France

Vive La France

 

And up next, we go to France.

 

To help me get inspired (and the required items) I went to the local "French style" farmers market at La Cigale. This is a market every Saturday and Sunday outside the La Cigale restaurant in Parnell, Auckland which has fresh seasonal produce and other yummy things (think paella, fresh bread, crepes, etc..!). Information on the market can be found at : http://www.lacigale.co.nz/french-market/

Again, I've run into problems of sourcing ingredients. This time it was chicory. Which for a "chicory and walnut salad" it's a bit hard to substitute the main ingredient. I tried asking with it's more common name "endive" but again no luck. While rocket (aka argula) fits the "bitter lettuce" bill, it didn't seem quite right and so I've left this dish off the menu this week. Seems I'm going to have to do a re-visit to France if I ever manage to find some!

Mushrooms & Béchamel in puff pastry

The market was a great place to pick up fresh ingredients. I used a nice mix of mushrooms (including portabellos) and picked up beautiful vine ripened tomatoes to use.

 

 

I roasted the tomatoes with a nice amount of EVOO and fresh ground salt and pepper. My mom recently gave me some flavoured olive oils and the basil infused oil would have been a great addition here.



The element I was most excited to learn here though was the béchamel sauce. Considered by many one of the key sauces to have under your belt, I have never made one. Lasagna? Nope, instead of the traditional béchamel I use ricotta cheese as a healthier ingredient. And you can see why with the amounts of butter and milk. No way this one could be decently veganised.

 

Doesn't this look good? So I won't lie. I cheated here and used store bought puff pastry. This was delicious meal and would made a great lunch. I would pair it with a fresh white wine (maybe a nice sauv blanc or pinot gris) and in the oh-so-French way, with a cheese plate for dessert.

Tofu with mustard sauce

I used pre-fried/packaged tofu here so that all that was required was re-frying it.

The mustard sauce was so simple and (again) went for a non-vegan option using real sour cream in the recipe. This will be a new favourite sauce of mine and can so easily be whipped up to serve overtop a dish (I could see this on top of chicken if you didn't want to go down a veggie route).

Chives were fresh picked from my garden. Garlic chives would work great on top of this as would parsley as an alternative.



Tarte aux pommes

I redeemed myself from my earlier store bought pastry efforts and made my own for the tarte as per the recipe. Someone shared with me the tip of rolling out dough between 2 pieces of baking paper and I haven't looked back. It makes rolling so much easier (no sticky bits sticking to the rolling pin) and allows for you to easily drape the dough into the pan.

 

I ended up slightly baking this blind as I was concerned that it wasn't going to stay down and again, un-veganised it by using real milk/cream.

 

It looked amazing in the pan.

 

 

I found the cream filling not quite as set as I had hoped for in the final product. I expected it to have the consistency of the vanilla/custard filling in a vanilla or custard slice, but this seemed a bit more runny. Not so runny that it went to bits when you cut into it, definitely drooped a bit as opposed to holding firm. Next time I might see about mixing in some agar agar as a substitute for gelatin.

 

 

Ireland

Ire-land! Ire-land!

Ireland is another country on this list that is special to me. In fact, of the 30 countries on this list I have lived in 4 of them! I lived in Cork, Ireland for a year in 2006! 

In thinking back to my time in Ireland, I have fond memories of the beer and a great local pizzeria in Cork, but generally no particular food dishes which stood out. To be fair I don't recall Ireland as being a difficult place for vegetarians. Having all the great Quorn branded meat subsitutes was always useful and while I occasionally got a strange look, I always felt there was something on the menu I could eat. It could be though that I was more focused on the beers there tho....

In looking at the menu for Ireland, I got very excited. This was a good hearty wholesome menu which was perfect on this slightly chilly night.

Entree/Side: Spinach and Potato Bake

Of course there was a potato dish,  being Ireland, it would have to be in there.

