VeganMoFo 2015 #15: Guess who's coming to dinner?

15. OMG, Barack Obama is coming over because he knows you make awesome vegan food! What are you going to make?

First up, today is my 15 year veganversary, so yay! I don't know the exact date, to be honest, I just know it was September 2000 when I made the decision to go vegan and make it stick (I'd had two failed attempts), and I was going off to do some practical work for uni (on a horse stud of all places) and I packed vegan food. The rest is history. Anyway, mid-September feels about right, so I mark it on the 15th. Of course I am at work today, so no chance to really celebrate with ridiculous food, but there is still time for happy reflection on the reason that I became vegan (the animals) and the reason I remain vegan (the animals). The fact that the food is awesome is just an added bonus!

UPDATE: Due to work and other commitments, I prepared several posts in advance for MoFo. I wrote this post up last week, when Tony was Prime Minister. However, LAST NIGHT there was a leadership spill, and Tony was ousted. Our new Prime Minister is Malcolm Turnbull. As I didn't have time to put together a spread of vegan caviar and pate and expensive champagne for Malcolm to come over, I still am going with the Tony dinner. Turnbull would be too busy smugly celebrating to come over for dinner today anyway. Pretty rude of them to not wait another 24 hours to do the spill so that I could get my MoFo post out! I have updated the post a little bit to reflect these recent changes. Let's get political!

Back to MoFo! So the Americans get Barack Obama to be their president, here in Australia we were stuck with Tony Abbott as prime minister... until last night. Anyway, due to locality I am going to have to have Tony over for dinner (now it will be a sorry you got booted dinner), because the last time Obama came to Brisbane parts of the city were shut down and it was annoying, and I wouldn't do that to the people of Brisbane. See what I a kind soul I am? To be honest, I can't imagine Abbott being at all excited about vegan food, but I will lure him here with the promise of onions. Tony Abbott loves onions so much, he will eat them raw, skin on. Full credit to Amy, who is awesome, for coming up with the hilarious onions for dinner idea!

Of course I am not going to serve raw onions. I myself don't like raw onions. Instead I settled on the French Onion Pie from The Vegan Table aka Tony's Schadenfreude Pie.



The recipe makes two 9 inch pies, I halved it to only make one. It calls for thawed, uncooked pie shells. We can't get pre-made vegan pie shells here, so I made my pastry from scratch using the savoury shortcrust recipe from Wrapped in Pastry by my awesome friend Leigh Drew.



The filling for the pie is slowly caramelised onions, which is then mixed with a pureed tofu base, poured into the partially baked pie shell and then baked until brown and set. It set up really well, and sliced beautifully. It had a lovely mellow and sweet flavour.

I also made the Rawkin' Rainbow Kale Salad with Creamy Chili-Lime Dressing from The Abundance Diet. Same-sex marriage has been a much talked about issue in Australian federal politics lately, with Tony being firmly against it. The dressing in this recipe is based on red capsicum, but I totally changed it around using some carrots and sundried tomatoes instead. I did have to thin it a bit with water to get it smooth. The dressing on its own was quite strong in terms of lime and salt, however blends wonderfully with all the vegetables. I used a bag of baby kale rather than chopped regular kale. For the toppings I left out the raw onion, and substituted jicama for radish because I couldn't find jicama, I also added some cherry tomatoes and cucumbers as well. It looked pretty!



Dinner is served Tony. Also, I noticed that the pie, much like a revenge leadership spill, was excellent served cold.



There are so many other issues I have with Abbott and his government (issues that will continue, even with the leadership change), that to make a dish representing each one of them would mean I would still be in the kitchen cooking! To be honest I didn't make a dessert because I don't see us really hitting it off at all, and why prolong the awkwardness.

In good news, the pie makes for excellent leftovers! Here it is being a lunch at work, with lots of vegetables leftover after I made the salad on the side.



Recipe ratings: Pie :D, Salad :)

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