Veganmofo 2009 – Millennium/Artful Vegan October 9, 2009

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while you’ll know that I love both of these two books. But I couldn’t leave them out of my review month, and I know that there’s extra people reading this now that Mofo is on too.

I’m lucky enough to have visited Millennium three times. The first time we went was before I was vegan, and I sat through a whole 3 courses without even realising I was in a vegan restaurant! It’s an amazing restaurant and if I found a genie and a lamp and it offered me a flying trip to any one restaurant, I wouldn’t even think twice about going back there.

I also love the books because they symbolise how far I have come as a cook. I originally only bought them because I’d enjoyed the restaurant so much, but after a few glances through I put them away because they just seemed impossible. Over the years though, each time I pick them up I’ve found them more approachable and enjoyable to cook from. There’s no denying that the recipes are time consuming. There are very few recipes you could knock up after work (though there are a few). Some of them need some unusual ingredients, but again after a few years of vegan cooking, my cupboards are better stocked and there’s only a few things I can’t get.You need to read every recipe very carefully because they will quite often use an ingredient which is actually another recipe from the book.

The books are quite different. I like them equally but certainly Artful Vegan is more elaborate. It has more and better pictures and is generally a more refined and upmarket book. Millennium still has some of those rcipes, but also includes more basic pastas, risottos etc.

So the next time you have a day to yourself and its raining outside, put those DVD box sets to one side and spend a rewarding afternoon cooking yourself some great upmarket food.

Some recipes I’ve enjoyed (and I still have many more bookmarked to try):

Buster’s potato torte with rosemary pistachio gruyere
Seitan sate skewers with peanut coconut sauce
Korean style barbecued tempeh over noodle salad with citrus and kimchee
White bean filled phyllo purse over soft garlic polenta with porcini zinfandel sauce
Paella
Saffron and butternut squash risotto
Moroccan marinade
Red lentil, lemon and rosemary orecchiette
Linguine with tempeh bolognese
Thai green curry eggplant stack
Miso-broiled eggplant over noodle cakes with walnut miso sauce and wasabi cream

Buster’s potato torte with rosemary-pistachio pesto and tofu “gruyere” April 27, 2009

Yet another Artful Vegan dish this weekend, and this one was probably the easiest I’ve done. It was just a matter of making the pesto and the “gruyere” in advance then pretty much just layering and baking it! It does require rather an unusual ingredient – white fermented tofu. I got mine in a chinese supermarket. It’s pretty scary stuff – smelly and in a very gunky liquid but it definitely gave a nice musty taste to the cheese.  I plan to use it again in this dish.

This is the second recipe from this book where I’ve found quite a big error. The title of the dish in the book is cashew gruyere, but there’s no cashews in it. I debated what to do about this for ages, and finally decided to add in a few cashews for added creaminess – but according to a few wise people at the PPK, the recipe is right, but the problem is that the title is wrong.

The pesto at first appeared extremely salty and I was a bit worried, but in the final dish it didn’t appear so. The other issue was the amount of potatoes used. I cant get hold of fancy red or purple potatoes, so I just used rooster, but maybe my potatoes were especially large as if I’d used the full 9 I’d never have got them all in the dish. I sliced 6 then did 3 experimental layers before I boiled them and that seemed about right, so I went with it.

This is a starter in the book, served with rocket salad and a drizzle of truffle oil. I served larger portions and some asparagus as it’s just come into season here and I always love that with truffle oil anyway so I thought the combination would work well. It did all work, extremely well, and resulted in a very classy meal with great depth of flavours. It was all rather rich though – and that’s coming from someone who used to be able to scarf down whole platefuls of the richest cheese dishes imaginable. Maybe my taste buds have changed? That’s probably the subject of another post, but in any case, this is a delightful, impressive dish which isn’t at all difficult. I’d love people to try it and see what they think!

Yuca black bean cakes with sweet mango, mustard and habanero sauce April 26, 2009

I don’t only cook from Artful Vegan, honestly! It’s just that I had a few days off work so I was determined to get a couple of new dishes sorted out. I’ve been having a sort of competition with my on-line friend Gill to see who can cook most recipes from these books. Since she’s not even vegan I felt I ought to be winning this one hands down, but she’s giving it a good shot! (I win the competition for meeting Eric Tucker though; even though I turned into a brainless dribbling idiot when I bumped into him at his restaurant Millennium).

