and then the marinade was pasted on:

…and eventually Tina Turkey was done:

Cate and her assistant Jen took care of arranging a cheese platter and roasting potatoes, pumpkin and carrots:

The other teams made a nut roast wrapped in cabbage leaves:

A seitan roast:

My plate of meganomz. I just realised I didn’t take a photo of our tofurky sliced up, but that’s it in the middle.  There’s also a wellington at the bottom there, I forgot to take a photo of it when it was done so here it is sliced:

I was so full after that and couldn’t finish my meal but I managed to eat dessert of course. They all turned out great but unfortunately the ice cream didn’t set in time. The green dollop you see is avocado lemon cream. This was delicious. Our lemon pie was great (though quite runny, you can see how the filling has plopped everywhere!) but my equal favourite was the tiramisu:

After all that food I had trouble finishing the rich chocolate tart so it went in to my lunchbox to take home.

The class was great and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Tofurky is really easy to make even with the three different components.  It might be more time consuming but things are easy to make (the time consuming part was sauteeing the onions, mushrooms and celery so you can see it’s not actually difficult).  I liked all the roasts, especially the wellington but my favourite was the tofurky.

I would love to attend more classes but sadly (for Melbourne peeps) Cate is heading off overseas and this was the last class. I was also really pleased that through these classes I met two of my favourite bloggers, Linda and Johanna.

Hours later, I’m still really full but very much looking forward to leftovers tomorrow!

Advertisement

Isa Does It, VCIYCJ and Vegan with a Vengeance recipes

I’ve made a few more recipes by Isa Chandra M. over the past month but have been a bit slack with posting, so here they are all in one go.

Peanut Butter Criss Crosses from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.  I won’t ever eat peanut butter on bread or toast but in biscuits I love it:

The Curried Peanut Sauce Bowl.  Yummm:

After trying the roast veg soba bowl at the Corner Hotel back in March, I had to make it at home.  This time I followed the Isa Does It instructions to the letter and I was rewarded with the same delicious meal.  I used both the lentils in the actual recipe but the next day I went for marinated tofu instead.  I’ve also made this with more veggies added in:

Isa’s Vegan With a Vengeance is a great book but admittedly, not one I have used all that much.  Not because there’s something wrong with it, more because I tend to stick with the latest cookbook purchases.  You know, shiny new toys and stuff.  Last week I decided to break out VWaV and I made the Ginger Macadamia Coconut Carrot Cake.  Deeeelicious!

Some weeks ago I made the Marbled Banana Bread from Isa Does It.  Clearly, my family need more practise with the marbling bit:

 

As I’ve cleaned up my eating (again) I won’t be doing much baking and I will be adapting recipes I use to be lower in fat, or making substitutions outright.  I like that I can still use Isa’s recipes as a base and end up with something that is still super tasty!

Chocolate Mousse Tart with Raspberries from Veganissimo!

For Christmas lunch I was tasked with making a dessert.  I had already flipped through Leigh Drew’s ‘Veganissimo!’, which has recently been released, and I knew I’d be making the choc mousse tart.

I made the pastry a day in advance so I wouldn’t be running around all crazy-busy like.  The pastry instructions are easy but when I was mixing it I was all “there is no way this wet sloppy sand consistency will turn in to rollable pastry”.  And I began to have a minor grrr-freakout period of annoyance.  But THEN, by some devilish sorcery, once I added the vegan milk, POOFFFFFF it all came together beautifully.

Baking the tart shell proved to be problematic however.  I used the correct size tart tin, though the height of mine was more a flan tart– I probably should have studied the photo in the book more and noted the tart tin sides were higher than mine!  But the biggest problem here was that the base of the shell, even though it wasn’t thick, puffed up a little but enough to make it impossible to pour a filling in and then not have half the filling left over.  So I had to use a sharp knife to chisel away at the base, thinning it out enough so that I could get all the filling in.  This proved to be a very good idea, because I was able to use all the filling when assembling the tart.

The recipe has you spreading a layer of raspberry jam on the base before pouring in the mousse but I left this step out.  The filling is easy to make and contains silken tofu.  I added a little bit of peppermint essence, only because I love choc-mint.

I kept the tart in the fridge overnight.  When serving the next day, I used blueberries and raspberries.  It was a bit sloppy to cut (I didn’t get a photo of a cut portion unfortunately) and there was some milky looking liquid at the bottom of the storage container and the tart shell had softened.  It wasn’t a problem at all though because this was really delicious and certainly something I would make again (with a higher sided tart tin!) for another special occasion.

A fantastic recipe!

You can check out more photos and reviews of Veganissimo! by fellow vegan bloggers Kittens Gone Lentil and Made of Stars.

A Very Veganopoulous Christmas

However you celebrate December 25th, or whatever you chose to do today, I hope it was a great day! In Melbourne we had a hot sunny day though fortunately not horrendously hot (though we were sitting in shade at Mum and Dad’s house so it was all nice).  The only downside to Christmas this year was none of the tv stations screening ‘A Very Brady Christmas’.  WHAT IS GOING ON???

