A while back, Janet posted a miso ramen recipe that looked most tasty, most veganisable, and really quite easy, so it ended up on my list of things to make.

And I made it. Go me!

I omitted the meat, sugar, and garlic, used veg bouillon powder instead of chicken broth, rice noodles instead of ramen noodles, subbed kale for the snake beans, and bought a packet of fresh enoki mushrooms at the Chinese supermarket for the occasion.
I also didn’t fry anything, just chucked it into the water. I did, however, grate the carrot and the ginger. That IKEA grater is really most useful.

Ingredients:

First time use for that mirin. Not sure it actually made any difference.

Soup:

It was nice and filling. A little too filling, perhaps. It didn’t have as strong a flavour as I had been expecting, though. I think I went wrong with some of the estimated measurements. That, and certain ingredients kind of sink to the bottom. Also, the ratio rice noodles/everything else may have been a little off. Less noodly next time. Or no noodly, whatever. Depends on how long I have to march on it.

I’m not normally much for mushrooms, but I’m finding I quite like these enoki ones. Or at least don’t mind them much. I’d still be hesitant to randomly munch them or eat them in an easily identifiable way, but in something soup-y or stir-fry-like they’re nice. I didn’t use all of them so froze a bunch. I also froze most of the sweet corn. I really didn’t need the whole tin.

Since I’m loving the idea of miso, I’ll probably make more miso soups. I’ve had some good ones at work, which didn’t have noodles and were less filling, but had more flavour. I might make something like that, but with a little more veg.

Some time ago, I didn’t make bami goreng.

Yesterday I thought I should make it properly, have bami the way I know it. Proper pre-cut veg, the spice mix, the nest-y mie, condiments, every convenient thing. And seitan. That’s technically new, but that’s okay.
Everything except the ham sub. Microwaveable ready-bami usually has these icky little pink ham bits, but I can’t be bothered to buy some overpriced underflavoured vegan deli slices for tradition’s sake.
The way I know it is the way I’ve always made it, and since I didn’t cook for myself much until I went vegan, the way I know it is the vegan way.

While Conimex is technically part of Unilever and I therefore have the general tendency to avoid it whenever I feel like it’ll make any kind of difference (to be honest, most of the time I don’t bother with it because it’s generally overpriced and over-processed stuff for which I have no need, habit and practicality rather than any high ethics), I am quite charmed with that most handy list of vegan products on their site, which is listed above the list of vegetarian products in the FAQ (yes, this sort of thing makes me happy). I don’t actually use it much, due to laziness combined with that general tendency to avoid it whenever I feel it’ll make any kind of difference, but it is handy.
Actually, I think the only time I ever used it was to figure out whether the spice mix for today’s not-particularly-exotic exotic food was vegan.
And to be honest, it’s not quite the spice mix as I knew it. I’m used to the stuff that needs dissolving in hot water, but this mix didn’t need any of that. It also started writing bami with an h in it, something that looks rather archaic to me and I simply refuse to play along.
A bit confusing, all that, but it worked out okay and tasted pretty much like the stuff I’m used to.

Anyway.

Ingredients:

The seitan isn’t on this picture, I didn’t think of adding that until after I’d taken it.

Food:

The brown stuff is satay sauce, the yellow and orange stuff the atjar tjampoer, and the little red dollop is sambal oelek. There’s also a St. Andrew’s Cross of ketjap manis that’s barely visible. With the sambal and the pepper, I’d really expected it to be spicier. Still good, though. Comfortable old-fashioned food.

Because I can’t leave things well enough alone, I decided to mess with the leftovers for a bit by adding some of those enoki mushrooms I bought for this other thing I must still make (will post it later). I also added some fried onions I forgot about yesterday and just sprinkled on the satay sauce powder rather than go through the immense trouble of mixing it up with a little bit of warm water like I did yesterday.

Interesting and relevant link for today: Confusion Cooking. A Dutch (apologies. It’s the short version of a paper with an English title and therefore possibly English text, but I’ve not been able to find it) article about the history of the popular Chinese restaurants here and how the food we consider authentically exotic isn’t actually as authentically exotic as we believe.
Now I’m not sure how to tag this anymore. I think I’ll just go with Indonesian, seeing as that’s the way this stuff is advertised and I’ve always learned it. No need to let new knowledge mess things up, now is there? I’m also wondering whether using the pasta tag here is a good idea. I would like a nice tag that covers all noodly things, so I might just alter the old posts or something. Whatever. I’ll see.

