Bento #121 – vegan indian

I seem to be on a vegan roll with my lunchboxes this week…!
The big container holds 1/3 spiced mixed rices (black longgrain, parboiled, red, white roundgrain, brown roundgrain), 1/3 red lentils boiled with turmeric and raisins, and 1/3 palak paneer tofu – spinach curry with tofu and green peppers. You can’t get paneer here and I’ve not attempted to make it myself yet, so I replaced it with tofu. Works ok, I guess, though it should have simmered longer to make the tofu take up more of the curry’s taste and saltiness.
The small container holds candy easter eggs (of questionable vegan status), lettuce, sugar snap peas, red pepper strips and a baby plum tomato.

The recipe for the curry is again adapted from The Indian Restaurant Cookbook – it had no proper palak paneer recipe but I adapted its spinach curry for it.

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Spring Fruit Sensations: Rhubarb (and asparagus)

I don’t know about you, but when I read “Spring Food Sensations” on Abby’s blog, my mind immediately sprang to rhubarb. Rhubarb is to me the ultimate spring messenger, and a delicacy to boot!
When I was little, I used to eat it in a preserve, or a sponge cake with rhubarb pieces on top (delicious!). But I never made anything with it myself – until now.
Since I wasn’t in the mood to try my hand at spongecake, the BF suggested Strawberry and rhubarb crumble pie. This pie can be made with or without a pie shell, but I prefer having something crunchy to whet my wererabbit teeth on.

Strawberry and rhubarb crumble pie

1 pie shell (or make a sweet pie pastry yourself from your favourite recipe; I used a sweet half-graham flour recipe that I like)
about 6 stalks of rhubarb
1-2 cups of strawberries (halve the big ones)
Sugar to taste
Flour (ca. 1/4 cup)
Crumble cover:
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cp sugar
ca. 50g butter
grated almonds or cocos flakes (optional)

Peel the rhubarb and chop it into ca. 1cm wide pieces. Toss with the strawberries, sugar and flour – the amount of sugar depends on how much you want to offset the natural sourness of the rhubarb, the flour is to stop the liquid from going everywhere during baking. Fill into the pie crust.
Mix the crumble ingredients until they become small crumbs. Spread them over the fruit using your hands – it just doesn’t get even with a spoon.
Bake at 225 degrees Celsius for ca. 20 minutes.

Enjoy with vanilla icecream or vanilla sauce.

It was nice – in hindsight the pie crust should have been sweeter to contrast with the tang of the rhubarb better. I wonder how a marzipan crumble would work on top?!
Not too happy about the picture (curse artificial light!) but the rest was eaten before I could get my camera in the morning. So have a bonus picture of rhubarb chunks.

Speaking of spring – another of those spring messengers is my beloves asparagus!
While the pie was cooking, I prepared a super-easy asparagus soup for first course.

Super-easy asparagus soup
1 bunch of thin green asparagus
1/3 cup spring onions, shopped
125ml (1 packet) cooking cream
125+ ml (more depending on desired creaminess) water
1 organic vegetable bouillon cube
1 tsp. butter or olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Blanch the asparagus quickly and cut off the tips to preserve for decoration. Chop the rest into chunks.
Heat the oil in a pot and sauté the spring onions. Add the asparagus chunks, cream, and dissolved bouillon cube and boil for about 20 minutes.
Puree everything with a hand mixer and salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with the asparagus tips in the middle and croutons or fresh baguette.

Super easy and you’ll never want instant soup again once you have tasted the real thing!

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Bento #120: Korean stew

I made a vegan Korean stew yesterday. I found the recipe on this blog but can’t seem to find it since the blog was moved…
It contains fried tofu, mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, onion and squash all simmered in a spicy sauce and sprinkled with scallions and sesame.
In the big container there’s rice, half a baby plum tomato and chives.

The boyfriend gets the same but enjoys his bento in a more orderly and strict fashion (haha right, we’re both utterly chaotic people and proud of it!).
He is also forced to eat more vitamins, aka sugarpeas, as you can see.

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Gardening diary: Day 13-16

The plants made if home safe and sound! And look how much they liked the change of air! This little fellow is stretching out his shiny new leaf for the world to see!
The picture was taken already during the easter weekend; by now the leaf is bigger than the seed leaves were! (And I actually just looked up what those first leaves were called on Wikipedia. I’m such a geek.)

The remaining plants from the greenhouse will be repotted soon as well; they grow slower, but also don’t get quite as leggy, so that might be good.
And the strawberries have sprouted a few hair-thin seedlings and were moved from their dark spot towards the windowsill (but are under a clear plastic pot for protection still). Photos shall follow.

