VeganMoFo 2018 #17: Menu: From The Voluptuous Vegan

I've been pulling out a lot of my older, under used cookbooks this year to start working my way through. One of them was The Voluptuous Vegan by Myra Kornfeld. This book has three parts - soups and stews, a chapter of menus, and then desserts. I have only made a couple of things from it before. The menus themselves don't have names, this is the menu that is found on page 171.

Orange-Ginger Tofu Triangles: I pressed my tofu and marinated it for 24 hours to get the maximum flavour! I found the marinade itself quite oily, it has a quarter cup of canola oil in it, which I think was too much? Once marinated, the recipe says to tip off some of the marinade to leave the tofu half covered, as it is meant to absorb what remains. But even after 50 minutes at 200 degrees C (instead of 180), only a little bit had been absorbed. Still, it had a nice orange flavour that I enjoyed.
Rating: :)



Arame Salsa: I made just 1/4 of the original recipe, which made enough to serve with the rest of the menu. Arame is soated in water, then simmered with apple juice. Cucumber, coriander, garlic (I used powder), and scallions rounded it out (I left out the jalapeno), a nice fresh accompaniment.
Rating: :)



Citrus-Scented Basmati Rice with Cinnamon and Cumin: Those of you who know me won't be surprised to learn that I totally made this in the rice cooker. I love my rice cooker! It makes things so much easier, and frees up a burner on the stove. I cut the recipe way down... 2 cups of dry brown rice cooked to serve 4 people... that is so much rice! I used 3/4 cup of rice, with 1 cinnamon stick and a little less than a teaspoon of cumin seeds. It did not have a strong flavour, but had a lovely scent.
Rating: :)



Teriyaki Vegetables: This is a great mix of carrots, daikon, and turnip (I couldn't find burdock root, and I meant to get parsnip, but I accidentally wrote down the wrong nip on the shopping list... it worked). The sauce is a mix of apple juice, shoyu (though I just used regular soy), and apple juice. I didn't have any kudzu for thickening, so I used cornstarch (using 1T instead of 2T based on what I read on the internet for substituting), which thickened it up nicely.
Rating: :)



And here is our finished dinner! A very lovely combination.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Possum is just enjoying a snack on my parents' bed and... oh look... Sahara just happens to be nearby. Such a coincidence!

VeganMoFo 2011 #22: 'The Voluptuous Vegan' and 'The Asian Vegan Kitchen'

Today I will be looking at two books, as I have only cooked a little from each one. So this way you can still have lots of photos of food!

The Voluptuous Vegan
Myra Kornfeld and George Minot, Potter, 2000



A menu book! A menu book! I love menus, so of course I had to buy this. This book is paperback and does not stay open easily. There are no photos either. The book is divided into the following chapters: Introduction, Ingredients, Equipment and Cutting Terms, Soups, Main-Course Menus, Desserts, Glossary and Resources. The Main-Course Menu section is made up of many different menus with several components. The menus cover all sorts of cuisines and ingredients. Unfortunately, as much as I love menus, I often don't have time to make menus. And because I am obsessed with making menus, I don't like to make single dishes out of menus. This is the reason why I have yet to make anything from the amazing Party Vegan by Robin Robertson, and why I have only made a few menus from this book. I do find a lot of the recipes in this book quite fiddly and time consuming as well, which is another limiting factor with time constraints. Anyway, let's have a peek.

Gingery Split Pea Soup


The soup chapter of the book contained stand alone recipes, as does that desserts chapter. This yummy soup has a great smokey flavour from chipotles. 4 stars.

Menu Page 123



This menu includes:
*Thai Vegetable Stew - includes eggplant, cauliflower, zucchini, carrots, sugar snap peas and others. 4 stars
*Baked Tofu Triangles - amazing little morsels. 5 stars.
*Jasmine Rice With Coconut - 4 stars.
*Mint, Orange, and Red Onion Salad - makes a small amount. 4 stars.
*Total menu rating: 4 stars.