Another soup. Pumpkin, two small onions, two wrinkly, sprouty carrots, a bunch of black-eyed peas (easy protein), and two sweet potatoes. I think they were, at least. One was properly pink inside, like the ones I’m used to, but the other one, the one I got at a toko while looking for grape jam*, while similar-looking on the outside, saw fit to be an entirely different colour under the skin. As such things confuse me, I’m no longer sure they were supposed to be the same thing.
Not that it matters much in the end, I used them the same way. Cook until soft and sic my immersion blender at them.
Food like this makes me happy I chose to buy that 5l pan recently. There’s no way I could’ve comfortable fit all of this in my small pan.

Soup:

I call it soup, but most people might not, the way it’s that thick. I added some water later on which made it more soup-like but still pretty thick and satisfying. I had it with some bread, but it’s perfectly good without if you want to avoid gluten.

And now for something completely different.

I’ve been going through my cupboard for a bit recently and decided that maybe it’s time for another pantry project. I have managed to aquire a good bit of food I simply don’t use and I still don’t have anything even approaching a meal plan, so it wouldn’t be a bad idea to do this again.
With some slight modifications, perhaps.
A little less strict, with me being allowed to buy some basic fruit and/or veg things necessary to make something decent out of what I already have, but still eating in a way that somehow uses food I already have rather than newly bought stuff.

This’ll probably mean eating a lot of noodly pasta things, since I have this tendency to buy that occasionally and to not eat it, but I can live with that.
And beans. I get entirely too excited about finding some cool dried beans and buy them only to be too lazy to properly soak and cook them for actual use.

Not sure when I’ll start exactly, probably later this week, perhaps next week.

*For no identifiable reason, I suddenly found myself having this bizzare craving for grape jam, something I don’t remember actually ever even eating. I’m blaming Americans for this, with their PB&J, considering the grape variety a tradtional one for the J (is this actually true? I learn this stuff by cultural osmosis, so it might be somewhat inaccurate). Around here few people seem to even know it exists, and I’ve been scowering tokos for the stuff with no luck.
No luck finding pinto beans, either. Rosecoco beans, yes, but no pintos. I should see if there’s a South American-specific toko somewhere…

Today kind of sucks on the vegan product front. First I read some disconcerting stuff about palm oil and Earth Balance (see also this post), and while we don’t actually get Earth Balance here, palm oil seems to become more common and is probably found in vegetable margarines here, as well. The one I have refuses to specify which plant fats it uses, but Alpro minarine lists something palm on the package.
Of course, the other options might not be neutral, either.
Then I re-read about Ecover losing it’s vegan logo (Dutch forum, but the first message with most of the relevant info is largely in English) and learn that the owner of Ecover is also rather high up at the company in charge of guarding the Guantanamo Bay prisoners. Which, apart from making me want to look into making my own laundry soap and washing-up liquid a bit more seriously (this looks interesting, if I can find properly vegan soap flakes), also has me wondering if Alpro’s beliefs are little more than a clever marketing ploy making us feel good and slightly smug about using their products. It’s quite possibly better than some alternatives, but that doesn’t automatically make it good, now does it?
I hate this world sometimes.

Anyway, on to the food.

While I had intended to make two different things with the two leftover aubergines, I found them with icky bits today. And after cutting off the icky bits, I didn’t think I’d be able to properly hold them for roasting. So, Bonnie’s baba ganoush suggestion will have to wait until I get me some more auberines. I definitely want to see if I can properly roast them on a candle flame.

Instead, I used what was left to make this PPK recipe I found while looking for peanut soup. I didn’t have a good few of the ingredients and have no clue how much aubergine I used and how to adjust the other ingredients appropriately, so the amounts are probably a bit off.

The missing ingredients were the shallots, the hot chili, the ginger, the ground cayenne pepper, the roasted diced tomatoes (I have a can of diced tomatoes, but didn’t feel like adding the whole thing), the green beans, the lemon juice (I have other plans for that lemon. You just wait), the coriander leaves (I have some frozen, but I thing this requires fresh), and the garnish.
To make up for this, I added part of a pointy red pepper (sweet, not hot), some not-tabasco (which is not particulatly hot, really. Will find new brand should I ever buy more), some kale, a bit of sereh, a tiny bit of kentjur (a ginger-like spice. Never used it before, but found it at the floating Chinese supermarket recently and decided to buy the jar), and your basic black pepper.
I forgot to take an ingredients picture, so you’ll have to just visualise them this time.

While I’m not sure I stuck to the recommended cooking/frying times, I did attempt patience with regards to the simmering and the salting. For some reason that bit of the directions seemed important enough to follow.

