Return to the world of blogging!

Ok, no more silly excuses. I now have a lovely flat with a relatively big garden and a huge kitchen. There are lots of pictures of food on my hard disk and my cameras. So I should resume blogging, right? Here we go, I hope there are still some people who read this :)


Beetroot (flannel?) hash from Vegan Brunch from ages ago in the Cricklewood morning sun, with some sort of salad it seems. Beets are hugely underappreciated by most people!


Carb attack! I just love aloo sag. This was a quick and mostly fat-free version.


I now live with someone vegan to feed, so I have more excuses to buy tons of food and cook many many dishes :) Carrot kinpira, grilled portobello mushrooms, mizuna salad with tomatoes and ponzu dressing, along with potato and onion miso soup, rice, umeboshi and all the other Japanese trimmings.

Still, there are always leftovers for bento... this pingu box broke last week, a shame because it was a very useful size. On the other hand, blue is not very good at making food look appetising. But come on, poor Pingu! This gives me an excuse to look for another Pingu box (I used to have two but gave one away when I moved country).

They all look the same...

...curries, that is. After reading the PPK "let's use our cookbooks more often" threads and finding out I'm running totally late for participating, I decided try some more recipes from Vegan Planet.

Which didn't express me. Don't get me wrong, I love how the book is international and seems to have a recipe for everything, but none of it has had that "wow" effect yet.

So we have lentil curry (which made a load, so I ate it 5 days in a row!):


And green bean-chickpea tagine, served with V-con red quinoa and chickpea pilaf. I left out the dried fruit because a) I didn't have any b) I'm not particularly fond of dried fruit in cooked things


I didn't manage to whip up a cake for Alex's birthday (as if I ever managed a properly iced birthday cake, anyway!), so I made chocolate muffins that look huuuge in this picture.
Talking about cakes, check out this site with fucked up cakes made by professionals!

I was meant to be at a demo on Saturday but we were horribly late. Sadly, everybody had already left and we couldn't catch up with the march anymore- luckily, that meant more waffles for us!

Now the question of the day: find out who this handsome stranger eating a vegan waffle is and win... a date with him and his pet owl ?

Lentil and chickpea Curry

Because sometimes a short vacation is all you need to get back into that creative mood.

So many things have happened in the last weeks- Ireland was great though I was really disappointed by Dublin. It's smaller than I'd thought, not pretty or "fair" at all, loads of tourists and above all, inaffordable! That's why I pretty much lived on pasta and toast, nothing fancy to fotograph really.

Anyhow, I visited a lovely vforumer in Belfast, and when I missed the coach back, it was raining cats and dogs and I had £ 10 to spend, I stocked up on foodie magazines. And oh, they're so much better than those lame housewife-ones you can get in Germany.

I got this recipes from one of them, and it's easy, cheap and versatile (have it with chutney= Indian, with coriander and coconut milk= Thai, with Ketchup= err, English?, but it's also good on its own).

In the first place, I didn't really understand why it's called a curry, but then I found out there's no other description that matches it. Anyhow, the recipe:

(officially serves 4, but I guess that's when you don't have anything else with it... I already fed 4 people and there's still half left)

• 4 tbs olive oil
• 2 onions, roughly chopped
• 2 tbs red curry paste (Thai/Indian doesn't matter, I used massaman)
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 200g lentils, rinsed and drained
• 600 ml vegetable stock
• 170g green beens, halved
• 2 yellow peppers, seeded and chopped
• 1 tin chickpeas, drained
• 12 cherry tomatoes, halved

1. Saute the onions in a huge pan until soft.
2. Stir in the curry paste and garlic, fry for a minute. Add the lentils and broth, bring to a boil and let simmer for 20 mins or until the lentils are soft.
3. Add beans and peppers and cook until the lentils are al dente. Stir in chickpeas and tomatoes and let heat through.
   

My Asian Vegan Kitchen

I haven't made enough recipes from The Asian Vegan Kitchen to do a proper review like I did for Vegan Fire and Spice, but I can already say I love the book a lot, especially because it doesn't focus on the "common" Asian countries for cooking (aka Indian, Japanese, Chinese and maybe Thai), but also has breathtaking Malaysian, Vietnamese and -joy!- Burmese recipes.

I don't know anything about Burmese food, but I know the Cauliflower Curry with pasta is worth the entire price of the book.

It's not as spicy as your average Indian curry and not tangy like Thai curry. It's totally different but familiar at the same time. It's creamy and above all, it photographs well, which is quite unique for curry.

Go make it if you've got the book!

Recent bento:

Pasta with pesto, garlicky white asparagus and cherries... the last proper asparagus of the sesason that I could lay my hands on :/

Simple overslept bento: brown rice with scallions, and sesame seeds, plum sauce in the green container, half a fig, three cherries and two mini chocolate chili muffins.

Eating Out 3

Last Saturday there was a city/musical festival thingy in Essen (a city with half a million inhabitants about 20 kms from mine. If you write "essen" without the capital E, it means "eating" in German. Yay!).

The festival was pretty boring, but I had some great soy meatballs in curry sauce (probably TVP-based) with rice. A giant serving, just right for me!

Then we also discovered the hugeste Alternative clothing store I've seen in Germany so far.
I couldn't spend any money because we went to the huge Basic health food store before where I eventually bought gomasio and too many variations of vegan soy desserts!

We also found out that there will be a huge Diwali-like Indian festival in Stuttgart in November, so I decided I'll be visiting my ex in South Germany for a couple of days then.

I also made a huge online book and bento supply order that night. I was surprised to find all the books except for one in the mail today (included a vegan Thai cookbook, a book featuring only tomato recipes and one with exotic fruit- worth buying it for the photos alone!).

Unphotogenic curry, darn you!