Menu Page 166


This menu includes:
*Mesclun with Raspberry Vinaigrette - fast and tasty. 4 stars.
*Seitan Bourguignonne - this has an amazing marinade, it makes heaps so there are leftovers for all sorts of things. It is quite time consuming. 4 stars.
*Mashed Potatoes with Parsnips - a fun twist on mashed potatoes. 4 stars.
*Total menu rating: 4 stars.

Menu Page 205


This menu includes:
*Indonesian Sambal - mixes together really well and is super addictive. 5 stars.
*Rice Noodles with Thai Peanut Sauce - I used 250g of rice stick noodles here. 4 stars.
*Stir-Fried Vegetables - A yummy mix of different fresh vegetables. 4 stars.
*Mango slices - not a recipe at all, just instructions how to cut mangoes. 5 stars (because mangoes are awesome).
*Total Menu Rating: 5 stars.

There are a lot of fun recipes in here, though some of them do call for some more obscure ingredients. I look forward to making more menus, if I can find the time! Savannah over at In Her Grace is blogging about recipes from The Voluptuous Vegan this week, so check things out over there as well!

The Asian Vegan Kitchen
Herm Parekh, Kodansha, 2007



If you look above the book in the photo, you can just see two little Gizmo feet! This is a great book that is packed full of authentic recipes, including recipes for making many sauces and pastes from scratch. This book does mean a bit of a trip and trawl through the Asian grocery shop, but it is worth it. The book is a paperback with a glossy dust jacket. There are is a middle section of lovely colour photos. Chapters work through different Asian countries, and include India, Japan, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma, Indonesia, Malaysia and Korea. Each chapter includes four or five sections such as Soups and Salads, Main Dishes, Rice Dishes, Noodle Dishes, Side Dishes and Snacks, Pancakes, Breaks, Drinks, and Desserts. There is also a glossary of ingredients (which is very handy) as well as a great index of main ingredients.

Again, I have not made much from this book yet. But let us see where I have been!

Chickpea Curry (India) with Bhatura Bread (India)


The chickpea curry gives instructions to soak and cook chickpeas from scratch. I had to cook them for much longer than the hour called for. In the future I would just use tinned, as any sort of woody chickpeas give me tummy aches. There are only one or two brands of chickpeas I can buy, even. Anyway, this is quite a spicy little curry, and great with the bread. 4 stars.
Bhatura is normally a deep fried bread. I shallow fried it here and it worked well. 4 stars.

Biryani (India)


I like biryani - rice and vegetables and seasonings make for an easy and yummy dinner. I served this with the above two dishes. 4 stars.

Red Curry Paste


My own homemade red curry paste! Beautiful. 4 stars.

Red Curry with Vegetables (Thailand) with Pineapple Fried Rice (Thailand)



The red curry used some of that beautiful curry paste. This recipe uses 3 cups of coconut milk, which I found way too rich! Either use light coconut milk, or even sub in some stock if you get overcome. I added lots of extra vegetables as well. 3 stars.
Pineapple Fried Rice is one of my favourite dishes to order from a Sydney vegan Thai restaurant. This is also amazing! Plus super cute. I used peas in place of capsicum. The restaurant one has fake prawns in it, which skeeves me out. This one has sliced up strips of inari skin (the closest thing I could find to abura-age deep fried tofu). 5 stars.


Food I have made but not photographed:
Dashi (Japan) - 4 stars.
Miso Soup with Tofu and Wakame (Japan) - Very quick and easy. 4 stars.
Green Tea Ice Cream - Was not good, but I realised that my green tea powder was not matcha. So I will report. Made me sad because it uses a cup of maple syrup - that is like $9 worth of syrup in something that didn't work great. Star rating pending retrying with proper matcha.
Sukiyaki (Japan) - This is delicious and so beautiful. I am sad I have no photo. 5 stars.

