26th: Favourite Holiday – What’s your favourite holiday ever? What do you like to make for it?
I don't really have a favourite holiday these days. It was Christmas, but that doesn't have quite the same level of joy and excitement for me these days that it used to. So today I am going to focus on Mother's Day and Father's Day. Basically, I love celebrating people I love. And I love cooking for people I love. Every year for Mother's Day, Father's Day, and their birthdays, I make my parents a special dinner. I've already showcased a few of the Indian menus that I have made for my dad over the past couple of years during my menu week of MoFo. But sometimes there is not handy book menu, and they pick random things from different books. That is what happened for both Mother's and Father's days this year.
Mother's Day
Benedict Pizza from Veganize It by Robin Robertson: My mum loves benedicts (in fact, the reason I now try every vegan benedict I come across is due to her influence), so making a benedict-inspired pizza seemed like a pretty fun idea! This recipe uses a few different components from the book, all put together. Pizza dough, marinated baked tofu, and hollandaise sauce. There is also the option to make a mushroom bacon or hamish loaf from the book, but I took the easier way and used some slices of Tofurky ham. The pizza base is topped with hollandaise, ham slices, baked tofu, wilted spinach, and sliced tomato, and then more sauce after baking. The pizza dough is easy to make, and is pre-baked for 5 minutes before topping. I would bake it a little longer next time, as it was just a little undercooked. The marinated tofu had a good, strong flavour. It is baked in the pan with the marinade, though I took it out and put it on a baking sheet for the final 20 minutes (the marinade was mostly absorbed) to get it nice and firm. I didn't want smooshy tofu on my pizza. The Hollandaise sauce is also very lovely, buttery and lemony, and got my mum's stamp of approval. All together, it was a lovely combination of flavours.
Rating: Benedict Pizza: :), pizza base :), tofu :), sauce :D
Basic Favourite Dressing from 500 Vegan Recipes by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman: I served the pizza with some salad tossed with this simple dressing. White balsamic, nutritional yeast, oil, and some dried herbs. I am not sure about the dried herbs, in all honestly, they kind of stuck in your teeth and gave a weird texture. But the basics of this was easy and yum.
Rating: :)
Chocolate Orange Pots from Cooks Share Eat Vegan by Aine Carlin: These rich little pots are so delicious. They are that classic vegan combination of silken tofu and melted chocolate, with orange extract added. One recipe filled three small little cups. As often with this sort of recipe, I find several hours in the fridge helps the flavours to melt. And also is required by the recipe t set up, so that works well. The topping is a Toasted Hazelnut and Cacao Nib Crumb, which was a lovely texture. I only made a half recipe of the crumb, and still had heaps left over! It was a nice topping for some oats.
Rating: :D
Father's Day
Dad normally picks Indian as the themes for his dinner, but this year he decided to branch out with some Chinese!
Vegetable Sweet Corn Soup from The Asian Vegan Kitchen by Hema Parekh: Sweet corn soup has to be one of my favourite soups. This one is based on stock (a Clear Vegetable Stock is another recipe in the book), creamed corn, and finely chopped vegetables (green beans, carrots, mushrooms, and cauliflower). I halved the recipe, which made three small starter sized bowls. The book suggests making another recipe, Green Chilies in Vinegar, to go on top of the soup, but I declined. The Clear Vegetable Stock was easy to make, though had a very subtle flavour (the only seasoning in it were some crushed black peppercorns), but makes a good base for many of the recipes in the book.
Rating: :)
Shanghai-Style Chow Mein from The Asian Vegan Kitchen by Hema Parekh: This was fast and easy. I was able to find some fresh wheat noodles without eggs at an Asian grocery store. They were quite thick and chewy, and it was a 500g packet (rather than 400g for the recipe), but I used all of it and scaled up accordingly. I wish I had scaled up the vegetables even more, because I love a heavy vegetable to noodle ratio. It was still good though, with onion, carrot, shiitakes (it says to use fresh, but I used reconstituted dry), cabbage, and bean sprouts (I used canned). Also green capsicum, which I left out and replaced with green beans instead. I left out the chilies as well. I served with some bok choy in mushroom oyster sauce.
Rating: :)
Ispahan Crisp from Vegan Desserts by Hannah Kaminsky: So... not Chinese. But when I asked what sort of dessert he wanted, he was thinking lychees, and I ran with it. This is based on some very famous french chef macaron flavour, but made into an easy fruit crisp. Except I used strawberries rather than raspberries, as my did is not a big fan of raspberry pips (and strawberries are the best). I used fresh strawberries, but tinned lychees. The recipe calls for an 8x8 inch pan, but you can see that it is quite flat. The topping was a bit too dry, I think it needs more vegan butter in it. It was pale and dry after baking, so I spritzed it with some canola oil and put it under the grill to make it got nice and brown. But such a lovely flavour combination, especially the rosewater in the topping. I served this with some So Delicious Strawberry coconut milk ice cream (I can eat their coconut ice cream, it doesn't make me sick).
Rating: :)
Cute Kitty Photo of the Post
Red and black, touching! Did I move Sahara's tail to actually rest against Dim Sim's back in this photo? Maybe. Who can tell.
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