Archive for December, 2007In early December I noticed that two new search terms had skyrocketed up the Veggie Friendly most popular search string list - “Vegetarian Christmas” and “Vegetarian Christmas lunch”. A good blogger would have quickly put up a post with vegetarian Christmas ideas… I didn’t quite get around to it, but in preparation for next year here is a summary of the food my family and friends ate this Christmas. If anyone else wants to share their vegetarian Christmas menu, email me veggiefriendly[at]gmail[dot]com with your photos and /or ideas. The Centrepiece Most traditional and modern Christmas lunches include a wealth of vegetarian and vegan side dishes which make a great lunch or dinner option. However, I’m often stumped by a vegetarian centrepiece to equal the turkey, lamb roast or BBQ’d whole fish that the rest of my family might be eating.
I was fascinated when my friend Harry told me he was attempting a Boxing Day tofurkey. A tofurkey is a vegan version of turkey, where tofu is used for the flesh and filled with herb stuffing in the centre. I have enough trouble keeping my tofu in shape at the best of times, so I was really impressed to see how rounded and, well, turkey-like this tofurkey looked.
The lovely brown colour on the outside comes from a miso baste, but Harry suggests it’s probably better to marinate the tofu for a few hours so the flavour soaks all the way through. For stuffing, he recommends shredded bread mixed with rosemary, sage and thyme rather than a store bought packet. The recipes he used are here and here.
The day before, Harry’s family had a modern take on a vegetarian Christmas with a baby spinach frittata for a centrepiece, supplemented by a tofu and corn salad and fresh bread with an avocado spread.
My family were having a small lunch with just our immediate family on Christmas Day, and a bigger, extended family lunch on Boxing Day. We decided to repeat the spectacularly successful stuffed pumpkin recipe from last year on Boxing Day, which was more than enough to feed everyone and added theatre during the carving. Unfortunately, I made a rash executive decision to buy a Bushranger pumpkin at the Farmers Market (it had symmetry, and dignity, and was about $5 for a whole pumpkin). However, the Jap pumpkin we used last year was much better - the skin held while it was cooking and had a nicer taste, plus it looked prettier when it came out of the oven.
For our smaller Christmas Day lunch we borrowed a recipe for chickpea flatcake from Rose Elliot’s Veggie Chic. This was a really simple, quick and healthy recipe - mashed chickpeas flavoured with onion, cumin, garlic and salt and pepper that is baked in a pie dish in the oven. The original recipe calls for honey roasted vegetables to be draped on top, but we just used plain old roast veggies and the sauce from our cauliflower cheese dish. I thought this was a good option to add a non-vegetable main to a meal. Vegetarian Side Dishes and Salads Over the years, our Christmas Day spread has started to move away from heavier, traditional foods like roast meat and vegetables towards lighter, healthier options that are much better suited to hot Australian conditions. I was impressed that our good friends Gill and Aaron bucked stodgy traditions this year to enjoy a delicious mix of salads for Christmas lunch.
The tabbouleh and chickpeas are a great, healthy choice, and are vegan-friendly. I was really taken with the mango and capsicum salad - it looks gorgeous and would be a beautiful addition to any Christmas table.
For Christmas Day, my family had a mix of vegetable side dishes, including my Dad’s great green beans lightly sauteed with toasted almonds.
I really like my Mum’s recipe for braised red cabbage cooked with vinegar, apple and sultanas. The brightness of the cabbage is a great table decoration, while the flavours have bite and are a good contrast to milder dishes like roast vegetables.
Another classic recipe of my Mum’s is cauliflower cheese. This year we tried an Indian version from Madhur Jaffrey’s autobiography, Climbing the Mango Trees. Unlike a classic cauliflower cheese dish, the cauliflower is first sauteed with cumin seeds, pureed tomatoes, tumeric, green chillies and cayenne pepper before being baked with a light cream and cheese sauce. I liked the spiciness of this dish, but the consensus around the table was that the original was better.
I have a well-documented weakness for potatoes, and these beautiful baby potatoes were perfect for roasting. The recipe was very simple - just peel, halve, toss the potatoes in a plastic bag with salt, olive oil and rosemary, and cook for about 30 - 40 minutes.
Because we were having roast potatoes on Christmas Day, I wanted a different dish for Boxing Day that would still be filling. I made a very simple potato bake - slices of potato interspersed with a dried onion and herb mix, and a 2/3 mix of milk and cream. It was also delicious.
For Christmas Day I decided to roast a lot of beetroot, sweet potato and pumpkin. The idea was that these veggies are all brightly coloured and healthy, and sweet potato has a lower GI than standard potatoes so it might not leave us as sleepy in the post-lunch lull.