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Bento #119: Springy

Guess what leftover I am using up today? *grins*

Devilled eggs on a salad leaf, baby plum tomato, sugar snap peas, pasta all’arrabiata with parmesan and chopped basil, chocolate easter egg.

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Looking for recipes: Quinoa

I’ve cooked quinoa several times now. I’ve found out that I rather like the nutty taste and texture of the grain. Since it has a lot of protein, it’s a welcome addition to my veggie kitchen.
Yesterday, I’ve tried microwave cooking it, based on the assumption that if rice works, quinoa must work too. It got great, actually – it takes slightly longer than rice, about 10 minutes for a cup, and needs to be steamed off afterwards, but gets nicely al dente.

I just have one problem: I can’t seem to find any really interesting recipes on what to do with it. It tastes well enough on its own, but the second I try to mix it into a salad it’s just not that great any more. Maybe it’s the dressing – vinaigrette doesn’t seem to work at all, and I’m not too fond of creamy dressings. With balsamic vinegar, it gets watery and bitter immediately, even if there was no bitterness in the original grain.
Meeta posted a recipe for quinoa soup the other day, but I must admit that it just doesn’t speak to me. It’s not something I could imagine having on my place and eating with gusto. Sorry, Meeta!
Then I have seen recipes that try to use it as a couscous or other grain replacement. But there’s something in me that’s deeply suspicious of “replacement” foods just because they’re better for vegetarians.

So what do I want?
I want something that celebrates the taste of quinoa in itself and adds other tastes to it that make a good flavour and texture combination. It does not have to be vegan, but it should be vegetarian. It can be any kind of food, otherwise – no restrictions at all!
Is there anybody out there who can help me out with a nice recipe?

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Comfort food: Potato soup

Why do so many people complain that when they’re home alone or cooking just for themselves, they never make anything good?
My mom never did that, and neither do I. After all, I count myself as the person who appreciates good food in the household (so does she), and why shouldn’t we make good food for just ourselves?

These days, when I’m home alone, I make things I don’t usually make. The BF can be somewhat picky about food (boiled carrots? Beans? Nah.) and sometimes I do crave the stuff, or want to try out a new recipe I’m not sure he will like. So instead of doing double cooking, I put those on days where I cook alone – if it’s too much, I can always freeze single portions for later!

There has been one dish that I’ve been particularly itching to make recently. My grandma sent me dried porcini mushrooms that a friend of hers has been picking in the forest – a little treasure! (Did you see how much those cost in the supermarket?) I’ve remembered that she used to make a potato and mushroom soup with them, and wanted to try my hand at tweaking the recipe somewhat more in favour of my tastes.

The result? Quite good, so far.

5 big potatoes (they should be of the “floury”, not fastcooking sort), peeled
1 onion, diced
1 handful of dried porcini mushrooms
1 handful of chopped leek
2 Tbsp. butter and/or olive oil
Vegetable or chicken stock (I use an organic bouillon cube)
Salt, pepper, spices (traditionally: cumin and marjoram. To fit my tastes: rosemary and thyme)
Optional: Cream or sourcream

Rehydrate the porcini in boiling water, keep the liquid. Grate or cube the potatoes. Heat some butter and/or olive oil in a pot and saute the onion and leek in it. Add the raw potatoes, stir a few times and add the mushrooms with the water used to rehydrate them. Add stock (how much depends on how thick you want the soup to be in the end). Cover and simmer until the potatoes are cooked through.
Puree everything in a mixer, or leave some of the potatoes and mushrooms out for a bit more bite to the soup (that’s what I did, because I like to have something crunchy in my soup!).
Optional: Add cream or sourcream on top.
Serve and enjoy a nice quiet cup of soup for yourself :)

It’s easy and tasty, just the right stuff for the returning winter here. I also added a grated carrot to my soup, but I didn’t find it did anything great for the taste. In fact, it distracts a bit from the goodness that is leek, potatoes and porcini.

I did take photos (even if the soup isn’t very photogenic, just good), but I can’t find the connector cable for my camera among all the moving boxes. Meh. That also means I’ll have a bento backlog to post soon… and I promptly forgot my bentobox at home! What a great start in the week…

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Gardening diary: Day 11

They still grow so fast you can almost watch them.
All the zucchini are in their own pots now, even the last runty one. The beef tomatoes that I already replanted are doing ok, though the ones still in the greenhouse seem to do even better – they all get their third and fourth leaves already! The zucchinis have also sprouted a third leaf, which is already shaped like a proper leaf, not the round immature shape of the starter leaves. I can see a fourth sprouting in some too!

They are a little high and leggy, so I have bound them to sticks now. I am not quite sure why, since they *should* be getting enough sun during the whole day! Then again, it has been snowing the last few days. Typical Easter weather!