Result:

It’s nice and comfortably peppery, but somehow I expected something more exciting. It’s kind of like a spicy satay sauce but with bits in. Not too unexpected. Still, again not too strong a peanutty flavour. I should really make me a proper peanutty soup without adding veg. Though I must say, these finely-chopped-kale cubes make for easier eating than the not-so-finely-chopped gai choy. And the aubergine bits are very nice and soft this time. I’ve certainly had different.

The soup is a fair bit runnier than I’d expected. I thought it’d be more a kind of stew rather than a soup. It looks thicker on the picture and it’s the sort of thing that I feel should be thicker. Maybe I’ll let it simmer some more so some of the water will evaporate.

Since the recipe mentions it tastes better the next day, I will refrain from eating the whole thing this evening and leave some to try tomorrow. Of course, after having written this, I want to eat more. Figures.

ETA 26-06-2008: I heated some up this evening and while I’m not sure I can properly compare and tell you whether it’s improved the way I was told it would, I can tell you it was most tasty. It made me feel pleasantly warm, the kind of warm you get after eating slightly spicy or gingery food. That kind of glow radiating out from your stomach. Comfortable.
The peanutty flavour was present, but wasn’t that prominent. Like part of the soup rather than the soup. And while I didn’t quite manage to boil it down the way I’d hoped, it did seem to be a little less fluid.
All in all, it’s a soup I will remember and probably make again some day.

I’m experimenting with how my posts show up in feeds for a bit. I think I changed the settings from “show all” to “show just a little bit so you have to click on to my blog to read the whole thing, yes you do *cackles*”. If it’s not showing up like that, please tell me about it. If it is showing up like that and it’s oh my god so totally annoying, please also tell me. I can change it back, no problem.

Okay, on to the actual food.
With the leftover gai choy and me looking up some stuff about that yesterday and finding some similar leafy green, collard greens, was an important part of Soul food got me thinking of Surinam food, a leap which might actually make some kind of sense somewhere.
Now I’m not too familiar with Surinam cuisine beyond the good old bara and the roti, but with the history of slavery and subsequent cheap labour immigration, it’s turned into a right melting pot with all kinds of cool foods definitely worth trying out some time.
Provided I get to skip the Madame Jeanette, at least. She looks all sweet and innocent, but she’s not. Not at all.

Anyway, while I’ve not actually eaten much Surinam food, I have picked up random bits of information about it and always assumed that peanut soup was part of that cuisine.
And with liquid peanut butter sounding really quite good to me, I’ve been meaning to try and make me some of that for years now.
I never imagined using greens in it, though. Still, that’s no reason to dismiss the idea rightaway, now is it? A quick google search got me this (Dutch site, there’s an English recipe here, which has no green bits, but has taugé. While looking for that, I found this peanutty aubergine recipe. Might be worth a try one day) recipe, which looked perfectly doable provided I leave out the sherry and chicken, and sub gai choy for bok choy/pak soy/whatever.
Other changes I made was blending the stalks through the bouillon, adding some ginger (I had some left, and this recipe? Just screamed “ginger”. I don’t care what the ingredient list claims) and not being too precise on the ingredients (am I ever? As if).

I skimmed a few other recipes, but none included greens, and they demanded Madame Jeanette be added. No can do, I’m afraid. Not getting burned twice. Not that adding a whole red pepper is the way to make things mild. Um.

Ingredients:

After not quite following the recipe, I got this:

The soup.

It didn’t have as strong a peanutty flavour as I’d hoped, though I’m not too surprised. It’s definitely there, just a little mild. This means I will have to make it again, but without the green. Shame. Such a chore.
It smells very peanutty, though.
Apart from not being very peanutty, it’s also not as spicy as I had expected. I guess your basic red pepper does pack less of a punch than your basic Madame Jeanette. However, it is very nice and warm. Very comfortable soup, this.
While it’s nice eating once it’s cooled just a little, the green bits are a little too large to comfortable fit on a spoon and tend to drip a bit. So should I ever make something with green veg like this again, I will be less lazy and chop it up a little smaller.

Today, a proper food post again.
Last Monday I had the day off and took advantage of that. Mostly y doing bugger-all, but I also thought I’d stop by the floating Chinese supermarket. Some of the food I got there I had for lunch that very same day, but some things needed more preparing.

