Street Food: Vegan MoFo #6

I hope this counts as my Wednesday post! So I missed the "deadline" by a few minutes, big deal...

Anyway, I've been wanting to blog about Pinoy (Filipino) street food that is vegan naturally. Of course I'm not talking about balut or betamax. I'm talking about cruelty-free, yummy, dirt cheap food (about P7 or US$0.17 each piece), like:

When I'm in a Filipino restaurant and all that's available is sizzling pig face and pig blood stew, I feel really sad that Philippine cuisine is so meat-centric. Even vegetables are cooked in animal flesh unless you order otherwise.

Lumpia is the Filipino term for "spring roll". Actually, according to Wikipedia, lumpia's name is actually a derivation from Chinese: 潤餅; pinyin: rùnbǐng; POJ: jūn-piáⁿ, lūn-piá. Lumpia can be eaten fresh or fried, and in this case, it is the latter.

There is nothing better than a deep fried vegetable lumpia doused in coconut vinegar (suka) spiced with garlic, black pepper, and bird's eye chili (from a recycled mineral water bottle with a hole in its cover), eaten straight from the bilao (woven basket) to plastic bag to mouth.

Street food seems to be extremely photogenic, probably because of the insanely bright sunlight. Turon is a saba banana wrapped in a spring roll wrapper, sometimes with a sprinkle of brown sugar and a piece of jack fruit inside (or not). While in the process of being fried, the turon is sprinkled with brown sugar again, which caramelizes and coats the surface of the roll.

Turon probably comes in third after the lumpia as best street food (the number one street food is carioca -- caramelized fried balls made from rice flour -- which was sold out when arrived). The lady who peddles her treats comes at around 3pm everyday and sits at the corner sari sari store (mom and pop shop) to serve the yuppies and blue collar workers near by.

More on Pinoy vegan street food to come in later posts!

New Favorite Find: Rose Water; Vegan MoFo #5

I am just floored by the sophisticated flavor of rose water. I was able to aquire some from Assad's Mini Mart, a Pakinstani grocery store in Makati. At P80 (US$ 1.70) for 250 ml of "50% distillate of rose, 50% distilled water", it was a steal. The flowery scent is literally hypnotic. Try taking a teaspoon of that stuff straight up and it won't taste like anything. My friend Buens thinks it smells like a rosary; my brother Martin thinks it smells like a grotto. If you can get your hands on rose water, I totally encourage you to buy it!


Ever since I acquired a copy of Isa and Terry's Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, I've been insistently teased by the book cover which has a picture of Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes. With a bottle of rose water in hand I was finally able to bake these for my birthday dinner. My cupcakes mayn't have come out as pretty as theirs, but the taste was just perfect. The combination of pistachios and rosewater is a match made in heaven, seriously. I don't know why it's taken me this long to hear of and taste rose water! Those damn Middle Easterners have been hiding this stuff from us.

For those not in the know, according to Wisegeek and Wikipedia, outside the Western hemisphere and English speaking countries, rose water is known as گلاب or Golâb in Persian, Gül suyu in Turkish, ماء ورد‎ Māʾ ward in Arabic, گلاب رس in Urdu, and розова вода in Bulgarian. It is the hydrosol or liquid remaining after crushed damask rose petals and water are distilled together to make rose oil, or attar of roses. The steam-distillation process was founded in Persia and Bulgaria during medieval times and was particularly used by Arabian doctor Avicenna in the 10th century.

It is used heavily in Middle Eastern cuisine -- Turkish delight or gulab jamuns; Iranian tea, ice cream, and cookies; Arabian and Indian milk-based beverages (lassi) and dishes (rice pudding); a Malaysian and Singaporean milk-based beverage (bandung); and Western European marzipan and madeleines. The ancient Romans bathed themselves in rose water and considered it to have anti-bacterial and antiseptic properties. It also figures largely in Muslim and Hindu religious ceremonies.