The other advantage was that all three vegetables are great in roast vegetable salad with a honey mustard dressing, which we made for a dinner with friends that night from the leftovers and ate again for lunch the next day.
By Boxing Day we were sated, so we wanted some lighter options for our big family lunch. Andy made a great mixed salad with blanched asparagus, cherry tomatoes, rocket, avocado and green beans.
A couple of weeks ago I tried a grilled peach salad in a restaurant and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. For Boxing Day, I combined grilled peaches with grilled figs from a tree in the backyard, then mixed them with baby spinach leaves and goats cheese with a lime and mint dressing. This was a popular salad, although in hindsight the cheese was unnecessary because of the strong, sweet flavours from the fruit. If you leave out the cheese it is a great vegan recipe. Much as I want be a good Christmas eater, and cut down on fat, salt and sugar, it just wouldn’t be Christmas in my family without pudding. For Christmas Day my Mum made her ever popular steamed fruit pudding, which she picked up from a friend when they had to make 120 Christmas puddings in a single sitting. Highly recommended with brandy custard and / or cream.
Because Boxing Day was our Christmas lunch with Andy’s side of the family, we wanted to serve another pudding to keep up the sense of occasion. However, we wanted a lighter option given everyone had eaten a big lunch the day before. Andy came up with the perfect compromise: individual bread and butter puddings. These were delicious, easy and quick to make, and lighter than the traditional Christmas pudding.
All in all I had a great holiday with family and friends. Season’s greetings to all my Veggie Friendly readers - thanks for keeping in touch and I hope that your 2008 is filled with delicious vegetarian fare. One of my favourite readers and bloggers
India is rightfully famous for its tea (or chai). It’s served in every restaurant, home, and railway station - the tea-seller call of “chaaiiii, chaaiii” is one of my archetypal memories of catching trains in India. The standard version is a milky sweet tea, but my favourite was masala (spiced) chai, which is laced with sweet-smelling spices like green cardamon, clove, nutmeg, mace and dry ginger. If drinking tea is a national pastime in India, growing tea is a national industry. Tea is cultivated in India’s cooler hill regions, such as Assam in the North East and Tamil Nadu in the South East.
We spent a few days in a tea-growing area called Udhagamandala (or Ooty) in the Nilgiri Hills in Tamil Nadu. There we visited the Tea Factory, a small scale tea processing plant which offers tours and maintains a small but highly interesting museum. Among other things, we discovered:
By contrast to tea, Indian beer is a total disappointment, particularly if you’re used to the lovely light local beers that are par for the course throughout the rest of South East Asia. The leading Indian beer brand is Kingfisher, but some bars also stock another local brand called Haywards 5000 and locally brewed versions of Fosters. Most restaurants and small bars only offer beer by the bottle. This is annoying because bottled beer made in India has glycerol added to it. A couple of tastings was enough to confirm our initial suspicions that any chemical used as an active ingredient in soap or as an anti-freeze in car radiators has no business in beer. Not only does the glycerol cause huge bubbles to form in the beer, it gives you a headache the next morning out of all proportion to the amount of beer you consumed the previous night. It also seemed to make the beer taste funny, but this may have been psychosomatic on my part. After a few disappointing forays into Indian beer, I decided that if it wasn’t available by the tap I’d stick to tea. No description of our food adventures in South India would be complete without a special tribute to the dosa. As I wrote about in the South Indian summary, the dosa is a large, savoury pancake that is a staple of South Indian food.
The batter is usually made the day before the dosa is cooked, allowing time for the ingredients to ferment. Once the batter is ready, the dosa is very quick to make. A circle of batter is poured onto a hot grill and fried on each side for about 4 minutes . The filling is pre-prepared, and usually added at the end.
Dosas come with either sambar or dahl, and coconut chatni on the side.
The standard dosa is fairly thick and smooth, and chock full of filling. However, there are other types.
Rava dosas are made with semolina rather than rice flour. The batter is thinner, and seems to have more air bubbles, as the rava dosas have a slightly thinner texture with small holes through them.
Another popular variation is the paper dosa. I only ordered a paper dosa the one time because when it came out it was twice the size of the plate. I don’t know if they are usually this size… but I was too scared to try and order again.
Paper dosas are much thinner than the standard or rava dosa and consequently are quite brittle. Mine struck me as more oily than the other types of dosas - possibly because the thinness of the batter made it easier for the oil to soak right through the pancake. While not my first choice of dosa, this one was certainly a scene stealer when it was brought out to our table in the middle of a crowded restaurant. Travelling in the South of India we often encountered regional variations in the food. Kerala is a good case in point, as there were many dishes there which we hadn’t encountered in our previous five weeks in India.
