Lustrous Musings

Mirch Masala (Leicester)

2011-12-18T23:01:00.001Z

I've been to Mirch a few times over the past six years. A short walk from one of my favourite vegetarian Indian restaurants in the UK however; it's difficult not to compare the two and always choose Shivalli. Still, choice is good, so whilst in the area recently we checked it out again.

Mirch is large and well located. Interior decor is pleasant and the menu huge. By far the most vegan options area from the Indian menu, but they also offer vegetarian Italian, Chinese and Mexican dishes.

The only thing that lets to place down is the food, which has always been in my opinion slightly underwhelming. They're not afraid to make food that's spicy, but it lacks complex flavours and is more average than fantastic.

As we hadn't planned to go; pictures are off my iphone. On advice of the waiter, we ordered a "Mirch Masala Special Sizzler" to share:

It tasted reasonably good, but was more of a vegetable side dish than a starter! With a good curry it'd have been a worthy accompaniment, but a little odd on its own with 2 forks.

For mains @cherrivalentine had an uttapam, which was actually pretty good:

One of the sides it came with wasn't vegan. We're always skeptical of anything creamy looking, so asked the waiter if it was suitable. He said he thought it was, but went to check, then returned and took it away.

I had a vegetable keema curry and rice:

The rice was good, the curry dreadful. It was TVP in oily spicey soup. I tried to eat it, but didn't make it past a few mouthfuls.

Luckily I also ordered some naan bread:

I remember hearing that certain items marked as vegan on the menu are typos, but the waiter insisted the naan was vegan. The plain was pretty good (it wasn't naan in the traditional sense, but pleasantly edible), but the masala naan far too spicy for my liking.

Like many Indian restaurants they've a big selection of bought in desserts, with limited vegan choice. They sell egg free cupcakes, but not dairy free (a missing opportunity?).

Pricing is good, but it's difficult to get excited about returning - especially when there's such a good alternative a 2 minute walk away.

Vantra (Soho)

2011-11-06T12:17:00.006Z

Vantra describes itself as being "Pioneering Organic Cuisine". Pretty exciting stuff - it'd be disappointing if it was basically just another grotty buffet.

I've walked past but not been in before. I had 10 minutes to grab takeaway in the area recently, so popped in to see what it was like.

£6 for a takeaway box is very reasonable; perhaps a little too reasonable, given the cost of their rent (just off Oxford Street). When the chain of chinese vegan buffets opened they were incredible value for money - you literally could eat £6 worth of ingredients (cashews, peppers, fresh veg etc) and not understand how they made any profit. As the years passed by the use of decent ingredients waned, until what we had today: lukewarm bland mush with an over reliance on fake meat.

First impression of Vanta? Very good. The staff seemed a bit confused and unprepared for the start of lunch service, but overall they've done a great job of the decor and creating a brand:

All their food is vegan; I got a takeaway box and a slice of good looking banana cake, which comes with soya cream.

The food itself? Meh.

No one thing was exceptional and there were a few flavours I really didn't like at all.

It also didn't smell that good - in fact I felt a little embarrassed getting on the tube with it. Quality wise: it is better than a Tai buffet, but not a lot better.

The cake survived about an hour of walking around London / tube journeys without going soggy in the soya cream. This is testament to quite how dry it was - but tasted good if you rationed out the cream effectively.

Vantra has nothing on Tibits, which is similarly priced and nearby. I will return however I hopefully try an evening meal there.

Favourite Places to Eat in England

2011-11-01T18:11:00.000Z

I've visited more than 50 vegetarian/vegan cafes/restaurants in England over the past decade and reviewed 33 since I started this blog. Incase anyone's interested, my favourites are:

Overall Top 5

1st: Veggie World (Bletchley)

Simply the best vegan chinese food I've tried, either in the UK or US. Decor could use a lot of work, but the fantastic food and friendly service totally make up for it. Massive choice, almost all vegan. Miles ahead of Loving Hut; light years ahead of the (now gross) London buffets.

2nd: The Warehouse Cafe (Birmingham)

Dependable, well priced, seasonal menu with both cafe options (burgers, wedges etc) and 'sit down meal' courses. Always plenty of vegan choice. Desserts (which were always its weak point) have started to improve in the past couple of months. I've eaten there countless times over the years and a recent evening meal was very good indeed.

3rd: Terre-a-Terre (Brighton)

Terre-a-terre is something special, which is why it gets a mention in the top 5. It's definitely a vegetarian restaurant however: vegan choice fluctuates over time - sometimes great, other times a bit disappointing. Catch it at the right moment and you may get the best meal of your life.

4th: Terrace Arts Cafe (Seaton)

This place is a hidden gem. Choice is great and the food well above average for the price. Waiting times were always an issue, but seemed a lot better on my last visit. There's not a lot of choice in that part of the country, but it is worth an hour's drive to try if you're ever in Dorset/Devon.

5th: The Lakeland Pedlar (Keswick)

Cheap, dependable, generously portioned, warm and filling cafe style food (generally a good thing when you've been walking in the hills!). I've never been disappointed by a meal from here - both the best garlic bread and best cake.

The Best....

A few runners up, most noted for:

Cheap lunch in London: Beatroot (London) - lots of flavours all mashed together in a cardboard box!

Cheesecake: Alley Cafe (Nottingham) - Cheesecake perfection

Dessert: Aloka (Brighton) - Following a truly dreadful main, the best dessert ever!

Dosa: Shivali (Leicester) - Avoid the Sunday buffet, order from the standard menu.

Raw Food: Saf (Shoreditch) - Expensive but some really good food, especially their 'cheeses'

Samosa: Jyoti's (Birmingham) - Their currys suck, but starters rock.

And The Worst.....

Food: The Gardener's Arms
Customer Service: Iydea
Everything: Zilli Green

Veggie World Revisited (Bletchley)

2011-11-01T07:00:00.000Z

Since my first visit and short review 2 years ago (complete with camera phone pics), I've returned to Veggie World many, many times.

It's odd location halfway between London and Birmingham has led to several days out that 'just happen to be nearby' so we can 'drop by in the evening afterwards'. Bletchley Park twice (well worth visit), Stowe Landscape Gardens, Waddesdon Manor, Clivedon, Claydon House, Upton House, Wrest Park etc. We're running out of National Trust properties within 40 miles now and are considering English Heritage membership next year instead.

Therefore, I figured it was worth an update, with better pictures and recommendations. The menu choice is extreme and value for money varies considerably. We've tried a large selection of it now and some things we keep going back to as they're so good.

Decor's improved slightly in the past couple of years, with better lighting. It's still a takeaway with a few tables though - you'd only ever visit because the food is amazing. They only seem to have one CD, that is played constantly in a loop.

We generally go for 3 savoury courses and skip dessert. We also purposely over-order, so we've a bigger choice and left overs to eat the following day! :)

Starter

"01 Appertiser Combination" is great on your first visit for trying a few things at once. We occasionally still order it, but tend to go with "27 - Crispy Aromatic Veggie Duck" to share, as it's both delicious and excellent value for money:

Other options include:

02 - Crispy Won Ton: Very good - included in appetiser combination
04 - Veggie Ji Skewers: Simply the best satay sauce I've tried:

07 - Crispy Seaweed: Comes with appetiser combination, wouldn't ever think to order alone
08 - Veggie Prawn Toast: Not a personal favourite, but the best I've tasted
10 - Veggie Peking Ribs: Part of the appetiser combination. They're OK, little strange
12 - Grill Veggie Dumplings: We sometimes order these as a side dish with mains
14 - Crispy Spring Rolls: They're OK, have had better.
18 - House Special Rolls: Or 'horse rolls' as we call them - neither of us liked them

Soup

Their soup tastes great and is cheap. "20 - Veggie Sweet Corn Soup" is my favourite, followed by "24 - Veggie Dumpling Soup".

I tried taking a picture, but it looks too gross to post ;)

Main Courses

The menu doesn't make it immediately obvious what is a good combination of dishes to order for mains. Some are just fake meat with sauce, whereas others come with lots of vegetables. Value for money varies considerably.

A few that I remember trying:

32 - Salt & Pepper To-Fu: Not to my taste - a little bland for my liking
34 - Crispy Sesame Veggie Ji: Delicious, but lacks veg - it's fake meat on a plate
35 - Stir Fried 3 Delicious: Unmemorable
36 - Veggie Chicken Macau: Or Parrot Curry, as we call it. This is one of our firm favourites:

37 - Lo Han Chai
39 - Golden Veggie Steak
47 - Crispy Veggie Ji Pineapple: Lovely, but lacks veg - fake meat on a plate
50 - Roasted Char Siu: Good, but lacks veg
61 - Sweet & Sour Veggie Chicken - Great sauce, but the ribs are better and have more texture
63 - Sweet & Sour Veggie Ribs:

65 - Veggie Chicken Balls
66 - Veggie Pork Balls

Their balls aren't so great. As one of my favourite things in non-vegetarian days I've perfected making them at home now - Veggie World's are unfortunately disappointing.

Sundries

I don't swear often on this blog, but Veggie World's chow mein is fucking amazing - there's simply no finer way of putting it than that.

The noodles are 100% identical to those I got from takeaways in my non-vegetarian days and have since failed to find in a supermarket (english or chinese). We generally go for 'duck' chow mein, normally because we've already got 'chicken' and 'pork' dishes.

There's lots of types of rice available, but we tend to order plain steamed rice - cheap and better at soaking up sauces etc.

The formula we work to is: duck for starter followed by a soup course, then 3 main dishes with chow mein and rice. We sometimes order items from the starter menu as side dishes to the main course (satay skewers, dumplings etc). If you order the right things then you can get very full and satisfied for £15-£20 a head

We've tried the set menus a couple of times when we've visited with friends, but tend to order from the normal menu when alone as neither of us like the fake fish dishes. I've tried a few of their desserts, but am usually uncomfortably full by that point.

Veggie World have gotten service down to a fine art - waiting times are extremely reasonable. I believe that they manufacture their own fake meat - I've not tried it elsewhere in the UK (I heard that Peking Palace used to buy from them, before coming a Loving Hut). You can order any meat with any sauce, increasing the choice even further.

Overall, I'll go as far as saying that Veggie World is the best vegan chinese I've tried in the UK/US. It's a good job it's not close enough to get takeaway from!

The Waiting Room (Stockton-on-Tees)

2011-10-31T17:32:00.003Z

I'm never quite sure what to expect when I find a random v*gan restaurant on the interweb, then get in the car and go. After a grueling 5.5 hour journey up the M1 from London I'm pleased to say that on this occasion at least I was pleasantly surprised.

First good impression: it's clearly visible from the street and looks inviting. No alley ways, basements or entrances through other shops. It looked busy too, which for a weekday evening is always a good sign.

Second: it's big inside, has candles on the tables and more of a restaurant feel than cafe. There's definitely a place in my heart for quirky cafes selling burgers and wedges (provided they're good), but it's nice to find places a little more 'sit down' restaurant like from time to time. The decor wasn't amazing, but the tables and chairs didn't look like they'd come from a skip either.

Third: the staff were lovely and seemed knowledgeable on the contents of the menu. Contrary to its name, waiting times were reasonable.

The only negative point to note on arrival was quite how unpleasantly warm it was. The radiators seemed stuck on max - I can only imagine they had a problem with the heating that evening and it's not a regular thing.

Oh, and there's the other negative point: it's definitely a vegetarian restaurant with a vegan afterthought, rather than a vegan restaurant with a few vegetarian dishes to please a wider audience. The menu contains many delicious sounding things, but vegan choice is definitely limited.

I ordered a Trio of pates for starter, which turned out to be a Duo of houmous and one pate:

It tasted OK, but I was naturally jealous of the good looking vegetarian starters being served to other diners. The houmous seemed homemade and the salad was exceptionally well dressed (generally I leave the token salad).

The more observant of you will notice the bottle of Sam Smiths cherry beer. Their selection of vegan booze was very good indeed - next time someone else is driving.

My shepherds pie was more hotpot than pie, but very good all the same:

Everything I tasted there was pretty 'old school' vegan cooking - no tofu or new 1990s fangled ingredients. The pie was lentil based, but one of the best I've had.

The one vegan dessert offering was orchard crumble, which didn't overly fill me with excitement at the prospect of trying:

It was however one of the best I've ever had (certainly the best I've paid for).

It was weird - good weird. I'm not entirely sure what the crumble was made of, it didn't conform to normal flour/oat standards. It was sort of dumped in a pile at the centre of the plate with stewed fruit and nuts.

Nuts? Pecan nuts, in crumble. Worked really well. The fruit (including whole black cherries) was stewed to perfection.

Conclusion? The Waiting Room is unimaginative vegan cooking, done extremely well. If they offered a little more choice it'd become a firm favourite. Either way: I'll certainly give it another go when I'm next up in that direction.

Houmous

2011-10-30T20:04:00.008Z

Like most UK vegans, houmous has figured heavily in my diet over the years. Mostly through desperation/lack of choice from supermarkets when I've forgotten to make lunch, but occasionally for pleasure too.

Embarrassingly, it's not been until recently that I've tried making it myself. Too much faff and all that.

It's actually remarkably easy however, and doing so allows you to use much better quality extra virgin olive oil than you'd ever get in premade stuff.

Ingredients:

390g Organic Chickpeas in Water
1 tbsp Tahini
2 tbsp Lemon Juice
2 tbsp Chopped Garlic
1 tsp Ground Cumin
Salt
Pepper
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Drain the chickpeas and blend the chickpeas into a paste:

Add the rest of ingredients (salt and pepper to taste), minus the oil:

As it blends, pour oil in until the right consistancy is reached:

Taste, season and reblend if required. Serve topped with pesto, or simply on its own. You can add other flavours in the final blend (olives, sundried tomatoes etc) also.

Screaming Carrot Bakery (Nottingham)

2011-10-25T18:11:00.008+01:00

If first impressions count, the Screaming Carrot Bakery's not off to a good start.

Metal grills over a shop's windows are never a good sign. The area didn't look overly nice when we drove up - I wasn't confident my car would still have hub caps when I returned.

Still, a vegan bakery is something pretty special. There aren't many on the planet - Babycakes in New York, Mrs Cupcake in London etc.

First impression when you go in through the door?

Well, first off, it's not a bakery. It's a health food store with a few slices of cake and pasties behind the counter. A pretty poor selection at that (Saturday lunchtime). OK, they're made on site, but the word bakery I think is taking things a little far.

Worried that the car's windscreen wipers were being stolen; we ordered a few things and made a dash for it.

The good news is: the pasties we bought were quite pleasant. Not worth a drive to Nottingham for, but above average. They were very cheap too.

The cakes were mediocre:

Carrot was OK (quite sponge like - not heavy), but the bakewell slice lacked flavour and had pastry approx 1mm thick.

If I lived down the road I'd definitely go back. That's unlikely to happen though!

222 (London)

2011-10-25T17:36:00.005+01:00

222 Veggie Vegan is (confusingly) a vegan restaurant, on a random street in West London. I'm probably one of the last vegans I know to visit, but it wasn't until I was at Earls Court recently that I've ever been in walking distance.

The decor's clean & pleasant with a reasonable number of tables. Service was polite / friendly / efficient.

I visited on a weekday lunchtime and didn't have long, so went with the all you can eat buffet option.

The lunch buffet's £7.50 all you can eat, which is pretty reasonable. I can't comment on how often the selection changes, but I enjoyed almost everything I tried:

It all seemed quite fresh & included a good variety of flavours.

I read favourable reports of their pancakes over the years, so ordered one when I arrived to be ready when I'd finish mains:

Top marks for presentation, good marks for flavour.