I have borrowed some books and am reading up on the proper soil and pruning of peppers, tomatoes and zucchini. It looks easy enough – they all like lots of nutrition, sun and heat and need pruning to get the nutrition to the fruits. Unsurprisingly, since they all come from the same continent!
I can’t imagine how life in Europe must have been before America was discovered. No tomatoes, no peppers, no potatoes or squashes – meat was scarce save for the rich folk, so almost all nutrition came from roots and grains! Some day I shall have to try out a medieval European menu – but hopefully not too soon. (Luckily the LARPs I’ve been to have largely ignored those facts…)
The book also told me that for repotting, I should always use a spatula and hold the tomato plants by the leaves, not the sensitive stems. Oops. Hope I haven’t damaged anything so far! I held on mostly to the ground clump and didn’t shake off any earth off the roots, though.

Have a good Easter, everyone! I will be back after Easter Monday, probably.

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Easter baking take 2: Osterpinzen

Osterpinzen are a traditional Austrian easter bakery made out of soft, sweetened yeast dough.
Austria is primarily catholic, so there are a lot of traditions around easter! For example, on Easter sunday, this sweet bread, some hard-boiled eggs and a piece of ham or smoked meat are brought to Easter mass, so that the priest can bless them. Every member of the family eats a piece of all three foods later (usually at the Easter brunch after the mass and the egg-hunt!), as it is supposed to pass on the blessing and bring good luck to you.

I baked a second batch yesterday, tweaking the recipe a little and (in my opinion) succeeding much better than last time, so I can pass it on now!
Since I baked more this time, the dough got a lot yeastier, and also softer. The proportions changed a little from the 250g flour recipe I had last time.
500g flour
100g sugar
100g butter
40g yeast
250ml milk
5-6 yolks
Salt, vanilla sugar (about 1 packet or 1-2Tbsp)
Dry white wine (can substitute lemon zest) for taste

1. Warm half of the milk to room temperature in a bowl. Mix in the crumbled yeast and about a tablespoon each of flour and sugar. Cover with a damp cloth and let it rise in a warm place for about 15 minutes. It will rise up and get frothy as the yeast multiplies.
This pre-dough is called a “Dampfl” in Austrian. I admit I had to look it up, much to the chagrin of my mother when I admitted to her I didn’t even know what a Dampfl was! I guess I fail at Austrian baking traditions.
2. Mix the rest of the milk, a splash of wine or lemon zest, vanilla sugar, the sugar and the butter in a bowl and warm to about 30 degrees Celsius.
3. Divide the eggs into whites and yolks. The whites aren’t used in this recipe. Save some of the yolk for brushing the dough before baking, and put the rest into a mixing bowl together with the flour, the milk-sugar-butter mixture and the risen yeast. Knead everything until the dough gets smooth and firm (if you use a food processor, it should be stringy enough to grab hold of the dough hooks).
4. Roll the dough to a ball, put it back into the bowl and cover it with a cloth. Put into a warm place to rise. When you see the surface starting to crack (about 20-30 minutes in), fold the dough again with your hands and let it rise another 30 minutes. It should grow some more by that time.
5. Preheat the oven to about 180 degrees Celsius. Cut the dough into 3-4 parts and form balls from each one. Place them onto a baking sheet or a greased baking pan and cut the top of each ball three times in a star shape. Place a dyed easter egg in the center and brush the dough with egg yolk:

I should have cut them deeper actually – cutting almost all the way through seems to be the ticket!
5a. Alternatively, divide the dough ball into three parts, roll them out to strings and braid to a wreath to be filled later:

6. Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 30-40 minutes, until the dough is cooked through (try with a needle).
7. Let cool and enjoy with butter and your favourite marmelade!

PS: I’m submitting this to Bread Baking Day #08, a baking roundup over at Wild Yeast. This month’s theme is Celebrations, so take a look and contribute your own spring celebration bakery!

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Bento #118 – Indigo Sushi

I dyed more eggs yesterday… then the weird idea rode me to make blue sushi rice. Why, I’ll never know.
It became a LOT as well, so the freezer is full of blue riceballs now…
The rolls are wrapped in tiny seasoned nori cut in half, as that was all I had left, and filled with carrot strips, leek and mayo. Then there’s some ginger and wasabi to the side, eggroll made from only eggwhites (the yolks went into baking…), broccoli and pad thai leftover from dinner. And a fishy with soy sauce :)
I just remembered that I forgot to bring chopsticks. Grr. Eating sushi with a fork just seems so wrong…

The boyfriend gets sushi, a blue riceball and sashimi, as I got tired of rolling rice at 12 AM.

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