Search ResultsAs you may have noticed, Veggie Friendly updates have been a little slower in recent years thanks to the arrival of my first baby, T, and my studies towards a Masters of Environmental Management. However, one of the nice things is that I still continue to get a stream of emails, comments and questions from people reading the blog or letting me know about great vegetarian opportunities. But imagine my surprise when a Canadian journalist contacted me to ask if he could submit a photo of spices that I took in Udaipur, India in 2007 for an article he was writing on The Spice Box cooking class for The Toronto Star. My surprise became uncontainable excitement and bragging a very grown-up show of delight when the photo was accepted for publication. One of the nicest things is that I associate Udaipur with Canada because we were there with two friends from Toronto, so it seems fitting somehow that the photo appeared in a Canadian newspaper. Andy and I were determined not to leave India without taking at least one cooking class. Afterall, there’s no point falling in love with food that you can’t recreate at home. Our first opportunity came in the lakeside city of Udaipur in Rajasthan. While there are a lot of cooking classes to choose from, we opted to go with the Spice Box, a local spice store whose owner, Shanthi, runs vegetarian cooking lessons on the side.
The class covers a number of popular Indian dishes, including palak paneer, malai kofta, vegetable biryani, chapati and vegetable cutlets, as well as spiced masala chai, and Kashmiri saffron tea. With so many dishes being taught in around three hours, the experienced Shanthi moves the class along at a fast pace. This is not a problem, however, as you receive a copy of the recipes and take turns to make the different dishes so the techniques are easy to remember.
I found the class really useful. While I’ve always loved Indian food, I’m not good at deciphering the different spices that are present in a finished meal. Learning the dishes from scratch gave me a whole new insight into why dishes taste the way they do.
Khadai paneer home-style - all capsicum and paneer, just the way I like it Throughout the class we picked up lots of interesting information about Indian cooking. For example, masala chai is always made with Assam tea, and home cooked Indian food is very different from the food you find in restaurants, using far more vegetables and far less sauce.
Whipping up a palak paneer I was also surprised at how fast the curries were to make. I’ve always been taught that curries need to be simmered for hours, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense when you consider that a home cook has many other demands on their time.
My favourite dish of the class was the malai kofta. The sauce was delicious, using lots of interesting spices like green cardamon (reserved for sweet and milky sauces), aniseed, cinnamon, white poppy seeds and watermelon seeds. And I was fascinated to learn that you make the unspiced, deep-fried potato dumplings separately from the sauce, and only combine them at the end.
Taming the chapati One of the most fun dishes to make was chapati. After making and rolling the dough, we transferred it on to a hot pan to cook where it quickly puffed up into a delicious bread.
The best part of the course was eating the delicious finished products at the end of the lesson, although as the only two in the class we couldn’t finish the food no matter how hard we tried. This class was ideal for beginners who want to get better acquainted with classic North Indian dishes. As Shanthi says, the only thing you need to bring to the lesson is a bottle of water and a big appetite. I guess you could say that Turkey is the land of the sweet tooth - possibly because there are so many sugary sweets that no-one has many teeth left!
Lokum (or Turkish Delight) is probably the most famous Turkish sweet. You can buy it at almost any bus stop or town, however Istanbul has finely honed the art of traveller’s sample boxes, which come securely packed for the ride home.
Along with rose flavour you can try cardamon, hazlenut and my favourite, pistachio (or even better, pistachio covered in cocunut). It even comes with a marshmallow centre.
Baklava is another popular dressert in Turkey, so we felt morally obliged to try some in Sutanahmet.
We also tasted the smooth vanilla slice with fresh banana,
and a fig slice.
I’m not that big on super sweet food (which probably disqualifies me from writing about food in Greece, Turkey or the Middle East), so my favourite dessert was sutlac, a creamy rice pudding baked until it caramelises on top, or else sprinkled with cinnamon.
Just before we left Australia, we heard a funny story about friends who travelled hours (and then more hours) by bus to a small town in Turkey which is renowned for its stretchy Turkish ice cream. Sadly, the town served only the regular stuff.
