Salty Seitan, Scourge of the Seven Seas(onings)

Eurgh!!! Does this have Salty Seitan in it, Ma?

He's a bad old boy, is Salty Seitan, worse in someways than his brothers Spongy, Rubbery, Gluteny and of course, the well-intentioned but somewhat misguided Slightly Raw. This seafaring gent will turn up in your stockpot after you've followed the soya-sauce heavy instructions for your cooking broth to the letter and shout 'Ta-ra!' in your face as you try to get over the fact that with every saline mouthful you can feel your blood pressure get higher and higher. His texture's good but boy oh boy, he's a little too in-your-face to be introducing him to the In-Laws as-is, know what I mean?

What are you going to do with ole' Salty? Send him off to that Ancient Mariners' home in the hot composter? Or even worse, just discard him, like a defective prototype? Let us anal-retentive control freaks not forget, it was defective glue that brought about the birth of post-it notes and where would we be without them now? And what about defective car tyres bringing about the birth of modern chewing gum? Who could live without that bad habit?!
So Salty is saved from composting by my hopeful benevolence. It becomes clear the only way to use him is in place of seasoning. He makes a cameo appearance chopped finely in the Tamil Tiger rice the other night and passes by relatively unnoticed (by all but McGonnagle - seitan hater extraordinaire). I make a lunch of quick mac n' cheezeburger using my Salty Seitan, and it's good - me and the boy enjoy it.

Mac n' Cheezeburger - yummy!

So I then push the boat out the following night, and feeling sure I can do a Henry Higgins with Salty's base charms, I make a seitan stroganoff that uses three caramelised onions and an entire carton of Alpro soya cream as the other main ingredients. A bit of lightly steamed broccoli stirred through at the last minute, served up on creamy mash and with a side of sweet-pickled red cabbage and I really, really enjoy it!

Salty's last appearance... seitan stroganoff

'Hey! I've cracked it! ' I think to myself. 'Who'll be able to tell that Salty came from such bad beginnings when I've dressed him up so fancy?' Well, anyone who isn't already pre-disposed towards wheat meat, it seems. Me and the boy loved it, but McGonnagle and SVD kinda retched their way through it, which wasn't quite what I was hoping for.
Ah well, like any outstanding character, Salty inspires love and hate in equal measures. We salute you, feller! But for heavens' sake, leave it a while before you visit again - 'kay?

The Skint Vegans do Comic Relief

Ah yes, us Brits and our love of a good charity telethon. Mind you, they're nowhere near as prevalent as they were in the late 80s (ITV Telethon, anyone?). So today - Friday 13th March, 2009 - is Comic Relief Day, or 'Red Nose Day' as it's more commonly known. This involves buying cheap-ass, perishable red noses for a pound a pop by the bucketload, doing 'wacky' and 'funny' things to raise money for charidee, and watching the nation's finest comic talent hawk their butts off during an allnight extravaganza on BBC1 this evening. To be fair, the Brits love Comic Relief because it's ours, all ours, and makes us feel good about watching telly - its a non-stop hit parade of comedy and all we have to do is make a quick phonecall towards the end of the night to bung 'em some money on the credit card and everyone's happy!
So, requisite red noses donned, McGonnagle made sure to dress wacky in her pyjamas for her school's 'dress-down day' -

Then after school, we diluted some of that redness with a nice bowl of spicy spinach and kale soup with homemade chapatis from 'La Dolce Vegan'. So good - especially the caremalised onions you spoon into the soup just before serving - yummy!

But we couldn't finish the day without some more red noses, and as it's Friday, it can mean only one thing:

Cooking With Children Friday Part 3!
Strawberry-lingonberry cupcakes with red fondant noses.

This was a twist - again - on the VCTOW golden vanilla cuppers. I love that recipe, btw - so versatile!! I subbed 1 tsp strawberry essence for one of the tsps of vanilla, then when cupping-up, I put a spoon of lingonberry jam between the layers of batter. Twenty minutes later, these cupcakes were out of the oven and smelling great. The fun bit was yet to come as I let Princess Sparkles loose with the red fondant and pink glitter.

So for all my British friends, Happy Red Nose Day! Lets see how many comedy shows they can amalgate into one skit tonight! And to everyone else, Happy Friday - I hope we all have a good weekend!

Rewarding Self-Belief... with Cake.