Price was OK (£5.25), however the pancake texture could be improved - it's impossible to cut through within massacring the whole dish and ending up with a big sloppy mess! I expect that if they used non-wholemeal flour it'd be easier to cut.

Overall though, I was quite pleased with the meal. I'll certainly return next time I'm in the area.

The Rainbow Cafe (Cambridge)

2011-10-18T18:28:00.011+01:00

Tucked away in a basement at the end of an alley, The Rainbow Cafe is a slightly misleading name for a premises free of natural light!

With an hour to kill in Cambridge this lunchtime I was pleased to find the place packed out (always a good sign). Luckily there was one table free, even if it was a bit of a squeeze to fit in.

I was averagely hungry, so ordered 3 courses (strictly for research purposes, you understand). Service was friendly and reasonably efficient:

Garlic bread £3.45
with sun-dried tomato or sun-dried chilli

Vegan Artichoke Parcel £9.95
Delightful filo pastry parcels wrapping artichoke heart, red pepper, black olives, sun dried tomato, & vegan cheese, rich & delectable, served with rice or fusilli pasta with optional marinara sauce & salad garnish.

Mocha Swirl Cheesecake £4.25
(from the specials board)

Choice of vegan options was good, with several proper (non-token) desserts. Waiting times were reasonable too, considering the place was full. Pricing was about average compared to other v*gan cafes across the UK (£15-£20 inc drink).

The garlic bread was odd, but good. Breaking from the tradition of crispy french bread or ciabatta, it seemed to be a soft finger roll; heated till the garlic spread had melted. It was certainly different, but I'd order it again.

Not sure what I made of the main:

It looked good and the filo pastry filling was very tasty. It was difficult to eat with the cheap cutlery however and really needed some kind of sauce to soak up the dry pastry, rather than the side salad. I guess it suffered slightly from 3 things on a plate syndrome, as opposed to a mixture of components that all complimented one another.

I wasn't disappointed by it, but I'd try something else next time.

Having been thoroughly spoilt by The Alley Cafe in Nottingham's cheesecake less than 48 hours previous (which I described as 'perfect'), The Rainbow Cafe's attempt would have to be something really special to compete.

It wasn't. It was a good attempt however - texture was pleasant and price sensible. The base could use some work, as could the height. I'd rank it about average on the vegan cheesecake scale :)

Overall, a fairly decent experience. I wouldn't drive miles to get there, but I'd certainly return if in Cambridge again and can happily recommend it to others.

Alley Cafe (Nottingham)

2011-10-16T19:32:00.006+01:00

Apologies for the lack of posts recently - Mofo's definitely off the cards this year! Lots of good things have been happening recently and blogging's just been a bit too far down my to-do list. It's safe to say that being 30 is not as bad as I thought it'd be - so far it's just been one good thing after another.

We were in Nottingham this afternoon, a bit peckish (starving) and completely by chance a couple of hundred yards from the Alley Cafe. We planned to go for coffee + cake, but with eyes bigger than our stomachs we ended up with main courses and garlic bread too!

Despite reviews saying it's difficult to find; we had no problems at all. It's location couldn't be more central (or at least, what I define as being central). It was a bit cold for outdoor seating - luckily one of the 6 or so tables inside was free.

Here's the odd bit - it's not an overly big place, but the bar takes up approximately a third of the floor space. It's an attractive looking bar, but they probably could have made it smaller and fitted some more tables in / made it feel less cramped.

Also, I realise we're not in the South East in Nottingham, but prices were very good indeed - well below average. Almost too cheap - just inside the very good value bracket. They serve booze and cocktails too - also at unusually good prices. Service was OK - not overly attentive but not rude. Waiting times were reasonable for what appeared to be mostly made to order.

We ordered a hemp burger with vegan cheese (almost certainly mozzarella cheezly) (£6.50), marinated tofu steak with root mash (£6.85) and cheesy garlic bread (£2.50).

The hemp burger was fantastically good - definitely home made and a contender for best in the UK (far better than Saf's poor attempt!):

The tofu steak was exceptionally good for the price. The tomato component had a slight smokiness to it and root mash quite edible (generally I hate mashed root veg). I probably wouldn't order it again though - whilst the burger was burger perfection, this didn't quite hit the spot. It needed to cost more and come with some kind of starch rather than salad (which didn't seem to work with it).

We made room for dessert - blackcurrant cheesecake (£3) and chocolate torte (£3.75):

There seems to have been a recent trend amongst veg cafes/restaurants charging £5+ for puddings, but this cheesecake was simply the best I've paid money for. The flavour balance was perfect and it was satisfyingly deep. Excellent.

The chocolate torte was rich but too small - I"d have paid more for a larger portion. It wasn't quite creamy enough for me either - it was more like chocolate biscuit cake than ganache.

Overall, I'd return if in the area and would recommend. The burger and cheesecake were perfect (not a word I use often). I didn't notice their drinks menu until the end (there wasn't one on our table) - next time I'll definitely try a few.

Saf (London)

2011-09-02T18:58:00.008+01:00

A few Sundays ago we drove down to London for lunch at Saf, then a wander round some shops (which inevitably meant Heals). We'd booked for 1pm and arrived about 50 minutes early, which we spent in its entirety looking for on-road parking (eventually we found free parking on Leonard Street).

For some reason I thought it'd be packed, but I felt a little silly saying we'd booked when there was clearly only 2 other people there eating! Thankfully a few more turned up whilst we were there, but it was certainly a different vibe from last year when it was rammed.

The weather was beautiful, so we sat outside at the back. Either they need to level the ground or adjust the tables - one of the two. After trying several we eventually decided upon one (a benefit of having the place to yourself!).

We ordered starters (* means cooked):

Saf Cheese Trio £7.45
Smoked paprika, olive & pesto cheeses served with tomato jam & raw crackers

Mushroom Gyoza* £6.50
Shitake & Woodear mushrooms with organic tofu & caramelised onion wrapped in rice pastry served with black vinaigrette

My starter was very good indeed (I had a feeling it would be). Definitely the highlight of the day (it was all downhill from here!):

I was really pleased to see a sensible number of crackers this time. Even the tomato garnish tasted fabulous.

The filling in the mushroom gyoza was equally good, but pastry a bit of a let down. It was chewy and not quite right. For a moment I thought it must in fact be some clever raw pastry, but apparently it was just crap cooked stuff :)

We weren't taken enough by any of the mains to pay £15 for them, so ordered a sandwich each:

Tempeh Salad Sandwich* £7.50
Shoyo & ginger marinated tempeh salad with baby gem leaves, vegan mayonnaise served in kentish flute bread

Portabello Mushroom Burger* £6.50
Roasted Portabello with grilled red onion, gherkin, tomato & fig jam served in ciabattini

I'm not a great tempeh fan, so can't really comment on this one. The mushroom burger however was pretty disappointing. I'd have been disappointed by it anywhere, but it was especially disappointing at Saf!

It really was a mushroom, pretending to be a burger. The bread was stiff and I ended up eating it with a knife and fork. Overall, it sucked.

Desserts were thankfully a little better:

Sour Cherry Trifle £6.95
Layers of chocolate sponge, vanilla cashew cream, sour cherry coulis & chocolate cigars

Tiramisu £8.45
Layered Saf mascarpone & coffee-walnut savioardi

I hate to say this on my blog, but I really have to: the cashew cream looked like someone had just wanked on top!

Can you see any chocolate cigars? Shavings sure, but no cigar.

It was OK, but not special enough to cost over £4. See this post for info on making far, far better sundaes.

The Tiramisu tasted pretty good, but it wasn't tiramisu. It's probably the best attempt I've tasted (certainly better than Inspiral and Zilli), but I'm still waiting for the holy grail of vegan tiramisu that tastes remotely like dairy tiramisu.

In summary? I love Saf and am definitely going again, but next time not for Sunday lunch! It is a little expensive, but it is special and I'm really glad it exists.

Moaz (London)

2011-09-02T18:49:00.002+01:00

I'll be honest: falafel doesn't excite me much. There is a place in my heart however for exceptionally good falafel served at a sensible price from a cafe in central London. Moaz however isn't it.

I've heard lots of good reports of Moaz over the years, but I've always been too tempted by other places in the area that I know to be good (such as Beetroot) to try it out. I'm glad I waited.

I'll start with what's good: the price. For its location, their pricing is pretty reasonable (£5.90 for a "Meal Deal").

That's about where it ends.

When we arrived we stood in front of the counter for a good few minutes before either of the people behind it acknowledged our presence. We then sat an an unclean table for around 10 minutes waiting for our "fast food" to appear.

I had a meal deal. The chips were the 2nd worst I've ever had (the worst were at a festival and undercooked). I had a few and left the rest (this doesn't normally happen with me). The falafel itself was OK (cauldron standard, possibly slightly nicer), but I didn't like the pitta itself (not fresh enough), humous or the "free salad bar" toppings.

Few things make my eyes light up more than a big bowl of olives. Few things make me die inside quite as much as finding they taste like they've been in brine for 20 years and still have their stones in.

I wouldn't go back.

(in case you're wondering what I do constitute as good falafal, I highly rate the stuff that Goodness Gracious sell at festivals).

Brighton 2011

2011-09-01T22:46:00.003+01:00

Life is currently treating me very well indeed.

Lots of good things have been happening recently: @cherrivalentine moved in, I got a better job and have been off galavanting around the world!

Before this all happened, @cherrivalentine booked us a weekend in Brighton to celebrate my 30th. I started blogging about a few of the places we ate at a while ago, so this final post wraps up the rest.

We stayed at Paskins Townhouse, just off the seafront. The room was very pleasant, complete with 4 poster bed and sea view (just about, if you stick your head out the window!).

We'd heard good things about their vegan breakfast, but we weren't impressed enough to bother going down on the second morning and opted for a lie in instead:

We'd planned to check out VBites on the way down, but were running short on time so ate some redwoods food straight from the packet in the car instead ;)

We revisited Terre-a-terre on the first evening, and I'm pleased to say that service was a lot better than last year. Unfortunately the menu selection not so good. We ended up having Tapas for main course, due to a complete lack of vegan mains we fancied eating.

The starters we ordered were:

Arepas Chilli Candy (v/gf) 8.95
Deep fried corn cakes rolled in spice dust served with chilly chelly jelly, avocado and lime mayonnaise, chilled pokey gazpacho hash and a candied chilli.

Good Thyme Trifle and Baby Beets (v/gf) 8.95
Warm carrot cream custard layered with macadamia lemon thyme crumble, sweet pickled baby beets and radishes, micro salad and herbs, served with linseed crackers. Delicious!

The corn cakes looked great, but seriously lacked flavour. Carefully rationing out the stingy amount of chilli jelly you get with them however improves the overall effect no end. The carrot custard was the highlight of the dishes - it was one of the best things I tried over the weekend.

Tapas was tapas - pretty much the same as last year's and unfortunately for us a rehash of starters!

The corn cakes came this time with chilli sauce, which worked a lot better. Again we got more custard, which was welcomed but it would have been good to try a few more things! Our favourite part was the noodles, which we'd certainly order again.

The desserts were pants. Seriously Terre-a-Terre, if you're reading this: go across the road to Aloka and try their raw vegan desserts - no competition! At the very least, keep your gorgeous frangipane on the menu at all times.

Everyone loves the churros, except me. I like a good donut as much as the next person, but these are no better than those you can get in co-op at 5 for 69p (often 10 for £1). Adding insult to injury they don't give you enough churros for the amount of chocolate sauce. Finally, what's with the cherries in vodka? We ate one each and left the rest. Am I missing something?

The other dessert we had was well presented, but essentially fruit salad & sorbet (grown).

Terre-a-Terre's still a great place to visit and I'll continue to rank it highly, but it really is a shame they don't ensure a good selection of vegan options at all times.

Going back I wouldn't feel confident I'd get 3 courses of fabulous food, please sort it out!

Wai Kika Moo Kau (Brighton)

2011-07-10T13:45:00.002+01:00

Still stuffed from our cooked breakfast at Paskins and having turned our noses up at the limited vegan menu offered by Food For Friends, we gave Wai Kika Moo Kau a go for a light lunch.

Luckily, after waiting 35mins for our food to come I'd worked up an appetite! Service was pretty bad, considering there were 5 front of house staff. There didn't seem to be one person assigned to our table, so we had to flag them down as they walked past at each stage of the meal.

We skipped starters; I ordered a chilli burger and @cherrivalentine a thai sort of peanuty wrap thing with tofu:

Making up for the unattentive / slow service, the food itself was pretty good and reasonably well priced. Portion sizes are very generous, however in the case of the chilli burger - a little too much so. Really it was too meals (burger and a large spoon of bean chilli) in a bun, making it quite impossible to pick up and eat:

(even my mouth's not that big). Only complaint food wise is that their drinks are a little overpriced - our milkshakes were £4 each.

Later on, underwhelmed by Infinity's selection, we returned for cake. I'd spotted on our first visit that they have the same supplier, but a bigger selection.

Quality was up to scratch with when I last ate said cake - it's a real pitty that none of the 15 (or so) v*gan restaurants north of London that I've visited seem capable of producing cake so good.

I'd go back to Wai Kika Moo Kau again - pricing was reasonable, food relatively tasty and portion sizes good. Vegan choice is decent, but the overall range of food available puts it very much more in the cafe bracket, rather than something a bit special that you'd rush back for.

Aloka (Brighton)

2011-07-03T21:59:00.009+01:00

Having had a very agreeable experience at Aloka's lunch buffet last year; I had high hopes for the restaurant. The fully raw menu looked stunning - what could possibly go wrong?

We booked a few days in advance for a Saturday night sitting. I was pleased to see that decor from downstairs continues up: same lighting, tulip tables and Vernor Panton S chairs (don't be put off by the plastic seating, as one reviewer said!)

It'd been a hot day, so we were pleased with our table by an open sash window. From my seat I could see along East Street towards Terre-a-Terre; which I tried to avoid looking at whilst we ate (I'll post about that meal shortly).

Having personally thoroughly enjoyed Saf, @cherrivalentine was in for a treat - she'd not had a fully raw meal in a restaurant before (other than the plain salads that confused omni places give you).

The dinner started with an amuse-bouche; a(n IKEA) shot glass filled with overly vinegary gazpacho. It was more an endurance than a pleasurable start to the evening, which didn't set a good tone:

We ordered a mezze platter for starter (£15.75), which promised a selection of items from the menu:

OK, so, the entire meal wasn't raw: we got a small cup of the day's soup, some bread and lentil pancake things.

The carrot humus I thought was rather good. The guacamole a bit bland (needed garlic) and olives over salty (I couldn't eat more than a couple). The crackers weren't good at all (no-where near as good as those from Saf, or those in overpriced boxes from Waitrose), neither was the lentil pancake (bland). The bread was bread and the soup again, a little over vinegary.

The main thing that baffled the hell out of us was just what the brown stuff in the white pot was meant to be. It looked like caramelized onions but tasted like, well, nothing. It was like eating gelatinous water. Apparently they were jasmine tea pearls - I wouldn't have guessed.

The whole dish was a bit pants, but nothing could prepare us for the main.

Stupidly, drawn in by the description, we broke the golden rule of shared dining and ordered the same thing: Botanical Living Special (£13.75):

First impressions good, but if I had to sum this dish up in one word? Bad. Really, really bad.

There were four things on the plate which didn't seem to have a purpose for existing together. A little ball of horseradish on a slice of courgette (wtf?), some chopped beetroot with a couple of olives, a mound of mushrooms in some kind of sauce and la piece de la resistance: a stuffed tomato on a stuck-together-seed-thing, ontop of sliced courgette.