Thoren is a classic Keralan dry vegetarian curry. It’s usually made with a single vegetable (for example, cabbage or beans) which is fried with spices and fresh pieces of grated coconut. It’s a quick, simple and tasty dish - the perfect meal when you have an odd vegetable lying around in the fridge.
My favourite Keralan curry was pachadi, which uses natural curd as the base for the curry sauce. The curd gave the sauce a creamy texture and a slightly sour flavour, which is a nice counterpoint to the usually sweeter Keralan dishes.
Another classic Keralan dish is Kitchadi. This can also be made with different vegetables, and uses curd in the sauce. It has a thicker consistency than pachadi, and in the version I tried the flavour was more bland and porridge like than the slightly sharper pachadi curry (but that could simply be the result of trying them in different restaurants).
Sambar (vegetables cooked in a tamarind flavoured broth) is a light, soupy curry served throughout the South. It is on most menus in Kerala, and is delicious as a topping for idlis or dosas, or as a simple, cheap meal served over rice.
And of course, if you can’t make up your mind about which curry to order, there’s always a thali set with a little bit of everything! With the end of our holiday rapidly approaching, Andy and I agreed that taking a South Indian cooking class was a priority. The relaxed town of Fort Cochin in Kerala was the perfect place to do it because many local homestays offered cooking classes on the side. Our hotel recommended we contact Maria at the Monte Carlo Guesthouse on Burgher Street. She’s not in any guide book that we know of - but she should be!
Maria’s classes are excellent value at 250 rupees per person for a vegetarian class, and 350 for a non-vegetarian. There is an extra charge of 50 rupees per person if you’d like to learn how to make chapatis. The classes take place in Maria’s kitchen and last for about three hours depending on the dishes. Bring an empty stomach because you get to eat the delicious results afterwards. One of the best parts of the classes is that Maria gives you a lot of choice as to the dishes you make. In the vegetarian version, we got to choose a ‘dry’ vegetable dish (Maria suggested we tell her our favourite vegetable and then she’d recommend a dish for it), a ‘wet’ curry, a rice dish and a chutney.
Eggplant was our vegetable of choice so Maria recommended a spicy chilli fry.We also used the class to learn how to make some of our favourite foods from the trip, including dahl, lemon rice, tomato chutney and chapatis.
Maria has an amazing wealth of knowledge about cooking. Most of what she knows come from her own experience running a restaurant, and the advice from her mother and mother-in-law which has been handed down in both families for generations.
Impressively, Maria gave us precise instructions for each dish, but did it all from memory. As she’d recount the steps she often offer asides about how to vary the ingredients or techniques slightly to produce a different dish. If we’d been able to stop drooling long enough to write down all of her insights we would have left with 20 recipes rather than five. I really liked that Maria’s class was hands on. Andy and I were her only students that day, so we took it in turns making each dish.
Making a number of dishes from scratch, we began to understand some of the basic methods of South Indian cooking. For example, there is a standard order for adding spices to dishes. You start by frying black mustard seeds until they pop…
…then add red onion, followed by turmeric for colour…
To make dahl, we used yellow split peas that had been soaked over night and then washed two times.
The final result was delicious, with much more complex flavours and texture than the dahl I’ve made at home.
By far the most difficult dish of the day was paratha. Maria taught us how to make the paratha dough and filling. The challenge was to fill the dough with the stuffing, then shape and flatten it with a rolling pin. Changing the way you fold and roll the dough changes the type of bread you end up with.
While Maria’s practised hands made the rolling look easy, I struggled to bend my paratha dough to my will. Still, with some expert help and patience the dough was finally in a fit shape to be cooked in a pan. It was great eaten with the chutney or dahl. Of all the cooking classes we took overseas, Maria’s was our favourite and I’d highly recommend her to anyone visiting Fort Cochin. If you’d like to organise a class with her you can visit her at the Monte Carlo Guesthouse on Burgher Street, Fort Cochin, call her on 2215342, or else email her at mgeorge24in[at]yahoo[dot]com. Update: Maria’s husband George has started a blog about Kerala’s many tourist attractions called Cascade of Pearls. It has details of their restaurant and also an email link. If the Indian state of Kerala was a novel, it would be the kind described on dust covers as a ’sprawling historical saga’. Now a Communist state with a democratically elected Government and the highest literacy rate in India, Kerala’s position on the southern calf of the Indian coastline has seen it frequented by Greek, Phoenician, Roman, Chinese, Christian, Jewish and Muslim traders for millenia. Many left traces of their culture in Kerala - some even settled there. In the last 500 years Kerala has been colonised by the Portugese, Dutch and English, all of whom has left lasting impressions through their distinctive architecture and religious legacies. It’s hard not to be fascinated by Kerala’s history - and even harder not to be fascinated by its delicious food. So when I heard about the The History Restaurant in Fort Cochin my curiosity - and appetite - were aroused. Located in the upmarket Brunton Boatyard hotel, the restaurant’s menu is a food journey through Kerala’s history showcasing Syrian, English, Portugese, Arab, Jewish and Indian influences. Initially I worried that most of the cultures represented on the menu aren’t that kind to vegetarians, but fortunately the modern day bias towards herbivores in India assured that there was food for us to try.