'Notella'-Vanilla Cupcakes

McGonnagle did really well at school today. At her school they reward good behaviour with a stepped system called the Golden Club. When you get to Level 5 - the Golden Club in question - you get certain privileges that your classmates can only lust after. Now, I'm not really bothered about whether McGonnagle gets to watch 15 minutes of 'Beverley Hills Chihuahua' on a rainy Friday afternoon while the rest of her class have to make do with the Ludo board. But I think persuading her to get herself into this club - even if only for a little while - is a valuable lesson in self-actualisation. She's a smart, funny, gregarious little girl. But little girls - especially in my family - need self-confidence. Getting into this club will help her understand that she can achieve whatever she puts her mind to. At the age of six, this knowledge is powerful. Today, she reached level four. We rewarded her hard work with 'Notella' cupcakes.

These were basically VCTOW golden vanilla cupcakes with a generous teaspoon of Dairyfree chocolate spread dolloped in the middle and then streaked through the cake batter with a toothpick. I had to up the almond extract as I was out of vanilla, and had to cross my fingers and fly without baking powder, (I know, I know... !) but luckily, they came out well.

Ho-Tep... Cupcake Destroyer!!!

Almond and chocolate is a classic combo anyway, and luckily in our house we're all quite partial to almond so nobody found the flavour too overpowering. Ho-Tep had two, while old Hollow Legs herself wolfed down FOUR (I feel a little queasy just typing that!) after having eaten a massive bowl of Tamil Tiger rice - basically rice and black-eyed peas cooked in coconut milk and curry spices.

Tamil Tiger Rice - recipe on 'Vegan Cooking for Animal Lovers'

I tell you, with that appetite I've got a marathon runner in the making...

Cooking-With-Children Friday! Pt 2

Tomato, olive and roasted red pepper pizza with cucumber salad.

Skint Vegan Dad has tootled off down South to see his Gran leaving me and the kids home alone. Perfect excuse to spend some time messing about in the kitchen.

We made chocolate sponge cake - or should I say McGonnagle made chocolate sponge cake. That girl already has some chops in the kitchen - she sieved flour, cocoa and baking powder like a pro and her spatula work was exceptional. We need to work on the overmixing though... nevertheless, what emmerged from the oven half an hour later was perfect for smothering with chocolate custard. Dee-licious!
We used the last of the potato fridge dough to make pizza. We kept the toppings simple - my kids aren't into loaded pizzas but they do love olives - and drizzled the pizza with a simple sauce of dark tahini and barley miso thinned out with water.

Pizza all dressed-up and ready to go!

A good shake of nooch and it was ready for the oven. We even had enough dough left after this to make a couple of sesame-seed crusted bread sticks. I served the pizza with a quick salad of sliced cucumber and mayo.

This was really good, and the tahini-miso sauce was brilliant for adding a bit of savoury without all the faff of making a cheese sauce.

Pizza 15 minutes later - yum!

You know, the worst vegan pizza I ever had was made for me by a well-meaning relative. Readymade value pizza bases, tomato puree and sliced button mushrooms. I smiled politely (dying of a cold at the time) and choked it down... *shudder*
I think the worst thing about the meat tunnel vision that omnivores suffer from, is the massive limitations it places on their diet. They eat meat and fish in lieu of so many other things it just kills their culinary imagination. I love the variety of a vegan diet - no set rules, no 'meat and two veg' form to every meal and the use of some intense kitchen chemistry to recreate certain flavours and mouth-feels. It's great fun! Plus - I don't need to bribe my kids to eat veggies. Bonus.

Notes From The Vegan Skint Kitchen...

Went shopping - spent thirty quid on groceries to last us next three weeks. Bought mainly staples - flour, tinned tomatoes, sugar, oatmeal - you get the idea! We have plenty in the house and freezer that needs eating up so I was looking to buy versatile staples that will go to make-up complete meals and provide us with a constant supply of bread.

Checked the cupboards when I got home and found a tot of self-raising flour. This seems a peculiarly British thing, as none of the US cookbooks I have even mention it. But 'Eating For Victory' mentions it in a very simple recipe for scones.
So I tweaked it a little to use-up some other, neglected baking ingredients and made cherry and coconut scones.
OMFG - why have I never made scones before?!! These tasted AMAZING, and made the house smell all coconutty and yummy while they were baking. The sweaty blobs of raisin-studded yellow pastry I'm familiar with are a world away from these - no wonder I always thought you had to have jam and marg on scones to make them palatable. Well, it's official - I'm never buying scones again. Not when they're so quick and easy to make and taste so good!

