Tag Archive for: vegan

Homemade umami powder

Homemade Umami Powder

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Homemade umami powder

I mentioned last week that I am obsessed with salty savoury umami things, usually in the shape of anchovies. This is partly for health reasons and partly because I just love those deep fifth taste flavours.

I occasionally worry that I’m desensitizing myself to them as I increase the amounts of umami in my diet constantly. Where one anchovy would have sufficed in a dish, I’m up to four at a time and adding seasoning as well.

I half expect that soon like I’ll just install a salt lick by the front door like I’m a horse and start dropping anchovy fillets straight down my throat like an insatiable salt seeking penguin.

I’ve dabbled with parmesan, done a bit of nutritional yeast, tried the No 5 Umami range by Laura Santtini and worked my way up through the levels of miso and still I just need a little bit more….

This week I was looking to cook for a vegan friend (which an event and a half when all our dietary requirements combine) and looking for ways to add flavour without animal produce, stumbled across the idea of ‘vegan parmesan’ on Serious Eats.

Made by dehydrating green olives, miso and fresh rosemary and blending them to a powder, it bears about as much resemblence to parmesan as I do to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But since I was looking for an umami bomb, I made it anyway.

And I am actually obsessed. It is insanely good. So intense, so delicious, so savoury. In the space of a few days I’ve made a cucumber salad with it, sprinkled it on a plate of bucatini with tomatoes and beef mince, combined with rice, seaweed and salmon and put it on fried eggs. And I can’t stop.

I’ve got through at least a quarter of my small jar and was contemplating not giving my friend the one I made for her. Instead I’m already planning a second batch with anchovy stuffed olives this time and maybe some lemon zest.

It’s super easy to make and considerably better value than those pots of umami paste or powder you can buy. It’s also fodmap friendly as it lacks garlic or lactose and of course the basic recipe is vegan.

Homemade Umami Powder (makes about 250g)

  • 500g pitted green olives (supermarkt basic types are fine)
  • 75g miso paste (I used hatcho)
  • 5 sprigs fresh rosemary

This isn’t a quick recipe and you’re going to need the oven on for 4 hours so make a bigger batch if you like. I’d probably just end up face down in the jar getting stuck if I’d done that though.

Using a food processor or mini blender, pulse the olives until they are roughly chopped. Set aside and pulse the miso paste too. Add to the olives. Use the food processor or a spice grinder to blitz the fresh rosemary too and mix it all together. It will look like green mulch. Don’t worry. Like a lot of things in life, it gets better.

Line a baking tray with a silicone mat or double layered greaseproof paper and spread the mixture out with a spatula to form a thin layer. Allow it all to dry and dehydrate in an oven at 100C for about 2 and half hours. It will look like brownish mulch. Stay with me.

Scrape it all back into the food processor and blitz it all again for about 5-6 pulses. Spread out on the tray again and stick it back in the oven for another 90 minutes or so.

It will now look like a rich dark brown crumbly powder that you can’t wait to use. Tip into a sterilised jar and allow to cool. Add to everything you eat for weeks to come and reward yourself for your patience.

Green Goddess Dressing

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green goddessBrixton market is fantastic all year round and the reason I am able to eat so well on a budget, but every so often, it exceeds even my expectations of it. This week it was with small dark skinned avocados for 25p each or 6 for a pound. (I hear places in West Norwood are doing 7 for a pound but that’s irritatingly odd numbered for me.)

I took my bulging bag of avos home and pondered what to do with them beyond simply splitting them in half, going old school by filling them with vinaigrette and eating them with a spoon. I vaguely remembered bookmarking Green Goddess dressing ages ago in preparation for a glut of avocado and it seemed like the moment to unearth it.

For those of whom who don’t know what Green Goddess dressing is (ie: all British people), it is an American salad dressing, particularly popular in the Seventies and absolutely packed with fresh herbs to give it the green of the name. While it has fallen out of favour generally, it’s popular amongst vegan food bloggers who use avocado to give creaminess instead of the lashings of mayo the original recipe featured.

