Purple Risotto

I've been wanting to make a beetroot risotto for awhile, since I saw a TV chef I don't particularly like whip one off. This version is unideal because we had no fresh beetroot; if we did, I'd chip it into matchsticks and replace the drained beetroot juice with a 1/2–1 cup or so of water.

This was fantastically tasty. My partner, who is lukewarm when it comes to beetroot (unlike me, though I agree with Robin Robertson and say that tinned just isn't the same after having fresh), was blown away by this recipe and said that it's now in her top ten recipes. She'd also like me to mention that the onions chopped into matchsticks was her idea; I just chopped them as usual. She suggests frying them until they're caramelised.


Purple Risotto
(Or, more mundanely, beetroot risotto)

1 red onion, chopped into matchsticks
1/2 eggplant, sliced into thin strips
425 g can beetroot, sliced; juice reserved
2 cups of spinach, roughly chopped
1 cup pearl barley
2 cups vege stock
2 tB balsamic vinegar
black pepper
whole baby spinach leaves, for garnish

Steam-fry onion and garlic until onion is clear. Add eggplant and cook until softened.
Add pearl barley, spinach, beetroot and marjoram, and fry for a minute. Combine beetroot juice, stock and balsamic vinegar. Add to pan a 1/4 cup at a time, waiting until it all absorbs until adding more. Cook until all the stock has been absorbed and the pearl barley is cooked.
Season with black pepper and stir through. Serve topped with fresh baby spinach leaves.

Banana Bread

This is my mother's banana bread/banana cake recipe. It's the best one I've found, and the only banana bread I've known my girlfriend to eat and like. Here it's improved - animal fats removed, sugar reduced. Still damn delicious. Don't forget (like I did) to mash the bananas first.

I don't think I've actually given any baked-good recipes here yet, so let me explain a bit. I frequently use tahini (essentially sesame seed butter) as a butter or margarine replacer in baking. It's hard to find a good dairy-free margarine, and those that I've found generally have some trans fats in them. For those not up on nutritional wossname, trans fats are about the nutritional equivalent of a hydrogen bomb, worse even than saturated fats. Also, tahini has wonderful selection of micronutrients like calcium and potassium. I don't always replace the margarine entirely; sometimes I use a mixture of tahini and margarine. Tahini adds a nice nutty flavour to baked goods.

I like using flaxseed meal as an egg replacer. You can generally find it in supermarkets, or failing that, health food shops. If you can't find the meal, you can often find the whole flaxseeds, which are easily ground using a pepper grinder. Don't bother trying with a mortar and pestle or a food processor, no matter what others tell you. It is LIES and does not work. A clean pepper grinder works like a charm. Flaxseeds (also known as linseeds) are an excellent source of Omega-3 fatty acids – much better than fish oil capsules which are often rancid by the time you buy them in shops. Flaxseeds are also apparently high in manganese, which I know I always look for in a food.

To use flaxseed meal as an egg replacer in baked goods, use 1 tB per egg and 3 tB of water. Whisk together, or blitz in a food processor until it becomes more viscous.

I really get this perverse glee from making sweet foods as nutritionally packed as possible, while retaining stupid amounts of flavour. That's why I like cooking with tahini and flaxseed. The end.

Banana Bread

125g tahini
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup apple juice
2 tB flaxseed meal, blitzed with 6 tB of water
3 mashed bananas
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 1/2 cups self-raising flour

Set oven to 180°C.
Beat butter, sugar, flaxseed goo and bananas until smooth.
Mix in baking soda and flour.
Pour into loaf pan and bake for 40–45 minutes.

Cauliflower, Asparagus and Onion Soup

Alas, another update without posting my beetroot chutney, of which I am very proud. We're halfway through it now, having had it on rye bread and mountain bread with caraway seeds, on zucchini and corn patties and on spoons, straight from the jar. I still can't find the recipe. I suppose this is the problem with having many notebooks, several of them identical. So, I bring you an older recipe, one from several weeks ago, that has been languishing in one of said notebooks (though it must be said that this is a better fate than all the recipes scrawled on whatever paper was to hand).