The whole thing just didn't work. Half way through we got giggling fits because it was so bad - it's a good job too, otherwise we may have cried.

I don't know where to start, so I'll start with the seed thing. At first it seemed like something you'd give to the birds, but then it reminded me of those chew things you give to hamsters. It was impossible to elegantly cut with a knife and just didn't seem to have a reason for being on the plate.

The courgette seemed unseasoned - that which I had in Saf had been salted to tenderize, but this just seemed to be sliced. A forkful of tomato stuff with a slice of courgette and a bit of birdseed did taste alright, but it was awkward to eat and only just alright - not £13.75 alright.

The similarly priced raw food from Saf seemed to actually be recognisable dishes (pasta, lasagne etc), so you knew how to eat them. This just seemed to be a collection of mediocre stuff on a plate.

As one of the worst things I've eaten in a v*gan restaurant this decade, it was a poor attempt and a really bad advert for raw food.

Our experience at Aloka was partially resuscitated by dessert, which was actually very good.

Confusingly they don't have a printed dessert menu - the waiter/waitress reads it out (minus prices). We ordered a raw chocolate cheesecake and a raw chocolate banana & macadamia torte:

Other than that the smaller one cost a pound more and tasted slightly of banana; it's difficult to tell them appart.

They were however very good indeed - both the best raw desserts I've eaten and for that matter, amongst the best I've had in any restaurant (either raw or unraw). According to the bill they were 5.50 and 6.50, which is most reasonable.

On balance; I wouldn't go back for an evening meal at Aloka. I thought their lunchtime buffet was excellent when I visited last year and I'd certainly return for that side of things. Their savoury raw food however is .... crap

What I would do though, is eat starter & main at Terre-a-Terre, then nip across the road for dessert.

Loving Hut (Brighton)

2011-07-03T19:02:00.014+01:00

This lunchtime @cherrivalentine and I decided to visit Loving Hut - The Supreme Master's cafe in Brighton. Unfortunately she wasn't in when we arrived, but luckily her devoted followers were cooking in her absence.

Loving Hut is an international chain of vegan cafes endorsed by Ching Hai; a nice lady who believes all sorts of nonsense, like the inner detail of life on Mars:

(whizz forward to 1:50 for the uber strange shit).

In her defense, she does give all this useless made-up info away for free - she doesn't charge for it like those money grabbing scientology folk.

Whilst not suggesting that people give up food and water altogether, she does sell reasonably tasty vegan food at reasonably good prices. They've a branch in Camden that I've not tried, but am led to believe has roughly the same menu - 60% thai/chinese, 40% western.

As it was a nice day we chose to sit outside, rather than indoors to the sound of Supreme Master TV. There's about 5 tables inside and 5 out. It's by a busy junction, but was still fairly pleasant.

We ordered a veggie platter (£4.80) that has a selection of things from the starter / light bite menu:

Service was quick and friendly. The balls were pretty tasteless, but wantons very good indeed. The rest was meh. I'd order wantons on their own next time.

My main was satay with noodles:

Which was fairly tasty. The fake meat wasn't very nice; I wasn't sure if it was tofu or wheat based. The sauce was good thou and it was decent value at less than five pounds.

Still a little disturbed by last night's meal at Aloka; Cherry opted for a good old faishoned burger.

which despite coming with feet cheese (tofutti slices) seemed pretty good. It wasn't frys, which is always a good sign (if you're happy paying someone to heat something up from a packet for you you should try VBites). Cherry concluded that as far as cults go, she definitely prefers this one.

Compared to the cake available in other Brighton eating establishments, Loving Hut's selection was a bit pants:

The first was a basic sponge topped with what I expect is Soyatoo whipping cream. The latter a lemon sponge with half a bottle of yellow colouring. They were OK for the price (about £2 a slice), but could have been better.

Summary? I'd certainly go again if I was in the area and fancied something quick and easy. I suggest that if you get a chance that you try it too. It's sensibly priced for what it is - just don't expect Veggie World quality. For once the Midlands may actually be better than the South vegan food wise!

Tibits (London)

2011-06-25T13:56:00.010+01:00

Having had a good whinge about a nearby v*gan restaurant recently, I've nothing but good things to say about Tibits.

Though I know Soho well; the other side of Regents Street is unknown territory. Therefore, whilst I've known of Tibits existence for a number of years, I've never randomly walked past and eaten there before.

I'd planned to visit October Cafe, but it was 9am and I didn't fancy waiting around for it to open at 10. I wanted to try somewhere else new, so found Tibits' location via google.

The format is similar to Aloka in Brighton - fill a plate then get charged by weight. Everything is vegetarian and the majority marked as vegan.

I'd been up for several hours by this point, so had an early brunch, costing a reasonable £6.40:

I've a feeling that they've more hot things available at lunchtime, but I was pretty happy with what I got.

I can't remember what everything was; I had a spoonful of each thing that looked vaguely good. There was definitely a black quinoa thing, some dhal, a fig and tofu salad, cucumber and tofu, a bean thing and some pasta. It tasted pretty decent and was all very fresh.

They've put a bit more effort into decor than most places, but whilst flock damask is totally my thing, I'm not 100% sure that the overall effect is to my taste:

I didn't have room for dessert, so got an apple turnover to take away - again reasonably priced at £1.70.

I took a photo, but I was on a train by this point and the dodgy lighting makes it look a lot less appetizing than it was!

The pastry was as close to perfect as I've ever had. They could have been slightly more generous with the filling and for absolute perfection; included some custard too, but now I'm really picking!

So, Tibits hasn't wowed me enough to be in my top 10, but I'll certainly return and would suggest it to others.

The food is above average value for money - you just won't find yourself laying awake at night longing to eat there again, that's all.

Mildred's & Mrs Marengo's

2011-06-20T19:23:00.001+01:00

When I first went to Mildred's in 2004 I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the experience. The food was so-so and service truely absymal.

I had a better experience in 2008 (including a mushroom pie which inspired me to make my own, much better version), but it's not been on my list of places to rush back too.

In all honesty, it's not a bad restaurant. The food's alright and if it were the only choice in the town I lived then I'd probably go a few times a year. London's got too much choice though, including far better value for money options.

I decided to give it another try recently, simply for dessert after visiting Beatroot for mains.

Service this time round was quite friendly. I sat at the front by the bar and despite the uncomfortable metal seating the experience was quite pleasant.

As my eyes are bigger than my tummy I ordered myself a couple of things and a soya latte.

The raspberry truffle torte was pretty good. It'd got the right balance of creamy / chocolatey / sweet:

As a big wedge on a plate with no accompaniment though the overall effect was lacking something - at £6.40 I'd expect a bit more in the way of specialness - homemade iceream, a biscuit etc.

The banana tofu cheesecake really did taste like it contained tofu (e.g. not in a good way). It was like I'd been transported back to the 80s (infact I'm pretty sure it's an adapted cheesecake recipe from Baskerville's 1986 "The Vegan Cookbook"):

The sliced banana tasted good though and appart from that unmistakable taste of silken tofu; the overall dessert was alright.

On their website they have listed "banana tofu cheesecake with coconut brittle and pina colada icecream". If it'd included the brittle and icecream it'd have been a pretty decent dessert, worth the money. Without it though it just lacked.

The bill came to £16.95 including their "optional" 12.5% service charge (which the first time I refused to pay as the service was so appalling).

£17 for 2 desserts and a coffee is understandable in a premium restaurant like Terre-a-Terre, but Mildred's isn't in the same league as far as I'm concerned. Whilst it's above average, it's still very much in the average camp.

In short: their food isn't worth the prices they charge.

As I walked back to the tube I noticed Mrs Merango's on the same street, which I'd heard about but not visited (nor realised it was located so close). I decided to get a couple of cakes to take home for @cherrivalentine.

I immediately realised that it was the same stuff as Mildreds, but at less than half the price!

I got another slice of the raspberry truffle thing and a carrot cake, both of which made it the 100 mile journey home in more or less one piece:

(at first I thought it was a slice of tomato, but was pleased when it turned out to be orange).

I really enjoyed the carrot cake and would buy it again. Both tasted better with a scoop of icecream.

My advice? Skip Mildred's and go to Mrs Marengo's for dessert. It's the same stuff, at much more realistic prices.

Beatroot (London)

2011-06-18T18:13:00.000+01:00

I've been going to Beatroot for more than 10 years. In this time the format's remained the same....I'm not even convinced they've changed their menu.

I like it though - it works for me: wide choice of things to eat, all piled together in the same box. By the time you're half way through they're all mashed in with one another, but that's part of the fun.

Value's good, currently about £6.50 for a large box (I didn't bother looking at price of smaller options!). They don't mark the vegan items but if you ask they'll point out those that are unsuitable. There's limited seating, but several parks near by.

I probably wouldn't go there too regularly if I spent more time in London, as I expect it'd get a bit boring after a while. It's good for occassional lunch if you're in a hurry though (or shitfaced on rum, wearing a santa suit - don't ask).

Top tip: If you want more than a couple of sausage rolls; ask for some first, then again at the end. They seem to scrimp on them otherwise.

I always go with some shepherds pie and a bit of pasta, then try other things each time.

I've had cake from there in the past, but it wasn't amazing. I'd recommend visiting Mrs Marengos for dessert after.

Surviving Madeira

2011-06-12T09:17:00.006+01:00

There's not a lot of info online about availability of vegan food in Madeira, so I'm posting here in the hope it'll find its way into Google and be useful to someone in the future.

@cherrivalentine and I visited last week and had a fabulous time.

Having spoken to various people who've been before & following a trip to portugal a couple of years ago; I felt it prudent to pack some essentials with me. The general consensus seems to be that there's nowhere to eat out. We went self catering so this didn't overly bother us.

I took non-liquid/paste/jel things to eat on the plane (such as nakd bars), then tofu, cheezly/scheese, fake meat and other things in my hold luggage that I assumed I wouldn't find when I arrived. In hindsight I'd also have taken some packets of ready made sauce/curry paste (indian, chinese etc), just to make meals easier. I'm lazy like that!

I'd recommend also taking pepper/salt/herbs/oil/ketchup etc in suitable portioned containers. Not because you won't find them on the island but because you'll end up buying full jars and not be able to take it home with you at the end.

In terms of things you can buy, I suggest you visit Funchal on the first day and stock up at Bio Locos. You'll probably want to go to Funchal at some point anyway for the cable car/toboggan (both worth doing). It's not a big town - you can walk from one side of the shopping district to the other in 10-15min.

Here's the hawl we got, costing about €85:

It included a couple of loaves of sourdough bread (the sesame seed was nicer than the plain) and this rather bizarre turd shaped thing:

(which thankfully tasted better than it looked). We ate it on bread, but you can probably cook it somehow.

They had fresh ravioli too, which was nicer than the stuff sold in the UK. We got a few things which I wouldn't recommend, like a big bag of chocolate biscuits that tasted like bourbons without the cream.

They've a mix of UK / Portuguese / other origin products, including quite a few I've not seen before. The person working there (owner?) spoke fluent english and was happy to translate ingredients lists.

Pricing is reasonable. There's obviously a premium (reflecting the fact it's been imported), but it's not outrageously so.

You can expect to find egg free dried pasta, rice, jars of tomato sauce, long life soya milk, soya desserts etc in larger supermarkets. There's a pretty big Continente half way along the on the south coast. I wasn't at all impressed by the quality of their fruit and veg though - you may be better off with markets. Also, there was a complete lack of asian foods - no indian, thai, chinese ingredients etc (other than soya sauce and rice!). I'm still not sure what 100% vegetal means, so don't assume it's 100% vegan.

There's an English supermarket in Funchal called Goodies with a reasonable amount of "accidently vegan" products (like Blue Dragon sauces), but expect to pay UK prices x3. If you're desperate for a tin of heinz spaggetti then give it a go! Otherwise I'd try to avoid.

Zeffirellis (Ambleside)

2011-05-03T22:57:00.005+01:00

Zeffirellis is one of the largest vegetarian restaurants I've been to and it's pretty much always packed, so they must be doing something right. They've opened another vegetarian restaurant in Ambleside since I was there last it seems, though vegan choice there appears to suck.

Prices are reasonable (very good value if you go for a meal+cinema deal) and food quality generally quite good. I'm not convinced that they've majorly changed their menu since I first visited in '06 though, which could get a bit boring.

The decor is pretty garish - they've obviously spent quite a lot of money on it but for me it's only just on the right side of tasteful. Furniture is of good quality as is their cutlery (Robert Welch), but a design that feels like children's meets steakhouse (very bizarre).

Service is alright and food is mostly Italian (style). None of their pizzas are marked vegan on the menu, but all can be made vegan if you ask them to remove the cheese.

The photos in this review kind of suck - my new 3D camera takes lowsy 2D pictures at the best of times, let alone in low light.

We ordered a couple of starters, one of which was great, the other not so. A mixture of sweet and standard potato wedges with salad and tomato sauce:

was pretty good. Not the best wedges of all time, but above average. Tomato sauce was a bit boring and tasted like it was from a jar (they've a choice of other things but most are non-vegan). The salad was well dressed.

Never have I had focaccia that's tasted so like Tesco value white sliced bread. Both of us agreed that it was terribly underwhelming. Olives were alright.

I had a puy lentil rissole thing, because I remember it being really good in the past:

This time round though it was less so. It was too dry and the dish just really lacked something.

I didn't think their pizza was up to scratch compared to previous visits either, but Cherry loved it and I didn't get to eat much of it!

We shared a dessert of summer pudding and hummous:

Only kidding - it's "cashew cream". It tasted OK and it's nice that they've made an effort to have a vegan cream, but it could have done with being smoother as it was very hummous like in consistency. The summer pudding itself was very good indeed - one of the best I've had.

The bill came to £33 exc drinks. Slightly higher than average, but not painfully so.

It's a shame that they've only one vegan dessert (exc sorbet - groan) and the menu doesn't change much, but if you're in the area it's well worth a visit. If it's raining outside then the cinema deal is totally worth taking advantage of. As the weather was stunningly gorgeous during our visit however it'd have been a crime to have been sitting in the dark watching a film.

The Lakeland Pedlar (Keswick)

2011-05-02T22:57:00.009+01:00

Less of a review, more of an endorsement for a sensibly priced vegetarian cafe I'd totally recommend.

Unfortunately it's far, far away.

Despite having once lived in Scotland, when I first travelled up to Cumbria from The Midlands in '06 it felt like I'd passed the edge of the earth and kept going. I quickly got used to the journey after a few visits however and it's since become one of my favourite parts of the country.

The Lakeland Pedlar is a no frills type cafe in Keswick; a short stroll from Derwent Water and some rather stunning views. I've probably been about 8 times over the years and it's pretty much a given that I'll end up there each time I visit.

Service is fast! Not suspiciously fast, but they've obviously got a pot of chilli on the go etc and plate up to order. Pricing is reasonable and portion sizes decent. It's located underneath a bike shop so probably picks up trade from cyclists as well as vegetarians (there's a large carpark next door for us unfit people).

It seems we arrived at just the right time for a choice of tables for Saturday lunch; people were queuing by the time we left. We ordered their nachos:

which could possibly be improved to the standards of Chesters with the inclusion of sour cream/guacamole/melty cheese, but is pretty decent all the same. We also had a 3 bean chilli wrap, which comes with a variety of salads:

Not being the world's greatest fan of salad, it's always refreshing to see a mixture of different types (pasta/couscous etc) rather than a few leaves.