There is so much more for me to make from this book!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post


Possum smooching it up on the carpet.

For more kitten action, check out my girls in their international debut - they are featured in this week's Feline Friday on Lauren's wonderful blog Whoa Wren. They are besides themselves with glee!

AusNZVeganMoFo: Voluptuous Menus

As many of you may know, I cannot resist a menu plan. I am virtually compelled to make any menu plan or suggestions made in my cookbooks. So The Voluptuous Vegan is like a dream come true - a book full of menus!

Some of the menus can be a bit fiddly, it is true. And there are some that have ingredients that are a bit tricky for me to source here in Brisbane. For the moment anyway, I am getting pretty good at finding ingredients around the place. The thing I like about it though is that although there can be many steps, it gives you a plan for making the menu so it all goes smoothly. And there are lots of components you can compare in advance as well, so it goes a lot more quickly when you are putting it together. The book also contains some super cute suggestions for plating up. Here's a couple of menus I have made in recent history to show you how great this book is.


This is Thai Vegetable Stew. A delicious stew that is bursting with so much vegetable goodness. Look at all those vegetables - eggplant, cauliflower, zucchini, carrots and sugar snap peas. Yum!


But what is this stew without some Baked Tofu Triangles to go with it? These are SENSATIONAL. You just want to make a whole bunch of them to sit and munch your way through.


Serve your stew and your tofu over some Jasmine Rice with Coconut. OK, confession time. This recipe calls for fresh shredded coconut. But I was just too lazy at the time to crack my own coconut that I used some from a packet. I promise I will do it for real next time!


This menu is just delicious already. But what makes it extra delightful is a nice side of Mint, Orange and Red Onion Salad. This is great, but makes a small amount so you may want to double the ingredients because it is very yummy!

This second menu is just perfect for a chilly night.


It starts with Seitan Bourguignonne. This includes seitan chunks, mushrooms and vegetables marinated in the most incredible marinade. It is so full of flavour - shoyu, miso, red wine, mirin, balsamic vinegar, garlic... so good! And the great thing is there is lots of marinade left over for future use. It's great with tofu!


Then you make a big bowl of fluffy Mashed Potatoes with Parsnips. The parsnips give it a great flavour, but can be a bit stringier than the potatoes when mashing.


A simple salad of Mesclun with Raspberry Vinaigrette rounds out the meal by adding some all important greens.


Giving you this! I won't lie, it takes a fair bit of time. But the results are damn tasty!

Cute Cat Photo of the Post


Another bittersweet tale for your today. This is Milky. For about 6 months when I was living in Sydney I had three and a half cats. Milky was my half. She started turning up every couple of days, sitting on the back steps. She was adorable and sweet and was wearing a collar. She was also skinny and had a sore on her face. My best efforts (including attaching a message on her collar and doing numerous neighbourhood door knocks) failed to turn up a home for her. I took her to the vet to scan for a microchip (there was none) and got some antibiotics for the wound on her face. She had no teeth, and would just swallow the antibiotics when you put it in front of her. I started feeding her, and she was so glad for it. It will come as no surprise that she was soon at my doorstep all the time! Unfortunately Sahara hated her, and Gizmo and Dim Sim were wary of her to say the least, so she never became a fully integrated place in the house. She did get into the house a couple of times - and trotted around so happily! When I went away on holidays and my girls went to the cattery, I arranged for a neighbour to keep on feeding her. She was an absolute sweetheart of a cat. Unfortunately for Milky, the wound on her face was not a wound but was a tumour. Knowing what I know now, it was most likely a squamous cell carcinoma. I tried to make her as happy as I could until the time came when the tumour was too big and the distortion to her face too great. She was going off her food. So we went to my vet and Milky was sent off in peace. This is the only photo I have of Milky. In case you are wondering, I named her Milky because of her colour. OK, that was quite an essay! I still love you Milky!