Curry soup

The other night we made a red curry coconut noodle soup :) I can't remember exactly what I did as I usually just eyeball ingredients for this sort of thing. I wrote a recipe for my sister, but failed to keep a copy for myself but oh well. I'll just give an outline. Curry soup is really to taste.

Red Curry Coconut Noodle Soup
Serves about 8 or 10 depending on how big your stomach is and how many veges you decide on

Ingredients:
Tin of red curry paste (I use Maesri brand - you can buy it at Woolworths, sometimes at Coles. It's the only brand I've found so far with no shrimp paste or other animal products in it. They also do a Mussaman paste and a yellow curry paste. Both delicious.)
2 cans of coconut cream (or milk) I use woolworths home brand light coconut cream
1 large onion
Garlic cloves (to taste, I usually use about 4 big ones)
Assorted veges - this time I had brocolli, cauliflower, carrots, eggplant, bean sprouts, bok choy, sweet potato, spring onions (scallions), snow peas
About 500mL 'chicken' stock (or whatever you have in the cupboard - mushroom would work nicely too but chicken flavoured is really best)
300g packet of tofu
1 400g tin of baby corn
1 400g tin of chickpeas

Noodles of choice

..I think that's about it.

Method:

Start off by lightly frying the onion, tofu and garlic together. Then add the tin of curry paste and stir for a little while. Try not to burn it. You can use oil, or a bit of the prepared chicken stock if you like. If using eggplant or sweet potato add in here. I didn't peel, or salt my eggplant, it sits in the curry long enough to no longer be bitter anyway. But you can if you wish.

Add in all the vegetables (including tin chickpeas and corn) and a can of coconut cream. (I usually use cream but milk would probabaly work better - next time I think I'll use 1 cream and 1 milk.) Stir it until combined. Add about half the stock and the rest of the coconut milk or cream. Cook until vegetables are tender.

It's supposed to be a soup, so if it's not liquidy enough add the rest of the stock or add some water. This time mine was rather thick because I used way more veges than usual - I needed a bigger pot! Another way that would work is if I served up the noodles and curry, then added some stock in at the end to make it soupy.

Serve in a soup bowl with noodles.

(The burnt mess on top the bowl there is a slice of eggplant I tried to grill. I forgot to put oil on it, so my partner tried to add oil about half way through, but it was spray oil and we have a gas oven, so it caught fire. No damage though - eggplant slice was chewy, but the cat liked it!)

Chili :)

The other night I made the Chacha Chili from the Skinny Bitch cookbook :) It's pretty delicious, and probabaly the cheapest thing to make in the entire book. It's gonna last us a while. The first night we had it with steamed pumpkin and brocolli with sweet chili sauce and a glob of hummus, and a few slices of grilled tofu that was marinated in red wine vinegar and soy sauce. Next time I will marinate it longer though, but it was a last minute decision. I drizzled all the leftover marinade over the vegetables and tofu. It was rather delicious.

Last night we had it with steamed sweet potato (I got a kilo bag at the fruit shop for 89 cents), brocolli (was on special for $2.99/kg at said fruit shop) and some carrots (always cheap :))

If you have the book, the recipe says to use 4 tablespoons of chili powder - pretty sure that's a typo - I used 4 teaspoons and it was almost too hot but not quite. It also took longer to cook than outlined in the recipe but I just left it there and it turned out perfect. I also used 100g dry soybeans instead of 100g of the kidney beans, to mix it up a bit. It works.

A very high protein meal. I'll have to use it, ha.

Breakfast for the hungover, and 'meatballs'!

It was the Pride fair day on Saturday which was amazingly fun (except the beer cost $5 a can! and I forgot to take a picture of our picnic). And we went to the pub with a friend afterwards and stayed a lot longer than we expected (and therefore drank a bit more) so there was a hangover on Sunday.

We usually prepare ourselves for such occasions (because they are genenerally few) and buy hashbrowns and fizzy drinks the day before. We didn't this time, but I had a little bit of pumpkin in the fridge and decided to make my own! I didn't go find a recipe because that was too hard. I ended up grating the pumpkin, and making a mixture of about 3 tablespoons of cornflour and 4 tablespoons of water and adding it to the pumpkin. I dropped a large tablespoon worth of the mixture into heated oil (just shallow fry, not deep fry) and squished them down. They are very fragile so I had to be careful flipping them. But they did end up staying in one piece which was good. They did the job :)

They were very crispy (I almost burnt them) on the outside but soft and pumpkiny on the inside. Very unlike potato hash browns. :) And nice and oily which was the point. You could use a lot less oil than I did with no dramatic difference I think.