Their garlic bread (ciabatta) is possibly the best in the UK (better than Terre-a-Terre - cheaper too):

Their chocolate cake IS the best I've tasted from a shop (better than Infinity) and the inclusion of icecream is welcome too (no prizes for guesses of which brand). The icing could be improved with use of this fudge icing, but again I'm picking now.

I generally find it difficult to get excited by flapjack, but I'm informed that it was very good.

Total bill was less than £25.

A welcomed difference from many vegetarian places is that they've generally a choice of desserts. They'd several cakes available when we were there. From memory their crumble isn't so great though (not to my taste).

I'm not used to this overly positive reviewing malarky - I'll write a scathing one about somewhere else soon, I promise.

Demuths (Bath)

2011-04-27T10:40:00.006+01:00

Demuths' existance has been at the back of my mind for a while now. In a minority of vegetarian restaurants that don't seem to cater too well for vegans however; I've not made an effort to check it out before.

That said, when I asked twitter for a list of restaurant suggestions a few weeks ago I realised that it's one of the few "good" vegetarian places I've not been to yet. We were planning to drive down the M5 on Easter Saturday (for a few days in Dorset) anyway, so a detour via Bath made for a welcome break to the journey (as opposed to Welcome Break, which is quite the opposite for vegans!).

Given that we were still in bed in Warwickshire at 10am, it's a miracle we made it there at all. What was meant to be getting on the road at 10.30 somehow warped into 11.30. We weren't the only people who thought of going to Bath that day either: once we hit the outskirts we sat in a 20 minute queue. Parking was a bit of a challenge too, the best onstreet I could find was 2 hours.

We eventually found Demuths at 2pm, fully expecting there to be no tables free. As they don't allow you to book for Saturday lunchtimes and it was over Easter we didn't fancy our chances at all.

First impressions? It's really small. Quite a lot smaller than I imagined, with only about 10 tables in total. It was also half empty!

The weather on Saturday was unseasonably warm and sunny. I've not been to Bath before and the experience was reminiscent of the French summer holidays I had in the 80s. The restaurant too had similar proportions to ones I've visited in France, with small rooms, high ceilings, wood panelling and large sash windows. We negotiated a table by an open window and with a small breeze and bottle of chilled water; bliss was achieved for a few moments at least.

The lunchtime menu seems to consist mainly of the evening menu's starters, re-branded as "light bites". Luckily the majority of these were vegan, compared to the main courses where the only choice was a curry. Given that it was the hottest day of the year so far (that I've not been stuck in work anyway), this really didn't appeal.

We ordered 3 "light bites" and 2 sides, which seemed to be a reasonable amount of food for 2 people:

Roast Red Pepper Bruschetta (vg) £6.95
roasted red pepper & creamy cannellini beans with toasted sourdough bread.

Coconut & Lentil Kebba (vg/gf) £6.95
with date puree, coriander & salad.

Purple Sprouting Tempura (vg) £6.75
with rhubarb ketchup & tamari reduction.

Balsamic Red Onion Bread (vg) £3.95
with garlic & herb oil.

Roasted Potatoes with Rosemary & Garlic (vg/gf) £2.95

Service was friendly and waiting time reasonable. As usual we ordered things we both liked the looks of and shared them out between us:

Being the brocolli hater I am, it was with extreme pleasure to find they'd run out and had substituted it with asparagus instead:

Where as the asparagus tempura from Terre a Terre (review and photo here) was exceptional, this attempt was more in the OK bracket. The batter was heavier than usual and asparagus not yet in season. I'm not sure what the rhubarb ketchup bought to the dish, but it looked pretty overall.

We both agreed that the Kebba was by far the best thing we experienced there. We weren't entirely sure what it was when we ordered it and the best description I can really give is large bhaji meets curry kiev. We ate it far too quickly to take a photo, but the inside was potato based with coconut curry in the centre. I'd certainly order this again and will probably have a go at making it sometime soon.

I wasn't really looking forward to the bruschetta. It didn't look overly appetizing either (I shalln't say what it reminded me of):

It was pleasantly nice however. The beans were really creamy and overall taste good.

The red onion bread appeared to be flatbread with caramelised onions on top. It tasted pretty good. Not outstanding, and there wasn't enough of it (maybe I'm just greedy though? :)

The big bowl of roast potatoes were just that: a big bowl of roast potatoes.

I'd have paid a pound more for them to be crispier and have sea salt, rosemary and cloves of roasted garlic included, to make them a bit more interesting. I think they may have missed a trick here.

In the name of research, we ordered the 2 vegan desserts they currently offer:

Cashew Cream & Coconut Praline (vg/gf/n) £6.75
with toffee almonds & berry compote.

Rich Chocolate Mousse (vg/n) £6.75
on a chocolate sponge with a bitter orange sauce & a coriander & pink peppercorn tuille.

It's really difficult to gauge this one, as it's quite unlike anything I've had before. I was expecting panna cotta, but it was more like coconut ice. It was pleasant but odd - we ate it all but I'm not sure I'd order it again.

I normally groan when I see vegan option of mousse on restaurant menus, but this one was a lot more decent than a pot of tofu tasting cocoa sludge.

The layer of sponge and puree on the side complimented it well and it was overall a good dessert. Whilst the tuille had novelty appeal, I'm not sure it added anything beyond aesthetics.

I've read several reviews that complain the food's overpriced. Our bill was 50% higher than we normally pay for a similarly sized meal at other vegetarian places.

Was it 50% better? Probably yea. It wasn't outstanding like Saf or Terre a Terre, but it's pretty decent food and the overall experience was an enjoyable one. I can see how they came up with their pricing and I think it's reasonable for what you get.

If they increase their choice of vegan options and/or change their menu then I certainly expect that we'll return.

I noticed on Google that there are 2 for 1 vouchers available on mains, so if they have more than 1 vegan main in the future then it'll be pretty good value.

Outdoor Summer Eating

2011-04-19T23:42:00.007+01:00

I love being outdoors, and I love food. It isn't often warm and dry in the UK (at the same time), so I try to make the most of every opportunity I get.

This post is an introductory guide of ideas for anyone planning a vegan picnic/bbq. It'll be useful for me in the future too - my memory's terrible at the best of times.

Picnics

The main reason why my partner and I have National Trust membership is so that we can make use of their grounds for regular picnics. Equally, when I go walking I try to include a picnic on the route (preferably on the top of a hill, with a good view). We even have picnics in our garden in the evening after work (sitting on the grass is sometimes nicer than at the table).

Investing in a set of watertight plastic containers (such as Lock'n'lock) is highly recommended. Thermos now sell freezer boards (as opposed to blocks), which are cheap and fit rucksacks better. Picnic baskets look nice, but aren't overly practical. Always remember to take some bin bags, both for waste and to stop hummous from getting smeared inside your rucksack!

Make:

Sandwiches - left over fajitas can be good too
Corination 'Chicken' - mix 'chicken' pieces in mayo, curry powder and apricot jam (sultanas are optional). It's less gross than it sounds!
Sausage Rolls - cut Linda McCartney sausage rolls into 3 and brush with soy milk before cooking
Pasta/Couscous/Noodle Salads - Jar of sauce, chopped pepper (if feeling healthy), job done
Pizza - cold can be better than hot. Use puff pastry as an alternative to dough if you fancy
Indian Snacks - You can often buy samosas, bhajis and pakoras in packs that require little or no cooking
Cake!! - how could I forget? Biscuits too. Scones + jam + cream are quintessential
Chocolate Mousse - there's a recipe on here somewhere, but it's basically soya whipping cream + melted chocolate + booze. Careful it doesn't melt thou
Vol Au Vents - Jusrol sell ready to bake cases. Fill with left overs :)
Potato Salad - boil new potatoes, chop and stir with mayo, mustard and chopped clives.

Buy 'ready to eat':

Fruit Salads - Though I'm aware that it's possible to make these yourself; I can rarely be bothered.
Desserts - They do exist occassionally - things like jelly and summerpudding are sometimes suitable
Dips - Hummous, salsa, gucamole etc. You can make these too, but they're generally cheap to buy.
Sausages - Redwoods sell a few varieties of ready to eat ones
Pasties - H&B sell ready to eat pasties in various flavours, which are semi edible
Quiche - now sold in H&B. It's alright, but not amazing
Scheese & Crackers - scheese works better than cheezly
Crisps / Nachos - not the world's biggest fan myself, but can be good for dipping
Nibbles - olives, sundried tomatoes, antipasti etc
Nice bread - I love making focaccia, but it doesn't happen often!
Oil & Vinegar - infused oils and balsamic vinegar, for dipping bread into
Interesting Salads - Tesco / Morrisons / Asda tend to be a bit shit when it comes to vegan pre-prepared salads that may actually want to eat. Sainsburys, Waitrose and M&S score much better.

Drinks:

Cold - I normally make up a smoothie, but juice works too. A thermos + ice helps.
Hot - Tea, coffee, hot chocolate - more useful on autumn walks than summer picnics
Booze - I generally end up driving later in the day, so tend not to include this

BBQs

BBQs are great. I use a gas one at home and the disposable charcoal type when visiting non-vegans. I can't really tell the difference in taste between the two, but gas is a lot more convenient (and less wasteful).

There are lots of vegan burgers available that really don't BBQ well at all. Tofu based ones like Beannies do work, but will often split in two and need rescueing half way through cooking! I bought a vegan BBQing book a few years ago which is utter crap - it suggests using a baking tray on the BBQ with all recipes - what's the point?

You can get hickory chips that you throw on the coals to create smoke. It's a bit of a gimmick though and doesn't make a lot of difference. I've heard people say that various brands of liquid smoke are vegan, but I've not been interested enough to pursue it.

There are lots of great marinades available in UK supermarkets. Sainsburys have several that are labelled vegan - I generally use their TTD brown ale stuff on kebabs.

Fake burgers/sausages - Frys works the best (by far). Serve with plenty of relish, mayo and salad in a warm ciabatta roll (Sainsburys sell the best ones)
Kebabs - I usually do mushrooms, peppers, onion, smoked tofu, courgette. If you put a mushroom at either end then it stops the other things coming into direct contact with the grill and hence they're less likely to stick when marinaded
Mushrooms - Large mushrooms can be cooked on their own, either marinaded in source first or just in a little oil, soy sauce and mixed herbs. Press them down a few times during cooking to release excess moisture
Tofu - You can marinade firm tofu and cook directly on the grill if you fancy. It probably will stick though, so don't be surprised if it does!
Potato Waffles - BBQ remarkably well. Plus the leading brand is no longer owned by Unilever! :)

Steamed Cocktails

2011-04-19T23:17:00.005+01:00

I realise that I'm probably missing the point of having an espresso machine.

I'll blog about coffee another time. In the meantime, I've found that various soya milk based cocktails work rather well when steamed.

The above was tonight's:

1 shot Kahlua
1/2 shot Frangelico
So Good (fresh)

Steamed directly in a whisky glass (foamed to 40^oC, then plunged and heated to 60^oC creating microfoam). It could probably be improved by adding some grated chocolate to the top - the foam's a bit bland otherwise.

A while ago I poured a little creme de menthe into shot glasses, then topped with steamed chocolate alpro, topped with froth. Works really well.

I'll keep you updated :)

Bakewell Tart

2011-04-17T19:59:00.005+01:00

I've tried many bakewell tart recipes from the interweb over the years and none have been quite right. Too stodgy, too moist, not almondy enough; just plain nasty.

Commercially available vegan cherry Bakewells exist in the UK, but they're also gluten free, overpriced and come with disgustingly cardboard-like pastry. It's been years since I've had a good tart (no pun intended).

Therefore, I started again from scratch.

I'm not really used to my recipes not working within 1 or 2 attempts, but this one took 7 iterations to get right.

I started with my basic sponge recipe: adding ground almonds and replacing vanilla with almond essence. The result wasn't nearly almondy enough though, and consistancy far too sponge like (funny that?).

By attempt 4 I'd really cut down the amount of flour and increased the almond content. Whilst this gave great flavour; I'd essentially created marzipan - too wet with soggy pastry underneath.

Eventually I came up with a set of ratios that actually work, give good flavour and the right consistancy (moist, but not too moist). It's effectively a sponge, but with the maximum amount of ground almond you can get away with and almond essense to boost the flavour.

Filling Ingredients:

100g Ground Almonds
60g White Sugar
80g Self Raising Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Power
2 tbsp Sunflower Oil
100ml Water
3 tsp Almond Essense

Other:

Shortcrust Pastry
Fondant Icing
Half a Glace Cherry
Raspberry Jam

Start by making a pastry case. I use blocks of frozen Jusrol shortcrust; they're cheap, convenient, in every UK supermarket and certified vegan. Blocks are better than pre-rolled as they're cheaper and you can roll the pastry a bit thicker.

If you've too much time on your hands and want to make pastry from scratch; I assume that adding some ground almonds to the dough will improve the flavour.

Roll out the pastry, prick and bake in a greased pie dish for 25 mins at 200^oC (180^oC fan).

Allow to cool slightly, then carefully remove and place on a baking tray. Spread raspberry jam over the pastry (warming slightly if required); thicker than you would on toast but not insanely so.

Mix the dry filling ingredients together, then add the wet. It should come together in a nice semi-stiff batter that tastes almondy. Add a spoon more flour/water if required to get the consistancy right.

Add to the pastry case (ensuring that all jam is covered and the top is smooth), then bake for a further 25-30 mins at the same temperature as before.

It's done when the top starts to go golden and an inserted cocktail stick comes out clean. The pastry should be nicely golden, but not burnt.

Give the pastry a trim with a sharp knife, knock the surface of the cake slightly to give a smooth top, then allow to cool.

When cool, roll out fondant icing to about 5mm (using icing sugar to stop it sticking to the pin / board). Tescos own brand fondant was vegan when last checked/purchased (a few months ago). Again, you can make your own fondant if you've too much time on your hands.

Carefully place the fondant sheet over the top of the cooled tart, then use a sharp knife to cut it in place. You should cut as close to the edge of the pastry as you can (rough cutting a cm larger first will help). Push any rouge fondant up against the edge once complete with a blunt knife.

Place a single glace cherry half in the centre and push down. Keep extras on standby incase there's a fight over who gets the cherry.

You can make a non iced version by increasing the filling ingredients to 100g sugar, 150g almonds, 125g flour, 1/2 tsp baking power, 3tsp essense, 150ml water and 50ml water, then sprinkling with sliced almonds before baking (push them down slightly first). This is more traditional, but not as nice IMHO.

The whole thing will serve 8-10 people and it should be easy to adapt for individual sized tarts.

Mustard Tofu & Chive Mash

2011-04-04T23:05:00.000+01:00

I felt bad for not posting any recipes, and for eating far too much junk food. If you look really close you'll even see green bits!

This is a really simple recipe with just a few ingredients. It's basically a honey mustard sauce with agarve in place of honey. It does the trick and gives a similar overall taste.

Pasta works equally well; I just fancied mash because I've not had it in a while.

Ingredients:

Firm Smoked Tofu
1 Red Onion
1 Clove Garlic
4tbsp Wholegrain Mustard
150ml Single Soya Cream
2tsp Agarve Nectar

Slice onion, mince garlic and cube tofu. I use a block of Taifun Smoked with Almonds and Sesame Seeds (Waitrose / independant health food stores).

Fry over a medium heat till the onions soften and start to caramelise. Remove from the heat, add the mustard (4 level tbsp) and stir so that everything's coated. Pour in the cream and put back on the heat.

Quite a few wholegrain mustards come with white wine as an ingredient, so its worth looking for one labelled vegan.

