My Vegan Kitchen

I don’t often cook Asian dishes; I tend to go the Italian, Indian or Mexican route as a default “line of least resistance “. These are the cooking styles I am most familiar with.

Serve and devour while piping hot!

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

Okay, so I'm obsessed with cabbage steaks currently! I've served this on herbed rice with a chipotle mayonnaise or you could call it a spicy, nut-based "Crema"..

Recipe for the Chipotle Mayo

1 cup cashews, soaked for 2 hours

1 lime (or a lemon will do)

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 tsp Maple syrup, or to personal taste

a pinch of salt

1 clove garlic, optional..

1 or more chipotle chiles in adobo (these are the canned chiles in a thick spicy paste, that you can find in most supermarkets these days).

Method

Soak 1 cup of cashews in water for 2 hours before rinsing and draining.

Blitz the cashews combined with 1 cup filtered water till the mixture is smooth. Add the juice of 1 lemon, nutritional yeast, a squirt of maple syrup and a pinch of salt, and blitz again till the mixture is smooth.

Now add 1 chipotle chile in adobo. Add some of the paste also for extra flavour! And extra chiles if you want it especially "picante"!

Blitz again till thoroughly amalgamated. Adjust as you see fit. Serve with the rice and the roasted cabbage 🌱

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

Surely the best thing about a cold Winter’s day is the comfort food we turn to to lift our spirits? It is uber-cold here in Melbourne right now, coinciding with our second Covid Lockdown. So cooking is the order of the day!

This is home-made broccoli, kale, lentil and mushroom soup (Oh, and sweet potato)..

And you know I have some spices in there!

In this soup I have used my Chermoula Spice Blend. This is one of the blends from the range I developed in New Zealand after the big 2010 earthquake when I lost my shop.

You will also need:

half a head of broccoli, cut into pices and steamed

1 generous glug of extra virgin olive oil

1 good size onion, finely diced

2 cloves of garlic (or less; up to you), crushed and chopped

1 heaped tbsp Chermoula (you can buy this in specialty grocery stores)

1 litre vegetable stock (I like to use Rapunzel veggie stock cubes, or Massel’s are also good)

1 sweet potato, oven roasted (or you could boil it if you don’t want to use the oven for such a small cook)

half the contents of 1 tin lentils. Leave a smattering of lentils aside for garnish

1 medium-sized bunch kale

For Garnish

sliced and sauteed mushrooms

fresh coriander

 

Chapattis for accompaniment

Method:

1. Steam the broccoli quickly till it is ever so slightly cooked. Run under cold water and put aside.

2. Sear the onions and garlic in the oil, till soft and translucent. Add the Chermoula blend and stir gently, allowing the spices to release their magic, then add the broccoli and sweet potato. Stir the vegetables around in the onion mixture till well coated with the spices.

3. Heat the vegetable stock and add to the pot. Cook for a further 5 to 10 minutes till all the ingredients are "holding hands" (if you know what I mean)? Allow the soup to reduce somewhat. This is how the flavours really develop..

4. Add the kale right at the end before putting the soup in a blender to puree. You may need to add more stock at this point, if the soup is too thick.

5. Pour the soup back into the pot to cook a little further, adding the lentils right at the end, so they hold their shape.

6. Add your various garnishes and serve with chapattis..

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

  

 My Raw pizza/cracker Recipe:

In this instance, I left the mixture intact without scoring it so that the crackers came out as large dehydrated sheets, which I have snapped into random pieces. More fun this way! 

Dip into hummus, chimi-churri (recipe up next), or eat with avocado and kassundi/chutney.

But seriously, they are wonderful just as they are. I love this style of un-cooking! Clean. Healthy. Exciting! 🤓

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

the delicate wafers...

    

This is a roasted root vegetable, and leek galette; served with sautéed kale, garlic, toasted pine nuts and lemon juice.. I made this galette for the first time two weeks ago. But the vegan pastry was a miss, so back to the drawing board. Turns out; using coconut oil as the fat component (when making pastry) is NOT a winner! 

This galette used a spelt flour and vegan butter recipe. (Tweaked from my last effort).

Why is pie-making such a happy craft?!  (that’s vegan cheese on the top)..