Cauliflower, Asparagus and Onion Soup

1 clove elephant garlic (or 2–3 cloves normal garlic)
2 small to medium potatoes, cubed
1 small brown onion, chopped
2 leeks, chopped
2 spring onions, chopped
1 head cauliflower, chopped roughly
2 cups vege stock
1 cup water
1 bunch of asparagus
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 tB lemon juice
1 bunch of green beans (about 2 dozen)

Roast garlic in 175°C oven for about 15–20 minutes or until soft right through.
Steam-fry potatoes, brown onion, leeks and half the spring onions, until brown onion is soft.
Add cauliflower, vege stock and water. Chop garlic and add. Simmer until tender.
While cauliflower is cooking, cook asparagus until tender in a medium saucepan with the lemon.
Add asparagus and thyme to the main pot. Drop beans in the asparagus water and warm through on a low heat.
Cook soup for further five minutes and then puree. Serve with green beans placed on top, sprinkled with reserved spring onions.

Sweet Chilli Sauce (Mark 1)

I was planning on posting my modified recipe for banana cake today, since I seem to have left my brand-spanking-new recipe for beetroot chutney at my parents' house. Unfortunately, my banana cake recipe (taken from my mother's recipe card index and improved on) has also gone walkabout. So, I bring you something else.

My girlfriend and I, as well as being vegan, are also big fans of wholefoods and slow foods. What this boils down to is that we like to make as much of what goes into our bodies as we can, from as early in the process as possible. So, last night she asked for sweet chilli sauce. It's imperfect, and I want to experiment with cooking it for a bit, and maybe with some cornflour to thicken.

Sweet Chilli Sauce
1 tB (15 mL) golden syrup
1/2 tsp cider vinegar
1/2 tsp finely chopped garlic
1/8 tsp finely chopped chilli

Combine in a bowl. Drizzle over food to make instantly more delicious.


It's really that simple. I made four times this quantity, in order to experiment with the vinegar, as the sauce is less viscous than I would like. That amount has been sufficient for dinner last night and lunch today, but you could probably make much more, keeping the ratios intact, and keep it in the fridge in a boiled jar. I'm not sure how long it would keep once the jar was opened, but I'd suggest not longer than a month.

Chickpea and Onion Soup

This is a variant of Jamie Oliver’s recipe Leek and Chickpea soup from his Naked Chef book. I’ve used canned chickpeas, because it’s far easier to find them here than dried ones. It also requires no forethought or overnight soaking. The other thing to note is that the recipe uses shallots, which Australians often confuse with spring onions. Shallots look like slightly squished brown onions until you peel the paper-like outer layers off and suddenly they look like red onions! In the forthcoming onion revolution, you’d better believe that shallots are going to be the red onion’s spies in the brown onion camp.

The other thing that amuses me about this recipe is that despite being labelled an 'Onion Soup', it uses neither thing most people think of when they think of onions – the red (Spanish) or brown varieties.

Chickpea and Onion Soup

3–4 spring onions
250 g scallions (about 6), chopped finely
3 medium leeks, chopped finely
2 sticks of celery with leaves, chopped
2 cloves garlic
1 can chickpeas (about 250 g drained)
1 small potato, cubed
1 L vegetable or faux chicken stock
black pepper to taste

Chop the spring onions into slices. Reserve the green slices.

Combine potato and chickpeas in medium-sized saucepan with water to cover. Simmer until potato is soft and floury.

Heat about 1/2 cup water in a large saucepan and add the spring onions, scallions and leeks. Steam fry until soft. Add celery and garlic, steam fry for a few minutes more and then add the stock. Cook for another 10 minutes. Add the drained chickpeas, potato and black pepper, cook for another 5–10 minutes then puree. I use a stick blender as I find it’s easier, but you can also use a normal blender, or even just a potato masher if you want to thicken the soup but leave the texture of the onion.