It’s particularly good at this time of year when often you have a fresh herb fest in the garden as well as being more likely to eat salad. I’d love to tell you that I went out to the patio and cut my own home grown herbs and salad leaves to create this meal, but since I’ve killed all my plants except the thyme that went to live next door for its own safety, I’d be lying. I simply revelled in finally being able to use up those bouquet sized bunches of herbs in the market for once.

I made this version when I was cooking for a friend who is vegan so omitted the traditional anchovy using a little miso instead. You could also substitute with nutritional yeast.

Green Goddess Dressing (makes about 350ml)

  • 2 scallions
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 100g fresh basil
  • 100g fresh parsley
  • 25g fresh thyme
  • 25g fresh tarragon or oregano
  • 1 anchovy fillet or 1 teaspoon miso paste
  • 4 small avocados or 2 regular sized ones
  • juice of two lemons or limes
  • 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
  • 1/8 teaspoon Tabasco or similiar hot sauce
  • 1/8 teaspoon ground cumin
  • salt and pepper
  • 50ml cold water (optional)

This dressing is easiest in a small blender but you could make it the the old fashioned way with some serious chopping.

Start by finely chopping or blitzing the scallions and garlic. Set into a large bowl and chop or blitz all the fresh herbs as much as possible. They should almost be a chunky paste. Add in the miso or anchovy and combine it all well to a further rough paste. Add to the scallion and garlic.

Cut the avocados in half and remove the stones. Puree or mash the avocado as smoothly as possible and stir into the chopped herb and scallion mixture. It will be slightly coarse in texture at this stage but combined.

Add the juice of the lemons or limes, the vinegar and the hot sauce. Mix well and stir in the cumin and the seasoning. The dressing should be thick, smooth and very creamy at this stage but if it’s too stiff for your liking, add the cold water to make it a little looser. I like mine thick enough to splodge with a spoon but add a bit more water if you want to be able to actually pour it onto a salad.

I served mine more like a dip with herbed courgette fritters swiped through it. It would also be fantastic with tortilla chips for a change to guacamole. It dresses salad beautifully and if you aren’t vegan, it’s excellent with chicken or fish. The high acid content in the dressing means it will keep covered in the fridge for up to three days without discolouring.

Hopefully this dressing will have a revival as it’s so delicious. You can adapt the fresh herbs depending what you have. I wouldn’t use rosemary but chives, majoram, sorrel or dill would all work well too. It’s just further confirmation that Americans really are the people to ask  about salad dressings and dips because they do them so well.

 

Turning Japanese: a simple vegan meal

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Shirataki to kinoko no ni-mono

Some time ago, a mate pointed out most of my blog posts are consistently carnivorous. I hadn’t really given it much thought – and I’m no hater of all things vegetarian – but a quick scan through recent posts suggested a certain preponderance towards pork, game and other meaty delights. So I’m hoping this might redress the balance a little … a simple but exotic meat-free and dairy-free meal.

We recently had some friends over for dinner – she’s vegan, he’s not – and I relished the challenge of cooking vegan-friendly food. I hoped to serve up something a bit different to my standard fare, celebrating interesting new ingredients, and which didn’t rely on meat substitutes. It’s always good to use a dinner as an excuse to try out some new dishes.

As for what to cook; after some deliberation the best choice… or at least the natural choice for me… was to go Japanese. Famed for their creative and delicious uses of veg and seaweed alike, and less dependency on dairy than many other cultures, looking eastwards gave me loads of options. And, having cooked Japanese at dinner parties before, I know it’s also a lot of fun to play with new ingredients and flavours! Read more

Polishing off Polish Pierogi…

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Several things are guaranteed to bring a tear to my eye: the episode of ER where Mr Mark Greene dies, posters for lost stuffed animals and family pets and the thought of ever having to go low carb and stop eating potatoes.