Like these things:

I already had the smoky tofu and I got the ginger today, but the long, thin aubergines and the gai choy I got there. I also got some rice noodles (and green tea noodles, but those’ll have to wait as they’re wheat ones). My standard idea with this kind of food is to chop it up and fry it, and that’s exactly what I did here.
First I fried the chopped up tofu, then I added some chopped onion, then I added one chopped aubergines (haven’t thought of what to do with the other two. Suggestions most welcome), and then I added the chopped gai choy in batches and let that get all nice and wilty.
When the veg was pretty much done, I fixed up some of that rice noodle (only required three minutes in warm water. Most convenient) and added that to the pan.
At random points I added bits of a gingery sauce I’d made which was basically ginger, tamari, some spices, and a lot of water since used the wrong grater an had to rinse it to get any of the ginger. D’oh! Worked out okay, though, what with basic evaporation and all.

Result:

I didn’t expect much flavour from the rice noodles, but they were actually quite nice. Not a very strong taste, and it’s possible they got a good deal of the flavour from the sauce, but that doesn’t really matter if it tastes good, now does it?
As I only used about 1/4th of the package, I still have a fair bit of the rice noodle left, and I look forward to trying more things with it and finding out just how much flavour it has.
Apart from that and the two other aubergines, I also have a good bit of the gai choy left. I’m thinking of making some kind of soup with it or something. Just your basic boil-n-blend. Or blend-n-boil. Not sure about the specifics yet apart from the general idea that perhaps aubergines should not be added to it.

The leftover coriander leaves and the minty Moroccan tea I made earlier with mint still left over made me think I should maybe make me some vaguely Moroccan food. Like couscous (yeah, that’s pretty much as far as my knowledge about Moroccan food goes. I’m vaguely aware of the existence of tajines, but have no experience with them), but without the gluten.
So, quinoa. I’ve had some around for ages, but I rarely do anything with it, which is a bit of a shame. This seemed like a nice opportunity to use it.

Stuff I used:

I totally forgot the bell pepper I had laying around. I guess I’ll find some other use for it later.

Anyway, what I did. I thought I’d have a try at writing it up with a bit more detail for a change.

First I roasted some spices (yellow mustard, coriander seeds, cumin) in a dry pan before bashing them using the ever-lovely mortar and pestle. I didn’t use too much, next time I might use a bit more.

After that I fried the chopped smoky tofu and onion together in some oil for a few minutes. Until the tofu had a nice, crunchy exterior.
Then I added the chopped courgette and let it brown for a bit.
Then the mashed garlic.
Not long after I added the chopped carrot and the chickpeas. It was about here that I added the bashed spices.
Then I added the chopped tomato. I grated the lemon peel from a few days ago and sprinkled it on.
I’d put the apricots in some water to soak. No clue if this is in any way useful, but I did it anyway. After adding the tomato I took them out of the water and chopped them before adding them to the frying pan.
I rinsed the lemony grater in the soaking water and then added the soaking water to the frying pan before putting a plate on it so it could simmer covered-like for a while.
Near the end I put on some freshly-ground pepper, some salt, and some harissa
The whole time I made sure to stir regularly.

During all this I’d also put on the quinoa (which I didn’t stir), with one part of rinsed quinoa chucked into two parts of water. More-or-less, anyway. I fear I may have used a little too much water. Apparently I suck as much at quinoa as I do at couscous. I didn’t end up with particularly much of it here, either.
When the quinoa was done, I put it on my plate and mixed it up with some chopped coriander leaves. I didn’t use nearly as much as I expected I would, so I’ll have to think of another thing to do with what I have left.
When the mixing was done, I added the veg to my plate and took a picture (see below). After that I put on some more veg and stirred it all up and ate it.

Result:

I’m pretty pleased with it. Especially the addition of the apricots. They add a very nice flavour.
Next time, though, I’ll add a little more of the dry spices. I’m content with the amount of coriander leaves, but all other things could be used a little more liberally, just to make the flavours that little bit stronger.

I’m really liking this smoky tofu. When baking it, I feel as if I should be adding some keukenstroop to it, as if it’s bacon pancakes.
The smoky flavour was a little lost in this dish, though. Soaked up too many other flavours.

ETA: Adding a bag of basic green tea improved the flavour of the mint tea. It doesn’t seem to have added any noticeable flavour of its own, just enhanced the minty flavour. A bit odd, but I’m not complaining.

Because the first two times my basic pantry soup was somewhat watery, I thought I’d try and improve it some more.

Stuff used:

Guess what I did with it?

Stuff I ended up with:

For this soup, compared to the previous ones, the main addition was the passata. I don’t know how much I used exactly I just used whatever I had left from a while back. Half a package, maybe? I’d frozen some a few weeks ago and took it out of the freezer a few days ago to thaw. It seems to have survived this well enough.
Adding this made the soup a good deal tastier, so I’ll definitely remember it for next time.

