VeganMoFo 2017 #15: Five Spice

15th: Spicy! – Talk us through your spice rack or cook with your favourite spice.

For MoFo 2015, I talked about how much I loved cinnamon, and it is indeed my favourite spice. But I've already posted about that, so for this year I thought I might talk about my favourite spice blend, which is Chinese Five Spice. It includes cinnamon! There are different variations on this blend, and recipes for making your own, but I normally use a store bought one that has cinnamon, star anise, cloves, fennel and pepper. It is very good!

To celebrate five spice, here are a few dishes I made from different cookbooks that feature it.

Five Spice Teriyaki Bowl from Bold Flavored Vegan Cooking by Celine Steen. I was lucky enough to test for this cookbook, and this was one of my favourite recipes. Celine has a super quick teriyaki sauce recipe in the book, which forms the base of the sauce. She also has a five spice blend recipe, but I used my pre-made one. The recipe calls for 1 1/2 to 2 teaspoons, I used the full amount being a five spice lover, and I could have maybe added a touch more. I served mine over rice rather than noodles, and I left out the capsicum and added a bit of celery for crunch.
Rating: :D



Flying Massaman Curry from Vegan Eats World by Terry Hope Romero. This curry uses a combination of garam masala and five spice to make a quick curry paste with shallots and garlic. Mixed with peanut butter and coconut milk, it was a quick and easy way to get a really nice flavour. The curry also has tofu (I used the savoury baked tofu recipe from the book), potatoes, broccoli and cherry tomatoes. The curry paste was meant to have chile and cayenne added, but I left them out for a nice mild result. I did have to add a bit of water to the curry paste to get it to blend easily, but it didn't seem to dilute the flavour.
Rating: :)



Vanessa Kabocha Salad from Salad Samurai by Terry Hope Romero. Another coconut, peanut and five spice creation, the sauce for this salad is absolutely delicious. The salad itself is a mix of steamed kabocha, edamame and green beans. It is meant to be served over red cabbage, but I served mine over a mix of cabbage and baby spinach as too much raw cabbage is not good for my stomach. I think this would benefit from roasting the pumpkin, rather than steaming, and you could easily use butternut instead. The recipe calls for steaming the pumpkin, then adding the edamame and beans on top to finish steaming, but then to remove the beans and edamame from the pot at the end of cooking to blanch. Removing them from the pot with the pumpkin was quite time consuming!
Rating: :) (but sauce alone is :D)



I had hoped to make some five spiced cookies (Wholegrain Vegan Baking, also be Celine, has a couple of recipes with five spice in the mix), but I ran out of time. But definitely keen to make them in the future. Five spice scented ginger cookies? Yes. Peanut Butter Five Spice Sriracha cookies? Yes. One day in my future!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post - Month of Sahara



Speaking of cinnamon, my favourite cinnamon of all was of course Sahara. Her colour is called cinnamon here in Australia (in the US they just call it red). Her fur perfectly matched the colour of my hair! You always had to be careful about any flowers or plants that Sahara could get access to, because as you can see she loved to sniff them. I love this photo of her.