Shimmy Shimmy Coconut

I had 5 medium-sized bananas that were leaving a less than desired aroma in my dorm room, and the best way to use them up is surely banana bread. In reality, the end product was more of a cake, but if you call it banana bread then its guilt-free - right? I used a double batch of this recipe and made a crumb topping by generally using the crumb topping from this recipe.

Slightly burnt on the sides but it was incredibly light in colour and banana flavour and had a really nice cake texture. It was also one of the easiest banana breads to make, so I’d definitely recommend trying it if you have bananas that are starting to gross you out.

This meal was based on a recipe from Delicious magazine (I think August, 2007 ), in which fish was crusted with a mix of uncooked polenta and herbs. I simply made up a mix of polenta, sage, rosemary and thyme with some cracked pepper, in one bowl and a corn flour and warm water mix in another. I double dipped a 3/4 inch thick tofu ’steak’ in both mixes then fried lightly in some vegetable oil until the polenta had turned a golden brown colour:

Served on some pappardelle pasta with a side of roasted asparagus and snow peas. I’d recommend marinading the tofu for a while before hand, but can’t really think what would be best - any ideas?

No recipe yet as I’m still trying to perfect the texture, taste and the cooking method , but isn’t it pretty?

Three of my favourite things - chilli, garlic and eggplant-y goodness. A local vegetarian restaurant here in Canberra has this dish called ‘eggplant and mushroom in clay pot’ that my very omnivorous friend probably has steamy dreams about (if the noises he makes as he eats is anything to go by). The soft eggplant and chewy mushrooms, combined with an amazing spicy sauce is really quite close to perfect.

So a recent expedition to the farmer’s market led me to buy an eggplant and ponder what I could possibly make that was a little different from my standard (but spectacularly delicious) eggplant rollatini from Veganomicon. A short google of eggplant hotpot led me to this dish and with a little tweaking and a lack of hot bean paste resulted in:

Hot Garlic Eggplant

1 large eggplant, cut into strips and then bite sized pieces

1TBSP chopped ginger

1TBSP minced garlic

2TBSP Hot sauce (I used Sri Racha hot sauce)

2TBSP dark soy sauce

2 tsp white sugar

1 tsp salt, plus extra

1/2C stock

~1 handful of chopped green shallots

2TBSP corn flour + 4TBSP water

Saute eggplant in a little hot oil until golden, then add water and cook until eggplant is soft. Remove from pan.

Cook garlic and ginger in a little oil at low heat then add the hot sauce and cook for 30 seconds. Add the soy sauce, sugar and salt and cook for 2 minutes, continuously stirring until sauce forms. If sauce is too thin, add the premixed corn flour+water and stir until combined. Add the eggplant and cook for 5-10 minutes over medium heat. Add the shallots and take off the heat. Serve over rice.

I recently developed an interest in Australian food. Not the lamington, ANZAC cookie, TimTam, vegemite on everything kind of fare (although soooo very good in their own right). Rather, utilising native Australian herbs, spices and methods in cooking more interesting dishes. Truth be told, my research led me to mostly fish and meat based recipes (not that big a deal as most recipes can be adapted, as we are learning from Hezbollah tofu!). But as I was searching through Benjamin Christie’s website I came across this nice sounding recipe for a paperbark smoked vegetable parcel I didn’t have all the ingredients listed in the recipe (although, oddly I did have some paperbark I recently bought from the markets), but made do with potato, carrot and green capsicum all thinly sliced. I layered half the amount of the vegetables on to the paperbark then seasoned with salt, pepper and an Australian spice mix called yakajirri (bush tomato). I then repeated the layering and seasoning and rolled the parcel up and tied both ends with string.

It was so quick to cook - only 20mins at 200-220 degrees celcius. I didn’t have the tomato relish that was a garnish in the original recipe, but I topped the parcel with dry roasted roughly chopped macadamia nuts and a side of mashed potato:

It definitely had a smoky flavour to it, and the bush tomato spice mix was a really nice addition. I’m thinking tofu with a dry rub will be the next thing to be wrapped with the paper bark.

So I’m back, somewhat. My laptop is getting fixed as we speak. I, ahem, found my camera on monday in a really obvious place, weeks after I was convinced it had been stolen (I probably should clean my dorm room more frequently - yeah?). Mention of my PhD is best left in that corner of my mind where I allow myself to freak out.

So, while I haven’t had time (or groceries) to make anything new (or repeat with photos some of the rather wonderful things I mentioned in my last post) since finding my camera, I did find some older photos on my camera that I hadn’t blogged about before.

Late last year I found The Joy of Vegan Baking cookbook in my local bookstore. It was quite a surprise, considering we usually have about three copies of Vegan Cooking for One (probably the saddest vegan cookbook there is) and that’s about it! So, while reading through the many recipes and salivating over the gorgeous glossy images, I found a recipe for Lemon Bars. I most definitely have a deep love of all citrus, with perhaps the most special place reserved for lemons. Sadly, I had no lemons in the house just then, but I did have several limes I had bought at the market for cheap-cheap. So Lime bars were made:

Its too long ago to remember the exact number of limes I used or the precise taste of the bars. I do remember that while the recipe was a little fiddly, they turned out pretty good. Still. Lemon bars would be better.

Thanks for the comments from the last post! New recipes coming soon!