Serve hot, with reserved spring onions on top.

Middle-Eastern Pizza & Pumpkin and Tofu Pizza

We were at a loss as to what to cook last night. We were so hungry that everything and nothing seemed appetising. I really wanted roast pumpkin, potato and sweet potato with the orange-coloured “brown sauce” our friend Hedda had cooked for Yule, but my girlfriend, Steph, really wanted pizza. Until she didn’t. As we couldn’t think of anything in specific we wanted to cook, Steph turned the cooking over to me. I could cook anything, so long as it wasn’t roast vegetables.

So I made pizza … that happened to have roasted eggplant and pumpkin on it.

Note that my quantities were for dinner for two people. Increase quantities for more.

Middle-Eastern Pizza

1/2 large eggplant, or whole small eggplant, halved.
1/2 green capsicum, sliced into strips.
2 tB tahini (sesame paste)
2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp garlic
2 pieces mountain bread or other flat bread
1 tB fresh rosemary, chopped
Dukkah, other Middle-Eastern spice mix, or (failing that) cayenne pepper (opt.)

Heat oven to 180°C. Place the eggplant cut side down on a baking tray and pour 1/4 cup of water in. Place in oven. Roast for about 20–30 minutes, or until eggplant is well roasted

Remove eggplant from oven & rinse quickly to cool it down. Remove skin and cube. Combine tahini, lemon juice and garlic. Spread over flat bread and arrange eggplant and capsicum in an artistic fashion (surely you don’t need me to tell you how to arrange a pizza). Sprinkle rosemary and spices over pizza.

Bake in oven for about 15–20 minutes, or until flat bread gets crispy at the edges.

Note: I cut our flatbread into two pieces, so I didn’t have to try and cut it after baking, when it was very crispy. I’d suggest doing the same thing.

Pumpkin and feta pizza was one of the first “gourmet” pizzas I ever tried – strangely enough, this experience happened in the unlikely Bendigo rather than on Lygon St. This was my attempt to recreate a vegan version. I think this is a more successful feta replacement than the recipe we tried a few months ago. So very delicious.

By the way, the weights are approximate as I didn’t use any scales while cooking. Again, use what seems a sensible amount considering the number of people you’ll be cooking for. I cooked both of these together, so the pumpkin went in shortly after the eggplant. It was pretty easy to manage both at once, even for me (I’m a bit crap at doing more than one thing at a time in the kitchen). I used rosemary and thyme here because that’s what I had to hand, but the original of this pizza used whole basil leaves. Use whatever sweet green herb takes your fancy.

Pumpkin & Tofu Pizza

100 g kent pumpkin (or other good roasting pumpkin, such as Hokkaido)
2/3 cup spinach, roughly chopped
100 g tofu
1/3 cup lemon juice
2 tB brown rice vinegar
sundried tomato tapenade or tomato paste
2 tsp each fresh rosemary & thyme, chopped
2 pieces mountain bread or other flat bread

Heat oven to 180°C. Place pumpkin in a baking tray with about 1/4 cup water in the bottom. Roast for about 20–30 minutes or until pumpkin is soft.

While pumpkin is roasting, slice tofu into sheets 1 cm thick. Place tofu sheets on paper towel or tea towel. Cover with another sheet of paper towel or tea towel, cover with chopping board, and press down gently. This should squeeze much of the water out.

Cube tofu and place in a jar. Combine lemon juice and brown rice vinegar, cover tofu, and replace lid. Turn jar occasionally to ensure that all tofu is covered.

Remove pumpkin from oven and rinse to cool down. Cube. Spread flat bread thinly with tapenade and cover with spinach. Arrange pumpkin and drained tofu on top. Sprinkle with herbs.

Bake in oven for about 15–20 minutes, or until flat bread gets crispy at the edges.

Mmm. Delicious. Makes me want to make another round for lunch today.