Vegan birthday dinner 2 - a photo essay: Vegan MoFo #6

Best birthday dinner, especially when you didn't have to lift a finger to make it or have to clarify a hundred times that it's vegan.
Thanks mom.

Samosas from Assad's Mini Mart on Jupiter St., Makati

Lumpiang Macau: friend spring rolls stuffed with seasoned shredded tofu,
served with sweet and sour sauce.

Japchae: Korean glass noodles with vegetables topped with toasted sesame seeds,
spring onions, and sauce (sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, brown sugar)

Fried tofu slabs to go with the Japchae.

A well-loved dessert from my childhood: Vegan MoFo #5

Oh mais con hielo, how I've missed thee. I haven't tasted your icy corny goodness in years. How I've longed for your juicy kernels, your crunchy shaved ice, your sweet surrender, your ability to cool this humid tropical weather -- but alas, you are almost always served with dairy evaporated milk. For shame, for shame. It's a good thing mother took me literally when I said I wanted you, and only you veganified, for my birthday dessert. No birthday cake for me, heavens no. And you taste just as good, if not better, with coconut milk. You don't need cow's milk to make you all creamy and lovely. You just need a good dose of creamy non-dairy milk and a healthy serving of sugar (and in my case, brown) to sweeten you up.

While I only had you 2 nights ago, I do hope we see each other very, very soon. I can't wait until our next rendezvous.

Vegan birthday lunch with the parents: Vegan MoFo #4

Ugh, it's just one of those days where you bake til 1am and you wanna take a bath but you're too tired to get off the chair...

So yesterday was my official birthday and the parents were nice enough to take me out to lunch in Power Plant Mall in Rockwell. Lucky for me, Power Plant has a few good restaurants with vegan options. One of my favorite restaurants there is Wild Ginger, which I've mentioned before in this post. It's not a fancy schmancy restaurant, it just has a good selection of Filipino, Thai, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Indian food.

First up: fresh Vietnamese spring rolls with spicy peanut sauce. It was good, not great. If only they added purple basil or cilantro inside the roll. The roll contained vermicelli noodles, lettuce, cucumber, and carrot.

Spicy tofu peanut salad. This is one salad that did not suck. Very few leaves, lots of fresh bean sprouts, julienned cucumber and jicama, fried tofu, and cilantro in a spicy peanut dressing.

One of my favorite sandwiches: spinach and dal chapati. This time it came with curry sauce on the side. This is usually served with yogurt sauce, so tell your server you want a coconut milk-based curry sauce.

And, the highlight of my lunch! Back story: I haven't had ice cream since January and I've been dying to get my hands on some. I made the mistake once of ordering a vanilla soy milkshake from Chimara in Greenbelt. People, please don't waste your money on Chimara soy anything, it is not good. This is the kind of stuff omnivores make fun of vegans for. I once tried their strawberry ice cream, blech!

I was told that a certain Italian restaurant named Pazzo served vegan gelato. The sad thing is, Pazzo is right in Power Plant, in the Rockwell Center where I work. And for the 2 years I've been working for my company, not once did I try Pazzo's gelato. I deprived myself of ice cream for 10 months for NOTHING.

Pazzo didn't have vegan gelato yesterday but they did have sorbet, which was naturally vegan, IN A WHOLE ARRAY OF FLAVORS. Strawberry, lychee, watermelon, lemon, limoncello and lovely tropical flavors such as calamansi, guava, and pomelo.

I got to taste pretty much all the available sorbet flavors and I ended up choosing a scoop each of lemon and pomelo. It sure was nice to taste some icy, fruity goodness.

Good lunch :)

Happy Feast Day, Vegans! + a vegan birthday dinner + bodacious birthday apple cobbler: Vegan MoFo #3

Belated Happy World Animal Day, guys!

Hey vegans, it’s our Feast Day too! Yesterday was the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), the Patron Saint of animals and the environment. Since becoming vegetarian, St. Francis has become my favorite saint; so favorite, I named my third cat after him.

Bear with me for a few paragraphs! I’m lifting this straight from the Catholic Encyclopedia entry on St. Francis. He truly was an amazing person. Omnivores and vegetarians alike could all learn a thing or two from this man:

‘The very animals found in Francis a tender friend and protector; thus we find him pleading with the people of Gubbio to feed the fierce wolf that had ravished their flocks, because through hunger "Brother Wolf" had done this wrong.

‘And the early legends have left us many an idyllic picture of how beasts and birds alike susceptible to the charm of Francis's gentle ways, entered into loving companionship with him; how the hunted leveret sought to attract his notice; how the half-frozen bees crawled towards him in the winter to be fed; how the wild falcon fluttered around him; how the nightingale sang with him in sweetest content in the ilex grove at the Carceri, and how his "little brethren the birds" listened so devoutly to his sermon by the roadside near Bevagna that Francis chided himself for not having thought of preaching to them before [as pictured up there].