Please excuse the yellow-ness and darkness of this photo. These are the Pistachio Rose Water Cupcakes with Rose Water Buttercream that I made for my birthday dinner. I used a petal tip for the piped frosting so it really looked like a white rose on top of the cupcake. These were a big hit at the dinner and I feel encouraged to experiment more with this potion. Biting into a cupcake, I felt like I was in the Tashbaan in Narnia, having tea and cupcakes with Aravis as she told stories of the people and history of Calormen.

Things I'm planning to make with rose water:
Rose Water Cake
Rose Water Cookies
Rose Water Ice Cream
Rose Water Pudding
Rose Water Milk Tea

Any suggestions? I am literally in love with this stuff. Rose water must be what a love potion would smell like.

And speaking of love, have you ever wondered why the rose (as a flower) is associated with the female external reproductive organ? In Hinduism, the Shiva lingam, or phallus, is bathed in rose water during the Mahshirvrati festival, which is the annual day of devotion to Shiva and the day Shiva marries the goddess Parvati. While Shiva is depicted as having both male and female attributes, he is considered a god rather than a goddess. So perhaps the lingam being bathed in rose water represents the act of love. Just a food for thought.

Birthday Feast: Vegan MoFo #4

This year I celebrated my first birthday as a vegan and had a lovely (completely vegan!) pre-birthday dinner at home with omni friends and family last Saturday. Actually took a half day leave from work last Friday just so I could prep for the dinner, relax, and not stress out about the food (haha, as if I've never stressed out about food ever).

Feast Savory Menu

Homemade  Hummus with Chapati Bread

Tomato Salad with Parsley and Mint

Falafels

Fettucine with a Black Eyed Pea, Thyme and Tarragon Tomato Sauce

Garlic Oyster Mushrooms

Roasted Vegetables: 

Garlic Parsley Potatoes

Garlicky Green Beans

Carrots with Cumin and Coriander (a twist on Jamie Oliver's Carrots)

Eggplant

Zucchini

Red Peppers

Feast Dessert Menu

Pistachio Rosewater Cupcakes with Rosewater Buttercream

Red Velvet Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

Margarita Cupcakes with Salted Vanilla Buttercream

Chai Latte Cupcakes

Lemony Cake with Lemon Buttercream

Feast Drinks Menu

Fresh Calamansi Juice

Bacardi Lemon Rum

Tequila

Absolut Rasberry Vodka

Fake beverages (Coke Zero and Sprite for liquor)

I enjoy cooking and baking, and sometimes I thrive on the stress and anxiety I get from cooking and baking. I don't recommend stressing over food on your birthday though. One thing I have to learn is to serve simple food during dinners, like casseroles and pasta and anything baked. It's really tiring to stand in front of a stove frying up a batch of falafels for 20 people. Also, I shouldn't overdose on the parsley and I should serve only one vegetable side dish (it took forever to prep the eggplant, zucchini, peppers, carrots, beans, and potatoes). Next time I'd like to experiment with savory tarts, homemade pizzas, and lasagna.

Well, despite the blood and sweat spent on cooking and worrying, my friends absolutely loved the food. I love showing omnivores that vegan food can be classy (not twigs and leaves), delicious and satisfying and that vegans don't eat salad all the time. 

We had leftovers for my birthday lunch (hummus on chapati, roasted veggies) plus an awesome Pan Seared Tofu with Garlic. I dressed up the hummus with a glug of olive oil, paprika, and parsley. The black eyed pea tomato sauce was transformed into an appetizer; warmed on top of garlic bread with an extra sprinkle of fresh garlic and parsley, it was satisfying and hearty.

Happy birthday to me! As I'm the only vegan baker my family knows, my mom couldn't get me a decent birthday cake (there was only one slice of the cake leftover from the night before). My dad topped leftover cupcakes (slightly smushed because the container containing them fell from the fridge) with candles and we called it a birthday cake.

For the omnivores out there, my birthday wish is that you incorporate more vegetables and vegan dishes in your birthday feast repertoire. As you grow older let's hope you don't clog your arteries with animal fat.

Impromptu Salad Dressing with Class: Vegan MoFo #3

Today I had lunch at my tita's / aunt's house with my tita's in-laws visiting from Australia. The thing is, this house had an empty fridge. All that was inside the fridge was fruit, jam, some bottled sauces, and butter. We had a lovely salad with sliced apples but no salad dressing. What to do?

