VeganMoFO Post #7: Brighton Bound

a couple of times a year Kate (a.k.a. Female Offspring) and I take ourselves off for a few days to rest, shop and enjoy all things Vegan. We usually end up in London but for some time we have wanted to take a Vegan "pilgrimage" to Brighton, commonly excepted as the "Mecca" of Vegetarian food in the UK (our version of Portland, Orgeon I guess).

We set off from home, later than we had hoped with a box of cupcakes, a pot of homous, pack of Oatcakes and a large bag of crisps. We would have had a couple of the rolls from the day before but my DH had decided to freeze them to last him and youngest daughter, Bean, through the week of culinary abandonment - we let it go!

Journey was straight through with no stops, 180 miles of Motorway plus another 20, Kate slept for much of the journey and I sang along to an early Beatles CD  - it don't get much better than this.

On arrival we realised how tired we were and that we didn't really know Brighton but, thanks to Twitter and @efcliz with a couple of pointers it meant that after a sleep we headed off for Kambis which was, more or less, around the corner.

Kambis is not a fancy restaurant, it doesn't have a licence to serve alcohol but it also doesn't charge you to take your own and there was a family run feel about the place. It is Lebanese and although the menu was for all dietary choices there was a lot of choice for vegans, which proves my theory that a Vegan will never starve in a Middle Eastern restaurant.

Starter we had a Vegan Meze for 1 (advice from the waitress suggested that we had ordered too much with 2 and she was right). It was listed as  Hommos, moutabal, tabbouleh, vine leaves, batatta hara, fatayer, falafel & salad, they substituted the Vine Leaves which was good as it's the one thing I didn't want. No picture - too hungry - but it was good.

For main course Kate had Badmojan, Aubergine in a tomato sauce with onions and spices and I went for Ghormeh Sabsi Vegetarian, Kidney Beans with parsley, leek, fenugreek, onion, rhubarb (what the heck?), herbs and dried lime. Both came with an enormous portion of perfectly cooked fluffy rice but we had a portion of fries between us too.

Kate waiting to "tuck in"

The flavour of all the food was excellent and it was a good first night dinner when you just want feeding and nothing fancy - good choice.

It also taught us that when you go to a place you are not familiar with get the advice from someone who is; thanks Liz

VeganMoFO Post #6: I don't like Mondays; but I love Sundays ...

... absolutely love Sundays because I usually get to  "hang out" in the kitchen, my Iphone goes into the Docking Station to play my music (any Mother of four children will know why the "my" was underlined!). My music, however, does give rise to some amusement, I put all 1,300 songs onto random play and takes what comes, that's okay but with such an eclectic taste it has produced some interesting follow ons - a Georgian chant directly followed by Madonna's "Like a Virgin" was my personal favourite.

This Sunday was a a good day, first things first, and I make a batch of bread, nothing fancy, nothing elaborate just half white, half wholemeal bread with a recipe I can make in my sleep (and often do) the decision comes with 2 loaves, rolls or half and half? Today was a rolls day (it was a loaves day yesterday).

"Run of the Mill" Rolls

Duties done so now onto the fun stuff, I am in the pursuit of the perfect Vegan Sausage and Burger and most weekends I experiment, today was:

50g Pecans, toasted and chopped

1 Onion and 2 cloves of garlic, chopped and fried until soft but not coloured.

1 tin Green Lentils

1 500g pack Mushrooms, sliced

30mg Tomato Paste

10mg Italian Herbs

5mg Tarragon

1/2 cup Oats

15ml Tamari Soya Sauce

I have listed these as if I was very precise, I wasn't but this is roughly what went into them.

After frying the onions and garlic I added the mushroom and cooked until soft then added the tomato paste to take away any bitterness.

I put everything from the frying pan into the Food Processor with all the other ingredients except the Pecans, I processed until almost smooth and then added the Pecans which I stirred in with seasoning (it only needed Pepper).

I formed into 8 burgers and coated with Barley flour, thereby keeping it all Gluten Free, and into the fridge to firm up.

There were some Maris Piper Potatoes in the pantry to use up so I cut into cubes and steamed until almost cooked and then shook (more violently then was absolutely necessary!) to create nice rough edges and then flash fried in a little hot Olive Oil.

Pecan, Mushroom & Lentil Burgers with Sauteed Maris Pipers

It needed a sauce so I went for Chloe's "special" sauce with her Double Drive Burgers. This worked better than the last time I made it as I had bought some "Sweet Relish" from a site I had found www.americansweets.co.uk that sell lots of American products in the UK. (I have even bought some Graham Crackers as I had never worked out what they were!).

Sweet Relish, as it says on the jar.

Add a salad with whatever is in the fridge along with toasted Pumpkin and Sunflower seeds and dried cranberries et voila the perfect Sunday Lunch.