We had them with baked beans, garlic, spinach and chilli.

The other night I wanted two things: baked corn pudding, and spaghetti and meatballs. I couldn't decide so we had spaghetti and meatballs, with a side of corn pudding. :) The meatballs are SO GOOD. I will make them again, and again, and again. Cheap and easy, though time consuming, they are DELICIOUS. Next time I make them I will cut the mustard powder in half and replace with sage or some other powdered herbs.

The sauce I made started out as a basic Napoli tomato sauce (tomatoes, garlic, herbs - I also usually put kalamata olives in but SOMEONE ate them all and put the empty jar back in the fridge), but I added grated carrot and zucchini, and a handful of red split lentils to make it thicker and heartier. Didn't really need to with the meatballs, but it was delicious together anyway. It's always good to add extra vegetables.

The corn pudding was good too, probably a bit strange to eat it with pasta but who cares, really. :)

Stew, Banana balls, and leftovers!

This is what we had for dinner the other night:
Can't get any cheaper than this I think. Red lentils, onion, a carrot (I added this because I felt like a carrot), some garlic, canned tomatoes and some basic spices. The recipe is called Ethiopian Lentil Stew and it's located here (on the Fat Free Vegan Website).

The recipe I used for Berbere I got from the Oxfam Shop Vegetarian Cookbook. We made it ages ago for another recipe in the same book. It's delicious. We only had smoked paprika though, so I think it's almost a totally different flavour. I'm not going to type it out (I think everyone should buy the book, everything in it is cheap and mainly easy to make) but the Berbere recipe is pretty much the same as the one given with the stew recipe.

The recipe made enough for us to eat well, 3 times each. So I think 6 servings without rice, 8 servings with rice. Or quinoa as we had it.

I also decided to make these banana balls, because I was in a crappy mood and making things makes me feel better. It did. They are also from the fatFree Vegan website: Banana-Cashew Balls. I only had almonds (they are on a good special at my local fruit shop at the moment) so I used those instead. I also used one more date, because I think the ones I have are smaller than the average fresh date. You can usually get them at Woolworths. The balls are delicious, by the way. Good as a snack or dessert, probably good for kids (and me!) to take to school too.

Tonight for dinner I felt like making corn fritters, so we went and bought some frozen corn (Home Brand was 1kg for $2.99 - cheaper than buying 1kg of tinned sweet corn, and the ingredients? Corn. Not Corn 60%, sugar, salt, water).

We had them with some leftover Berebere Stew, and a side of brocolli sauteed with spinach leaves, garlic, ginger, soy sauce and some sesame seeds. As you can see from the picture, there wasn't much of that. We underestimated a little. So we ate all the corn fritters. (Recipe made about 10). Next time I'll have to remember to make them smaller or spread out the batter more because this time it struggled to cook in the middle. Recipe for Corn Fritters I used is here. I just realised I didn't use the cornflour. I'm not sure what difference it would have made, they were fine without.

Mayonnaise used to be a once every now and then treat for me to buy myself when I could afford it. Vegan mayonnaise is expensive! The brand I liked best was about $5 for a small jar. Not anymore! I'm pretty sure it cost me about $2 to recreate it using this recipe. Made about 2 cups worth. It is so delicious. I will be making potato salad (another treat I would make when I was rich) this week. For pretty much nothing. (Just for information: I use apple cider vinegar as a salad dressing as well, also in marinades for tofu, etc. So the huge bottle you buy is worth it).

Life is awesome.

Staples!

Some things I always try to have in the pantry...

Canned beans, canned tomatoes, flax seeds, quinoa, dried legumes: red lentils, green lentils, soy beans, chick peas, kidney beans, brown rice. Also pasta, spices, etc. Baked beans and instant noodles are good too :)

You can easily make a good meal out of lentils, tin tomatoes, spices and rice. 1 cup of lentils goes a long way :) Dried beans can also be prepared ahead and frozen if you have no time, and it generally works out a lot cheaper than buying canned beans all the time (there's also less packaging involved). I always keep good sized jars to store dry goods in if I buy anything in them (such as large jars of olives, instant coffee, pasta sauces).