I ended up having a go at making the dressing with ingredients that I found around the kitchen. Turned out to be a fortunate accident because I discovered this awesome dressing that wowed the Australians. It's pretty versatile too. The dressing was essentially made up of: an acid, sweetener, salt and pepper, garlic, and oil.

Depending on what you have on hand, your acid can be kalamansi juice, orange juice, lemon juice, lime juice, pineapple juice, even vinegar. The sweetener can be sugar, molasses, a liquid sweetener (steer clear of high fructose corn syrup, please); in my case, I used jam, homemade mango jam to be precise (yes I belong to one of those families where preserved fruit recipes -- mango, banana, santol, etc -- aren't written down and are passed down via oral tradition). There are a ton of jams you could use: strawberry, blueberry, grape, mangosteen, guava, even marmalade and applesauce. The jam helps with the emulsification too. As with the oil, you can use any oil you got on hand; we only had sesame oil in the cupboard, so that's what I used.

Mango Sesame Dressing

1/4 cup + 2 tbsp kalamansi juice

2 heaping tbsp of mango jam (preferably homemade; check out a recipe here)

1/4 cup + 1 tbsp sesame oil

2 garlic cloves, grated

salt and pepper to taste

2 tbsp water (optional)

Throw everything into an empty glass jar and shake well until emulsified. If too tart, you can add a bit of water.

The dressing was too darn easy to make and it was different. I mean, it wasn't your run of the mill balsamic house dressing, or some vinaigrette. Sometimes it's nice to mix and match the dressings you have at home.

There are so many permutations to this recipe. You can easily do the following combinations: lemon-strawberry, orange-blueberry, lime-maple syrup, pineapple-guava, lemon-apple, etc. etc. As with the oil, you can use any neutral vegetable, extra virgin olive oil, even virgin coconut oil.

I'm really not a big salad eater only because most restaurants with crap veg options usually only have leaves and tomatoes (aka "salad") as their sole vegetarian dish. If I was forced to eat dinner in a place that only had a salad, and the salad was leaves and tomatoes and balsamic dressing, I'd rather eat nothing. I am so tired of plain salads!

Sometimes the dressing really makes an impact on the salad and turns a crap salad into an awesome salad.

Pho Hoa's Veg Options + PAWS takes over Eastwood: Vegan MoFo #2

Today I had the opportunity to have lunch at Eastwood, Libis, which is like my 3rd time to go to this place (I'm a sheltered Southerner, so sue me). On the way to the restaurant I saw this:

It's things like this and the Philippine Animal Welfare Society's beauty beyond breed public service announcements that warm my vegan heart and give me hope that the Philippines is becoming more humane to animals. I'm especially loving this PSA because the cat in the ad looks like my Lucky. Here's another pet-friendly poster right outside Pho Hoa:

How come there isn't any PAWS propaganda in the Alabang area, or in Serendra, or anywhere else? PAWS, please come to Alabang!

Anyway, it's pretty sad that most Southeast Asian food is vegetarian and vegan friendly while Filipino food always is meat-centric. Pho Hoa's menu didn't just have leaves (aka salad) for the veg option; it had pho soup, spring rolls, fried tofu, stir-fried vegetables, etc. Great thing about it too is that it costs about P300 or less to get a full meal.

Last time I ate at Pho I got the vegetarian pho, which is essentially boiled salted water over vegetables, mushrooms, a piece of tofu, and rice noodles. The fresh togue (mung bean sprouts) gave the crunch and fresh basil leaves gave the flavor to the broth.

This time I ordered the fresh spring rolls with hoisin-peanut sauce and the fried tofu with a bell-pepper mushroom sauce.

The rice paper rolls were made of rice noodles, tofu, carrots, cucumber, and basil and cilantro leaves. Semi-tasteless on its own but was outstanding with the sauce. The basil and cilantro was a nice addition, giving it a fresher, cleaner taste. I'm glad they used herbs for the greens instead of tasteless salad leaves.

