Recipe Round-Up: Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen

I have all of Chloe's cookbooks, with Chloe's Vegan Italian Kitchen being the most recently released (but she has a new one coming soon). As well as the expected pastas, it has a whole range of dishes from starters, salads and vegetables, other main courses, pizzas and desserts (including some fancy cupcakes, of course). This is the first recipe round-up that I have done from this book!

Eggplant Alla Funghetto: This is a simple but tasty dish, with eggplants, tomatoes and garlic simmered until soft and yummy. This is meant to serve 6 as a vegetable side, but I served this over brown rice over some baby spinach, and god two decent dinners out of it.
Rating: :)



Wild Mushroom Rigatoni: This is a mix of dried wild mushrooms (I was able to find a nice blend at the supermarket) and fresh mushrooms (I used a mix of cremini and shiitake). As is my usual habit, I halved the amount of pasta (I like a high sauce to pasta ratio), and I also added some peas. The sauce is based on soy milk and white wine and thickened with flour, and is lovely and creamy. I got 3.5 serves out of mine.
Rating: :)



Fusilli with Minted Eggplant Sauce: Roasted eggplant is combined with oil, water, lemon juice and sundried tomato, then mixed through with fresh mint, to make this interesting sauce. The recipe called for the eggplant to be blended with 1/2 cup of oil and 1/2 cup of water. I used 1 cup of pasta water and a small glug of oil. No oil shaming, I just personally have a low tolerance for oily food. I halved the amount of pasta, and also added a tin of white beans. The eggplant made a nice, creamy background for the sun-dried tomato pieces.
Rating: :)



Penne Puttanesca: I am a big puttanesca fan (though hold the chili), and this was a tasty one. Using half the amount of pasta and adding in a tin of kidney beans meant it was just the right amount of saucy! The recipe called for Parmesan Topping (also included in the book), but I am happy with a sprinkling of good old nutritional yeast.
Rating: :)



Lemon Herb Cannellini Beans: OK, so in a moment of being an absolute doofus I realised after I finished that I forgot to add the lemon juice. Bravo! But these were still nice and tasty, and very cheesy. I can see how the lemon would have added a bit of freshness to it, though. The sauce simmers down to be thick quite quickly, so keep and eye on it. It is served over Mashed Potatoes with Garlic and Sea Salt. The recipe gives the option of using either broth or non-dairy milk for mashing, I used broth so of course it was not as creamy as it could have been. My garlic was also quite strong, so I had some garlic breath going on after this.
Rating: Beans :), Potatoes :)



Grilled Portobello Steak in Lemon Parsley Pesto: I loved the mushroom (which I pan-fried in quarters rathher than grilling in slices), though the sauce lacked a bit of depth. It has a very strong caper taste, which is fine because I like capers. This said it would serve 4, but I only got 2 serves out of it serving with brown rice and broccoli.
Rating: :)



White Wine Risotto with Shiitake Mushrooms and Peas: I actually really like making risotto if I am in the mood for it. I find the stiring soothing. Instead of regular aborio rice, I used a packet of Organico Porchini Risotto mix that I had lying around. I've had a packet of that before and it was flavourless, so I figured using it as a base for a mushroomy risotto recipe would be a better way to try it again. This risotto worked out beautifully, with three big serves. I didn't even need to put nooch on it, which is high praise indeed. I served ith with baby spinach, white beans, and roasted asparagus.
Rating: :)



Pumpkin Risotto: This was a handy way to use up some tinned pumpkin puree that I had kicking around. It is pretty simple, with nutmeg and sage as seasonings, and it was tasty and creamy. I served it with some baby spinach and some sliced and sauteed Tofurky Chick'n and Apple Sausage.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This little cutie is one of our adoption kitties at work. Her name is Aurora!

Recipe Round-Up: Chloe's Kitchen

Time for another recipe round up! This time we are heading back to Chloe's Kitchen by Chloe Coscarella. You can see what else I have cooked from this book here.