When the cream's been heated, add the agarve 1 tsp at a time. Taste until the balance suits your palate. Adding too much will make it oversweet and ruin the other flavours - 2 tsp is just right for me.

Allow to simmer and reduce until you've a sticky, slightly sweet sauce / coating on the tofu and onion.

Mash Ingredients:

Potatoes
Single Soya Cream
Margerine
Salt
Chives

I didn't forget to include quantities - I just never measure them and adjust each time to taste. As a general rule: use 2 medium sized potatoes per portion.

Peel and chop, boil until done and drain. Pass once through a ricer, stir then add the other ingredients until it tastes good.

Pass through the ricer again if you can be arsed, the stir in a generous amount of chopped chives.

If you've spent too much time faffing about (taking pictures doesn't help) then transfer back to the pan and heat over a low flame.

Serve immediately.

The Warehouse (Birmingham)

2011-04-03T19:08:00.006+01:00

So; I've been to The Warehouse approximately a million times since 2006. Despite having been countless times since I started the blog; I don't think I've actually dedicated a post to it.

As I seem to have become a lazy blogger who posts restaurant reviews rather than actually creating new recipes; having been again last night I thought it was about time.

The Warehouse is a vegetarian "somewhere between posh cafe and low end restaurant" in the centre of Birmingham. Their vegan desserts are usually a little disappointing, but starters and mains very good. It's not overly expensive - 2 people can eat 3 courses each for around £35.

It's very close to The Bullring, in a fairly undeveloped former industrial area (Digbeth). On-road parking is free on Sundays and if you're willing to walk 5 minutes; there's spaces further away from the centre that are always free.

There's an all vegan shop downstairs (One Earth), which is alright but doesn't take cards (and I rarely carry cash). In the evenings you have to ring the doorbell to be let in, as the building itself is also shared with Friends of the Earth.

The decor's cheap and cheerful, with a changing selection of art work for sale displayed on the walls - none of which so far I've been tempted to buy. Service is very good and waiting times generally reasonable (though we did wait an hour recently when we went Saturday lunchtime).

The vegan choice is probably more than 50%. Sometimes though the vegan option looks rather pathetic compared to the vegetarian version (almost always the case with their desserts). There's no particular focus on one cuisine - there's always a curry, a few mexican dishes and a random selection of other things. They've "light bites" (burgers, sandwiches, tortilla wraps etc) as well as full main courses.

The closest place I've found on my travels similar to The Warehouse is The Whale Tale cafe in Lancaster (similar price, choice, quality, building etc).

Anyway; I'm aware that you probably don't want to read my waffle and would rather look at some photos, so here's what we had last night....

Starter was a selection of pates, served with an ungenerous amount of tortilla:

The green and black pates appeared to be pretty good green/black olive based concoctions. The orange one was seriously gorgeous - we assumed it'd be pumpkin/butternut squash, but seemed to be more carrot and sesame seed. We're not entirely sure what it was, but it was delicious all the same. I wish restaurants wouldn't scrimp on the amount of bread served with such dishes - you end up having to eat half the pate off your knife.

I've not had a curry at The Warehouse before, but I'm glad I've tried now. I'm a bit of a skeptic when it comes to giant dishes with tiny centres, but the overall portion size was OK.

I'm not sure what's going on with the crispy noodles, and the rice tasted like it'd been cooked a few days ago, but the flavour of the curry itself (thai red) was very good indeed.

Sarah had a "light bite" of tortillas filled with refried beans and melty vegan cheese, with wedges. It's not really my cup of tea, but good value for money at £6. We decided not to trust the creamy accompanyment.

I mentioned that the desserts are generally pretty disappointing, and last night's was no exception. For the record - I make far better sundaes than this. It was alright, but not worth £4.95 by any means. The menu made it sound a lot better than it was!

The best dessert they do is carrot cake, but you can buy it downstairs to takeaway for half the price.

I mentioned that I've been loads of times before, and I reckon I'll be be going many times again. It's by far the best place of its genre in the Midlands, and is consistantly good. I've taken various omnis to it in the past and am more confident than I am with some places that they'll produce good food.

Terrace Arts Cafe (Seaton)

2011-04-02T11:06:00.003+01:00

The Terrace Arts Cafe in Seaton serves very possibly the best vegan food on the south coast (outside Brighton). It's no Saf or Terre a Terre, but at less than half their price it's well above average.

The menu choice immense; the specials board alone has more choice than most other places. No eggs are used at all - everything is vegetarian and the majority vegan (or vegan option).

Having been 6 times in the past couple of years I've held off blogging about it.

Whilst the food has been consistantly good, there was until our last visit a fairly fundamental problem. Now that this appears to have been addressed; I'm happy to recommend it to others.

I don't buy into the whole concept that orders must arrive within 15 minutes, and don't mind waiting half an hour for good food. At the Arts Cafe however the wait was more a "enough time to go to the supermarket and buy the ingredients before cooking" wait. It happened every time we went - the longest being over 2 hours from ordering.

Ideally restaurants do 90% of the prep before they open; finishing off dishes when they're ordered. Here however each seemed to be made from scratch. As most were complex and had lots going on; if 4 people ordered different things there'd simply be too much work for one person to do.

Last time though we were pleased to see the owner out of the kitchen in incharge of front of house. The choice is still huge, but waiting times down to normal.

I can't remember exactly what we had, but I took a few snaps as usual of our shared starter and one of the mains:

The portion sizes are pretty generous and all food is very fresh. Flavours are good in most dishes and many come with lovely creamy sauces. I've had their burger a couple of times but probably wouldn't have again (the second time I forgot that I'd had it before!).

I've not been so impressed by their desserts - something described as rocky road was not at all to my taste. We did get a pretty decent sticky toffee pudding last time however:

I'm really pleased to see that they've sorted the waiting issue now and will certainly return when next down that way (normally a couple of times a year). It's probably in my top 10 favourite places in the UK.

Jyoti's (Birmingham)

2011-03-13T11:36:00.008Z

I know people who rave about this place, but after a very mediocre curry there 5 years ago I didn't rush back. The dhal contained approximately 2 lentils and the poppadoms made Sharwoods look good. I went a couple of years ago on my birthday and had a pretty similar experience.

Urban legend has it that Jamie Oliver once visited and loved the experience so much that he returned and allowed himself to be photo'd several times with the owners. Excellent PR though this is, there's just something a bit unnerving about having pictures of Jamie Oliver staring at you on their homepage, from the menu and on the wall, watching you eat.

Jyoti's is an Indian restaurant and "sweet centre" on Stratford Road. The staff are friendly, 80% of the menu is vegan (non-vegan things are marked for once) and the prices are fantastic.

For the uninitiated; sweet centre basically means deli. As usual almost all the sweet things contain dairy, but most of the savoury items are vegan. The takeout prices are very good - a samosa is just 40p.

Having been a few times I think I've figured it out now. Their sweet centre items (which are served as starters / sides in the restaurant) are excellent. In fact, I'll go as far as saying that their samosas are the best I've ever tasted.

The filling seems to be mashed potato based rather than chunks of veg, but the flavour is simply amazing. The pastry's crispy, they're ever so slightly sweet and have just the right amount of heat.

It's their currys that just don't inspire me. For reasons unknown their dosas are all non-vegan - I'd be happy with a nice masala dosa instead of curry.

With this in mind I think I'd go back - either for takeout or a banquet of sides.

Whilst I'm on the subject of things they do right, their pooris are excellent. The eat in price is 45p each, so I had 5 :) Masala poori are twice the price though and taste almost identical.

We had a few starters, including Batetawada (bhajis in pastry), which were really tasty too (the filling was quite similar to samosa):

We were given a couple of pani puri to try, which I wasn't overly taken by (hollow pastry balls stuffed with random stuff):

I ordered a "Puri and Aloo Curry", as it comes with 4 poori and seemed good value for money. The curry itself though was fairly boring and I probably wouldn't have it again. We also had a "Makai and Kaju", which was essentially a big bowl of sweet corn in some sauce with a few cashew nuts. It had more flavour than the Aloo, but again I don't think I'd order it in the future. The rice portions are quite generous, so we shared one along with poori.

I'm generally not that taken by Indian sweets, but we had a couple of Ladu to take away, that we ate in the car on the way home.

They were actually pretty good. You can just about eat a whole one without dying of sugar overdose and I'd definitely have them again.

As Jyoti's is not that far from my girlfriend's place; I need to find a way of co-ercing her into bringing takeout to my house when she comes. Their sweet centre is in a whole different league to their curry and I'd happily become a regular customer.

Crêpe Suzette

2011-03-09T21:20:00.009Z

Pancakes in boozy orange juice.

Crêpe Suzette is really easy to make - I used to make it for breakfast when we spent our summers in France in the 80s/90s. If you substitute butter for marg and ensure you use vegan alcohol; pretty much any Crêpe Suzette recipe will work.

In fact, you don't really need a recipe at all. Just melt some margarine in a pan and add orange juice/peel, lemon juice/peel, sugar and Cointreau to taste. Simmer down slightly, add pancakes and warm through. If flambéing's your thing then pour a ladle of flaming cointreau or brandy over at the end - it's not strictly needed though. You can leave out the booze altogether if you like.

Here's the quantities I used last night:

6 Pancakes
Knob of Margarine
1 Orange (zest only)
1 Lemon (zest + juice)
200ml Orange Juice
100g Castor Sugar
75ml Cointreau + extra for flambéing

I blogged my pancake recipe a year ago (clicky click) which worked perfectly. I mixed half of the soya milk with the flour first, then whisked in the rest of the milk. It looked a little thin at first but seemed to do the job and came out lump free.

Zest the orange and the lemon, then juice the lemon. Add to the orange juice along with the sugar and cointreau.

Heat the margarine in a pan, then add the liquid. Simmer for 5 minutes so that it reduces slightly and becomes more syrupy. Taste and add more sugar / booze as needed.

You may choose to remove the zest at this point - whilst it looks nice it doesn't taste so great. Add the pancakes one by one, sliding under the sauce then folding into quarters. Warm through for a couple of minutes.

If you feel the need to set fire to things; either seek professional help or heat a ladle of cointreau, light and add to the pan (or pour the Crêpe Suzette once served).

You can serve with icecream if you like, but it tastes perfectly fine on its own. I can thoroughly recommend eating it immediately whilst the pancakes are still delicate. I discovered to my dismay last night that if you pounce around with a camera for 20 minutes they can become rather chewy! :O

Herbies (Exeter)

2011-03-06T11:31:00.007Z

Don't let the dodgy decor put you off - Herbies is by far the best place to eat in Exeter.

It's dimly lit, with more brown than you can shake a stick at. I think the last time I went they'd changed the color of a few of the walls, but it's a long way away from light and airy. There's a metal (heating?) pipe that runs around the perimeter, that you always seem to get your chair leg caught around. There's a definite slant in certain places too.

Decor aside: it's in the city centre, has an extremely well priced menu with plenty of vegan choice and produces consistantly good quality food. It's all veg, gets pretty busy at times and I always end up in there when visiting Exeter (normally a couple of times a year).

It sells the world's best (that I've tasted so far) vegan brownie. There's nothing more annoying than the scores of crap recipes online, from people who think undercooked equals gooey. Herbies use a method for making theirs which I've never heard before, that lets them get gooey on the inside whilst still perfectly cooked. They kindly donated me the recipe, but I haven't permission to post online. No photo either I'm affraid - I never get that far :)

Their burgers appear home made and are pretty decent:

certainly above average. You'll notice the no-expense-spared Ikea glasses, but at these prices I honestly don't care.

The nachos are really good, and big enough to share. In general the portion sizes are very generous, and they make up a lot of things fresh that others buy in, such as vegan mayo.

I'm normally too stuffed for dessert and get brownie to takeaway, but managed a sticky toffee pudding last time I was there. It was really good - up to my own standards :)

I can't recommend Herbies enough. For the price the food is excellent and there's nothing else in Exeter that comes close. If when I next visit I find they've sorted the decor then it'll be even better :)

Cafe Soya (Birmingham)

2011-03-03T12:17:00.010Z

People have been mentioning this place for years, but when I phoned up in 2005 the staff didn't fill me with any confidence at all that they actually do cater for vegans. I've therefore since been giving it a good ignoring.

Eventually I visited it a few months back; my girlfriend had been recently and said it was OK.

Unfortunately it seems that you really do have to get lucky to find a member of staff there who knows what veganism means; whilst she'd gotten lucky, on our trip I'm not convinced we found one.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that with a name like Cafe Soya that it must be a veg restaurant. It's not, in the slightest. They do have a separate vegetarian menu, but nothing is marked and no one who was working there the evening we went seemed to have a clue what was vegan and what wasn't.

When we'd eventually communicated as best we could, they took our order. Spring rolls and mock duck for starter, sweet and sour tofu, steamed rice and another tofu dish for main:

The spring rolls were meh. There were OK, but nothing special.

The mock duck + pancakes was better. Not up to veggie world standards, but pretty good - about what I could do out of a tin. If I return I'd order this again.

The sweet and sour was pretty boring. Decent lumps of fried tofu, but otherwise not particularly memorable (if I hadn't taken a photo I'd probably have forgotten about it!)

I can't remember what the other dish was (I'm good at this restaurant reviewing, aren't I?). I seem to remember it tasting OK however, if that helps!

If I'd have eaten there 10 years ago I expect that I'd have been pretty impressed. Since then however I've been both spoilt by places like Veggie World, and learnt how to cook my favourite dishes at home. As such, considering the food was rather mediocre; I wasn't overly taken by my trip to Cafe Soya and shalln't be rushing back.

Manic Organic (Birmingham)

2011-03-03T11:52:00.013Z

Having lived in the region for 7 years; I've only heard this place mentioned once before. It's odd for a vegetarian cafe to get so little attention amongst the vegan community (completely obsessed with food).

It only came to my attention again because we've eaten at the Warehouse far too many times recently and Jyotis is currently closed for a holiday. As the UK's second largest city; Birmingham really doesn't score well on the number of places to eat at the moment.

We checked it out last Saturday and as usual I snuck my camera along. The place is easy to find and has free parking at the Asda next door.

The first thing you notice about this place is that it's definitely a cafe. Whilst the Warehouse claims to be a cafe too, it resembles more of a low budget restaurant than a cafe. Here you pay before getting your food and collect your own cutlery.

The second thing; it was packed. They definitely have a good customer base.

It's not expensive, but it's not super cheap either. The menu is very cheese/egg orientated and no items are marked vegan. The front of house staff don't seem to know what is vegan either, so every query requires a separate trip to the kitchen - a minor annoyance and not overly impressive.

We didn't have long so just ordered mains. I had a burger (with mushrooms) and Sarah a "samosa".

They've a sign behind the counter that proudly proclaims their choice not to serve deep fried food. As I'm fairly sure the crisps the burger comes with are deep fried, I can't help but feel that this policy is a little confused. If anything's going to be deep fried I'd rather it were some proper chips or wedges.</grumpy old man>

The burger itself looked home-made (I've not seen any quite like it before), but was really bland and seriously lacked flavour.

The "samosa" was quite unlike any I've ever seen before:

It was basically a large triangular burrito (I guess they couldn't use samosa pastry as that would need to be fried). In contrast to the burger however it was packed with flavour and actually pretty nice.

Their juice appears to be freshly squeezed, and my smoothie included a label from a piece of fruit (which on balance is probably more reassuring than alarming).

In short: if it was located at the end of my road I'd probably pop in quite regularly. As it's not; I can't say for sure that I'll return.