My life is pretty crappy right now making me an incredibly woeful food blogger. My laptop is still broken (meaning I’m left with a crappy Dell work computer that has adminstrative privileges preventing me doing pretty much everything!). What’s worse is that my camera got stolen out of my dorm room while I took my rubbish to the bin (I stupidly thought I could leave my room unlocked for the three minutes it takes to walk to and from the garbage room) and I really can’t afford a new camera right now. Compounding these technology issues is the realisation that I should be writing up my thesis but don’t have nearly enough data to do so. To put this last point into perspective, I have an entire results chapter worth of results to get (about 1 to 1 and a half years worth of work) in about 8 months! Anyway, those are the reasons for my lack of posting, but hopefully things will settle down soon, I’ll get some more results for my thesis, my parents will take pity on me and buy me a camera and Toshiba will help me out and pay for some of the repairs for my poor little laptop.

Hopefully those who occasionally visit this site will continue to do so as there will be a few posts eventually (once I acquire a camera of some sort), including my vegan version of creme brulee,  a recipe for wattleseed and macadamia-crusted tofu, a second attempt at zucchini puffs, stuffed french toast, and some cupcake recipes I’ve been trying out (how does lavender-vanilla bean cupcakes with a lavender-infused buttercream frosting sound?).

My poor unfortunate Toshiba satellite M60 had a fit and died two weeks ago, taking all of my work files and pictures with it! But thanks to the awesome IT team at work I was able to salvage my data. That said, it doesn’t look good for little bluey (my laptop) and I’ve been on blog strike until the shock wore off. But I’m back now…

I’ve blogged about these before and mentioned at the time that I was attempting to make them at home because they were so delicious. I recently stumbled upon a recipe on a blog (that I now can’t find a link for!) from Madhur Jaffrey’s A Taste of the Far East for scallion (spring onion) bread. The image looked similar to what we’d had previously at Dumpling Inn and the only ingredients needed were plain flour, cold water, hot water, shallots, sesame oil, vegetable oil and salt. Sounded easy enough! The most time consuming part is preparing the dough, so if you use this recipe be prepared to make the dough a few hours in advance and spend some time rolling the pastry and a sesame oil roux in a fashion not too dissimilar to making a croissant (ok, its not like it at all except for the rolling of a fat into dough, then repeating the process again). As soon as I can find that other blog, I’ll post the recipe, however the end results were good but not as great as the Dumpling Inn shallot cakes:

Next time I think I’d quickly fry the shallots with some garlic and salt before filling the dough and I would probably bake them instead of frying them as they were a little greasy.

Several months ago, in a post punk kitchen thread barely acknowledged, an idea was suggested about putting frozen cookie dough balls into cupcake batter and as the cupcake bakes, the cookie dough thaws creating a soft cookie dough filled cupcake. It was an intriguing enough idea and so I made these:

White choc macadamia cookie dough centred chocolate cupcakes with white chocolate ganachey icing. They were, ofcourse, quite a hit with the work colleagues.

I recently received the third season of US version of The Office from a friend of mine and returned the favour by making a new batch of these cupcakes. I have no white choc chips anymore, so instead I made some baci flavoured cookies (based loosely on the Veganomicon choc chip cookie recipe). I rolled small amounts of cookie dough into 40 balls and froze them on a tray*. Once they were pretty cold I put them in a ziplock bag and stored them in the freezer. The cupcake recipe I used was the hazelnut cupcakes from VCTOTW. I aliquoted half of the cupcake batter into the prepared cupcake tray, but realised it wouldn’t be enough to cover the cookie dough balls** so simply distributed the batter evenly then pushed the cookie balls into the batter so that the balls were sticking out. They baked away for 20mins. Once they were cool I simply made a quick chocolate icing with melted chocolate, margarine, icing sugar and a dash of frangellico. It was a little runny but thickened up when I added some soy milk powder.

The result:

Sprinkled with hazelnut meal, they are reminiscent of ferrero rocher cupcakes. Another winning cookie dough cupcake.

* Frozen cookie dough balls are also a pretty great after dinner treat on its own!

**Next time, I reckon 1 and a half batched of this cupcake would be a better amount if you want a cookie dough center.

Slowly, my meat-eating friends are starting to integrate vegan foods into their lives. It helps that I force feed them vegan baked goods whenever I get the chance. One restaurant that has made it particularly easy to get my friends to eat tofu is ‘Dumpling Inn’ at Jamison shops. Since one fateful night late last year, we have been going to this restaurant at least once a month ( and more like once a week) and we pretty much order the same things:

Sizzling bean curd - the sauce is either a plum or sweet and sour sauce as far as we can discern, and is thick and perfectly balanced in flavour. I dream about this dish (not really, but it is good enough that I could dream about it) and pretty much crave it most days.

Bean curd with hot rock salt - oh the garlic and salty goodness of this dish! Very few restaurants have made this as well as Dumpling Inn.

Four season beans with mince pork (minus the minced pork, of course) - a recent addition to our order. Frankly, it doesn’t compare to the tofu dishes, but it is quite nice in its own right.

One of my friends (a seasoned Chinese restaurant frequenter) suggested getting the shallot cakes (which I will likely blog about my attempt to make these soon enough) as an entree and I thank her for that as they were so delicious. The picture is blurry and doesn’t do them justice - tastewise:

One of my friends is very anti-tofu and he seems to have no trouble eating his fair share of these dishes (the truth is, I wish he didn’t like them at all - more for me that way)!

All in all Dumpling Inn is a cheap, really tasty dining experience with friendly service that makes it well worth the very frequent visits.