Chloe's Favourite Five-Minute Salad Chloe uses a combination of mashed avocado and sushi vinegar as the dressing, which was delicious! The salad itself had mixed greens and tomato in it, I left out the scallions, but you could really add anything into it. Chloe said it served 6, which I guess if you served it in a thimble would be true. I got two side serves out of this (served with some boxed vegan lasagna), but really you could eat the whole thing on your own.
Rating: :D



Classic Roasted Vegetables: This is a fairly straight forward recipe, using cauliflower, broccoli and carrots as the vegetables. She calls for 1/4 to 1/2 cup olive oil, though I used a lot less - just enough to lightly coat the vegetables. Using that much seems like it would have just been drowning in oil.
Rating: :)



Teriyaki Wok Vegetables: Chloe provides a simple teriyaki sauce recipe to mix up for these veggies. Chloe suggests using carrot, bok choy, onion, mushrooms, zucchini and snow peas, though you could really use anything you fancied. I didn't have any onion so I left that out, and I also added some dry roasted cashews at the end. I only needed to add about half the amount of sauce for the veggies. This served three over rice.
Rating: :)



LA-Style Chimichurri Tacos: I could only seem to get terrible photos of this yummy dinner. It has three components for the filling - tomato rice (which I adapted to make in the rice cooker), a chimichurri sauce, and a mushroom and black bean filling. The sauce was a bit runny, though I used a mix of pasta water and oil rather than the full 1/2 cup of olive oil (I don't have anything against oil in general, but personally things that have a lot of oil in them tend to make me feel sick). I topped them with some Sour Cream, also from the book. It is a tofu based sour cream, and at first had quite a strong soy taste. However it mellowed quickly.
Rating: Tacos :), Sour Cream :)



Baked Sprinkle Doughnuts: Confession: deep frying terrifies me, so I have only ever made baked doughnuts. These ones are delicious! There is an option between making a chocolate glaze or an old fashioned glaze, and you can see I have tried both (I coloured the old fashioned one pink), and I have topped them with all sorts of things. The recipe calls for piping the doughnuts into the doughnut pan, and while this does give a nice smooth all over appearance, sometimes I skip the step and just spoon it into the pan. I've made these a few times for bake sales, and they are definitely popular. I generally do a triple dip of the glaze to ensure a nice, thick, smooth covering.
Rating: :D





Iced Apple Cake Squares: These are so delicious! It rises quite high in the pan, giving the squares a definite cake vibe rather than a slice. They have a great flavour, and are wonderfully moist (sorry if that word creeps you out). They are topped with a simple icing. As always, I would have preferred it without the icing. Though I was making them for a bake sale and I know how people like their sugar!
Rating: :D



Sea Salt Toffee Bars: I thought these were just OK (though disclaimer, toffee and caramel aren't my favourites, I was making these for a bake sale). The base is quick to make, but I found needed an extra 10 minutes to go golden in the oven. I had some issues making the caramel following the instructions as written, it didn't almost burnt and then ended up quite thick and hard to spread. Granted I haven't made many caramels, so if I had more experience I would have had a better intuition about how to handle it, but the instructions for a novice may not end up well. As always, be sure to put on lots of salt!
Rating: :|



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Last week was five months since Sahara passed away. Time goes too fast.

Melbourne The First 2017 - Part 3

I've been having a bit of a rough time, so it has been a while between posts. But here is the final part of my early July Melbourne trip!

After the epic carb fest of Saturday breakfast, brunch, lunch, and afternoon tea, we had a bit of a late dinner. Our friend Michelle came over and we watched the latest episode of RuPaul's Drag Race, as well as ordering all of the food from Loving Hut Northcote to be delivered. We ordered A LOT. Clockwise from the top left: lemon chicken (though they forgot the sauce!), two lots of fried rice, mushroom and tofu stir-fry, noodles with veggies and mock duck, rainbow salad, rice paper rolls, spring rolls, Mongolian beef stir-fry, Japanese curry. It was a lot! Alas, the Mongolian beef and the Japanese curry ended up being a bit too spicy for me, but the rest was very good. We are so much. Not going to lie, after this day of eating my tummy was less than impressed with me... but it all tasted so good.





Sunday morning a light breakfast only was in order. I had my Smith & Deli apricot danish, a banana and a mandarin. Then we went to a special advanced viewing of Kedi. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. It is very bittersweet, and very well done. I cried.