We began with an entree called Kodappan, a dish of coconut and runner beans served in a banana flower that is indigenous to Kerala. The best part of this dish was its flamboyant presentation, though the beans were a light, dry way to kick off the meal.
The mains section was helpfully divided into veg and non-veg. Unsurprisingly, the veg dishes were almost all Indian, with the non-veg representing the foreign aspects of Kerala’s history. We ordered the Vaigana Pody, an old recipe of young white eggplant curry from the Konkani Brahmins, and a local version of dal made sweet by the addition of ginger, peanuts and jaggery. The dal was well-executed, but I prefer the savoury kind. The eggplant was amazing - soft and melting, and just a hint of eggplant flavour underneath the curry sauce.
Although feeling full, we weren’t ready to bring an end to our journey just yet. For dessert I ordered the Trifal Appan, a thin pancake of rice stuffed with stewed tropical fruits, mango cream and jaggery sauce. The appan (or appam) is a cousin of the Uttapam that we encountered occasionally in the South (mostly in Kerala). It’s often served with a curry, but was also delicious as the base in this sweet dessert.
Andy couldn’t refuse the Pazham Nirachathy, a banana with cardamon cooked in ghee with jaggery sauce and coconut. Although a simple dish, it tasted lovely and was a great way to finish the meal. The concept of a “history” restuarant could have been naff. And with such diverse gastronomic influences, the individual dishes could clashed and made it difficult for diners to choose a three course meal. Fortunately, through careful planning and an understated but elegant setting the History Restaurant avoids these traps. It’s an expensive, but very enjoyable, way to experience Kerala’s fascinating past. After many months of (mostly) budget accommodation and sweltering heat, Andy and I decided to treat ourselves to three nights of luxury at the Taj-run Savoy Hotel in Ooty, Tamil Nadu. Cool air, horlicks, hot water and badminton, the hill station town was a lovely indulgence towards the end of our time in India. While our hotel cost more in a single night than most of our other accommodation combined, the friendliness of the staff, and the beautiful grounds and room made it worth every penny. Best of all, the hotel offered a “cooking demonstration” run by the restaurant’s chef. We were a little worried by the”for ladies” stipulation on the website, but fortunately that was no bar to Andy participating. Taj hotels are well known for their superior food, and after our great experience at Masala Kraft in Mumbai Andy and I were keen to learn from one of the company’s chefs. The class turned out to be the highlight of our stay.
The Executive Chef, Lok Shahi, was very friendly and accommodating. Assisted by chefs Samodra and Nathan, he happily agreed to run the demonstration at 7pm so we could eat the results for dinner, even though this was just on the cusp of the restaurant’s busier dinner period. We were asked in advance what we’d like to see demonstrated, and specified only that we wanted something vegetarian and South Indian. Even with such meager instructions, the team of Chefs came up with the perfect meal - two vegetarian Nilgiri curries, hailing from the wider hill district of which Ooty is a part.
The first dish was a Nilgiri Kai (mixed vegetable) curry. With Ooty’s cool climate making it well disposed to growing vegetables, it was no surprise to see a dish laden with fresh spinach, carrots, cauliflower and beans.
The vegetables were quickly sauteed, then seasoned with salt, tumeric and an onion and cashew paste. Splashes of milk and water completed the dish, leaving it smooth, creamy and not all spicy, a perfect complement to our second curry.
The next dish was a hearty red kidney bean curry called Avavai Uthaka. It had a typical South Indian spice base of mustard seeds, red onion, turmeric, chili, salt and ginger.
Fresh tomatoes and red kidney beans were added to the spice mix and cooked quickly on a high heat. The result was a filling and fiery dish, perfect for a cold Ooty night. To round off the meal, the chefs made gassu doti, a flat, fried bread with grated potato mixed through the dough. It was delicious eaten with spicy chutney, also made in the Savoy Hotel restaurant.
The skill of the chefs meant the whole demonstration took no more than half hour, leaving us plenty of time to savour our meal amongst the colonial charm of the Savoy Hotel’s dining room. If you ever get the chance to take a Taj Hotel cooking demonstration, grab it with both hands! |
Bad Behavior has blocked 4060 access attempts in the last 7 days.