Mezze Lunch Box

It was my brother's 30th birthday this week and since he was in town we were able to have him around to have a celebratory dinner. This lunch box is the 'morning after' result:


It contains a grilled mushroom, some baba ganoush, some stuffed green olives, some kalamata olives, some tabouli, some Moroccan chickpeas on couscous, some pitta bread and a slice of orange & almond cake covered in chocolate ganache.

Some recipes to follow.

Have a lovely day!

Lentil barley soup

Ingredients
1 tablespoon of olive oil
*1 small onion (finely diced)
*2 cloves of garlic (finely diced)
a handful of button mushrooms (quartered)
1 teaspoon of ground cumin
1 teaspoon of ground coriander
1 teaspoon of garam masala
1/2 teaspoon of tumeric
3 carrots (diced)
1/2 celery (diced)
3 zucchinis (diced)
2/3 cup of red lentils
1/2 cup pearled barley
the juice of two fresh lemons
water (or *vegetable stock if you can eat it)
salt & pepper to taste

[*Obviously I didn't add these, but I think that it would have been even yummier if I had.]

Heat the olive oil in a heavy-based pot over a medium heat for a few minutes. Add the onion (if you are lucky enough to be able to eat it) and fry for about 5 minutes (until it becomes translucent). Add the garlic and spices and stir thoroughly. Add the mushroom and stir so that it becomes coated in the spices (if you cannot eat onion - like me - then cook the mushroom first and then add the spices to it).

Once the mushroom has browned slightly, add the other vegetables and stir together. Leave the vegetables to sweat over the heat for about five minutes.

Add the lentils and barley and stir through. Then add about a cup of water (or vegetable stock) and stir for a couple of minutes. Add the lemon juice and more water (the amount can vary depending on how liquidy you would like your soup to be). Raise the heat in order to bring to a boil, and then cover and let it simmer over a medium-low heat for about 20 minutes.

It is ready when the lentils are mushy and the barley is soft to chew. Add salt & pepper to taste and serve with some yummy crusty bread.

Spinach and tofu pie

I made this yummy tofu and spinach pie with lots of nutritional yeast, lemon juice and herbs. It makes a great dinner (with a side salad if you have the energy) and also saves well for a yummy lunch the next day.

Vegan Brownie Cupcakes

It was my friend Elissa's 30th birthday last week, and so I decided to bake her cupcakes. I poured over my new book for days beforehand and felt so confused about which recipe to try out first, but in the end I decided to go for "Vegan Brownie Cupcakes" - which I made with organic fair trade chocolate, cocoa and sugar and organic flour.



I must say: they were a success - dense, chocolatey and rich, mmm...

Apple-raspberry tart lunch box

Today's lunch box contains two soy sausage, tahini, pesto, tomato, carrot, shallot & spinach sandwiches, a container of 'cheezy chickpeas', a container of red grapes, raisins & dried apricots and a slice of apple-raspberry & coconut tart (recipe below).


The tart was an idea that came to me early yesterday morning as I lay there wondering whether to get up at 5am or hope for a little more sleep. I remembered that we had some apples that needed using and thought that they would be yummy with a bit of cinnamon, coconut, almond meal & raspberries. Turns out that I was right. P. and I gobbled up a quarter of it last night and only stopped in order to avoid making ourselves sick.

Apple-raspberry and coconut tart

Ingredients

Pastry
2/3 cup plain flour
2/3 cup almond meal
1.5 tablespoons of vegetable oil
2 teaspoons of sugar (optional)
water

Filling
3 Granny Smith apples (peeled, cored and sliced)
2/3 cup raspberries
1/3 cup shredded coconut
1/4 cup plain flour
1/3 cup almond meal
1/4 cup of vegetable oil
2 teaspoons of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon of allspice
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
Egg replacer equivalent of 3 eggs


Instructions

Pastry
Preheat the oven to 180 C.

Combine the ingredients together and knead into a ball. Roll flat with a rolling pin (sprinkle some extra flour on top if it feels too sticky) and then press evenly into a greased shallow pie dish (or a pyrex one - they don't stick, which is nice).

Bake for around 8 minutes or until slightly brown (start preparing the filling while the pastry is baking).

Remove from the oven, but leave the oven on.

Filling
Sprinkle one of the teaspoons of cinnamon over the slices of apple and stir through. Place half of the apple slices on the base of the tart in a spiral pattern.

Combine the remaining dry ingredients together in a bowl and stir thoroughly. Add the vegetable oil, egg replacer and stir together. Add water if the mixture is too dry. When well combined, add the raspberries and stir through gently.

Pour the mixture over the apple and spread it out so that it covers the tart evenly.

Place the remaining half of the apple slices on top of the mixture in a spiral pattern, pushing gently so that they sit into the filling. Sprinkle with a small amount of sugar if desired.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, or until the apples are browning and the filling is starting to become crumbly (it will be more sticky than a cake though and so your knife will not come out clean if you stick it in the centre of the tart).

Beans, rice & Muhamarra dip lunch box

Today's lunchbox contains a spicy bean and vegetable soup over brown rice, a container of Muhamarra dip (recipe below), some celery & carrot sticks, some corn crackers and an apple crumb-cake muffin.

The Muhamarra dip is something that we always used to eat at Cafe Mint and it was a real favourite of mine. I have been wanting to make it myself for quite some time and was really happy with the results. It takes just the way I wanted it to. The apple crumb-cake muffin is from Vegan with a Vengeance. It is yummy, but, again, I think that the recipe is too sweet (especially the topping) and you could halve the sugar and receive better results.