The batter of the fried tofu usually has egg in it but the server was able to have the dish made egg-free. It was akin to Japanese agedashi tofu with a golden panko breadcrumb crust, smothered in a Vietnamese gravy of red peppers and mushrooms.


It would've been perfect with steamed rice and stir fried vegetables with the tofu but it was good on its own. I ate this with hoisin sauce and Sriracha sauce.

Phoa Hoa Philippine branches can be found here. I hope that restaurants in the area become more and more veg friendly.

Carrots by Jamie Oliver and Isa Chandra Moskowitz: Vegan MoFo #1

October 1 was supposed to be the start of VeganMoFo; I'm starting a day late, so what? I'll post twice. Anyway, I finally got around to experimenting with Carrot Cake Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World.

To tell you the truth, I am a carrot-phobe. I pretty much despised them throughout my childhood and adult days, except for carrot cake. I hearted carrot cake so much, I think I had it once for my birthday cake back as a teenager (how I chose carrot cake over chocolate, I'll never know.). I don't remember the last time I tried carrot cake though; last Monday I made Isa's Carrot Cake Cupcakes because [1] I haven't made vegan carrot cake yet, and [2] a coworker of mine wanted to order cupcakes from me, but they had to be carrot cake style.

One dozen cupcakes called for a whopping 1 cup of shredded carrots with a measly 2/3 cup of sugar. Nude carrot cake cupcakes are just slightly sweet, specifically to make way for the frosting. I had some lemon buttercream left over, which I topped on the cupcakes with a sprinkle of cinnamon. I think these taste best refrigerated so the cupcakes firm up a bit. Overall though, these are pretty good. Hmmm, now that I think about it, I really miss carrot cake.

I think my hate affair with carrots was due to the fact that every carrot dish I came across was boringly boiled or steamed with no imagination. In terms of savory food, the first time I truly enjoyed carrots was when I made Jamie Oliver's Roasted Carrots with Orange, Garlic, and Cumin.


Wow, these were sooo good. I made these back in the day when I didn't own a camera, hence the stolen photo from his website (did you think my own food photography was this good? Oh I wish...). The recipe originally appeared in Jamie's Dinners which is his cookbook for kid-friendly, family-friendly, crowd-friendly food. I think I really enjoyed his take on carrots because they did not taste like carrots. The orange really brightened up the flavor (even masked it, thank God) and it was a winning match with cumin, which was an optional ingredient. Since orange tends to be on the sour side, you might want to add a sprinkle of brown sugar.

For those who can't operate an oven to save their life, you can totally use a toaster oven, which I did. just line the toaster pan with foil or parchment paper for easier clean up. You want the carrots to get that nice brown "sear" from the roasting.


Roast Carrots with Orange, Garlic, and Cumin
adapted from Jamie's Dinners

Peel carrots with a peeler; if using large carrots, slice them into sticks.

Boil them in salted boiling water with a tablespoon of brown sugar, a splash of olive oil and a few pinches of dried thyme.

Cut an orange (I used local satsuma oranges) into eighths; add them to the water with a couple of whole garlic cloves in their skins.

Add a few pinches of ground cumin.

As soon as the carrots are cooked (fork tender, like potatoes), drain them, discard the herbs and all but one of the orange pieces. Place these on a foil or parchment-lined baking pan.

Squeeze the garlic out of its skin and chop the remaining orange piece finely; toss with the carrots, some salt and pepper, and a little more olive oil. Roast them at 200°C/400°F/gas 6 for 10 minutes, tossing halfway through.

When you see the brown bits on the carrots, you're done.

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For the love of all things carrot, I leave you with a photo depicting what someone else thinks about Isa's cupcakes:

Happy October VeganMoFo! And Happy World Vegetarian Day (yesterday)! More to come.

Vegan MoFo

I seldom (barely!) post because I don't like blogs without photos... and I don't own a camera. Isa of Post Punk Kitchen fame is declaring October as Vegan Mofo -- the Vegan Month of Food. Thought I'd join and represent the Filipino vegan community. Oh wait, is there even a Filipino vegan community? Only other vegan I know is my brother...

Anyway, expect more posts on food. Hopefully I can borrow a camera for this particular purpose.