Vegan MoFo fail + news shmews

Hey Vegan MoFo'ers, sorry for my embarrassing Vega MoFo performance. Nine MoFo's is really sad. But I have a good excuse. I was busy all October trying to help victims of Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. So things got busy. Which is too bad, because I wanted to blog about awesome things, like:

















My lentil and quinoa Sunday lunch, which Francis seemed to like.

Vegan food activism in the office which you can definitely do at least once a year or when it's your birthday and your coworkers require you to feed them. In this case, it's a farfalle and black bean salad which I believe knocked their omni socks off.

Being vegan in Hong Kong, which was hecka easy.

And other non-MoFo topics, like despedida food!

Despedida meal #1 at Healthy Kitchen in Serendra; featured: fresh Thai spring rolls.

Despedida meal #2 at Som's, Rockwell; featured: Pad Thai.

Despedida dinner at home with the family; featured: tomato and aubergine linguini.

Why despedida? Well I temporarily closed up my baking shop and resigned from my real job because I'm gonna be away from home for at least half a year... I'm going to culinary school in New York! Which is another reason why I've been neglecting this blog -- I have been busy with work, baking and getting ready for school. I'm excited for this new adventure because I can't wait to seriously hit the culinary scene.

Watch out Manila, I'm gonna set you on vegan fire!

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.

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 :)

Another feature in Appetite Magazine + pretty good vegan alfredo and edamame pate

More vegan love in the local food magazine scene. I contributed some vegan baking tips to this month's Appetite Magazine. I also handed in an original oatmeal cookie recipe, fairly similar in taste to the old butter-and-egg laden version I used to make in my pre-vegetarian days.

Pick up a copy of the June 2009 issue of Appetite Magazine!

PS If you recall, my vegan baking business Kitchen Revolution was given a positive review in this magazine's pages last February 2009.

Zoom in to check it out!















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Finally a restaurant in the metro is showing some vegan love. Healthy Kitchen in Serendra, Bonifacio High Street offers some nice vegan options that don't rely on fake meat and Indian spices. Sorry, no offense to India -- I mean I love Indian food, I eat Indian probably once a week. In the past if I wanted some good vegan food, I'd have to go to an Indian restaurant; Indian food can get tiring though if you eat it all the time. So if you have the option to eat good vegan food in a non-Indian restaurant, you take it.

Like Healthy Kitchen. I'll admit, at first I did not appreciate this restaurant's name. While health is certainly important, the word "healthy" tends to scare people away. Not sure if this is a manifestation of the scary H word, but the past 3 times I've been in the restaurant, majority if not all of the customers were female... I got 6 brothers and I know they aren't a fan of the H word.

Anyway, I like that this restaurant actually displays the V word prominently. And I'm not even talking about vegetarian, but vegan. Such a big relief that a food establishment recognizes veganism!

Here's one of HK's dishes -- wholewheat spaghetti with vegan alfredo sauce and tofu. I honestly did not have any expectations because I've never tried to make a vegan cream sauce (okay once I made the pine nut sauce from Veganomicon (link to amazon), which frankly sucked. I think I added too much lemon juice). I was pleasantly surprised. It tastes nothing like traditional alfredo sauce, but it's got a nice savory taste which I think comes from mushroom broth and onions. The cubed tofu was seared and tasted great with the sauce.

The next time I was in HK was for a merienda thing and I ordered the edamame pate with tortilla chips. The chips were supposed to be a combination of blue and red but the restaurant only had blue, which I didn't mind at all. The pate was very hummus-esque, with only its green tinge separating it from it's tan cousin. Good merienda, however I think it would've been tastier if it was served with salsa.

Healthy Kitchen also serves tofu adobo, vegetarian burrito wraps and Boca burgers.

I caution you not to take any of the green tea frappes, even if you can have them made with soymilk -- the green tea mixes HK uses has milk.

What the restaurant seriously lacks is vegan dessert. I miss being able to buy dessert...


HEALTHY KITCHEN
141C Serendra Place, Bonifacio High St,
Global City, Taguig
900.6514

Check out their menu here.

Jerk tofu to the rescue

Okay, this was one of the most amazing tofu dishes I've ever had. Get the recipe here.

I guess what attracted me to this recipe was the fact that it had the word jerk. I love exploring new recipes and using spices I don't normally use in savoury dishes -- such as allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon, usually found in fall / winter desserts. I may've tried cinnamon in a curry, but usually in combination with cumin, cardamom, coriander, etc where you can't almost detect it. I was pleasantly surprised with the results of this dish -- spicy and sweet, totally different from anything I've tried. Am now a fan of Carribean food, even though this Jerk Tofu isn't a traditional dish.