‘Francis's love of nature also stands out in bold relief in the world he moved in. He delighted to commune with the wild flowers, the crystal spring, and the friendly fire, and to greet the sun as it rose upon the fair Umbrian vale. In this respect, indeed, St. Francis's "gift of sympathy" seems to have been wider even than St. Paul's, for we find no evidence in the great Apostle of a love for nature or for animals.’

According to legend, on his deathbed St. Francis thanked his donkey for carrying and helping him throughout his life and his donkey wept (okay I got this from Wikipedia).

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Anyway, on to MoFo’ing. My birthday comes right after St. Francis’s feast day, I don’t know why I wasn’t named Francesca, or Frances, or Francine, or whatever derivative you can think of. I am not so big on naming my future children after Saints, but Francis I wouldn’t mind :)

I was so set on blogging about the completely vegan dinner I had last night with family in Corner Tree Café (same guys who buy my cupcakes; a vegan-friendly, vegetarian restaurant) but man, I gotta be quick on my toes with the photographing. For appetizers, we had:

This awesome starter plate of fresh vegetable sticks (cucumber, jicama, carrots) “on the rocks”, chunks of crusty wholewheat bread, white bean hummus, olive oil, and dukka – an Egyptian sesame-seed-and-spice blend.

Wholewheat breadsticks with marinated herbed olives. Not a huge olive fan, my family seemed to like it, but I thought it was way overpriced. They gave us only 2 breadsticks.

And an organic green salad with carrots, beets, and walnuts in a lemon-mustard dressing.


I’m not a big fan of sugary drinks (I wouldn’t mind fresh buko juice or calamansi juice) but I ordered this lemongrass iced tea. It was different, a good kind! Lemongrass-y and gingery.

This is where I stopped taking photos because my 18-month old nephew got hold of my camera. We were also pretty much starving and dug in right away when the servers brought out the food.

We also had the tomato and bread soup, which was nice and chunky.

Our entrees include:

1. North African vegetable stew with couscous. Flavorful, almost curry-like without the coconut milk but not heavy on the tummy at all. Corner Tree used “gentler”, less heavy spices.
2. Vegetable koftas in tomato sauce. Just like Italian meatballs except the koftas were a bit more tender.
3. Tofu-walnut burgers topped with crispy onions with a side of gravy. This was a winner for Michael, my vegan brother. Last time I was here I ordered mine in a whole-wheat bun, this time this was served platter-style, with a side of red rice.
4. Spaghettini with broccoli, pine nuts, and lemon. This dish was flavorful thanks to the lemony goodness.
5. Kare-kare na gulay. A Filipino peanut stew of vegetables (leafy greens and mushrooms). Omnivores usually eat this with bagoong or fermented shrimp paste. This was served with vegetarian bagoong made from tausi, aka fermented black beans (a typical Chinese condiment). I didn’t get to taste this dish but my dad said it was good.

Corner Tree Cafe (Vegetarian Food)
Francesca Mabanta
150 Jupiter Street Bel-Air, Makati, Metro Manila
(632) 897-0295
NB: They are closed on Mondays.

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So this was the second time in a row that I had to make my own birthday dessert, but I didn’t mind! I made a super quickie, seriously thrown-together apple cobbler from The Joy of Vegan Baking. I swear, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau is my hero! I love her piecrust-making methods, I’ll never make pies a different way again.

From start to finish including baking, it took me about an hour and fifteen minutes to make this cobbler – but I had help with the peeling and coring of apples. I was set on making a strawberry cobbler with frozen strawberries but I couldn’t find the right recipe (most needed fresh berries). Luckily I had some Fuji apples so I made an apple cobbler instead.

Er, apologies for the crap photo… someone’s little hands smudged up the camera.

Fruit-based desserts are definitely tastier than any other kind, in my book. I don’t want to brag (well it wasn’t my recipe to begin with) but everyone loved it :) Will definitely make this again, especially since it was a no-brainer. Seriously, please make this.

Colleen’s recipe is super easy to follow, it’s like the apple pie for lazy people or for people who are still iffy in the piecrust-making department. Some notes on apple cobbler-making:

1. The recipe called for an 8- or 9-inch baking pan but I chose to use an 8x10 glass pan because the cobbler had to serve 14 people.
2. If you’re doing the 8x10 glass pan, I highly recommend adding an additional half recipe of the cobbler dough just so you get enough spread on top.
3. The recipe called for 5 cups of tart apples, I used 5 sweet Fuji apples. I’m not a fan of tart fruity desserts, sorry. The apples amounted to more than 5 cups = no problem. No need to adjust the sugar mixture you combine with it.
4. I’m not a fan of white sugar either. Definitely substitute washed / raw sugar. If you don’t have that on hand, then use a 50-50 mixture of white and brown to ease up on the empty calories.
5. No margarine? No problem. Use unbleached coconut oil. Coconut oil smells amazing and lends a good round “fatty flavor” to the dough. I can’t explain it better, just that coconut oil is awesome. I bought mine from Tindahang Sakto .
6. I brought the cobbler from the oven to the restaurant. If you’re transporting a dish that came straight from the oven, I highly recommend you cover the dish with foil and place it on a wooden tray with a thick layer of newspaper for protection. Don’t use a plastic tray! I even added a dish towel between the dish and the newspaper.