Sunday Salad

An afternoon snooze was obviously in order which left me refreshed and ready for Part 2, a batch of Mulligatawny Soup as a birthday present for a good friend at work who liked this soup when I made some years ago, he said it was similar to his Mother's which is always a killer, so I wanted to make it as nice as he had found it last time, not sure I did - quite - so I'm going for "it's the thought" on this one!

Also made two batches of cupcakes, the ubiquitous Banana with Lemon icing from Chloe Coscarelli made Gluten free and also her Coconut Cupcakes to which I added Pineapple juice to the icing with a slice of Pineapple on top to turn them into Pina Colada - success in a cupcake!

Pina Colada as a cupcake

Lovely, lovely day and now packing my case as tomorrow Kate (Female Offspring, remember her!) are Brighton bound.

Excited!

VeganMoFO Post#5 Coach & Horses, London's first Vegetarian Pub

Good Morning,

Didn't manage a post yesterday I'm afraid as I had to take my youngest daughter for an audition in Convent Garden and then was out last night.

I did, however, manage to cross off another of my London "must dos" which was to eat at the Coach And Horses in Greek Street, Soho.

My dear Hubby was also in London for a meeting yesterday morning and suggested that he join us when he had finished. Before I go any further I must explain a little about him, he is an Omnivore, a Carnivore even, his ideal diet really is red meat, sausages and red wine which is now fundamentally opposite to mine. In fairness to him he has said that he doesn't feel its right that, at home, meat should be cooking whilst I am in the kitchen so he bought himself a gas barbeque (we now call him "Ken" as he is always out the back with Barbie!).

He wasn't, therefore, my ideal lunch companion on the day but the Coach & Horses did hold interest to him as the place well known for the staff at Private Eye (his favorite publication) holding many a liquid lunch at and you could tell it had a history, there was that feel. For any visitors to the UK this would be a great place to go, there is a "hidden" tea room (quintessentially English) upstairs, "hidden" because you access it through the bar. I saved this "treat" for another visit and we stayed in the bar, which had everything you would expect of an English Pub, wonderful to see the character preserved and not "improved (?!) by one of the large chains.

Coach & Horses Bar

I was interested to see how they would put a menu together that catered for meat eaters and expected there to be a number of meat substitutes, Quorn and the like, but it wasn't like that at all more reminiscent of Manna menus (where Head Chef, Lahiri Balloni, worked before) and it sparks an interesting debate of whether you offer an easy decision for meat eaters when your worlds come together or do you go "full on" Veggie: Artichokes, Polenta, Beetroot Tarte Tatin that sort of thing. Another discussion for another post.

Back to our lunch, DH went for cheese and biscuits (safe!), whilst daughter, Bean (that really is what we call her) went for Home made sausages with mash and beans in a tomato sauce. Her verdict was that it was very filling and tasty with the beans tasting quite similar to my home made baked beans which I took as a compliment.

Purely in the interest of research I ordered two dishes (a martyr to the cause), Pate and Sourdough toast followed by Tofush with chips, Peas and Tartar sauce.

Pate was "mushroom-y" with a flavour that wasn't overpowering, nice though, and the Tofush - well now that was interesting: Tofu, wrapped in Nori Seaweed, dipped in Ale batter and deep fried and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Beautiful crispy batter, lovely deep flavour from the Nori and although there was more Tofu than I would normally eat in a sitting I didn't leave a scrap. Left the Tartar sauce however because there was a mix up on the deliveries meaning I wasn't sure it was the vegan option I had ordered and was much too hungry to ask!

A note here about the service, we had ordered four dishes and there was only three of us which confused the waitress and she gave my Tofush to a couple at the bar who had also ordered one. We could quite understand how this had happened and it wasn't a big deal but they were full of apologies and gave us all a free drink to apologise. How they handle everyday situations like this says a lot about a place; impressive.

Would I go back? Absolutely but next time I try upstairs, have a feeling that will be a treat!

Here's a link to the menu, most of this was on offer yesterday but not all. http://www.coachandhorsessoho.co.uk/coach_menu.pdf

By the way, I didn't take any photographs (not really into this recording your life frame by frame business yet) so the picture above is from Google and I have gone back to find its originator for acknowledgement but can't find it again - rookie error - sorry!

VeganMoFO Post #4 My name is Carol and I'm a Cookbook'holic

It’s been 2 days since my last purchase (although there are 2 on Pre-order with Amazon :-) )

Okay, I freely admit it’s an addiction BUT, I don’t smoke (last ciggie was June the 23rd, half past 11, 1986), I hardly drink (an absolute lightweight) and I don’t eat out at fancy restaurants (they don’t serve Vegan food) so, all in all, as addictions go, it’s not too bad at all. In fact I think it’s pretty good.