Anyway, true to Family Veganopoulous form, we cooked enough food for twenty people even though there were only six adults and two children. We have many days worth of leftovers so it’s all good, as I don’t particularly want to see the stove again for another few months.  Just plop me down on the edge of my sofa waiting for Mike Brady to get out of the collapsed building and life is good.

What I loved most about Christmas lunch this year was how everything on the kitchen table buffet was vegan. The bbq stuff for the meat eaters was outside. It really struck me just how much vegan food a lot of omnis eat without actually realising it, so when people do the “ewww vegan food!” thing, they don’t see they’re probably already eating it– they just have meat on the plate too and getting rid of the meat isn’t really that much of a big deal after all.

But let’s start with breakfast.  This year I said no special breakfast, because last year the kids only ate the unhealthy part, then we stuffed ourselves at lunch.  So this year’s offering was fruit:

Here’s the table at lunch.  You can see the Island Black Bean Burgers and Bistro Beet Burgers from Isa Does It, but I forgot to take a closeup:

I made the Lemon Dijon Green Beans from Dreena Burton’s ‘Let Them Eat Vegan!”:

My sister made a delicious roast eggplant dip:

Sis also made the Quinoa Olive Tabouleh from Let Them Eat Vegan!:

I made the Kale Salad with Butternut Squash & Lentils from Isa Does It, minus the lentils:

My sister always roasts up potatoes, sweet potato and pumpkin:

From ‘Appetite For Reduction’ by Isa Chandra M, I made the Masala Baked Tofu:

My mum made a coleslaw with a simple dressing:

There was a Jamie Oliver Christmas show on the other day and he made a celeriac dish. We’ve never eaten celeriac before so my mum made the recipe. I think it’s just the celeriac in olive oil plus thyme. It was nice though I don’t think I’d buy celeriac myself:

Mum made some plain pilafi rice:

Mushrooms and onions, yum:

I was totally stuffed from THIS.  Check out the herbi goodness!

Being stuffed from lunch didn’t stop me from eating a big fat piece of Chocolate Mousse Tart with Raspberries from Leigh Drew’s ‘Veganissimo!’:

In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I did heaps of baking. Here is what I made and gave out to people.  We have the Rosemary Choc Chip Cookies and Norah’s Lemon Lemon Cookies (which didn’t turn out flat) from Isa Does It; some coconut macaroons I put together randomly; Coconut Pecan Chocolate Chunk Cookies from Woman in Real Life plus a hazelnut version and a peanut version; some raw balls I made up from nuts, dates and chia:

I’ll try to blog about the recipes individually, but everything was pretty much great. Even if things didn’t turn out texture/consistency-wise great, it still tasted fab.
Despite all that food, today was fairly low key. Usually I have some relatives visiting from interstate on Christmas day but they won’t be here for a few days. I’m sure my parents will enjoy the quiet time until then.

Before I go, I’d like to share this awesome book Arthur received. Oh man you guys, I am so SO tempted to claim it for myself. It’s called ‘Archi-Doodle: An Architect’s Activity Book” by Steve Bowkett. You can fill stuff in and make up your own designs, with prompts like “complete the panorama with your vision of the future:

***
And now, all I want for Christmas is a good night’s sleep! All the hustle-bustle is over, Arthur and DeeW have new books to read and games to play. I’ve realised that even though the baking can get on my nerves in summer, I have enjoyed giving home made treats as gifts (and freezing biscuits/cookies really is helpful, as long as you don’t keep eating them and having to bake more…) Quite a few of the presents I bought for others were second hand: a box of 48 unused Prismacolour pencils for DeeW bought cheap on eBay because the seller got the description wrong and had zero bids mwahaha; the tea cup-saucer set for my brother in law was from a collectables store. I bought copies of ‘Isa Does It’ for some relatives then purchased some of the ingredients to go with it (a kind of baketivism I guess!). Through purchasing vegan cookbooks as gifts in the past, my family have changed their eating habits to include more vegan meals and my sister has now stopped eating fish and meat completely. By default, my mum now mostly cooks vegan and is quite happy to be meat free herself (my dad, not so much!)

Best wishes for a super holiday season!

Brady Christmas

Tahu Goreng from Sid In The Kitchen blog

This year for Vegan MoFo, I subscribed to many great vegan food blogs.  I’ve enjoyed every blog post I’ve read and bookmarked many recipes and eating-out venues!

I’ve also drooled over photos and on some occassions, like today, I’ve made the fantastic looking recipes.  Today’s fantastic looking recipe was Tahu Goreng- Fried Beancurd in Peanut, Soy and Tamarind Sauce from Sid In The Kitchen.  Look at the photos!  Now you see why I had to make it.

I mostly followed the instructions but was too hungry and lazy to grind the peanuts so I toasted them whole.  I didn’t have cucumber so I thinly sliced some zucchini and I also used the last bit of noodles I had floating around in the back of the pantry.  And I then decided that I would mix everything together in the wok instead of serving it like the recipe suggests, and finally I sprinkled dried shallots on top:

This recipe is great and I think it would be even greater if I’d served it exactly as the recipe states!  I was in a rush as well tonight but I will definitely assemble the finished product properly next time. If I have to cook food for guests, this will be on the menu  🙂