Not a bad birthday so far.

Birthday buko pie

Happy happy birthday to Michael, my awesome brother who turned vegan the same time I did and has been my animal-rights fighting buddy ever since. I can honestly say that vegan life would've been more difficult if not for him. He was the only vegan I knew for the longest time (until the vegans started coming out of hibernation when they heard about my bakery) and the person I'd rant to when I'd get angry about an AR-related issue. He also convinced me to adopt our cats when I was still hesitant about keeping pets.

Here he is with my mom, my 2 other brothers Gabriel and Antonio, and the birthday pie I made for him: buko pie. Ever since my triumph with my first vegan pie, I've been dying to make buko pie.

Buko pie is one of those Filipino desserts that is usually not vegan and something that I've missed eating. Usually the pie crust is made with butter or dairy margarine, or it's got eggwash brushed on top, or the filling's made with milk. Michael requested buko pie for his birthday instead of traditional cake, and so I went on a mission to make my first buko pie.

Quick lesson: buko is the young version of coconut. While the coconut looks like a hard ball of brown hair, buko is a hard green ball. The coconut's meat is used to make coconut milk while buko meat is softer and is used fresh in fruit salad or other Pinoy icy desserts. Also, it's from the buko that we get one of the best juices in the world: buko juice.

I immediately turned to my mom's favorite cookbook when it comes to all things Filipino: Let's cook with Nora, by Nora V. Daza, the Julia Child of the Philippines. As you can see in the photo it's been well used. A lot of the newsprint pages have been splattered with sauces and the book cover had to be wrapped in plastic because it was in a serious state of disintegration. My mom bought this in 1996 for a whopping P85. For the foreigners out there, according to this site the peso was around P26.25 to the US dollar in September '96, so the cookbook would've costed a whopping US$3.24! I believe this edition was the 1969 edition with retro drawings of the dishes.


The recipe was easily veganizable. Actually I'm surprised that buko pie isn't naturally vegan. The recipe for the pie filling called for buko meat, sugar, coconut water (aka buko juice), cornstarch, and evaporated milk. Why do people insist on using cow's milk when making a coconut dessert? What's wrong with coconut milk?

I made the 10" pie crust from The Joy of Vegan Baking (you can use VeganYumYum's pie crust recipe here). The buko pie filling recipe was for an 8" pie so I just added 1/4 more of the ingredients.

You can buy buko meat and buko juice from your local coconut purveyor, usually found in markets / palengke. I bought mine from the market in BF, Paranaque, along Palanca St. for P17 per buko. The coconut guys sell both adult coconuts and bukos -- fresh as they hack open the fruits right in front of you. For this recipe, just ask your coconut guy for the juice and meat of 3 bukos. Get the meat as a whole, don't get it slivered up. While waiting for them to prepare your order, enjoy a glass of buko juice.


Buko pie
adapted from Let's Cook with Nora by Nora V. Daza

1 prepared 10" pie crust (top and bottom)

2 1/4 c. buko meat, sliced into chunks
3/4 c. + 3 tbsp. raw sugar
1/2 c. + 2 tbsp. buko juice
1/2 c. + 2 tbsp. coconut milk
1/3 c. + 1 tbsp. + 1 tsp. cornstarch

Preheat your oven to 400 deg F.

Place the buko meat and sugar in a medium saucepan. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk the cornstarch, buko juice, and coconut milk together. Add the cornstarch mixture to saucepan.

Heat the pan on medium heat and cook, stirring continuously until thick. The consistency of the mixture should be like thick gravy. Add the mixture into the prepared crust and top it with top crust. Crimp the edges with your fingers or with the tines of a fork. Make slits on the top (or use a fondant cutter to make cute holes like I did).

Bake the pie for 30-45 min or until golden brown. Cool the pie in room temperature for several hours, then place in the refrigerator to cool down further. The pie is best served cold.

Notes on making buko pie:

1. If you want a pie with more "bite", get your buko meat malakanin. This is thicker than the usual mala-uhog type, which is softer and better suited for buko salad.
2. Keep the buko meat and buko juice in the refrigerator at all times!
3. I used canned coconut milk -- in fact I think I used light coconut milk. If you want a richer pie, feel free to use regular coconut milk or even coconut cream. If you're feeling domestic, why not make your own coconut milk?
4. I used raw sugar to keep things white-sugar free, but feel free to use white sugar. This pie isn't super sweet so it's perfect for people who aren't into desserts. If you'd like a sweeter pie, you can increase the sugar to 1 to 1 1/4 c.
   
5. The proportions of the ingredients was 1 + 1/4 of the recipe in the cookbook. The pie could actually use more filling, so if you want a meatier pie, try these proportions: 2 1/2 c. buko slivers, 1 c. + 1 tbsp. raw sugar, 3/4 c. buko juice, 3/4 c. coconut milk, and 1/3 c. + 2 tbsp. + 2 tsp. cornstarch.

Happy pie making!

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.