Up first on the menu was the potato and spinach dish. The thing I loved most about this dish is that 99% of it came directly out of my garden. The potatoes, garlic, spinach and herbs were about as fresh as they could be.

Once again I opted to un-veganise this dish and used cream and butter.

I used a red potato (heather?) variety which helped to make this super creamy. 

Saying mixed herbs in a recipe always feels so ambigous so to clairfy, I used italian parsley, thyme and rosemary in my dish which were super yum. This was full of flavor and really delicious.

Main/Entree: Irish Stew

I mentioned above that this was a bit of a cooler evening and so having a hearty soup/stew was just the ticket. I made a few minor changes and substitued swede for turnips and also split the potatoes called for in half and used kumara (purple/golden variety) for the remainder.

I also used olive oil instead of sunflower. It was a light version so wasn't too heavy in terms of changing the taste.

Side: Soda bread

I love making breads but always worry that mine come out too dense, but I don't think that is a concern when it's a soda bread you are making.

Again, I opted to un-veganise this recipe and used a regular unsweetned, probiotic yogurt for the moisture component. I also did a lightly brushed wash of milk over the top to help make a lovely golden crust.

Main: Blueberry pancakes

Ok, I have to say I don't get this recipe. Not literally - I mean I understand the recipe itself but I'm not sure how blueberry pancakes fit into Ireland. I remember when I lived there we made pancakes for shrove Tuesday which is a Catholic holiday (I think). While it was a fun thing to do, I'm not sure it's very Irish - but what do I know?

Anyways, I found searching for buckwheat a suprising challenge. Maybe it is because I once again left my shopping to the last minute. Countdown has a suprising variety of flours but no buckwheat. In any event, I found this LSA mixture which has buckwheat in it and so thought it would be a great subsitute.

It was only when I went to cook that I again realised this was a vegan recipe. Vegan pancakes? While it's not a lack of milk that's the challenge here, I was unsure how these would go sans eggs.

Again, I unveganized it and used normal yogurt and everything looked ok in the pan. Except when i went to flip these it was a disaster. It just didn't work - they fell apart. I eventually gave up, scraped everything back into the bowl, mixed 2 eggs and then added them in. Once eggs were back in the mix they came together lovely. While you could taste/tell that these were healthy, I quite liked the mix of LSA in there and would be inclined to do a 50/50 combination of flour / LSA with all my future pancake recipes.

As the pancakes were sweet, we had these as a bit of a dessert. They were a lovely way to cap off the meal. Since I continue to break the vegan feel, I used whipped cream (from a can too!) as a topping with the pancakes. It took me back to being a kid and loving whipped cream on my waffles in the morning. Yum oh yum!

So, that's Ireland. Dinner is served....

England

England!

So across to England we go. It came time to cook Sunday dinner and you know what, I was exhausted. Earlier that morning I was up to do the Auckland half marathon and when it came time to cook dinner, cooking was the last thing on my mind. 

So I skipped the Sunday dinner. 

That week, it was Guy Fawkes day. Why the English celebrate this who knows, but given the date it seemed timely to make up for the delay with cooking England that night.

Entree: Curried Parsnip Soup

This soup was super easy to make. In fact I was surprised at how easy it was to make. 

It has a good spicy curry hit and would be a great started for an Indian meal.

The cream dash at the end was a great tip - it cut through was finished it off perfectly.

Main: Crispy Beer-Battered Tofu

Ok, so I'm sure you can tell this from the picture but.....i cheated. I've had this beer batter in my cabinet for years (well close to 2 years) and thought now was as good as a time as any to try it. Considering it was just the flour mixture I consider this only a minor cheat.

The recipe called for dulse flakes in the marinade. I had to look these up and after reading they were a sea lettuce I decided to subsitute them with roasted nori (seaweed). A lovely vegan paella recipe by Tal Ronnen uses them and so I was quitely confident they would work well to give that salty-from-the-sea taste.

For the beer I convinced Matt to open a bottle of beer (hard sell) but as all we had was Moa's Pale Ale, I was briefly concerned that it might be too strong a flavor, but it ended up great.