Cappadocia is not far from this town, and when we were there I was surprised to see the mythical Turkish ice cream being whipped and stretched elegantly out of an ornate brass tub. In memory of Tiff and Andrew’s ice cream odyssey, we tried one at the Goreme Otogar (unfortuantely the guy on duty wasn’t trained in stretching, so you can’t tell from the photo just how special this ice cream is, but at least he had a big spoon. Rebecca from Cucina Rebeca and Ed from Tomato just tagged me with the ‘Five Things to Eat Before You Die’ meme from Melissa at the Traveler’s Lunchbox. This is, like, the biggest thing to hit the food blogosphere. Almost ever. The idea is that food bloggers around the world choose five foods that they think everyone should try befre they die. I gave this a lot of thought (which may not be reflected in the list). There are some things on my list of five foods I’m glad I’ve eaten before I die (creamy mashed potatoes I’m looking at you) but I recognise that they’re not an essential eating experience for everybody else. Also, I debated if the list was meant to reflect platonic ideal (or idyll) foods. Five perfect things that everyone, no matter their background or economic status, should try before they die. I decided that list is just too hard. How do you go past fresh drinking water or allow for different dietary needs or predilections? Next I tried to come up with a list that included my five most unique or hard to come-by food experiences (i.e. the 17 course meal in a small restaurant buried in a French forest, or the amazing curry with string hoppers in Sri Lanka which was served out of a communal bucket). But as much as these meals were fun, I don’t think that their uniqueness alone is enough for me to recommend that they should be one of the few things that everyone in the whole world should try once. Further complicating matters, some of my favourite things like fresh figs and cheese were already taken and like Rebecca I didn’t want to be a copy cat. At this point I realised this list was causing me blogger’s block so I decided to go with my five favourite vegetarian foods / experiences. 1) Fresh mangosteen - a perfect food deserving of its mythology. Pull away the skin to reveal pristeen white flesh, a sweet smell, and an exquisite creamy taste. 2) Salt and pepper tofu - what’s not to love about silken tofu cooked in a light salt and pepper batter that literally melts in your mouth. 3) Camp fire stew and damper - head to the Australian outback, make a fire under the stars, and let your vegetable stew bubble away in a hot iron pot nestled in the coals. For dessert, cook some damper on a stick or in tin foil, then fill the centre with some jam and butter, and wash it down with billy tea. 4) Palak paneer - Everyone should eat Indian curry before they die. I love palak paneer: creamy spinach curry cooked in spices with white cubes of soft paneer cheese that soak up the flavour. 5) Nasi Liwet and fried tempeh at Bu Wir’s night stall, Solo, Indonesia - At sundown a city of tarpaulin tents appear on the streets, each one has a few low tables and pots of delicious, fresh home-cooked food. Nasi Liwet is the local speciality, but my heart was stolen by the delicious, thin slices of fried tempeh. I tag: Chocolate Suze, Vegetable Adventures, Vegan Sydney, Beets and Potatoes and Vegan Friendly NY.
V-Rating: VVVVV I think I’m the only person, let alone only vegetarian, who hasn’t eaten at St Kilda’s Lentil As Anything. I’d heard all about it but never made the trek. No excuses, really. However, as a new resident of Brunswick I noted excitedly the second outlet of Lentil As Anything on Sydney Rd - inside, but run separately from, a cool pub called The Spot Bar. For those non-Melburnian readers, Lentil As Anything began life as a modest cooperative restaurant cooking exclusively vegan fare. Its gimmick is a “no set prices” menu and no bills - customers simply push whatever money they feel appropriate into an honesty box on the way out the door. This wonderful concept has many wondering if people do actually pay more than the probable menu price due to feelings of goodwill and guilt. I suppose there’s no way of testing this interesting hypothesis. However, one thing is for certain: the food is bloody excellent. Vegetarians will immediately appreciate the overwhelming selection beyond veggie risotto and veggie lasagne. The menu changes daily but the range is strongly influenced by Asian and north African recipes with rice and couscous everywhere. Food is simple but delicious and is served quickly. Staff will assure you that, in keeping with the general ethos of the business, produce is fresh, organic and sourced locally. On my inaugural trip to Lentil As Anything I enjoyed a bean and vegetable stew with home baked rye bread. My dining companions devoured a vegetable couscous and a stir fry on rice - both of which easily passed my sample taste test. All three were spiced to perfection and the servings were very generous. Washed down with a cleansing ale from the adjoining bar it was a highly satisfying dining experience. An absolute must for Melbourne-based veggies and visitors. |
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