The recipe calls for maple syrup. Instead, I used a muscovado-ginger syrup from Tindahang Sakto, a brilliant liquid sweetener for the maple syrup-, agave nectar-deprived. I've used it in brownies too, and it's great because it's got this deep earthy taste, perfect for baked goods that don't call for butter but need a little more depth. BTW these guys sell vegan-friendly, earth-friendly bath soaps (one soap has honey, so avoid if you don't use honey) and eco-friendly cleaning agents! They sell super fragrant coconut oil which I've purchased and can't wait to try in baking. And I love reading the blogs by one of the owners (Yapak / Yakap and Gardencore) :)

Anyway, do try this recipe. It also calls for jalopenos, which you can't really find here; you can sub with sili labuyo or just add more cayenne pepper.

Also don't be scared about all the prep time. I usually keep some blocks of tofu in the freezer. You can defrost them in the fridge during the day (give it 24 hrs in the fridge); if it's still partially frozen, dunk it in hot water for a few minutes. To remove excess water I wrap it in a dish towel and put a heavy mortar and pestle on top -- let sit 15-30 min. I marinade usually for 15-20 min before I fry it.

Oh and quick tip, use a non-stick skillet. The marinade with the onions tend to burn if you use a regular skillet. Also, tofu will stick to the bottom of a regular skillet unless you add copious amounts of oil.

AND, play around with the spices! I've tried this without the allspice, cayenne, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and instead added dried rosemary, thyme, marjoram, and sage.

AND AND AND, it makes a lot of marinade. After frying up the tofu, cook the marinade a bit (it's chunky due to the chopped up onion). Pour it over the tofu or mix it up with rice -- instant fried rice!

Homemade pizza #2 + a sort of media mention

Arghhh, so my one-blog-a-week resolution just went out the window about 3 weeks ago. I don't really have much of an excuse, just that things have been crazy-busy with work and baking.

Oh! Some news-ish. My baking business got mentioned in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a major daily in my neck of the woods. You can check it out here. It's tiny, the article is essentially a list of websites that can help you be more eco-friendly, in the spirit of celebrating Earth Day last April 25. Kitchen Revolution is "eco-friendly" because it's vegan and I don't use parchment paper and disposable frosting bags. Wheee!

Anyway, on to real food. I've ranted in the past about the suckiness of pizzeria-pizza. My feelings have not altered, except maybe they've been a lot more strongly opposed to lazy vegetarian pizzas pizzerias try to sell to us lowly vegetarians. It's like we are afterthoughts! Pizzerias, you know who you are.

I love my aunt / tita Colette because she always tries to accomodate my and my brother's veganism when it comes to food for family reunions or dinners at her home. She invited me and my brothers to an impromptu pizza night last Friday and again, we made pretty awesome homemade vegan pizza which pwns any pizzeria pizza any day.


This time I used mini wholewheat tortillas, which are great because [a] they're wholegrain and [b] they're so tiny you can stuff yourself with 2-3 pizzas and not feel guilty. They crisp up nicely despite the overload of toppings -- I believe the trick is to be sparing with the tomato sauce.

My tita made a thick tomato sauce out of tomato paste, garlic, onions, and basil which tasted surprisingly sweet -- tomato paste is usual sour. It was quite thick, I had to use a spatula to spread it on the tortilla.

Toppings include: leftover roasted vegetables (zucchini and broccoli), roasted eggplant, mushrooms, slivered onion, chopped garlic, sliced green peppers, Italian herbed tofu, and toasted pine nuts. Out of the oven, I added torn arugula leaves, parsley, and chili-infused olive oil. May I just say, pine nuts on pizza are aMAzing. Try it please.


I swear, best pizza ever, nevermind a wholewheat tortilla isn't a traditional pizza crust.

I've got 2 recipes to share: the Italian herbed tofu and the chili-infused olive oil. I employed a version of Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Italian marinated tofu from Vegan with a Vengeance. The chili-infused olive oil, I winged it :) Seriously, please don't waste your money on store bought infused oils when you can simply make your own.


Italian herbed tofu

Ingredients:
1 block of 350g firm tofu
1/2 cup white wine
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp white balsamic vinegar (may use regular)
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp apple cider vinegar
3 cloves of smashed garlic
1-2 tsp each: dried basil, marjoram, and rosemary

oil for frying
brown sugar

Drain tofu and wrap in a dish towel, lumpia style. Place something heavy on top, such as a huge can of tomatoes or a marble mortar and pestle. Let press for 15-30 min.

Meanwhile, make the marinade: mix the other ingredients together in a glass / ceramic bowl or measuring cup.

Slice the drained tofu thinly, like 1/4-1/8 inch in width. Make it thin like how you would slice cheese. This will help crisp up the tofu. Place the sliced tofu in a container and cover with the marinade. Best if you marinade the tofu overnight, but since last Friday was impromptu pizza dinner, I marinaded it for about 15 minutes.

Heat some oil (3-4 tbsp if I recall correctly) in a skillet on medium heat. Fry the tofu slices until crisp on both sides. I drizzle a bit of the marinade and sprinkle a bit of brown sugar on both sides in between flipping -- it makes the tofu all yummy and caramelized. That's it!