The noisy people in this area make me feel I should’ve maybe played with the pumpkin instead to create some appropriately-coloured food seeing as I’ve utterly neglected my patriottic decorating-duties.
I think I know tomorrow’s main topic at work…

Yesterday I decided to finally try my hand at the stretchy bean-thing and put some chickpeas up for soaking.

Today I bought a bag of watercress. Now I’ve bought this stuff before, a good while ago, and didn’t care for it much. I can’t remember what I did with it, probably made some kind of basic salad, but the flavour was a bit too sharp.
Still, I’d seen the stuff mentioned, and it’s supposed to be healthy and actually quite good when prepared properly.
It has it’s followers, with a festival and an alliance and everything.
Unfortunately, the festival is not anywhere near me, so I’ll miss out on some good old veg-veneration and morris dancing (I’m not actually being sarcastic. I think I’d truly enjoy that kind of thing). unless I plan my holiday around it (don’t think I’m not tempted. It’s on the UK’s South coast, so not too far away).

Anyway, I was still not too sure about just doing any random thing with it, so I looked for some recipes.
The festive site gave me a neat recipe for watercress hummus, which was great considering I already had them chickpeas going, and some more googling got me a simple-looking watercress soup, which also called for chickpeas. Is that great, or what?
As per usual, I didn’t follow the recipes to the letter and basically did my own thing as far as quantities and spices were concerned.

I decided to go stretchy on the watercress as well and make both these things. I used about a third of the watercress for the hummus and about two-thirds for the soup. I considered keeping some for a smoothie, but figured I could just buy some more later.
I also made some standard hummus with coriander leaves as the green bit and kept some chickpeas seperate for making some other random food. Perhaps something involving quinoa. I’ve not made anything with that for a while, and I still have some coriander leaves left.

So far I’ve not yet tried the watercress hummus, but the soup is most tasty and has a familiar greeny flavour I can’t quite place. Chervil, perhaps?
Against all expectations, it actually tastes, well, quite soft. Very nice.

Unfortunately my beloved shoyu contains wheat, so I couldn’t put any of that in any of my lovely foods. I’ll have to get me some tamari later.

Vessels containing stretchy food:

I have quite a lot of hummus now. Not a bad thing, really, but still. I’ve frozen some for later use, but I’ll have to eat some freezer food if I want to freeze some more.
Between using a lot of coriander leaves and using a fair bit of watercress, I can’t actually tell the different kinds of hummus apart. I expect I’ll be able to taste the difference, though.
Nutritional analysis of the soup. Probably not exact since I guessed the quantities and didn’t bother with the salt and spices, but I still like doing it.
Can you actually see the page properly if you’re not logged in as me?

While Belgium is closeby and not too different culturally and linguistically (well, Flanders, anyway), there are some minor differences. Some involve keyboards (stupid AZERTY!), some involve slightly different meanings for certain words, and some involve food.
For instance, they like their chips. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but the area where my boyfriend lives has a pretty high density of chip shops. Generally the sort that rather smells like, well, an old-fashioned frietkot (I’m still suspicious about what they use for frying).
They also seem to be hugely distrustful of Dutch chips for no good reason, but whatever.

Proper home-made Belgian chips:

Made by my boyfriend’s grandmother, basic marinated tofu made by me.

Another thing that’s ever so slightly different is the bread. While it is a basic food just as much in the Netherlands as it is in Belgium, it seems to have even more of a significance there. I can’t quite describe it, and it may just be a difference between families rather than between countries, but still. Belgian bakeries have bread-vending machines. That’s different.

See:

Also, they are, again, somewhat distrustful of Dutch bread. I think it’s something to do with the way it keeps longer, probably due to the addition of certain additives.
The lack of (at least some) additives might explain why bakeries are open on Sundays as well. At least I think they are. I’m pretty sure we stopped by one on a Sunday once.

Not so much a difference, but a food that’s not commonly found here. Chervil soup.
No picture of that since I didn’t eat any this time, but occasionally my boyfriend’s mum makes a batch when I visit, and it’s absolutely lovely stuff.

Some more foodie things we did involved visiting a local vegetarian restaurant and stopping by Stonemanor for some Brit food.

Loot:

While I don’t actually like crisps, I tend to find a packet of Walkers salt and vinegar incredibly hard to resist. It’s really only because the stuff’s not available here at all outside of shops catering to expats and the occasional Britain-related festival.
At least I managed to not buy the Irn Bru.

I didn’t get as much as I’d expected and easily stayed within my self-imposed limit. It helped that TruFree seems to have done away with the puddings (they also changed the ingredients of their custard cream and bourbon biscuits so they now include milk. I had no intention of getting those, but still. Grrr) and there were no ingredient lists for the many frozen bagels they had.