I really don’t care how big an Irish cliche I am. I love spuds with all my soul. What other foodstuff is so versatile, so easy to work with and to grow yourself? There is just no thing as too many potatoes in my life and that is why I love pierogi so much. A dumpling stuffed with mashed potato? Hello there! Dumpling is the magic word in my world, especially when you can fry them in butter to add even more of my favourite things to one dish.

There are as many recipes for pierogi as there are types of spuds and Polish families, but I used this one from Post Punk Kitchen as I wanted a dairy free recipe for a friend with intolerances. (I find specifically dairy free sites seems to rely heavily on soy or nut ‘milk’ based products and I would sooner die than use soy cheese. Vegan sites tend to seek other options and skip the processed stuff most of the time so I prefer them.)

I cannot pretend to have solved the eternal dilemma of translating American potato recipes to our varieties and found a total replacement for Yukon Golds, but find that if all else fails, a Maris Piper is the answer, although I used the last of my own Pink Fir Apples from the veg patch. I also won’t lie to you. This recipe is time consuming, but actually very easy to make. So stick Radio 4 on, roll up your sleeves and get pottering in the kitchen this weekend.

First up, choose your filling. Pierogi can be stuffed with anything. You can do some with spud and some with just about anything of your choosing. Sauerkraut is popular. I fancied pumpkin and sage to be seasonal. Black pudding would be brilliant. But feel free to use anything you desire. Leftovers would be perfect here. I went for sauteed mushroom with tarragon and mashed potato. Just cook as you normally would, but make your spuds are nice and dry before you mash them.

Once the filling is decided on, you’ll need to get going with the dough. This is dead easy. An American cup is approximately 240ml which equates to about 110g of flour, but if you’ve got measuring cups, stick to those. I used plain flour here and needed to add all three full cups of flour to stop the dough being too sticky to get out of the bowl. I added another two or three handfuls to it as I was kneading too.

After about ten minutes of kneading, the dough will be smooth as anything and lovely and elastic. This requires little skill, just some concentration and a bit of time. At this point, you can either store the dough overnight covered in the fridge until needed or get on with making dumplings.

Flour the surface and dough well and roll it out as thin as possible. Mine needed to be a tad thinner than they were, but I still got 45 pierogi out of them so be prepared to have an invasion of dumplings! Cut out circles of dough with a cutter or glass and then get filling. I put about a dessertspoonful of mushroom and potato in each one, brushed the edges with water and pinched shut, making sure the ends are nicely closed. That’s it. Super simple. Easy enough for little hands to do too.

Once I’d cut, filled and pinched half the dough, I boiled six or so pierogi in a big pot of water for about four minutes or til they float. You can served them simply boiled or you can take it up a notch by frying them off for a golden crunch. Drain them onto kitchen towel if you’re doing that and then pop into a pan of hot fat. While they fry, deal with the other half of the dough. I used up the full 500g of spuds I mashed and half a punnet of chestnut mushrooms to fill all of them, but could have done with twice the amount of fungi.

Once your dumplings are fried, pop in the oven to keep warm and keep going in batches until you’re ready to eat. I served for dinner, sprinkled with truffle salt and fresh tarragon to keep them simple but dairy free, although they’d be great with sour cream too. The other half went onto lined baking tray to cool and go into the freezer until needed.

So after all that time and pinching, were the pierogi worth it? Oh yes! With bells on. Surprisingly light dough with the smoothest creamiest mashed potato possible, despite not a drop of butter, oil or milk in it, all made better by frying them off. I managed 9 of them before passing out in a carb coma, but managed to go back for more for dinner the next night, adding some pan fried breadcrumbs for extra crunch.

A super easy, surprisingly relaxing recipe to make, I urge you to get your dumpling on as soon as. You’ll have a great meal that will impress anyone straightaway and enough to do several quick dinners when you can’t be bothered to cook another night. Dumplings don’t get better than this!