I picked this recipe out because I knew I had some frozen yuca taking up space in my freezer, but when I came to cook it I wasn’t sure the frozen would work so I switched to the suggestion of sweet potato instead.

It’s really quite a simple dish (it’s from the appetiser section but as usual I just served a larger portion as a main course just for me). There are quite a few dishes in these books that are simpler than others, so if you’ve been neglecting these books because you think all the recipes are too time consuming, do get them out again and have another look.

I made the roasted tomato salsa first – I’ve never made salsa with roasted tomatoes before and I will definitely do it that way again. Then I made the habanero and mango sauce, and finally the yuca-black bean cakes. I didn’t expect the cakes to hold together but they did.

This wasn’t my favourite dish from these books but it was still very nice. I think the main problem was the sauce. Sometimes US ingredients differ from ours and that may have been the case here, but the mustard was far too overpowering. Looking at the recipe again I wish it had stated a weight for the mango because I’m sure that Californian mangoes must be a lot bigger and tastier than ours. If I was making this again I’d probably double the mango in it.

Seitan satay skewers with peanut coconut sauce April 18, 2009

I did say that I’d be making more recipes from Artful Vegan and here’s another. This is in the appetizer section but I was eating alone so I decided to just eat more of it than the recipe suggested and eat it as a main course. It appears to be quite a bit simpler than some of the recipes – but there a couple of mistakes in the instructions which made it not as easy as it appeared!

The instructions missed out a couple of the ingredients mentioned in the recipe list. I’d already struggled with the seitan not having enough liquid and added some extra water before I spotted the tamari in the ingredient list and assume that was meant to go in. I have to buy my vital wheat gluten online so I was reluctant to start again, so I just added a splash of tamari and kneaded it in. I think that made it a bit tough, so if you are making it be sure to add the tamari in along with the water.

The other problem was that there are 12 cups of stock mentioned in the ingredients list which don’t get used, but it was easy to see that that should have been added to the coconut broth to cook the seitan nuggets.

After that things went pretty smoothly. My sauce was a lot thinner than double cream consistency, but I went with it (and after refrigerating the leftovers, it really thickened  up, so I’d make it in advance next time). I used a bag of preshredded stir fry mix for the salad part, as I can never get through a bag of bean sprouts before they turn to liquid.

I put 3 pieces of each of the seitan, mint and pineapple on the skewers because I was eating it as a main course. This might have overcrowded the pan a bit because I’d have preferred more of the seitan to come into contact with the grill pan. In fact after I’d taken the picture I gave the seitan nuggets a few extra minutes on the grill to get more nice smoky grill marks.

So, how was the overall dish, after all the tweaking? Delicious. The seitan chunks were astonishingly meaty and went brilliantly with the pinepple and mint. The salad was lovely and fresh and the sauce was rich, peanuty, spicy and zingy. I don’t think I ground the szechuan peppercorns finely enough because I bit down on a few little rock hard things, so next time I’d spend a bit longer grinding them before adding to the sauce. But otherwise, now that I’ve ironed out a few of the difficulties, I’d certainly make the dish again.

And using the leftovers… April 11, 2009

I had some of the noodle salad leftover from the dish last night, so, instead of just piling it onto a plate and noshing, I decided to make some rice paper rolls from it. It hardly took me any time at all and took a basic plate of leftovers into a tasty treat. Delicious!

Korean-style barbecued tempeh over noodle salad with citrus and kimchee April 11, 2009

This is another recipe from The Artful Vegan. You can’t pick this book up when you get in from work and start cooking from it, but if you plan carefully and get organised you can produce some stunning results.

I’d looked at this recipe before with lust, but hadn’t been able to get my hands on any kimchee. I’d thought about making my own but hadn’t got round to it. Then, when I was in a shop in Nottingham faced with a fridge full of it, of course I couldn’t remember why I’d wanted it. There were lots of different types too, but I grabbed a jar anyway, confident I’d find a use for it. I was delighted when I remembered this recipe, and even more so that I was off work yesterday and found all the other ingredients I needed too.