It’s the extent though, all in all I have, literally thousands of cookery books and if you look at  the history of my purchases on Amazon, it’s not the only place I buy from but it’s a good indicator of what’s happening in my life you can see a evolution. First there were lots from the “Celebrity” books and “technique”  genres moving onto Vegetarian, Macrobiotic, Ayurvedic, as I researched the options available to me  and then, eventually, you see the Vegan books move up from a trickle to a crescendo (I appreciate those words don’t really go together but they were the ones that sprung to mind).

I must admit that when I “turned” Vegan I thought,  naively as it turns out, that there couldn’t possibly be many Vegan only cookbooks so I may as well just buy them all  - soon changed my mind on that one!

When I started to prepare for MoFO I took out all of my Vegan only books and put them all together on the piano, thus:

The first 3 piles

and the second 3 piles

Yesterday afternoon I had the most wonderful time, there was a storm outside and there was work to be done for my job but I didn’t want to do it so I sat and catalogued all my Vegan Cookery books (there are 154 including 3 that fell down the back of the piano!). I organised by author, I looked in all of them and reacquainted myself with some old friends. You forget just how many Robin Robertson has written and they are still coming and how Tanya Barnard and Sarah Kramer spearheaded the concept that Vegan cooking and eating is FUN.Let’s not forget the blogs, good blogs are producing may good cookbooks, my last Amazon purchase was Vegan Crunk by Bianca Phillips where both blog and book prove my point.

My favourite book on the day has to have been “The Voluptuous Vegan”, I love the name it feels nice when you say it, the cover is alive and vibrant  so how could this book possibly be about a way of eating that is “austere”, “deficient” and “unhealthy”?  But, of course, we all know ……………………..

And today’s job? Finding a home to keep all my “friends” together and quickly too as I have nowhere to serve all the food!

VeganMoFO Post#3: A letter to Chloe

My youngest daughter, 'Bean', had a “Tweet convo” with Chloe Coscerelli (www.chefchloe.com) who mentioned that she was coming to the UK in a few weeks and did we have any suggestions. This is a reply I put together for her which I thought may make a good blog post to share. Please leave comments with any additional ideas.

Hi Chloe,

You mention your trip to the UK on your Tweet to so here are a few ideas.

I am assuming your trip will be to London (most are!) so I would recommend:

Manna restaurant in Primose Hill. It is the oldest Vegetarian restaurant in London that turned fully Vegan a few years ago, the food is gourmet and yummy. Primrose Hill is great too, very trendy and “in”, where a number of our “celebs” live. www.mannv.com

;

If it's on the menu its vegan

The previous Head Chef from Manna left and now works at a couple of pubs (very English) called the Coach and Horses in Greek Street, Soho and The Smithfield (by the famous meat market!) both of which are now fully Vegetarian (the Vegan options are very good I am assured). I haven’t eaten at either yet but they are definitely on the list for my next trip. www.coachandhorsessoho.co.uk and www.thesmithfieldtavern.co.uk

;

Tibits in Heddon Street just off Regent Street is lovely. Vegetarian serve yourself lots of Vegan choice and the food is so fresh and there is such a selection of both hot and cold dishes (you pay by the weight of the plate when you have finished filling it). Our favourite place for lunch when shopping. www.tibits.co.uk

So, so much choice!

Mildreds in Lexington Street, Soho, again Veggie but loads of Vegan options. Very small and you can’t book a table so we always arrive early (6.30 ish) www.mildreds.co.uk

Whole Foods Market on Kensington High Street (yes, we have a few WFM over here!) have a Vegan/Raw restaurant upstairs called Saf which has a good menu, we have eaten there once and enjoyed it. http://www.safrestaurant.co.uk/

The Vegan “personality” in London at the moment is Ms Cupcake in Brixton. Haven’t tried them so I can’t say how they contrast/compare to yours. www.mscupcake.co.uk

Let's hear it for Ms Cupcake.

Should you venture out of London then Brighton is the place to go for Vegan food although Manchester (near where I live) is getting better.

That’s a few to get you started, I shall be interested to follow your reports on your trip to see if you find some places that I haven’t heard of (very likely!).

Enjoy your trip and keep up the good work.

Love and Peace

Carol

xxx

Vegan Mofo Post 2; Vegan Toolkit workshop part 2

When you left us we had met the Tutor (Jane) and the other 2 participants on the course and were heading into the kitchens for demonstrations and cooking:

The kitchen had been totally refurbished since my last visit and it was now kitted out very commercially however it wasn’t intimidating for domestic cooks, I approved J

Firstly we had demonstrations from Jane for dishes that she felt constituted a “toolkit” that could all be easily adapted as your confidence grew:

Mayonnaise

Cashew Crème

Pesto

Tofu “Meat”balls

Pancakes

Yellow pancakes without eggs?