Make your own hummous! Hummus? Hommous? chick-pea spread!

Why? Because it's cheaper than buying a tiny little container of it at the supermarket. And it tastes better.

Hummous

Makes a fair bit

Ingredients:

2 cans chickpeas, drained (reserve one can's liquid)

3 tablespoons tahini

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 large garlic clove, crushed

Black pepper

Parsley

Put the chickpeas (minus liquid), tahini, lemon juice, crushed garlic, and some black pepper in blender. Blend. Add small amounts of reserved chickpea liquid until desired texture is reached.

I like mine really thick. Add more pepper if you want, and quickly blend in the chopped parsley at the end. You don't really have to have parsley, but it does taste nice. Put it in a air tight container in the fridge. You can probably keep it up to two weeks, if you can make it last that long :) I can't.

I usually put on sandwiches or toast, or I buy rice crackers...but that's bad because I usually eat the whole packet. Use it as a dip with raw vegetables like carrot, celery, brocolli, cucucumber, zuchini, anything really.

First post with Mushroom Stroganoff!

Welcome!

I based this on a recipe from Leah Leneman's 'Easy Vegan Cooking' . I added a few things which I'll put in bold.

Mushroom Stroganoff

455g mushrooms

4tbs vegetable oil

1 clove garlic (I used at least 3)

1 onion

1/2 cup wholewheat flour

2 cups vegetable stock (I used Massel's Salt Reduced Chicken stock)

340g tofu (I find Nutrisoy to be the best tasting)

Sea salt, black pepper, mustard powder to taste

I added to the original ingredients:

1 large carrot, diced

3 birdseye chillies (I grow my own, they're quite hot)

About 200g of green beans

About 2/3 cup of whole pitted olives

Method:

Slice mushrooms. I used portobello mushrooms. (At least that's what the label at woolworths said. They like to chop and change). You can slice them as big or as small as you like. You could even puree them if you wanted, if you don't like chunky mushroom.

Chop up the vegetables.

Add vegetables (minus the mushrooms) to a large cooking pot with a little bit of oil (or you could use a bit of water if you don't want to use oil). Fry them on a medium heat, stirring occasionally, while you make the tofu cream.

Chop up the tofu into chunks (I just used the whole 350g packet). Blend it until smooth. (This type of tofu takes a little longer because it's firm, but you can buy soft or silken tofu as well, which will make it a bit more smoother, but this one works fine for me.)

Add enough water while blending to make about 600mL of tofu 'cream'. I added about 1 1/2 cups of water. Try not to add too much, because the cream will be watery and runny. I did that once and the meal tasted mainly of liquid tofu rather than mushrooms.

Meanwhile, add mushrooms to the pot and cook until soft.

After that, add the 1/2 cup of flour and stir, then slowly pour in the 2 cups of stock. Stir constantly to avoid lumps.

Pour in the tofu cream and stir through. Turn heat down to low when it starts to boil. Cover, and leave to cook, but stir it occasionally, while you cook the pasta. You can add the seasonings here if you like. I think I used a very large tablespoon of mustard powder, and a fair bit of black pepper. No salt. Instead of mustard powder, I'm sure you can use a little bit of whatever mustard you have in the fridge. This is where you can add olives too, if using.

This time we used these fancy pasta shells. We only ever buy this stuff if it's on the $1 stand at the local gourmet market. (This is how we also get loaves of spelt bread, organic bread, random jams and spreads, snack food etc). Any type of pasta will go with this dish. (I usually buy home brand spaghetti or fettuchine from Woolies, or make my own.)

It is finished! For some reason the picture makes it look un-appetising but I assure you it is delicious.

This made enough for 2 people to eat 4 times each (but once we added rice to it and made it into a pie) so I'd say it's a 6 - serving dish. You can freeze it, so if you don't want to eat the same thing four days in a row (or for lunch and tea twice in a row) then you can have it later :) I wouldn't freeze pasta, though.

Enjoy!