Afterwards we went for lunch at The Snug Public House in Brunswick, which had received some good blog reviews. My friends, I will not be going back. First of all, it is tiny and full or drunk people drinking Guinness and being noisy. Secondly, the food was not the greatest. Poor Leigh ordered a Battered Sausage (literally a deep fried Tofurky sausage, no sauces or anything came with it) and the Curry Cheese Chips. These were a disgrace. The chips themselves were OK, but they were covered in a runny sauce that tasted of nothing except perhaps the very faintest wiff of old Keen's curry powder. A lot of salt made it a bit better, but it was Not Good.





My Bangers and Mash was better, and I did enjoy it. The mashed potatoes were actually really good. The sausages were Italian-style Tofurky sausages, which were kind of spicy and not the right flavour choice for this kind of dish. There were two of them, on top of a huge mound of potatoes. It really was too much food, though The Snug seems to pride itself on obscenely huge servings. The gravy was not bad, but was oddly sweet. Thankfully the potatoes were nice and salty so it balanced it a little.



That night we ordered in again, following an afternoon of watching cooking shows followed by watching She's All That (Leigh had never seen it) and Not Another Teen Movie. This time we ordered from a Japanese place in Brunswick that I had been keen to try. Unfortunately, their delivery menu is very limited compared to the actual restaurant menu. There are three vegan options, and we both got the vegan gyoza bento. It said it came with rice, salad, pickles and stir-fried vegetables. The vegetables were just bean sprouts with soy sauce, the pickles were some sort of spicy cucumber rather than the tasty Japanese pickles we were hoping for, and the salad included a suspect creamy potato salad (that we avoided just in case, there is no vegan potato salad on their regular menu). So eh, but still tasty and something a bit lighter.



The next morning we went to Wild Timor Coffee for a light breakfast. I started with a Beetroot Ginger Latte (on soy, no honey), which was pretty and pink and mostly tasted like ginger. Leigh got the vegan option on the Breakfast Burrito, which she enjoyed, and I had a delicious Buddha Bowl (roasted sweet potatoes, beets, brussles sprouts, and baby carrots with avocado, beans, turmeric pickled cauliflower, fermented red cabbage and balsamic reduction). It was amazing.







Before I headed to the airport, I stopped by True North and picked up a vegan reuben to take away. It had housemade pastrami, vegan cheese (which was kind of tasteless), mayo and sauerkraut. I ate it at the airport with a Matcha smoothie from Boost Juice for lunch before my flight. I have heard varied reports about this reuben. It was OK, mostly it tasted like caraway and sauerkraut. Not terrible, but there are much more exciting reubens out there.





Of course no trip to Melbourne is complete without bringing home some treats! First up, a little box of yummy Middle Eastern sweets from Al Nada Sweets, an all-vegan sweet shop that was near Leigh!



And my haul from visiting Smith & Deli and The Cruelty Free Shop. The two big Smith & Deli bags are full of peanut butter pretzels!



I have actually been back to Melbourne since this trip for OzComicCon, so that was a very different sort of experience. I will get around to sharing that trip soon!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Of course the highlight of the trip was getting to meet this awesome little dude. Chia has since made the move to Sweden, and is now living the high life as a Swedish kitty!

Melbourne The First 2017 - Part 2 (Carb Fest)

Are you ready for some serious carb loading?

For dinner on Friday night we went to the fairly new Red Sparrow, an all vegan pizza place. Normally I am on the ball and book for things, but my mind wasn't in it and I wasn't sure how many there would be or what time it would be. Turns out they were fully booked out, but were able to squeeze us in on some bar seating. Book ahead folks! Or get takeaway/delivery, lots of boxes were heading out the door.

Leigh and I shared three pizzas. Two from the specials (the Tandoori Chicken and the Hawaiian), and the Puttanesca. They were good pizza. Not as good as Gigi's in Sydney, but Gigi's is a different beast all together. But close to Pizza Pi or Sizzle Pie in the US (Pizza Pi still wins my heart for best trashy pizza). The tandoori chicken was not very spicy, which was good, though did have a coconut drizzle, eh. It was probably my least favourite (I picked off all the capsicum). I enjoyed the Hawaiian (which we got with olives because that is the best way to have a Hawaiian), though I wish the toppings were a little bit more evenly distributed. The puttanesca was very nice (we got the chili on the side), though the flavour of the sauce was a bit drowned out by the epic ton of vegan cheese that was on it. That may have been a case where less was more.