It was getting quite late by now, we were ALL talkers so it was a good thing there were so few of us or else we would never have eaten! But after frying our own pancakes we tucked into them with a cup of coffee and planned the rest of the day.

There were 8 recipes for us to cook and we were going to do 2 each:

Creamy Mushroom and Herb Pate and Thai Mushroom Soup with Crispy Wontons for Starters

Paella, Crispy Sweet and Sour Tofu and Roast Vegetable Plait for Mains

Blueberry Muffins, Cheesecake, and M’Hanncha (a Moroccan filo filled “snake”) for dessert.

I was assigned the Thai Mushroom Soup and the M’Hanncha both of which I enjoyed making, the soup took me out of my comfort zone because, for some reason, I rarely cook Thai food.

Lesson - if you take a photo over a steaming pot you get a picture of steam!!

Jane and I have fun rolling the snake

Kate made the Mushroom Pate and the Roast Vegetable Plait both of which she found easier than she anticipated. Could there be a dinner party coming up?!

Pride and Pate!!

As there were so few of us and we had to cook two dishes each we were VERY late eating lunch (past 2.30)but we must have been fed on our “trying each other’s dishes as we went” because it didn’t seem to matter as much as I thought it would. All the food was delicious and you could see ways to develop each recipe for your own taste.

So much delicious food, it would be rude to leave any

The only negative thing I would say is that this is the only cookery school I have been to where you do your own washing up. I didn't mind in the past when I was working towards the Diploma (they stopped doing it before I had finished) because as a student I felt it was right to clean up after yourself as you go but for “leisure” course that you are paying good money for it seems a bit much. Moan over!

I won’t finish on a negative point because that wouldn't be fair as I thoroughly enjoyed the day, I have cooked a number of the recipes since and they all worked well, I can definitely see them being developed in the future. Plus we made some new friends – bonus!

VeganMoFO Post 1. Vegan Toolkit Workshop, Vegetarian Society

And so this is MoFo, let the blogging begin …..

I have wanted to start blogging for a long time, partly in answer to all those people who know me  and my cooking/cookery book obsession saying “you should write that recipe/tip/info down”, “write a book”. A book is far too onerous a task (heavens, a month’s blogging is looking mammoth at the moment!) but a blog should be do-able. Kate (Female Offspring to add to her titles) will be joining me but I guess in more of a behind the scenes or guest appearance capacity.

Becoming involved with VeganMoFo this year appealed to me because of the discipline it provides of “having” to make at least 20 blog posts in the month and also, co-incidentally, Kate and I have a number of “vegan related” activities occurring in October so it seemed to fit nicely.

The first event didn’t quite make the cut as it was held last Friday, 28^th September, but I will begin with the beginning of its review and will finish tomorrow otherwise it will be much too long (this may become a recurring theme!)

Vegan Toolkit Workshop held at Cordon Vert Cookery School, Vegetarian Society HQ, Manchester.

Both Kate and I have attended a number of Courses and workshops at the Vegetarian Society in Manchester. In the past but they only offered Vegetarian course (they are the Vegetarian Society after all!) but they have always catered for Vegans and given variations to recipes etc.. They have now introduced two courses the Toolkit and a Party one that we are booked on in November.

We arrived, on time “Thank You Traffic Gods”, at 9.15 for a 9.30 start which is quite early for a workshop where people have had to travel, most are 10.00 for 10.30. However, I was excited about the day and pleased to get there and meet the other participants, it was also the first time I had been at the Veg Soc for a number of years so it was a little like a homecoming with lots of hugs and catch ups with the staff.

My hope had been that Vegan courses were now on offer because of the growth in interest so I was disappointed to find there were only four participants, Kate and I plus a married couple who had travelled from Ireland. This does give me a general cause for concern that the message of how to “think Vegan” that I struggled with for so long isn’t reaching as many people as we would like. However, on a selfish level, it was nice to have a chance to chat and swop experiences and ideas. The couple were very friendly, I am sure we will stay in touch, and although not Vegan themselves it was an area of interest especially as she was embarking on a course on Nutrition.

Over coffee and drinks in the lounge we met out Tutor for the day, Jane, who, again was not Vegan herself (she did spend a month following a Vegan diet last year) but is a committed Vegetarian of many years and “knows her stuff”. She is the Editor of the Veg Soc’s magazine and Secretary of the Food Writer’s Guild, definitely a “done that, got the tee shirt” woman who I could have happily sat chatting to for the rest of the day, but, there was cooking to be done.

Tomorrow I will tell you about the recipes …