Cherry Coconut Scones (Makes 8 So I'd double the quantities and freeze half)

1/2 lb self-raising flour (or 1/2 lb plain flour and 4 tsp baking powder)
1 tsp salt
1 oz vegan margerine
1 oz sugar
1 oz dessicated coconut
2 oz glace cherries, chopped
1/4 pint soya milk

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F/GM 6.
Mix the flour, baking powder (if using) and salt together before adding the margerine and rubbing in with your fingertips - the mixture should resemble fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar, coconut and cherries before using enough soya milk to form a soft dough. Roll out on a well-floured surface till 1" thick, then cut out circles or do what I did and roll it into a fat sausage before slicing off 1" rounds! Bake on a greased cookie sheet for 15 mins or until golden brown.

Is it still Winter, Mummy?

Yup.
How do we know this, young Ho-Tep? Because where a mere day ago your mother had the heating off and was drying clothes on the line, this morning the snow was deep and crisp and even. After ensuring your sister was late for school with your infuriating toddler dawdle (mental note to self: leave at eight), we took advantage of the fresh snow to make a snowman.

This construction crew...

But unfortunately, this snow was not of the sticky kind. The Inuit have hundreds of different names for snow depending on it's properties, so I'm sure they would know how to describe it, but I have to resort to saying it wasn't sticky, and therefore our snowman looked a little... physically challenged.

... Built this defective snow-thing. Don't hire them.

No matter, you still got to stick some veg into a heap of snow, so you were happy!
After the morning's exertions we enjoyed a couple more cinnamon rolls.

These were so, so heavenly good, they made all the other cinnamon rolls I've ever made seem like fakes. Soft to the tooth, with that fragrant crunch of cinnamon sugar, my cinnamon roll success seems to be down to finally getting a feel for kneading and using an awesome dough recipe. As I make all my family's bread from scratch whenever possible, the time-consuming aspect of kneading and proving for a mere two loaves of bread every other day has always been a hassle, and sometimes resulted in 'no bread, oops!' situations arising.
But I've been making potato refrigerator dough as per Katie's reccomendation, and - bar the fact that I get a fright every time I open the fridge door as I'm accosted by a Blob of newly-risen dough - it works out great. You can bake as much or as little as you like each time, and by varying your add-ins you can use the dough to make bread, rolls, pizza dough, foccacia, or cinnamon rolls... for someone who's pressed for time but wants to cook from scratch as much as possible, this recipe is a real lifesaver. The only changes I've made is to cut the sugar from 2/3 to 1/3 cup and to substitute 2 flax eggs for the eggs.
This afternoon, we planted some sweet basil and chive seeds in impromptu seed pots (SVD's empty egg cartons).

We used our homemade compost, so lets see how it does. I read somewhere that slugs hate herbs so I'm planning to surround the rear of our house with troughs of herbs. We have a little situation going on with the blighters getting into the kitchen after dark... so I will fight them with herbs. I hope it works out better than it sounds!

Ruth, if you were wondering what to do with Barley...

You can use it in place of rice for things like stews, soups and risottos. I made a squash and shitake risotto for dinner on Sunday night using barley in place of rice, and it was dee-licious, especially with a teaspoon of rocket pesto and slice of homebaked wholemeal bread.
Other food we've recently been eating is:

Banana bread bundt with white sugar icing and shredded coconut sprinkled generously over it.

Spinach tortillas filled with shredded lettuce, chili sin carne and served with rice and peas with tomato salsa.
I took McGonnagle through to Glasgow a couple of weekends ago to a Scottish Vegans' potluck and this is what we took:

Chocolate-peanut butter fudge with pistachios based on this recipe.

Baked vegan yum-yums based on this recipe. For anyone who doesn't know, yum-yums are a kind of rope-shaped, twisted donut - popular in Scotland - with a simple sugar glaze. There is usually dairy in the recipe. These were lovely, and a treat to eat. What I think would make them even better for next time is using all-white flour and making them a little thinner. And for true yum-yum authenticity - deep-frying them. But the flavour was great and actually reminded me of the Polish jam donuts of my youth - Pączki - that my Gran used to churn out en-masse for special occasions. I think it may be time to put that plum jam in the fridge to good use...