Given that this dish was essentially meant to be fish, what's more English than Fish and Chips. So I made some chips to go along side the peas. My recipe was:

Lindsay's chips/wedges

3 potatoes

Olive Oil

Salt and pepper

1. Heat the oven to 180 C

2. Cut the potatoes into wedges (half, and then quarters).

3. Liberally spray/cover in olive oil and salt and pepper

4. Cook until golden and cooked through - for me this was around 40 minutes

Side: Crushed minted peas

I've never made peas like this before and had some strange looks from Matt and the father in law when  I was crushing them with a rolling pin. I used a lemon infused olive oil and lemon and mint straight from the garden. Rather than straight salt and pepper I seasoned with lemon pepper seasoning (the kind usually used for steak). Yum.

Dessert: Trifle

I have a big issue with this one.

1. It uses jelly. Trifle should not have jelly!

2. It has no sponge cake? Trifle should have sponge

I realise these are highly contreversial statements and I know my friend Victoria and I used to have many a debate on this topic. In any event, I'll do it as per the recipe (well, sort of).

I luckily had some strawberry jelly from a vegetarian stand at the food show (or Green living show) still in the cupboard. The picture below is quite useful in case anyone else finds themselves looking for this brand.

The trifle was supposed to be vegan, but well, yea....that's just not me.

So the custard was made with milk and for the cream, I just used cream. Although I will be keen to try her vegan cream at some point.

To serve this I used small whiskey glasses which were the perfect size for individual servings and I think looked quite elegant (I originally wanted to use martini glasses but couldn't find 3 of the same size around our house)

While I may disagree with the lack of sponge, I can't argue that this was simple and tasty and a refreshing end to our meal.

Denmark

Denmark

My food journey continues into mainland Europe and Denmark was up next.

My goal has been to cook all recipes for each country, but admittedly I was stumped this time. By what you ask? Jerusalem artichokes. Again, what you ask? A Jersusalem artichoke isn't like the artchoke I have growing in my garden but rather seems to be a distant cousin of a potato or other root vegetable. I had no luck finding them at any markets (wrong season they told me at the French La Cigale market). I thought I would try asking any neighbors via the new website Neighborly.co.nz but had no joy there. 

So I skipped it and continued on with the other items.

Baked beetroot

Now Matt can attest for me - I don't really like beetroot, which is weird, because I should. I like most other root vegetables or anything that is red. But there is something about it, I dunno. It's an incredibly popular ingredient here and thankfully Matt is a big fan and so the slices on veggie burgers from Burger Fuel do not go to waste.

Anyways, I was skeptical, but I actually liked this dish. Maybe it was the mayo served with it. Which, the cookbook called for fresh grated horseradish. Given that is not an everyday ingredient I opted to cheat and made wasabi mayo by mixing wasabi (which is horseradish) and normal mayo. 

Almond Rissoles

This was very yum, although seemed a bit crumbly which could have meant I needed more egg or some moisture element for the dish. The chopped in almonds in it were a great addition to the texture and this has inspired me to make red lentil balls more often (these could be great with a noodle dish!)

Cabbage rolls with sour/sweet filling and mustard sauce

I opted to use regular sour cream in the mustard sauce. These were very nice, but a little hard to eat. I suspect this could be due to me getting the wrong kind of cabbage? Th recipe calls for "savoy cabbage" leaves, but I've never seen a type listed against the cabbage here (though not that it's an ingredient I frequently buy). Even with boiling them they were a bit hard to chew off/break off - particularly along the stem/vein of the leaf.

There was also a dessert to go with this...but I skipped it. I figured given that I was already missing the Jerusalem artichoke soup, skipping the dessert wasn't a big deal. I could do them both together later.

For platting I did individual plates with all elements together. I used Asian soup spoons for sauces. It was a great effect on the presentation and Matt and Peter enjoyed all the food.