Gyoza Noodle Soup

I was totally won over by this post on the Fairest Feed by lovely Philippa, and decided to take my own crack at making a Japanese noodley soup with gyoza.

Mine's not quite as pretty, but was super delicious!

To make:
About 1 cup vegetable stock per person (make sure it's nice & garlicky & gingery),
Soy sauce, orange juice, kumquat marmalade, mirin, etc,
Some vegies, including asparagus, spring onion and cabbage / wombok,
Some tofu puffs
Soba / ramen noodles (precooked to al dente),
Gyoza! (You can buy dumplings at the shop, or make your own).

Okay.

Put the stock in a pot, and add juice of 1 orange, 1 tbspn light soy sauce, some mirin / ketchap manis / sugar / kumquat marmalade (just make your favourite Asian-y broth),
Add some finely sliced tofu puffs (about 1.5 per person), and the long cooking vegies (like asparagus stalks, cabbage, cauliflower etc.
When that's cooked, add asparagus spears, spring onion, other quick cooking vegies, and the noodles.

At this point, start frying your pre-steamed gyoza.

Then, when the gyoza are fried, the noodles will be done. Serve! Mmm! So good.

macro bought by woolworths

Just a quickie today - unimpressed to discover that Macro Wholefoods, as of May 09, has been bought out by Woolworths.

Enough.
Freaking.
Woolworths.

You can read more here - some of the stores are going to be turned into 'upmarket grocery' stores named Thomas Dux. Macro's line of products will be bought out too, and presumably rebranded.

I am getting downright sick of hearing terrible stories of the way that Woolworths treats its food growers and suppliers, and I know I'm not the only one.

And I really liked their tempeh burgers.

Read more here.

cheater pastry pudding

This recipe is super easy, but requires puff pastry which I just bought at the shop (hence, cheater).

I was watching Masterchef a little while ago, and they made some sort of caramelised apples with french toast. I am yet to be convinced of the virtue of either eggy french toast, or a vegan alternative, so I came up with these to go with my apples.

Again, don't have any quantities in this recipe...

You'll need puff pastry, don't use a low fat version or they won't be nice & crunchy and puffy.

Take
1 sheet puff pastry (defrosted), and sprinkle on top:
Caster sugar (about 1 tbspn), &
Cinnamon, &
Nutmeg of clove powder, &
Dessicated coconut, &
Apple, just a tiny bit grated VERY finely (optional).

Basically the more you add, the harder it is to roll, but that's okay. Don't add much that is too wet or it won't be nice & crunchy when it's cooked.

So. Roll it all up (the pastry needs to be very non-frozen & very non-low-fat or it will crack).

Then with a sharp knife, slice it into rounds - each should be about 1.5cm thick.

Then, place on a baking tray and bake for about 15 mins or until they look golden and delicious.

Pre-cooking - sorry about the battered tray!

Post cooking - the darker ones are just upside down.

Serve with caramelised apples or something else yummy.

You can also make savoury ones of these, go for it!!

pumpkin: roasted pumpkin pasta

Now that we're getting our weekly vegie boxes, I'm a lot more focussed at cooking specific vegetable types. We recently had a BIG chunk of pumpkin in our vegie box, which called for, amongst other things, Roasted Pumpkin Pasta.

It was quite easy to make...

I peeled and roughly chopped my big pumpkin into bit sized strips.

I chucked them in an oven tray with some olive oil, salt & pepper, and roasted them at about 180 degrees for 1.5 hours, until they were lovely & sweet and the way roasted pumpkin should be.

Toward the end of the roasting time, I made a basic pasta sauce, with:
Leek &
Onion, fried until golden in
Olive oil, to which I added
Salt,
Pepper,
Chopped Tomatoes (from a can), &
Spinach leaves

When the sauce was ready & the spaghetti cooked, I tossed it all together with about half the pumpkin, and then served with more pumpkin on top, and some pistachios (yum!)

It was soooo nice. Recommended!

And sorry for lack of measurements, I NEVER measure when I cook savoury, but you'll figure it out!

Kumquat Salsa

I know, it is a bit unusual, kumquat salsa. But I like to experiment!
We were having tacos, and I had just finished making some kumquat marmalade (more on this soon). Kumquat apparently is a very common ingredient in Asian cooking, I love it with soy & chilli. So I thought, why not in salsa? It worked really well, very yummy.

I've been eating this salsa with the tacos, and also just on bread. So good!

Ingredients:
1 small onion, sliced finely
1 teaspoon fresh ginger shredded
1/2 tbspn olive oil
1 capsicum sliced finely
1 chili sliced finely
salt & pepper
1 tomato, cut into little cubes
1 tspn soy sauce
pinch of cumin seeds
2 stalks of oregano leaves
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbspn kumquat syrup

You should cook this in a mid-sized frying pan.

Fry the onion and ginger in the oil on a medium heat for a few minutes until the onions are just starting to brown.
Add in the capsicum and chili, turn the heat down, and cook for around 10 mins, until the capsicum is nice & soft.
Turn up the heat to high, add the cumin seeds, salt, pepper & oregano, and cook for around 1 min until the cumin is nice & fragrant.
Add the soy sauce and kumquat, and cook about 1 more min - the sauces should sizzle when you add them in, and the liquid quickly evaporate.
Okay. Now add in the lemon & tomato, turn down and cook a bit longer.

Voila! You have salsa. Enjoy!

Yummy Vegies: The Green Line

Sorry for terribly long absence from this blog!

We've just started getting organic vegies delivered from The Green Line (if you're in Melbourne too you can also get them!)

We've opted for a weekly box of mixed seasonal fruit & vegies, it's always a surprise!


I feel a lot healthier eating this fruit, normally I would NEVER buy fruit, but as it's there I have to eat it!

Because the vegies are seasonal, it means there are lots of things in there I might not usually buy, so I have to be more creative cooking. That's a good thing!

Get your own Green Line vegies here!

spaghetti & beanballs

Meatballs are one of those ultimate feelgood foods I think. But not having eaten meat for a long time, I had totally crossed them off my comfort food list until I bought my copy of Veganomicon and found beanballs in there! Like any recipe, I can never follow it and always think my way is best. I've made these twice now, once with breadcrumbs and once wheat free.


Both recipes make at least 20 beanballs.

You will need to make a basic tomato pasta sauce to go with them.

Beanballs

With breadcrumbs:
1 x 410g tin red kidney beans
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
1/4 of a leek
1 tbspn plum sauce*
2 tspn soy sauce
pinch of pepper

Drain the kidney beans (reserve the liquid). Put these in a food processor with the rest of the ingredients. Blend, adding the kidney bean liquid as you go, until you've got a mixture the consistency of mincemeat. That's it!

Wheat free:
1/2 cup of dry adzuki beans, soaked overnight (at least 12 hrs) and then cooked until soft
1/4 cup cornflour
1/8 cup rice flour
1/2 small onion
1 tbspn plum sauce*
2 tspn soy sauce
pinch of pepper

Same as above! Drain the beans, chuck everything in the food processor, and blend adding the cooking liquid as you go.

Cooking:
Roll either of the mixes into balls, and then fry them, turning as they cook. When they're fried all over, simply add them to some basic tomato pasta sauce (mine was just onion, tomato & zucchini). Cook for about 5 mins in the sauce, then serve over pasta!

* - you can use any sweet relish/chutney instead of the plum sauce.