Muhamarra
(Roasted Red Capsicum and Walnut Dip)

3 roasted red capsicums, rinsed and partly drained, coarsely chopped
1 & 1/2 cups broken walnuts
1 slice of crusty bread (crumbed)
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 small red chili (diced)
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Preheat your oven to 180 C and then place three whole red capsicums inside, in an oven proof dish. Bake for around 40 minutes or until sunken and soft, turning regularly (say every 15 minutes). Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Peel the skin off the capsicums (if they are properly cooked, this should be very easy), remove the core and the seeds and chop into one inch slices. Allow it to drain, but keep some of the liquid for the dip.

Combine all of the ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth. (You may wish to add the walnuts and olive oil slowly as the mixture reduces in size). Add extra olive oil if it looks too dry.

Store in an airtight container in the fridge. Yummy as a dip with pita bread, crackers or veggies, or as a spread for sandwiches etc.

Penne, pumpkin muffin & chickpea lunch box

Today's lunch box contains penne with a tomato, garlic, basil & olive sauce, a pumpkin muffin, and some 'cheezy chickpeas'.

The pumpkin muffin recipe came from Vegan with a Vengeance and they are delicious. I would recommend using far less sugar than suggested in the recipe though. I cut it down a little and they were still sweeter than they needed to me.

The 'cheezy chickpeas' recipe came from Vegan Lunch Box. They are basically just chickpeas, nutritional yeast, sea salt & canola oil baked in the oven for 30 minutes, but they really are very yummy.

Happy Valentine's Day

I hope that you are all having a lovely Valentine's Day.

In a moment of intense 'cheesiness' I decided to bake (coconut) cupcakes for P. and take them to him at work. (He works only one block from our apartment).



The recipe is in Vegan Cupcakes Take over the World.

Orange & almond cake with chocolate ganache

When we got married, Paul and I wanted to make sure that everyone who attended our wedding was well catered for at the reception. The food itself was vegan yum cha (at Bodhi in the Park) and we spent some time chatting with the events coordinator to make sure that many of the dishes were gluten-free (including the dipping sauces etc) because several of our guests suffered from coeliac disease. However, Bodhi didn't do cakes, so we had to organise this separately and were delighted to find the perfect solution at O Organics just down the road from our place (at the time) in Surry Hills - an organic, vegan, gluten-free Orange & Almond Cake covered in dark chocolate. The bonus was that it was absolutely delicious - the yummiest cake that I have ever tasted.

Anyway, ever since then (two years ago tomorrow as a matter of fact) I have contemplated purchasing another cake from them, but have always held back feeling that I really ought just make one myself. The problem has always been that I didn't have a recipe and couldn't find one anywhere on the internet or in my recipe books. However, after finding a recipe for a vegan orange cake recently (that didn't work out particularly well), I started thinking that I could probably experiment and make one up that would do just fine. So, when my brother was in town for his 30th birthday last week I decided that I would take the plunge.

I am very happy to report that it was a total and complete success. I was very lucky - the cake turned out to be absolutely perfect (well, perfect for my taste at least).

So, now that I have got it just right, I thought that I would share it with you.

Orange & Almond Cake

1 1/4 cups plain flour (sifted)*
1 1/4 cups almond meal
2 teaspoons baking powder**
3/4 cup light soft brown sugar
1/2 cup soy milk
1/2 cup vegetable oil
Juice of 1 orange
Zest of 1 orange

1. Preheat the oven to 180C
2. Combine the flour and almond meal in a large bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar, soy milk, oil, orange juice and zest.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix well.
5. Pour the mixture into a cake tin (I use the flexi ones because nothing ever sticks to them, but you can just use a normal tin and grease it well).
6. Bake for about 25-30 minutes (in a new fan-forced oven - longer if not), or until the cake browns very slightly on top and a knife comes out clean with poked into the middle of it.
7. Leave the cake in the the tin for around 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a cooling rack and allow to cool for an hour or so.

*If you would prefer to make this recipe gluten-free then slmply replace the flour with almond meal or a gluten-free flour (like rice flour).
**This is quite a dense low-rise cake. If you want it to be a little fluffy then you could add another teaspoon of baking powder.

Dark Chocolate Ganache

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
2 1/2 tablespoons soy milk
100grams dark chocolate (preferably fair trade & organic), chopped up into small pieces

1. Heat the oil and soy milk in a double burner (or just a metal bowl placed over a pot of slightly boiling water on the stove).
2. Once they are warm (but not too hot, you don't want the soy milk to boil), add the chocolate and stir until melted.
3. Remove from heat and let it cool (stirring the mixture every now and then).

Once the ganache is mostly cool, then you can pour it over the cake and smooth it around so that it covers it all over.


Leave the cake for a little while to set and then eat it (or serve it to others if you are feeling generous).

Tofu burger lunch box

Sorry about the presentation, I wrapped the tofu burger up in a paper bag before remembering to take a photo. Anyway, I can tell you what was in it - a sourdough roll with tahini, strips of tofu dry fried with garlic, ginger and Braggs, tomato, baby spinach, shredded carrot, shallots, fresh chilli, and grilled mushroom.

The rest of the lunch is a baby version of the tofu burger on sour dough olive bread (for that hungry time around 11am), some corn crackers, baby tomatoes, almonds, dried apricots and a lemon poppy seed muffin.