Cookin' with kale...

Kale seems to be an important part of the vegan diet going by other vegan food bloggers' blogs, but although I've tried it a few times and thought it was okay, I've (shockingly!) never before now cooked with it, because I've rarely seen it available to buy round this neck of the woods, and because I've been quite happy with the other leafy greens in my life, I've never felt particularly inclined to hunt it down.

But when I came across a bag of organic curly kale quite by accident( in Asda; we usually go to Morrisons or Sainsbury's these days) I had to buy it. I made a braised tofu, kale and sundried tomato stew(inspired by the braised seitan, kale, brussels and sundried tomato stew in Veganomicon) pictured here, with roast potatoes, which was quite delicious. The following night I finished the bag of kale by putting it in a tofu, kale and bell pepper balti with quinoa, (not pictured because the photos I took never turned out well, sorry!) I'll definitely be buying kale again. :)

In other (exciting?) news, I got a voucher from Amazon, which I've put towards buying 3 new vegan cookbooks - The Mediiterranean Vegan Kitchen by Donna Klein, Vegan Feasts by Rose Elliot, and Vegan Cooking; Recipes for Beginners by Eva Batt. Their estimated arrival is on Wednesday, so new dishes and reviewscoming soon, watch this space!

Yahoo! Scottish Vegans' potluck goodies...

Here is a large broccoli, sundried tomato and onion eggless tofu quiche, with a litter of baby sundried and tomato quiches! My own recipe mini quiches are one of my potluck staples, so when I made these the night before I just added more ingredients and made a big one for Jay and my dinner while I was at it.

I also made some of Terry's favourite almond cookies from Veganomicon for dessert. :)

Apparently my blog is Brillante...

According to Lelly at Lelly's Vegan Kitchen who nominated it!

Ok, so the banner's up and her blog's linked, so what i have to do now is nominate 7 more blogs for the award. And the nominees are, in no particular order...

1 DJ over at Skint Vegan...

2 Jillian at Bitchin' Vegan Kitchen ...

3 Tori at Herbivious...

4 Pamela and Sarah at Punk You!

5 Peggy The Veggie at Vegan Teen Cuisine

6 Kristin at Beans And Greens

7 ...and last but not least, Nancy at Veganica!

I'd better go leave comments on their blogs to tell them! Go check the links out! :D

Chickpea cutlets again!

I love this Veganomicon recipe after trying it fried, because as I said in my previous post, I found them slightly dry when baked, but frying them made them absolutely gorgeous. This is very quick and easy to make, and I think it's quickly going to become a cruelty free kitchen household favourite. :) Served here with baby potato salad made with Plamil vegan mayo and dill, and mixed Italian-style salad leaves.

Bananas...and Fudge!

This week I had a massive bunch of bananas...

Bananas are the perfect accompaniment to the world's easiest vegan crepe recipe(below). Although any healthiness bananas added to my plate is balanced out by the obscene amount of maple syrup I drizzled on top...

(Makes 2-3 10" pan-sized thin pancakes or more or thicker smaller ones)

300ml soya milk
100g of plain or wholemeal flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp vanilla essence

a little vegetable oil

- blend or whisk all ingredients except the oil till frothy

- wipe the oil onto a preheated pan, then pour enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan, wait till it all the batter is "dry"(should only take a few minutes) before attempting to flip it or it will fall apart!

-flip and fry other side of pancake for a minute or so, then serve

This here is banana bread from Dino Sarma's Alternative Vegan which I've made loads of times before. I've sprinkled sugar on top this time to make it more cake-like. Sadly, sugar is not the best thing for a type 1 diabetic like my boyfriend Jay to be eating, even though the scent of freshly-baked banana bread was so tempting he took a little extra insulin so he could indulge... naughty boy!

...but wait! Now this banana bread can still be successfully made by subbing the 3/4 cups of sugar for 1/2 cup of agave nectar! Here's the sugar free version below...

And last but not least, here's a photo of Fudge (The Cat, that is... you weren't expecting a veganised version of fudge after all those sweet banana dessert thing were you?)

Meet Rosie and Sophie...

These gorgeous guinea-pig ladies are Sophie, left, and Rosie, right. But no, they don't live with me(don't think that'd be safe anyway with Fudge-puss running around my flat!) but with my mum. Posted here because all vegans love looking at cute critters :)

Now for a step-by-step pie...

This is the Graham Cracker Pie Crust from How it All Vegan. Only I've used the british answer to American graham crackers, Morrisons own brand "Value" Sweetmeal Digestive biscuits. (Note; not all digestive biscuits are vegan, some, usually the more expensive shops-own ones and McVities, contain whey powder-from cows' milk- so do be sure to check the ingredients first. AFAIK Asda's cheaper own brand are vegan too btw).
The pie filling is Everyday Dish's Chocolate Espresso Truffle Pie- this website has a brilliant selection of vegan cookery shows- check it out!

Then I sprinkled chopped toasted almonds on top and put it in the fridge overnight. I've yet to taste-test it so watch this space...
I've made this Italian Marinated Tofu from VWAV before, but this time I used the leftover marinade to bake some mushrooms in (for 15 mins at 220C) and they turned out lovely.
And last but not least, Veganomicon's chickpea cutlets, served here with some broccoli and roast baby potatoes. I ate this with some ketchup, I baked mine as the book said you could do this and thought they were okay, if a little on the dry side, so I think I'll try frying them next time.

Devilishly tasty seitan cutlets!

No, don't panic, it's not meat, although Jay and I both thought our seitan cutlets looked scarily like a piece of dead animal when we saw them! It doesn't taste as we vaguely remember corpse tasting either, for it's a lot less chewy. It is, as I mentioned in the title, devilishly good though! (I do believe there's a law somewhere on the internets which states anything written about seitan must contain a poor satan pun? Right..?)

I used Veganomicon's recipe, then as they suggested, dredged the prepared cutlets in flour and fried them. This is my first attempt at making my own seitan using gluten flour(although I have tried ready-made vegan foods using it before) and I'd definitely do it again. It's very simple to make, although it is fairly time cionsuming and creates a lot of dishes(!), so it's probably best to make large batches so you can refridgerate the leftovers and use later.

I bought my gluten flour from a friend at the Yahoo! group, who'd bought a large batch of bags from the flour bin website for all in the group who were interested in buying some, so we could all save money on postage. If you have other vegan friends, then this is a great idea for ordering these hard to find items online. :)