The recipes can look a bit overfacing, especially when you realise that quite often an ingredient in the list is actually another recipe. This one however, was quite straightforward. I decided not to use the marinated tempeh, even though I had a batch in the freezer. I just couldn’t see how the Italian flavours from the marinade would work with the rest of the dish, so I just used plain tempeh instead and don’t regret it for a minute.

I made the BBQ sauce in the afternoon and that set the scene because it smelt beautiful. I bunged the tempeh straight in it so that it had a few hours to marinate. Then I made the noodle salad. The recipe suggests rice, soba or udon noodles. I had all three in the house but I opted for soba because we don’t eat them often. The other ingredients in the salad are cucumber, kimchee, grapefruit, orange and lime segments, bean sprouts, spring onions, coriander, lime juice, tamari and sesame oil. Supreming the citrus fruits was a lot harder than chefs make it look on the telly but I got there in the end. I also had some fun playing with my new spiraliser (actually it’s not new but it was the first time I’d used it). It took me a while to work it out but it produced some beautiful strips of cucumber and I can’t wait to use it again.

Then I got the garnishes ready, heated the grill for the tempeh, and cooked the pak choi. While the tempeh was under the grill I plated up the noodles, then arranged the tempeh and pak choi, the extra citrus pieces and finally the sesame seeds and coriander.

So how was it? Well, needless to say it was nothing like the sort of food I normally cook. It was bursting with fresh zingy flavours which exploded in my mouth. The spicy, smoky BBQ sauce went perfectly with the citrus and spicy kimchee. And, like everything else I’ve made from this book, each part could be made on its own and used elsewhere – so I could use the BBQ sauce as part of another meal, or the noodle salad would make a great lunch on its own.

If you’re intimidated by this book and haven’t used it much, I urge you to dust it out and give it another chance. If you get yourself organised you can get stunning results.

White bean-filled phyllo purse over soft garlic polenta with porcini-zinfandel sauce, kale and grilled pear January 1, 2009

Wow! That’ a long title!

I’ve been determined to cook this meal for a long time and have somehow not managed it on at least 3 occasions. Yesterday I finally managed it, and I’m so glad I did.

It’s from “The Artful Vegan”, which is the second book from Millennium chef, Eric Tucker. I’ve been to the restaurant 3 times and been blown away by the clever combinations and fancy vegan concoctions. I own both books but have definitely made more from the first one.  I’d previously only cooked one meal from this book. When I first got the books I thought the food was beyond me, but I think it’s a measure of how much my cooking has improved that I can pick them up now and find quite a few things I want to cook.

That said, it’s not a meal to cook when you get in from work! It involved quite a lot of steps but individually none of them were particularly hard – they just needed planning. The first thing I did was make the sausages. I used the Millennium recipe but steamed them, as I’m quite comfortable steaming seitan sausages now and it seemed easier. Then I made the mushroom stock for the sauce, followed by the sauce itself. I’d never made sauce like that, using a dark roux and homemade stock, but it resulted in a rich thick deep glossy sauce.

Next I made the filling for the purses, which used vegetables, sausage, sherry, herbs, stock, white beans and truffle oil. I let that cool and assembled and baked the purses last. The garlic polenta was pretty easy and I’m sure I’ll find other uses for the thick tasty cashew cream that went into it. Then the recipe called for broccoli rabe, but I substituted kale, and finally there was grilled balsamic pear.

I made 2 mistakes throughout – neither of them affected the taste but they did alter the look of the dish. I didn’t realise until quite late in the proceedings that my phyllo pastry was a different shape to the recipe, so my purses were a lot chunkier and less elegant than in the book. The other mistake was using plates that were too small so the meal looked crowded and messy, when I’d hoped for a really good photo and presentation just for once! There’s a much better picture in the book and another one on the website which I hoped to recreate, but no matter. The taste was sublime and went perfectly with the bottle of zinfandel we brought back from California a few years ago.

It was a lot of work considering the meal was demolished very quickly – but it was time well spent. And of course, the individual elements of the dish can be altered or used in conjunction with other things – for example, I’d definitely make the polenta again – it was probably the tastiest polenta I’ve ever had but on its own it was super easy.

I’m not intimidated by these books anymore and although they aren’t quick they are well worth considering when you want something a bit special.