Shivalli (Leicester)

2011-03-02T17:26:00.005Z

Shivalli in Leicester is one of the UK's better vegetarian South Indian restaurants.

In a previous life it was known as Halli, but that particular restaurant changed hands a few years ago and started serving meat. Luckily Shivalli has since opened a short walk away and seems to have pretty much the same menu / members of staff.

On Sundays they've a sensibly priced all you can eat buffet, however when we took advantage of it last year I wasn't overly impressed by the quality of things on offer. Unlimited poori yes, but too much gloop and not enough ingredients (as is often the case with all you can eat).

As I'd once had the best dosa of my life at Halli, we ate from the menu when we returned to Shivalli a couple of weeks ago.

I'm always a little wary when menus on websites don't include prices, however in Shivalli's case everything is cheaper than you expect it to be. Two people can get pretty full for under £20. I'd definitely recommend avoiding the buffet in future and paying a little extra for better ingredients.

They don't mark what's vegan and what's not on their menu, which is a tad annoying. The staff are clueful though and pretty much anything that sounds vegan either is or can be made so.

Demonstrating my lack of knowledge about Indian food; for starter I ordered a Bhel Poori. I absolutely love standard poori, so I couldn't possibly go wrong, right?

Sadly Bhel Poori appears to be a little different. After I'd gotten over my initial disappointment I was pleased to find that all was not lost. Though it looks a lot like a big boring dish of bombay mix, it's soft, sticky and flavourful. I'd certainly order it again, but with some real poori on the side!

We also got a Kajoo Padoka (cashew nuts in batter), which comes in a very generous portion:

I probably wouldn't get this dish again - it's OK, but I'd rather just eat a bowl of salted cashews. They're a little dry and definitely need to be eaten with the condiments.

The Onion Masala Rava Dosa I ordered for mains was up to previous standards; far nicer than those I've had at places like Sagar:

We ordered a "Mix" Uttappam too, then swapped our plates half way through (classy I know):

On its own I found this dish really bland. It's like a giant omelette with no taste. If you carefully ration the condiments however it really comes to life and tastes fantastic.

I like Shivalli and will certainly return. I prefer it to the other veg Indian restaurant in the centre (Mirch Masala) and now I know you can find free parking nearby on Sundays, there's no excuse not to.

Gone.....forever?

2011-02-01T23:40:00.004Z

Ah, blogging. I remember that. I even think I used to make posts every now and then.

It's been a while, hasn't it? Between November 09 and November 10 I made a total of 85 posts - roughly one every 4 days.

Then, all was silent.

What changed?

A few months back I did some thinking - there'd been something on my mind for a while. Ashamed though I am to admit it, it took me a whole 11 years of veganism to finally realise - I've been living a lie.

It would seem that veganism just isn't for me after all.

Since then I've never felt better, being able to binge on McDonalds and KFC, totally guilt free. There just really isn't enough diversity of flavour and nutrition in vegan food. It's so limiting and bad for your health.

Everyone's welcome to make their own choices, but those who choose veganism are just ill-informed, unintelligent wasters. Don't make the mistake I did - no one will think less of you if eat that big piece of steak you've been longing for.

No, not really :p

Life is good. Still happily vegan - I've just been keeping busy recently with many of the other things that I enjoy.

I don't do boredom - I have way more hobbies and interests than time to devote to them. Being at uni (4 year of holiday camp) was OK, but since I've been working I've just had to focus on a few at a time. It just so happens that it's been blogging's turn to take the back seat in the past couple of months.

There's lots of good stuff happening in my life at the moment and things are moving forward in an ever positive direction.

I've gotten back into renovation work and have built the dedicated home cinema I've been day dreaming about for years. I'm not the world's biggest movie buff, but it's more than awesome to have a 120" screen at your own place. I got a 3D HD projector and built the screen for it myself, using material direct from the cinema industry's largest supplier. Thanks to various deals on ebay and forums, I picked up about £900 worth of Mission speakers for £250. It's all coming together nicely and whilst a load more work to do, it looks pretty damn sweet so far. We christened it with its first movie a couple of weekends ago and I'm looking forward to getting some friends round and a console hooked up.

I love Christmas, but this year's was sadly a write-off. I took the longest holiday from work in 6 years (16 days!), then promptly caught flu and didn't recover until it was time to go back! (sod's law, huh?). Christmas dinner is normally a big calorie fest, but I managed a mere mouthful before feeling sick.

In the hours before I got ill though it snowed, a lot. I braved the roads and bought a sledge (they only had pink ones left, but I don't mind). We had one good day at least, which we'll just assume was xmas day:

I'm not really a winter person, but this one's going OK. I'm still totally looking forward to the summer - hammocks, camping, paddling, picnics, exploring the countryside - it's all good. It's winter though right now and I actually don't mind.

There's also my relationship with food to factor into the non-blogging equation. I like food. A lot. Over the past few months however my taste buds have been changing and I've been craving sweet food less and less. Having once been obsessed with cake, I could now quite happily go without for a month or two. I drank some ale this evening and it didn't taste horrible (granted, it didn't taste good either). There's a chance I may even start liking vegetables next......

Anyway, ramble over. I still like food and my photography totally needs the practice. I expect that I probably will post on this blog again at some point in the not so distant future.

If I don't, then I thank you all for reading and suggest that you come find me on twitter instead. Actually, do that anyway :)

Beer Breaded Garlic Mushrooms

2010-11-15T08:01:00.003Z

I've been loosing weight recently. As I've not been putting much effort into healthy eating or been to the gym, this can at least in part be attributed to the deep fat fryer remaining in the cupboard for the past few months.

I created a recipe for Mint Double Chocolate Torte a couple of weeks back, but have been to scared to actually make it. Whilst I'm quite convinced that it'd be lovely, it'd also be rich and loaded with calories. I got as far as making the base for it this time last week, then chickened out.

This is probably a step forward in my life; I've been wanting to find a healthy diet that I enjoy without feeling like I'm constantly denying myself tasty food. I've tried 'dieting' in the past and whilst it gives short term results, it's an unpleasant experience and doesn't fix the longer term problem - wanting to eat foods containing more calories than I know I'll burn.

It's not all doom and gloom though - I still hate most vegetables and had a most enjoyable, gluttonous meal on Saturday night. Whilst I'm considering trying some more raw recipes this week, last night I bowed to Twitter pressure to deep fry and had a go at making breaded mushrooms. I'd not had any in years - all I've found recently have contained egg.

I've not breaded anything before, but it was surprisingly easy - the tester one came out perfectly. I guess that most people use egg to help the breadcrumbs stick, but this is easily substituted for batter (and gives me an excuse to sneak some booze into the meal).

Ingredients (serves 3-4):

150g Baby Button Mushrooms
Beer Batter
1 tsp Garlic Granules
4 Slices Fresh White Bread

I started by making up a bowl of beer batter, to which I added a tsp of Garlic Granules. I think on reflection that I could have added 2 tsp.

I lightly toasted the bread, then made into fine crumbs using my kitchenaid blender on slowest speed (I expect a food processor would also work).

The mushrooms I washed and cut the hard stalks off, then heated the oil to 175^oC.

Toss each of the undried mushrooms in a bowl of flour, then transfer to the batter. Ensure they're entirely coated, then roll in breadcrumbs. If you do it with a reasonable amount of speed then you shouldn't have issues coating all sides.

Immediately after rolling; drop each into the hot oil using a spoon just above the surface. You'll probably want to try one first, then do the rest in a couple of batches.

Try to add all mushrooms in each batch to the oil within a couple of minutes of each other, then fry for 5 minutes. Turn them a couple of minutes into cooking, to ensure they crisp evenly.

Drain off as much oil as possible and transfer to a bowl with kitchen tissue. Set aside until required, then fry again for 1 minute to re-heat. Serve with garlic mayonnaise :)

Mint Chocolate Shots

2010-11-10T00:27:00.005Z

I've been a bad, bad Vegan MoBo blogger.

Considering I'm the only one though however and that I never stated I'd post every single day, I think it's allowed.

The reason I've not blogged recently is simple: I've been lazy. That and that the post I planned to do went wrong, horribly wrong.

A few weeks ago I made up a gorgeous shot using creme de menthe, cream, chocolate syrup, irish whisky and kahlua. Cleverly I snapped a picture on my iPhone for twitter and wrote down the ingredients, but not the measurements.

When I came to recreate it on Sunday I found that I just couldn't get the quantities right, and my attempts really didn't taste good at all - too alcoholic, too creamy, too sweet etc. I fundamentally don't agree with blogging / posting a recipe which really doesn't work - there are way too many crap recipes on the internet already.

It's 12.43am and I should really be in bed, but procrastination has allowed me to revisit the concept and I'm pleased to announce that this time it worked. Therefore I'm writing it down this time!

Ingredients (serves 2):

1 shot Irish Whisky
2 shots Fresh Soya Cream
1/2 shot Chocolate Syrup
1/2 shot Creme de Menthe
1/2 shot Kahlua
Squirty Cream
Grated Chocolate (optional)

Add all ingredients bar the last 2 to a cocktail shaker with ice, and shake till your hands go numb from the cold. Pour into glasses and top with squirty cream. Top with grated chocolate if so inclined.

Drink in 2-3 gulps, attempting to drink half the cream with each, mixing in your mouth before swallowing.

It's kind of like a mint version of the baileys recipe I posted last November (my blog is almost a year old!) and kind of not. I know that Baileys now sell a mint version, but it came out after I turned vegan so I've never tried it and can't comment on simularity.

Damson / Sloe Gin

2010-11-06T08:39:00.003Z

Controversial I know, but I don't actually like Sloe Gin that much, or Damson Gin for that matter. I've not found any really great cocktails that use it and I don't think it's that great on its own.

I did enjoy making it though, so as there's a remote chance that my taste buds aren't superior to everyone else's; I'm dedicating this VeganMoBo post to it.

I made Sloe Gin in 2006, then Damson Gin in 2007. I added the used damsons when I'd finished to a kilner jar with brandy and sugar, then left on a shelf and completely forgot of its existence. I discovered it in summer 2010 and was delighted to find that it's actually pretty good. I'd be tempted to use brandy instead of gin for the first batch if I ever make it again.

Sloes grow in the wild in the UK are are relatively easy to find. Just make sure you look up what they look like in advance though and don't accidentally make deadly nightshade gin. Damsons are harder to find - though sometimes in shops its easier to find someone with a tree.

The recipe for both is essentially the same - wash and prick fruit, place in a kilner jar, add a few tablespoons of white sugar then cover with gin. Close the jar, and shake regularly for the first couple of weeks, then every now and then after. Traditionally you should wait until after the first frost before picking sloes - I'm not aware of any rules for damsons.

The first time I made it I meticulously measured out the ingredients, but in reality it doesn't really matter (and variety is good).

If you make it around now then it should be done in time for Christmas. You can use the fruit again (as I did with brandy) or attempt to eat it. Cooking with it sounds like a good idea, but all the alcohol boils off. I made chocolate with the sloes, but in reality it wasn't that good.

Mushroom Stroganoff

2010-11-05T07:44:00.001Z

I've been making this for years, but last night's was the best tasting so far.
I owe this in part to the half bottle of brandy I added whilst trying to take flambé pictures ;)

Continuing with the Vegan MoBo theme and in an attempt to prove that I eat food in between drinks:

Ingredients (Serves 2):

2 handfuls Fresh Mushrooms
1 handful Dried Mushrooms
1 Onion
1 clove Garlic
Smoked Tofu
100ml Brandy
1 pint Mushroom Stock
Fresh Soya Cream

Slice fresh mushrooms and fry in a little oil with cubed tofu, minced garlic and diced onion. You can use any type of mushroom you want - a combination can be good. Either red or white onion is fine. I use Taifun Smoked Tofu with Almonds and Sesame Seeds - it's much nicer than unflavoured stuff and is firm enough to fry with.

Make up the stock and reconstitute dried mushrooms in it. Again you can use any - last night I used shiitake and porcini. Once they've softened up; remove from the stock and add to the pan.

Cook until onion is soft and the mushroom has released excess moisture. When the pan is hot and reasonably dry, add the brandy and light (standing back so you don't loose your eyebrows in the process). If you add it when the pan isn't hot enough or when the mushrooms are still releasing moisture then you'll have difficulty lighting.

You can add as much brandy as you like, but 100ml should be enough. It also works with sherry and I guess other booze too (but probably not kahlua).

Pour in the stock, bring to the boil and allow to simmer until most of the liquid has been absorbed / boiled off. Add cream to taste, stir through and heat.

Season with salt/pepper and serve with tagliatelle or linguine. Waitrose in the UK sell fresh varieties of each.

Tomorrow I'll return to booze only, I promise.

Vegan MoFo Survey

2010-11-04T17:00:00.003Z

Hooray for non posts.

It's not uncommon during MoFo for bloggers to post questionnaires; in the hope that lazy participants with nothing better to post about will fill them out and provide a reciprocal link in return.

Whilst I naturally abhor such practice; considering how horribly wrong last night's cocktail experiments went I figure that it's an excellent way to pad things out a bit.

Therefore, this one is thanks to I Eat Trees:

What is one food you thought you’d miss when you went vegan, but don’t?
Meat

What is a food or dish you wouldn’t touch as a child, but enjoy now?
Anything involving mushrooms

What vegan dish or food you feel like you should like, but don’t?
Anything involving most vegetables

What beverage do you consume the most of on any given day?
Water

What dish are you famous for making or bringing to gatherings?
Cake

Do you have any self-imposed food rules (like no food touching on the plate or no nuts in sweets)?
No.

What’s one food or dish you tend to eat too much of when you have it in your home?
Pizza - sometimes several times a week.

What ingredient or food do you prefer to make yourself despite it being widely available prepackaged?
Pesto. It's piss easy to make and always tastes better fresh.

What ingredient or food is worth spending the extra money to get the good stuff?
Balsamic Vinegar (last bottle was ~£15)

Are you much of a snacker? What are your favorite snacks?
Absolutely: cake, biscuits, chocolates, dried fruit

What are your favorite vegan pizza toppings?
Sundried tomato paste, pepper antipasti, pesto, artichoke, fake cheese

What is your favorite vegetable? Fruit?
Potato, Melon

What is the best salad dressing?
None.

What is your favorite thing to put on toasted bread?
Marg.

What kind of soup do you most often turn to on a chilly day or when you aren’t feeling your best?
Pizza. Honestly, why would anyone turn to soup?

What is your favorite cupcake flavor? Frosting flavor?
Lemon.

What is your favorite kind of cookie?
White chocolate & macadamia

What is your most-loved weeknight meal?
Pizza

What is one dish or food you enjoy, but can’t get anyone else in your household to eat?
Living alone has its benefits :)

How long, in total, do you spend in the kitchen on an average day?
About 30 minutes

DeKuyper Melon

2010-11-03T09:31:00.005Z

....and a green drink in a fancy bottle that tastes like cough medicine, called Midori.

I'd had a passing interest in trying Midori for a while now. I emailed them 3 times of the course of several years, but heard nothing back.

After finding a reliable contact at DeKuyper recently for asking about veganness of their products I enquired (mostly out of boredom) about their melon liqueur. It's in most UK supermarkets and I had no problem picking up a bottle (~£10) when I'd heard back.

The best way I can describe DeKuyper Melon is as a liquid version of melon flavoured sweets. It's sweet and whilst artificial tasting, really quite pleasant.

A few days later, @M_tohappyvegans mailed Midori and got an instant response - maybe they just don't like me? We'd just polished off our first bottle of Dekuyper, so I bought a bottle of each to run a comparison.