 

 

 

@thegastronomicalworkshop

  

  

For the filling:

quater of a pumpkin, cut into pieces and roasted

roasted sweet potato (cut into cubes of some description before roasting)

sliced leeks, sauteed on both sides till caramelised.

freshly ground black pepper

Once the pastry is rolled out, spread the vegetables over the pastry and sprinkle liberally with the pepper. Leave a small area free on the outside so that you can roll the pastry inwards towards the centre to form your galette. Transfer your pie onto a baking tray or baking dish that fits size-wise.

Bake at 200 degrees Celcius for 15 to 20 minutes. Keep an eye on it to check that the pastry is browning.

  

Have you tried baking wedges of red cabbage? - it’s a revelation! They are very “steaky”, (move over cauliflower 🤓). This is round 3 of my experiment with red cabbage cooked this way. I have served it on a cashew-based chipotle cream, with the celery/caper/currant and parsley salsa from last time. I omitted the olives this time as I found them to be too dominant in the previous trial..

 

Method: bake the cabbage wedges in the oven after quickly searing them in a pan with a little olive oil. The cabbage goes a really silky texture when cooked. 

 

For the salsa:

1 stalk of Celery

1 clove of Garlic

1 dessertspoon Capers

1 tablespoon Currants

a half bunch of Parsley, finely chopped 

Sherry vinegar

Slivered almonds, dry roasted in a pan to get some colour (and crunch) on them 

Shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven spice)   

Sautée the celery and garlic till soft, then add a splash of sherry vinegar. Add the capers, currants and a good volume of parsley and stir to combine, allowing the parsley to wilt and the ingredients to marry..

Drape the salsa over the “steak” and garnish with the slivered almonds and a sprinkle of shichimi togarashi.

 

@thegastronomicalworkshop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm a great one for buying bananas and watching them go off in the fruit bowl! I salvaged these before they transformed (i don't like them once they’re past the firm stage cos the sugars all change), and caramelised them with maple syrup to have with granola for breakfast this morning.

So; here is granola and caramelised bananas with plums, hemp seeds, caramelised almond slivers, salted caramel coconut yoghurt, et "les fleurs du jardin".

 

@thegastronomicalworkshop

This is a caramel and jaffa gateau. There are three layers; the nut base, the thick gooey caramel, and the unmistakeable jaffa; served on a blackberry coulis 😍 Raw, vegan, dairyfree, refined sugar free, gluten-free, and scrumptious! (Made for a plantbased party) 

@thegastronomicalworkshop 

   

This one is from the archives. I'm not sure that the photos correspond to the recipe I have recorded as I have made several versions of this dish (as you do)!

 

Here is a guideline:

Ingredients for the base

1 cup cashew nuts, soaked
1 tbsp whole linseed
1 tbsp ground almonds
1 cup dates soaked 
1 heaped tbsp coconut oil 
Blitz all ingredients in a food processor and spread over your chosen rectangular or square pan. Put in the fridge to set while you make your next layers.

Caramel

1 cup dates
1 ½ tbsp almond butter
1/3 cup pure organic maple syrup (or to personal taste)    
1 cup raw cashews (covered and soaked in water for an hour and then drained)
½ cup coconut oil, melted
 
When you heat/melt the coconut oil, let it cool before adding to the other blitzed ingredients otherwise the mixture will split. It's a good idea to heat the coconut oil in a double boiler to avoid direct heat to the oil. Put into the fridge to set.

Jaffa Layer

2/3 cup raw cashew nuts, soaked overnight then drained 
3/4 cup fresh orange juice
1 tbsp orange rind 
1/3 cup maple syrup 
1/3 cup cacao powder 
100g coconut oil, melted

Put the cashew nuts, orange juice and rind, maple syrup and pure cocoa powder in a food processor and blitz thoroughly. Wait for the melted coconut oil to cool a little, then add to the other ingredients and blend till smooth. Pour the jaffa mixture on top of the caramel layer. Place in the fridge to set.

Garnish!

p.s.  I made the coulis with blackberries, maple syrup and lemon juice blitzed in the blender. Strain out the pips... The coulis adds a necessary tart element to cut through the richness of the gateau..

Delicious!