Archive for June, 2008

Mushroom and White Wine Vol au Vents

Wednesday, June 25th, 2008

Mushroom and White Wine Vol au Vents

I love puff pastry, anything light and fluffy that you can fill with gushy food and tasty sauce is awesome. This is the second time that Nick and I made these, and unfortunately we bought the teeny wee puff pastries instead of the large ones. Still, they tasted great, and I’ll defiantly make them for the next dinner party. They’re super omni-friendly and easy to make buckets of.

Ingredients:

Packet of frozen vol au vents
6 large mushrooms sliced
1 regular sized onion chopped up quite fine
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Handful of parsley chopped up fine
1 glass white wine
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup flour
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes (If you have them, tastes good without)
1 teaspoon garlic salt

Directions:
Glaze your vol au vents and cook according to package directions. It usually takes about 15 minutes which should give you time to make the filling. In a frying pan heat up some olive oil and add the onions. Once translucent, add the mushrooms and leave to sweat out the moisture tossing occasionally. Meanwhile, whisk the flour, water, nutritional yeast flakes and garlic salt in a pot. Turn on the heat and keep stirring until it starts to thicken. Add in the wine, stir until your mushrooms are starting to golden. Mix in the mushrooms and onions . Finally add the parsley, and ladle generously into your vol au vents. Best served with some big home made chips and a crispy salad, but that’s up to you :)

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Posted in baking, mains, ommnomnom, recipe, sauce | 2 Comments »

Banana and Apricot Muffins

Tuesday, June 24th, 2008

Banana is a wonderful egg replacement. Every time I bake relying on oil and rising agents it scares me a little, especially as I still do a lot of guess work when it comes to the length of time that something takes to cook. This means there is an inevitable point where I have to open the over door and take a peak, or poke a knife in. All the while losing precious heat and rise. This is probably the first muffin recipe where I have just pulled together the bits and bobs in the kitchen to create something. Something easy as well, as I only used one bowl for mixing (usually I make a terrible mess ^_^)!

Ingredients:

  • 2 large ripe bananas
    The best bananas to use are those that have gone completely black on the outside but are still nice and yellow inside with no visible bruising.
  • 1 cup loosely chopped dried apricots
  • 1 cup flour
  • 1/4 cup rapeseed oil
  • 1/4 cup soy milk
  • 1/4 cup maple syrup
  • 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

Make sure to heat up your oven to gas mark 4 and put some muffin cases in tins first. Mash up the bananas in a large bowl. Once mashed, move to the sides so there is a hold in the center. Toss in some apple cider vinegar and the soy milk. Add the rest of the wet ingredients and mix well. Then sift in the dry, and add the apricots. Mix until “just done”. Fill the cases just over half way an put in the oven for about 25 minutes. Make sure that you poke the muffins with a knife at the 25 min mark to see if it comes out clean. If not, give them a few minutes longer.

Banana and Apricot Muffin

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Posted in baking, ommnomnom, recipe, snack | 1 Comment »

Rhubarb Tart

Monday, June 9th, 2008

This was the first time I’ve made a tart, I used to just buy them and stick them in the microwave, but most tarts, even if they don’t contain milk are glazed with it, or eggs. It was about time I started making my own. This is Nick’s absolute favorite dessert, thanks to his granny who used to bake them for him. It’s funny, I always see grannies as the type to bake tarts but mine never did. I wonder where I got that stereotype from? There are loads of vegan rhubarb tart recipes out there, but this is just what worked for me. One that I want to try in the future contains not just rhubarb but strawberry (yum yum) over at the Rural Vegan blog

For the rhubarb and sugar filling, I added some flour as I made a peach crumble from La Dolce Vegan a while ago, and the flour/sugar seemed to form a wonderful syrup. The rhubarb came from my fathers garden, so now I have tonnes of the stuff. It’s immense, particularly the leaf which he stripped off for me, it’s was pretty much as big as me!

Rhubarb


Anyone have any suggestion of how else to eat it other than tart, and stewed rhubarb with custard (I have yet to try the vegan custard I found in Tescos)?

Directions:

Filling:
4 large stalks of Rhubarb
3/4 cup regular sugar
1/4 cup flour
3 tablespoons lemon juice

Chop up the rhubarb into 1/2 inch pieces and mix with the rest of the filling. Leave it to sweat.

Pastry:
2 cups plain flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup margarine
1/5 cup water

Mix the flour and margarine with your hands until crumbly. Gradually add water (you may not need it all) until the dough sticks together when you squish it together. Roll out roughly and put in cling film. Leave in the fridge for about a half hour before rolling out two circular pieces. Place one in your pie dish, add the filling, then place the other on top. Crimp the edges and poke a few holes into the top. You can then glaze the top with a little bit of soy milk. I cooked my tart for about 75 minutes at gas mark 4 (Thats 350 degrees folks) but cooking times vary from oven to oven. Leave to sit for a few minutes before cutting a big slice to have with a large mug of tea. The tart was lovely, it left the house smelling great for a few hours and our tummy’s nicely satiated with a good combination of bitter and sweet.

Rhubarb Tart

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Posted in baking, dessert, humor, ommnomnom, recipe | 5 Comments »