Other than the colour, I struggled to find one. DeKuyper is gorgeous, Midori tastes like children's cough medicine.

It's a shame - I really wanted to like Midori. Other than its funky bottle however it really has nothing going for it.

The good news is: all Midori cocktail recipes I've tried taste far better with DeKuyper. We spent a couple of evenings trying out 10-15 recipes a couple of months back and there's one that I've made time and time again since. It's actually, possibly, now in my top 5 favourite cocktails.

DeKuyper Splice (formally Midori Splice!)

Ingredients:

2 shots DeKuyper Melon liqueur
2 shots Malibu
Pineapple Juice
1 shot fresh soya cream -or- coconut cream
Ice

Fill a highball glass with ice and pour the melon liqueur over.

Add the malibu, then top with pineapple juice until the glass is almost full. Don't mix.

Float the cream on top, so that it covers the whole surface. Fresh soya cream is best (Alpro), but coconut uht cream will be nicer than long life soya cream if none is available.

The result should be greenest at the bottom and drunk through the cream.

For a drink containing 4 shots of 24% strength booze it really doesn't taste alcoholic at all, and slips down with ease.

Banana Vodka

2010-11-02T23:24:00.001Z

Mmmmmmmmmm.

So; I realise this is (arguably) the most disgusting looking thing I've posted thus far, but I assure you that it tastes better than it looks...

Banana vodka was an experiment I conducted a few weeks ago (before going to Dubai), which I then bottled and left to fester in the back of the fridge. I've not really heard of people making it before or seen recipes calling for it, but I like bananas and had some that needed using.

Having almost completely forgotten of its existence, I was quite gobsmacked when I finally tested it last night and found how good it is.

The good news is, it's easy to make. Like most fruit infused vodkas it contains only fruit, sugar and vodka. Being a soft fruit it only needs to infuse for 24-48 hours.

The bad news is, I can't remember the quantities I used. I seem to remember it being something to do with 25g and 75g, and thinking I didn't need to write it down because I'd definitely remember.

I'm pretty sure though that I mashed one ripe banana (75g?), covered it with vodka in an airtight jar, then added white sugar to taste (25g?). Give it a really big shake, then again every time you walk in the kitchen. After 48 hours it should look as disgusting as that which is pictured above, at which point it's time to strain.

This is a 2 stage process. The first involves using a sieve to remove the large particles (see above), then the second using cloth to remove the pith. I used strong kitchen tissue instead of cloth for mine, which was a pain in the ass but did eventually work.

Decant into a clean bottle and refrigerate until use.

In the name of Vegan Mobo (it's a hard life); I created a cocktail using it last night.

With the exception of banoffee, the main use of banana in my life is for making milkshakes. As it also goes well with chocolate, I wanted to make a creamy shot with cream and chocolate syrup.

Having decided to make a layered shot, I quickly (only 4 drinks) found that cream was both too sickly and had a density too similar to the vodka to layer properly. Therefore I switched to vanilla soy milk, which works so much better.

It's with great pleasure that I give you my "Banana Split".

Squirt some chocolate syrup into the bottom of a shot glass, then pour banana vodka into the glass via the back of a teaspoon. Allow to sit for a moment (whilst it completely separates), then very carefully add the vanilla soya milk to the top (I used fresh So Good).

If you've not made layered shots before then it can take some practice to get right (see YouTube for videos), but it all goes down the same way in the end. Talking of which, it's best to drink these in one go, mixing the flavours together in your mouth before swallowing.

You may need to experiment with the amount of syrup you use, to ensure that enough comes out with the drink and doesn't just stick to the sides! :)

Vegan MoBo!

2010-11-01T10:43:00.005Z

I would use this (mostly meaningless post) to wish you all a happy "World Vegan Day", however as I'm not entirely sure what the point of it is (or who decided the date as being 1st Nov); I'm instead going to use it to introduce Vegan Mobo.

In case you missed it, 1st November is also the start of Vegan Month of Food, where bloggers are encouraged to post more than normal about vegan food.

Admirable though this is and as open minded as I am; I'm just not sure that "MoFo" - the adopted abbreviation for "month of food" is a word one should be using. A search on urbandictionary will enlighten those not familiar with the word's normal use.

Therefore, I suggest Vegan MoBo instead, Vegan Month of Booze.

I'll use that as an excuse instead to post about tasty drinks, and as an excuse to make more of them :D

Creme de Menthe

2010-10-29T00:23:00.004+01:00

is good stuff.

I tried mint syrup as a kid and wasn't impressed. I was therefore not overly excited to find that De Kuyper alcoholic creme de menthe is vegan a month or so ago when @M_tohappyvegans wrote to them to check. It turns out that both the white stuff (which I've never seen in shops) is vegan, as well as the green stuff (in most supermarkets).

As part of my quest to own all vegan suitable booze I bought a bottle anyway, and was pleasantly surprised.

It mixes incredibly well with chocolatey things, such as chocolate soya milk. I plan to make a mint chocolate torte at some point (I've still not made this again since I blogged it back in Feb).

It also works really well in hot chocolate, substituting creme de menthe for kahlua in this recipe.

I've drunk half a bottle so far (with help) and will no doubt find other combinations that work well with it.

Edit: Now I think about it - I've actually made quite a few good tasting cocktails using this now. Too bad I can't remember how to make any of them.....

Dubai

2010-10-25T13:55:00.007+01:00

Dubai: a city with practically no history, institutionalised racism, polluted beaches, censored internet and one of the world's highest carbon footprints; where imprisonable offenses include homosexual sex (10 years), use of cough syrup (4 years), prescription medicine (8 weeks) and even eating the wrong type of bread roll (4 years).

Despite its guaranteed sunshine, world's tallest building and biggest mall; Dubai isn't exactly my ideal holiday location. It is therefore explainable why I was less than ecstatic when it was announced I was being sent there for a week earlier this month by my work.

Part of my general reluctance to visit comes from the fact that the UAE doesn't like guys with long hair. I've read reports of long haired guys being falsely imprisoned in Dubai and others having their's cut off by the police in neighbouring Sharjah. Having had long hair myself for more than 10 years I seriously considered having mine cut, until speaking to the British Embassy first. As it happens, I saw more guys with long hair during 1 week in Dubai than I do in an entire year in the UK.

Getting There - Emirates

I booked my flights the day before (£417 return) via Opodo, then called Emirates immediately to change my dietary requirement. Strangely, the vegan option (code VGML) is named "Vegetarian".

Unfortunately they don't tell you what you're being served, so your guess is as good as mine as to what the food was meant to be (comments please!). The good news is that they serve you first - up to an hour before everyone else.

On my 9.20pm - 7.20am (7 hour) flight there was one meal:

The rice smelt like shoes, but was strangely tasty. What can best be described as dal was dry but OK. The rice salad didn't really fit, but as I was expecting them to stuff up the order and serve me chicken, I was grateful all the same. I'm pretty sure it was vegan - nothing was obviously creamy or egg like. They served it with the obligatory non dairy creamer (containing milk protein), which I ignored.

On my 3.05pm - 7.40pm (7.5 hour) flight there were two; a main meal and snack:

The main part was a strange kind of potato hotpot, but it was warm and I was hungry. The margarine was labelled vegan, but dessert a little too suspect looking. I decided not to risk it, so gave it to another passenger. They confirmed that it tasted really odd, so "probably vegan".

My second meal/snack looked like this:

The roll seemed to be filled with whatever yesterday's main course was. It was just plain odd.

I almost didn't try the muffin, but tore a bit off and saw that it almost certainly wasn't made with egg. It was a kind of mix between crumble and sponge, which had gone a bit hard in the fridge. Still, it was edible, and I wanted another when I'd finished.

I don't know whether the wine they serve is vegan or not; and frankly as the wine hater I am I don't care. They do seem to serve unlimited alcohol though, and have 50cl bottles of cointreau.

Whilst it looks like I'm having a whinge, I'm genuinely quite impressed by Emirates. Other than the creamer they managed to produce edible vegan food that I'd eat again.

Eating Out

If happycow is to be believed, there are about 40 vegan friendly restaurants in Dubai. Whilst I believe there are this many vegetarian restaurants, based on an evening in Bur Dubai I'm not sure how many are actually vegan friendly. That is, unless you speak Arabic / Indian languages and can converse with the staff. In the ones I tried they looked confused and said "no, vegetarian". One got so confused that they said "next door" and pointed to a mixed grill - assumably thinking I was taking the piss or something.

I did find a couple of vegan friendly restaurants though, both with help from others and both part of international chains.

The first, Asha's (in Wafi mall) has an outlet in Birmingham where I ate a couple of years ago. The manager was very helpful and chef came out to advise what could be made vegan. There was a choice of 4 main courses, plus poppadoms and roti bread. The quality was excellent (far better than the UK, which I made a point of telling them) and wasn't badly priced (including a 30% discount from the hotel). I didn't get a flattering picture of the food, so will post a rare photo of me instead:

Their website leads me to believe that there are other outlets in Dubai also.

The second, Saravana Bhavan is in a larger chain, with 25 branches in India and an outlet in London.

I'd not been before though, and was pleasantly surprised to find the first restaurant in my life where everyone washes their hands before eating! It's also the first restaurant I've been to where everyone eats rice with their fingers. It was a good experience, but on reflection using a spoon is easier ;)

All meals they do are the same - thali. 3 of the dishes (the creamy looking ones) are non vegan and you have to make sure you say "no" to the big pot of ghee the guy serving rice walks around with. Puris are unlimited (and amongst the best I've had), as is rice.

The rest of the food was pretty good. I went with an Indian colleague and would certainly recommend it.

Dubai seems to have quite a few juice bars dotted around in malls and at the airport, such as this one in Deira City Centre:

Each time I found one I had a green / vegetable smoothie, which were reasonably priced. Cafe Nero and Costa both have branches selling fruit things, but they're made from juice and ice rather than fresh fruit.

Not strictly vegan related, but I took to drinking mint tea whilst in Dubai, which is easy to find:

Buying Food

In a word: easy. Especially if you visit the lower ground floor of Dubai Mall, where you'll find both Waitrose (yes, Waitrose) and a large Organic store.

Waitrose has a lot of UK stock at sensible prices, so if you've a (studio) apartment; you're sorted. They also have local items too, including American (vegan) recipe oreos for less than a quid a pack. More excitingly still, they also sell Fry's (wish they would in the UK!):

The organic supermarket has plenty of choice, including the largest selection of Amy's products I've ever seen:

Whilst they sell plenty of cold stuff (including fresh tofu) they don't sell any ready to eat items, which sucked as I was staying in a standard hotel room without cooking facilities:

What they do have is a lot of long life vegan stuff, including chocolate and various nut/seed/fruit bars:

What else?

I went up Burj Khalifa, which is worth doing at 100 dirhams (the walk up price). The views on a good day are spectacular (I got lucky).

I also went on a Desert Safari, which was fun. The included food was all meat related though, so I ate a large amount of fresh 'simple' bread instead.

I left my vegan suntan lotion at home, as it contains hemp seed and I didn't want to be put in jail for 4 years. I was worried that I was burn horribly, but in reality hardly anyone spends time in the sun during the day - instead most people rush from one airconditioned building/vehicle to the next. I didn't even pick up a tan.

In Summary

Would I go back? Oh holiday - no. To take a job - no. On a business trip - maybe, but next time I'm having a studio.

Summer Holidays

2010-08-16T10:28:00.002+01:00

I've not forgotten you, I'm just being lazy with my cooking and concentrating on other things at the moment.

I'll return within the next month or so :)

Deep Fried Raw Nakd Cashew Bars

2010-07-14T22:19:00.002+01:00

Mmmmmmm; raw food.

OK, so I realise that there's something inherently wrong about this blog post, I just can't figure out what it is. I <3 raw food and I <3 deep frying, so surely it's all good?

I started eating Nakd bars as soon as they came out and have consumed several hundred of their larger bars over the past few years (mostly as breakfast - I'm generally raw these days before 12). Their new smaller bars are alright, despite looking like something suspiciously different. I like the cashew type the most, however due to their size they're not quite a meal replacement.

So how better than served deep fried in cider batter?

I admit, I did this as a joke. I'd just made my dinner and was on the hunt for something to deep fry for dessert. I am however extremely surprised by how good it tastes!

It's not in the oil long enough to get really hot, but the heat it does get melts it slightly and makes the date become quite toffee like.

The batter is from a recipe I posted in December, using cider (hard cider) instead of beer.

I don't really have anything else to say, other than that I'm definitely making this again!! :D

Cinnamon Ring Doughnuts

2010-07-14T09:22:00.007+01:00

So this isn't really a proper post; more of a confirmation that the previous doughnut recipe that I posted earlier this month is indeed better suited to ring doughnuts.

The process of making them is the same, except you roll out the dough and cut it into doughnut shapes before rising. I used a cookie cutter for the outer and the end of a shot measure for the inner. Half the recipe quoted previously makes 4 doughtnuts.

Raising on an oiled surface really helps with clean removal. Fry each in 190^oc oil until done (golden brown), turning a few times:

When cooked, shake off excess oil and roll in a mixture of sugar and ground cinnamon. Eat within a day.

Critique? Physically, they work. They do everything you'd expect and the end result looks as it should.

Taste wise they do have that lovely fresh doughnut taste to them, but it's more of an aftertaste as opposed to an in your face taste. Somehow I need to get more flavour into the dough, which could mean salt or a source of flavour (vanilla?). As they're going with cinnamon, I wonder if replacing water for apple juice would work?

The other criticism I have of them is that they're ever so slightly chewy. That is, they're not quite soft enough and melt in the mouth like. I'll work on it and let you know ;)

Quesadillas

2010-07-05T10:04:00.004+01:00

This isn't really a meal - more of a high calorie snack.

The concept is simple - 2 fried corn tortillas with melted cheese and salsa between them.

Fry half a red onion in a pan with a little sunflower oil, then add spices. I'm lazy and buy packets of fajita spice mix (Discovery in the UK is vegan), from which I use about a quarter.

Fry the spices for a couple of minutes, then add finely chopped seiten chicken pieces (I use Redwoods). Cook for a further minute or so, then add 200g (half a standard tin) of chopped tomatoes in juice.

As it starts to reduce down add half a tsp of black treacle and a half a tsp of smoked paprika (or as much as you like to get the desired level of heat).

When most of the liquid has boiled off and it tastes good, transfer to bowl and wipe out the pan.

In a second pan fry a corn tortilla in a little oil. When the edges start to brown flip it over and cook the other side.

Whilst this is in progress fry the other corn tortilla in the original pan (again with a little oil) and place meltable vegan cheese on top.

Spread the salsa mixture ontop of the cheese. You'll want the heat quite high to ensure it goes crispy and the cheese melts properly.

The tortilla being cooked on its own will finish first, so take it out the pan and place on top of the other.

When cooked both tortillas should be golden brown and starting to go crispy, without burning. Carefully remove the quesadilla from the pan (using 2 spatulas slid underneath) and transfer to a chopping board. Divide into quarters with a sharp knife and eat immediately.

Miniature Chocolate Chip Banana Drizzle Cake

2010-07-04T22:58:00.006+01:00

Everybody say "awwwwww" - this is the smallest cake I've ever made.

