Saturday, November 7, 2009

Pita-bread and chickpea and mayo salad


I finally got around to making home made pita bread. While it was simple enough, I just don't think my oven gets hot enough to give a really good air bubble which in turn leaves a space for your fillings. Never the less, they were still delicious.

I filled them with a chickpea and mayo salad. My husband put in a chickpea cutlet.

This is what I did for the salad.

Get 1 cup of cooked chickpeas and mash with a good squeeze of dairy-free mayo. Mix these together well. Add some salt, pepper flat leaf parsley and some ground wakame (you can really use whatever seaweed you have around. If you only have nori, just pound them up. I had wakame strips so I ground them up in my mortar and pestle). You could also add finely diced celery/red capsicum.

This mix went into my pita bread and I put on some mixed lettuce. Yummo!

Pomegranate, raspberry and passionfruit sorbet


I was staring at my near empty fruit bowl and wondering what I could do with a passionfruit and a pomegranate. Then it hit me...SORBET! This turned out so lusciously. It is refreshing and sweet and the passionfruit seeds give it interest and texture.

Here's the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 fresh pomegranate
1 fresh passionfruit
A handful of fresh or frozen raspberries
1 cup castor sugar
1-2 cups of water-divided use


Method:

Put the sugar and 1 cup of water into a pan and place on a medium heat to dissolve the sugar.
Add the pomegranate seeds and juice to the pan and simmer for 5 minutes
Add the raspberries and simmer until they just fall apart.
Take off heat.
Pour the mixture into a sieve and push the seeds thru. This will give you a smooth mix as the pomegranate seeds really don't soften much. It also removes most of the berry seeds.
Add passionfruit pulp and the other cup of water.
Place into the freezer and every half hour give if a brisk mix to break up the ice crystals. This is what makes the sorbet soft instad of just a big ice-block.
If you have an ice-cream maker use that and follow the machines instructions

Would go great served with a sprig of fresh mint.

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Sushi - raw style!


I had a lot of fun making sushi for the first time, and it was pretty simple. It is all about the preparation.

You can add anything you want to these. Make sure you cook your rice so it's nice and sticky. I added a tablespoon of rice wine vinegar to the rice after it had cooled. I did not put any wasabi on it but a small amount of vegan oyster sauce.

They were delicious and are a great way of getting some raw vegetables.

Pomegranate salad


My husband bought some pomegranates for a recipe but discovered he didn't have enough and so now we needed a different way to use them. And so there was salad.

I didn't have coriander or basil, but would only use the basil next time also I would reduce the amount of broccoli and add baby spinach.

Here's the link

Heavenly Choc Cupcakes and Chickpea cutlets



The brilliant cookbook writers Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero have several books out- all of which are vegan. One of them being Vegan cupcakes take over the world.

This is their recipe for Chocolate cupcakes and the heavenly frosting.

Another recipe was for Chickpea cutlets. My husband adores them. They are reminiscent of schnitzels and taste wonderful with a squeeze of lemon.

Savoury crackers


I came across this awesome recipe from Fatfree Vegan for crackers using chickpea flour of which I purchased at my last Canberra shop.

I omitted the tumeric and added a few teaspoons of dried rosemary. They were delicious.

Gingerbread Men


I had a great time making these little people today with my 2 year old. Although she ate most of the pink icing and so my people don't have much pink!

The recipe is from the Post Punk Kitchen