Leigh's friend Neibi had recently overdone herself with mock meaty cheezy pizzas, so was after something a bit simpler. She got a tomato pizza, hold the vegan cheese.



To finish we shared a piece of Peanut Butter Banana Chocolate Pie. The top layer was based on coconut, though it was pretty mild and not too fatty. I was happy to leave it the the others and scoop out the delicious peanut butter banana chocolate underneath. SO GOOD! Very rich.



The next morning, after the carb-tastic feast of Friday night, we had some green smoothies. HA! No, we didn't. Instead we went four a double dip to Smith & Deli. First stop by was for breakfast and croissants! Here's what some Egg McMartinez sandwiches and some pizza croissants look like.





My Pizza Croissant is actually snug in my freezer here in Brisbane, awaiting a chance for me to drown it in ketchup as I forgot they are a bit spicy! But never fear, because I also had a Blackberry and Chocolate croissant to feast on, as well as the best chai latte ever.





After this we swung by the new location of the Melbourne Cruelty Free Shop, which is the biggest vegan supermarket in the world. Big in area, though, as the selection itself was fairly standard. Still, it was fun and I picked up a few goodies.

Then it was back to Smith & Deli at 11.30, which is when they start serving sandwiches. Also to pick up some goodies from their grocery shelves (they have a lot of fun products). And a peanut butter hot chocolate (I have to remember in the future to just get a small, as they are so rich!). So back to the sandwiches. I was thinking maybe three to share, Leigh had other plans. We ended up getting a lot. We took them back to Leigh's for a lounge room picnic.



Let's break it down. First up, The Mensch! Smoked salmon, dill cream cheese, red onion & capers on a bagel. We got it without the raw onion, though. The smoked salmon seems to be made from tomatoes and was very nice! Their bagels are super filling and heavy though, so go with caution because they will fill you up fast.



The Hail Seitan is one I'd wanted to try for a while, though I knew it would sit pretty heavy so I was glad to share. It has salami, ham, turkey, pineapple, BBQ sauce & cheddar. All things I love! It was good!



The Free Willy 2 is not one I would have picked, given that I am not a fan of most faux fishy things (vegetable-based salmon substitutes excepted). It is a toasted sandwich with their tuna salad and melted cheese. No idea what they use for their tuna salad, and never need to know. I took a tiny bite of this and I was out. Not for me. Though I have it on good authority from Jojo that if you are looking for a good tuna sandwich, this is one! So it is all personal tastes.



The Home Alone is the first sandwich I ever had from Smith & Deli, but Leigh was yet to try it. It has turkey, stuffing, roasted Brussels sprouts, cranberry sauce, mashed potato and gravy on a roll, and it is still one of my favourites from there.



Finally, I wanted to try the Club Sandwiches Not Seals, which had turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, mayo and cheddar on sourdough. I do love club sandwiches, but I had been wary of trying this because once you have The Club at Wayward Vegan Cafe in Seattle, no other club measures up. And I'm sad to say this fell way short. I didn't mind that it didn't have the middle layer of bread (especially as there was enough bread to go around on this particular day), but it was kind of just like a meat and salad sandwich. The cheese was a bit rubbery. It was cold. If it had been toasted it would have been much improved. But... eh. My friend Taylor loves them, though. But he has never had a Wayward Club.



Obviously you cannot go to Smith & Deli and not come away with some sweets! We got some Ginger Apple Cakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, which were super nice and actually not too sweet at all. I also got an almond croissant (which I brought home for my mum), a cherry danish, and apricot danish, and a sweet potato tart with marshmallow frosting. Leigh was horrified by the thought of the latter, but I really enjoyed it!





We watched the first episodes of the new Twin Peaks that afternoon. Unfortunately Smith & Deli did not have any cherry pie, so I made do with my cherry danish (which kind of looked like a little owl, so on theme) with a damn fine cup of peppermint tea.



This isn't even the end of the food we ate that Saturday, but it is the end of this post!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Chia having a sweet little nap.