Chili-infused olive oil

Place 1/3 cup olive oil in a cold saucepan. Add in about 2 tbsp dried chili flakes. You may add chopped garlic as well (as much as you want). Heat the pan on the lowest heat setting, until you see bubbles appear on the oil's surface. Do not raise the heat! The point is to let the oil draw out the chili's and garlic's flavors, not the fry them.

You can store your infused oil in a bottle in room temperature. Drizzle this lovely oil on anything and everything.

World Vegan Day / Lazy Saturday Part 1: Tequila-spiked barbecued tofu with grilled onions and tomatoes

November 1:

• All Saints' Day to us Catholics
  
• the day The Vegan Society was founded
• World Vegan Day
• the first day of World Vegan Month

November 1 2008 was my first time to celebrate World Vegan Day as a vegan. I spent the weekend out of the concrete jungle and closer to nature. Well, I spent the weekend in a beach house but we never even ventured out to the beach. We mostly just slept, ate, played pusoy dos, read, and watched the 4th season of The Office.

When you're not facebooking or blogging because there's no internet (or phone line for that matter), you can't help but become more domestic. With an 8-6 job and a cupcake-baking (mid)night job, I sometimes forget how enjoyable it feels to cook something that was meant to be eaten by me and my family. When you're in a place where skyscrapers don't exist, the air does not smell of car fumes, the ocean is a 10 minute walk away, and there are palm trees in your garden, you can't help but bring out the ol' Weber grill and do some outdoor cooking.



World Vegan Day Menu
Lunch
Tequila-spiked barbecued tofu
Grilled onions and tomatoes
Sauteed talbos ng sayote / chayote tendrils

Dinner
Lentils with onions and fennel seed
Ensaladang talong / grilled eggplant salad
Tequila-spiked calamansi juice

We brought over a bottle of tequila, left over from my birthday feast; my brothers and I planned to drink all Saturday night, but whaddaya know... something in the cool provincial air made us go to bed at 9:30 and watch The Office on my mac. The tequila did not go to waste, I found good use for it in the kitchen.

Tequila-spiked barbecued tofu with grilled onions and tomatoes
I can't really give a recipe out here because I just mixed things in willy-nilly.

Essentially, in a bowl, mix in some chopped garlic, 1/4 c. freshly squeezed calamansi juice (or citrus juice of choice), about 1/2 c. of soy sauce, 1/2-1/4 c. canned pineapple-orange juice, and 1/4 c. of tequila. Mix everything together with a spoon, and taste. If it's too sweet, add more soy sauce. Too salty, more juice. Too alcoholic, a combination of soy sauce and juice. After adjusting, add a splash of oil. In that, dunk in some well pressed chunks of tofu, and let marinate for as long as possible. I marinaded mine for about 15 minutes.

Stick the marinaded tofu into barbecue sticks (make sure to soak the sticks in water so they don't burn) and place them on a platter and spoon the marinade over. With the bowl of extra marinade, add in some sliced onions -- sliced into rounds, don't break them up! After this, slice some egg tomatoes into halves, and remove the seeds and the pulp; set those aside.












Place the tofu on a well-oiled and heated grill, preferably on an angle so you get nice grill marks. Spoon marinade over the tofu. After 5 or 10 minutes, flip the tofu over. Spoon some more marinade. After 5 minutes, transfer the tofu to a plate.

Carefully lay the onions on the grill, spoon some marinade over, and let cook for about 5 minutes. Carefully flip over (use tongs) and spoon more marinade. Cook until brown / black / crisp around the edges, and transfer to a plate.












While the onions are cooking, you should have added the tomato halves into the marinade and let sit for about 5-10 minutes. After the onions have cooked, place the tomatoes on the grill, cut side down. Spoon marinade on top. Flip after 10 minutes, and spoon more marinade on top. Cook for 5 minutes, and transfer to the tofu plate.

Pour the leftover marinade into a saucepan and simmer. In a small bowl, mix 2 tbsp. of flour or cornstarch and 2 tbsp. of water. Add this flour / cornstarch mixture into the marinade, and stir until it gets thick. Voila, instant barbecue sauce!

It probably took me 30-45 minutes to prep, cook, and serve the food. Don't you just love the fact that "undercooked" tofu won't kill you while undercooked animal flesh will? Meanwhile, the dead animal (for my omni family) took ages for the blood and rawness to cook out...


Kinda related to World Vegan Day / Lazy Saturday: I found Diet for a New America at a secondhand bookstore last week, for only P110 (US$2.30)! And it looked as new as any other book. I've been reading it regularly and it is just so riveting. It's a perfect read for a perfect World Vegan Day. I love that it presents well-researched evidence that the animal cruelty industries don't give a sh*t about us consumers; they're are out to make us fat and diabetic and give us heart disease and cancer, while torturing animals in style.

More on World Vegan Day Dinner in my next post...