Ages ago (years) I bought a couple of 4" spring form tins, which I don't remember using until tonight. Now that I'm living alone again I need to restrain myself from making standard 8" cakes ;)

I'm not sure how much of a success this cake was, I just decided to have a go. I made a standard sponge with banana and chocolate chips. I made banana drizzle icing, which I'm not sure (according to google anyway) anyone has done before. Perhaps with good reason? :p

It's pretty moist and I think I used a few too many chocolate chips and a bit too much banana. The cake itself physically worked and it tastes pretty good. I'm not so sure about the icing - I was aiming for a buttercream consistancy but a base of 25g mashed banana wouldn't allow this to happen. Personally I don't believe it has enough of the banana flavour in it.

For my notes as much as anything I'm blogging the recipe anyway, on the pretense that it needs some tweaking.

Cake Ingredients:

100g Self Raising Flour
75g Castor Sugar
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
100ml Water
25ml Sunflower Oil
75g Banana
25g Dark Chocolate Chips

Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, then add the oil and water. Mix to a batter. Add the banana and mash it into the mixture. Add the chocolate chips and beat as much air in as possible.

Pour into two greased 4" springform tins and cook at 200^oc for 20-25 mins.

Remove and allow to cool when an inserted cocktail stick can be withdrawn cleanly.

Icing Ingredients:

25g Banana
125g Icing Sugar
10ml Soya Cream

Mash the banana and add 100g of the icing sugar in stages. Combine to a thin icing, then sieve the lumps/dark bits out. Add the remaining icing sugar and soya cream.

When the cake has cooled apply the icing and eat. As it's quite moist I'm guessing that it may improve over night.

Cream Doughnuts

2010-07-04T17:30:00.006+01:00

Having been told in a health checkup this week that my cholesterol level is too low to be read (using 3 separate blood samples in two machines) I decided to celebrate with a spot of deep frying.

I sometimes make special trips to Co-op to buy their doughtnuts and used to buy Tesco and M&S ones when they were suitable. Nothing beats a freshly fried one however.

I veganised a recipe a few years back and whilst it worked, the taste just wasn't quite right. I was inspired by Terre a Terre to have another go and am pleased to report that the results were pretty good.

As always I'm going to give an honest review and not just say they're amazing because I made them. Fresh out the frier they were amazing - just like ones from fun fairs. I think this recipe would work best for traditional ring doughnuts served hot. Once cooled and filled (as I did with the remainder) they weren't as good. Therefore next time I make them I'll either do ring or play with the recipe a bit.

Ingredients (4 huge doughnuts):

250g Strong White Bread Flour
25g Margerine
150ml Water
1/2 tsp Dried Active Yeast
Pinch of Salt
Pinch of Sugar

Place all ingredients in a bread maker and select the Italian dough/pizza setting (45 minutes on my Panasonic).

Place the dough on a floured surface and kneed for a couple of minutes with your hands.

Divide the mixture into 4 and shape into lozenges. Place on an oiled try in a warm area for 20-30 minutes (I use an oven that's been heated to 50^oc, then turned off). During this time they should smooth out and gain in volume.

Heat your fryer to 190^oc and cook each doughnut for about 3 minutes (turning regularly).

I've just acquired a camera that shoots 720p video, which is a vast improvement on my iPhone's terrible video application that I used earlier this year for my pancake recipe. Thus I've decided to play around with vlogging a bit more:

They should float as soon as you place them in the oil and start bubbling immediately. Within 30 seconds you'll be able to turn it over. Once cooked remove the basket and shake off excess oil, then roll in sugar.

If filling, allow to cool first. I tried Soyatoo squirty cream, however piped whipping cream would have been better. I'd also recommend using standard jam - the stuff I used was a bit too syruppy and synthetic tasting.

Chesters (Worcester)

2010-07-04T09:49:00.004+01:00

I'd not been back to Chesters since the first time in 2007, so jumped at the chance to return when invited out by a group of vegan friends.

As a general rule: I don't voluntarily do non vegetarian restaurants. I've been vegan long enough now to have had enough crap restaurant experiences to last a life time.

There are however a few hand picked exceptions to this rule, who whilst serving non vegetarian food; do completely understand the concept of veganism and have a choice of items on their standard menu.

Chesters is a Mexican restaurant in Worcester with an impressive selection of vegan offerings. They use vegan sour cream, cheese, tofu etc and seem to have really thought it through.

I've eaten a lot of nachos over the years (when you meet me you'll realise I'm telling the truth) and Chesters have gotten it just right. The chips aren't over salty and they don't scrimp on toppings.

Being the adovcate of deep drying you know I am; for mains I had a 6 bean chimichanga. Due to them messing up my order and serving salad not chips I ended up with both! Their chips are very good and salad (from a salad hater) pretty good too.

The chimichanga itself wasn't so great, but they do a variety of fillings so next time I'll try a different one. Their standard menu is for 2 chimichangas (£12), but at lunchtime they've the option of one (£6). I could probably eat 2, but it would be sheer gluttony if I did :p

Uncommon for non vegetarian restaurants: Chesters have a choice of vegan desserts. There did however seem to be some kind of availability cofuffle (I think in the end they decided they could do it), but with minutes to spare on my parking ticket I had to make a run for it and miss out on pudding.

In hindsight running is probably better for me than cake, but it's OK - I got the deep fat fryer out when I got home. More on that in another post.

The picture that follows is of their carrot cake, from the last time I visited:

It's large, warm, moist, slightly odd and served with vanilla swedish glace. Slightly odd in a good and tasty way though.

I'd certainly return (probably a few times) when back in that direction. I should probably start going walking in the Malverns - they're less than an hour from me and there's some very pretty countryside in the area.

Lavender Cordial

2010-06-29T19:59:00.005+01:00

Another of this year's creations: lavender cordial.

Making syrup is the first step in making sorbet, which is partly what I had in mind when making this batch.

For the recipe you need dried food grade lavender, which can be found in independent health food stores (I believe that Suma distribute it). I used 50g, which cost under a pound. I could probably have gotten away with using less, but as usual I was making it up as I went along :)

Ingredients:

50g Dried Lavender
500ml Water
250g White Sugar
Lemon Juice

Heat the water and sugar in a pan, stirring until it has all been dissolved. Wash the lavender and add it to the pan. Stir, cover and leave on a low simmer for about half an hour.

Strain the mixture and add lemon juice to taste. Bottle and keep in the fridge.

Serve with lemonade or use in cocktails. A little goes a long way.

Peanut Butter Smoothie

2010-06-24T22:12:00.004+01:00

I don't know why I've not tried this before:

1/2 Glass Apple Juice
1 Banana
Handful Blueberries
1 tbsp Peanut Butter

Blend until smooth.

p.s. I stole this idea from Aloka :)

Blueberry Waffles

2010-06-23T23:21:00.008+01:00

It's been a while since I posted a new recipe. Various other things have been going on in my life recently, including eating out a lot more than normal. Don't worry, I'll start recipe posting again sooner or later. In the meantime you'll have to make do with the following post.

When my parents get a list of things I want for my birthday I normally end up with something I like, but from the more practical end of the scale than fun. This year however I got a shock, when to my delight I was given a waffle iron. Not just any waffle iron: a beautiful Cuisinart one.

A few years ago I tried buying a waffle iron. To my horror I found that there were none available on the UK domestic market. I investigated whether or not to import one from the states and get a power convertor, but in the end gave up.

Upon receiving this I started trying recipes from books and the web. The 3 I tried from Vegan Brunch all (in my opinion) sucked.

I'm aware that yeast risen ones are probably nicer, but haven't tried any yet. What I did try however was my standard cake recipe, which gave the best results by far. Thus I made a few minor modifications and blogging tonight's rather tasty attempt at blueberry waffles.

I think there's probably some refining left to do, but I could quite happily eat one of these again.

Ingredients:

150g Castor Sugar
200g Self Raising Flour
1/2 tsp Baking Powder
150ml Water
75ml Sunflower Oil
1/2 tsp Vanilla Essense
50g Blueberries

Heat the iron on setting 3 (of 6). Mix the dry ingredients together then add the wet. Mix thoroughly, then stir in the fruit (I used small frozen berries). Grease the iron and spread the mixture onto it (you should have a small amount left over).

Cook for around 8 minutes, resisting the urge to peek (which will cause them to split). When done the amount of steam produced should have visibly reduced. Carefully extract from the iron and serve with vanilla icecream. Makes 4 waffles (each of which serves 2 people, or one hungry person).

Brighton Restaurant Binge

2010-06-11T22:55:00.006+01:00

Following on from last month's 24 hour London restaurant binge, this month we celebrated my birthday with a 48 hour Brighton restaurant binge.

The trip itself didn't go exactly to plan, but we ate out an impressive 7 times and had some awesomely good food. I paddled in the English Channel and we even got time for a little shopping, including Heals, Montezumas and my favourite kitchenware shop in the country - Steamer Trading.

The weather, having been gorgeous the week before was mixed; with periods of rain, sunshine and cloud. We stayed in the ever glamorous Brighton Travelodge so we had more money to spend on food.

The posts that follow include reviews from Terre a Terre, Aloka, Red Veg, Infinity and Iydea.

Infinity Cafe (Brighton)

2010-06-10T21:50:00.003+01:00

Despite a thoroughly miserable lady behind the counter at Infinity, we really enjoyed the few things we had there.

I didn't bother photographing the BLT I had on the first morning because it was pretty much just a BLT. The rashers (almost certainly redwoods) didn't look as if they'd been cooked at all, which was a little strange.

When we returned the following afternoon we had cake, which was far more enjoyable. In fact, it was the best cake I've ever had from a cafe/restuarant/shop - up to homemade standard! :O

The banana cake (as pictured above) was really good. I could just eat a slice of that now (damn you blogspot!). I'm definitely going to have a go at making something similar when I get a chance - watch this space.

The chocolate cake was pretty good. Not on the same level as the banana, but still the best chocolate cake I've paid money for.

Infinity also have a shop on the same road, which is similar in calibre/choice/slight overpricedness to Fresh & Wild in London. They weren't stocking Go Max bars anymore (apparently they contain GM), but I picked up a few other things I don't often see, including:

Raw cocoa butter - the first time I've ever seen it in a shop, and they had a choice!
Cocoa nibs - not sure what to do with them yet, but thought I should probably buy them anyway
Raw chocolate mousse - which wasn't great (not surprising as it contains moss!)
Maverick Chocolate Honeycomb Bars - which are grim and bare no resemblance whatsoever to Crunchie bars, despite what some people online claim.
Chelsea Buns - Not the best ever, but I'd eat again
Focaccia - Not up to my focaccia fiend standards I'm affraid :(

All in all, I hope you Brighton people know how bloody lucky you are to have so much choice of tasty things on your doorstep! :p

Aloka (Brighton)

2010-06-10T21:05:00.004+01:00

Having not planned to go to Aloka at all we ended up going twice whilst staying in Brighton, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

The first time was randomly after eating a big meal at Terre a Terre. As we left and found it almost directly opposite we thought it'd be rude to not at least check it out.

Decor wise I love Aloka, I've somewhat of a lighting fetish and really like their chandelier. Their seats are unusual and comfortable (apart from the wooden ones in the window, which are best avoided).

We ordered a couple of cakes: a cupcake and a slice of chocolate biscuit cake. First impressions on food? Not that good; the cupcake was dry and biscuit cake so-so. We were however intrigued by their raw cashew cheese, so vowed to return at some point over the next 48 hours.

We ended up returning the following lunchtime, when they have a pay by weight buffet laid out. We attempted to order off their standard menu, but only managed to acquire the cheese from it.

I wasn't overly taken by the idea of the buffet, but am super glad I tried. The only buffets I'd been to previously are the all you can eat type, so weighing seemed like a bit of a con to me. The food was however good quality and our plates came to £5 and £6 each, which is very reasonable for a sit down lunch.

The deep fried seiten things were a little strange, but I'd happily eat them again. The filo parcels were really good, with butternut squash, pesto and various other things contained within. Nothing else really stood out, but the whole meal was fresh, flavoursome and pleasing (with exception of perhaps the polenta, which wasn't so great).

Having been impressed by the cashew cheese at Saf we were sadely less so by Aloka's attempt. They must be congratulated for their inclusion of a sensible number of raw tortilla chips with it (something Saf scrimped on), however they were more bendy than crispy which was a little odd!

The cheese itself was more paste like than cheese like, but it was pleasant enough. I suspect it was made with a less sophisticated recipe than Saf's, who actually ferment the cashew milk. I'd probably eat it again but not rush back for it.

When in Brighton again I'd certainly return to Aloka, both for their lunch buffet and to try their evening raw menu. I recommend that others do the same :)

Terre a Terre (Brighton)

2010-06-10T15:37:00.014+01:00

Terre a Terre was one of our main reasons for visiting Brighton.

We planned to just dine a la carte on my birthday, but somehow we ended up visiting twice; having a set menu the first time and tapas the second. You're only 29 once, right? In total we spent around £110 on 2 starters, 4 mains, 3 sides, 4 desserts, 2 alcoholic drinks and 3 non alcoholic.

As expected, the food was excellent. It's difficult to compare restaurants serving very different things to each other, but food wise Terre a Terre is certainly now in my top 5. It's a large restaurant that was busy both nights (Monday/Tuesday).

Atmosphere was pretty good. Service on the first day was excellent. Service on the second day sucked and somewhat spoilt our overall enjoyment, which is a shame. More on this later.

Visit #1

Our impromptu visit on the first evening was due to discovery of their £15 for 3 course deal, which seemed too good to miss. Entitled the "Great Grower's Menu" it offers a choice of 2 vegan starters, 1 main and 1 dessert; made with local, seasonal ingredients.

We ordered a garlic focaccia to nibble on when we arrived. It was served quickly and whilst not outstanding was pleasant enough (i.e. i'd order it again, but not rush back for).

Our decision to sit at the front of the restaurant proved a success. With several members of staff passing us regularly service was prompt, polite and we felt well looked after.

We normally order a couple of drinks then switch to table water when eating out. I prefer water with food anyway and am in no way a wine fan. My 'elderbubble' was probably the least exciting thing we had there - cava mixed with elderflower cordial in. Becky's lychee/pomegranate non-alcoholic cocktail was half the price and twice as nice.

Our starters were both excellent, which is surprising considering the inclusion of broad beans!

My dish, "Pulborough’s Asparagus Army" is described as "Broad bean lemon thyme espresso with samphire, linseed flowery leaf relish and fried asparagus soldiers":

The broad bean 'espresso' was actually quite pleasant, bearing no ressemblance to the disturbing taste of the last (and first) broad bean dish I had a few years ago. The samphire salad thing was quite tasty and the battered asparagus well cooked. I'm not sure how much the 3 things went together, but I enjoyed the overal dish.

One thing I dislike about vegetarian restaurants is when they offer a vegan option, but don't tell you what it is until it's placed infront of you. Often you're left feeling disappointed. "Tomato Tea and Hot Parmesan Cream Eclair (vo)" did not, unfortunately come with a veganised eclair:

The "Brandy wine tomato consommé" was seriously impressive - really, really nice - rich, fresh and flavourful. The substitute eclair was less impressive indian tasting bread, which was almost certainly an uttapam borrowed from one of their main courses.

Our mains were both "Lettuce and Lovage (v/gf) - British pea and parsley pikelets with St Germain sauce, a warm salad of seared lettuce, shallots and baby potatoes, finished with lovage salt and mint oil."

It was pretty weird by my standards, but with the exception of the lettuce I thoroughly enjoyed it all. It's the first time I've had cooked lettuce and I think it might be the last. The pikelets weren't at all what I was expecting. Far from crumpet like they were actually kind of mini burger type things. I guess "mini burger things" doesn't sound as appealing on a menu however!

Dessert was very impressive. "Raspberry Rumble (v) - Raspberry frangipane tartine served with raspberry sorbet."

The frangipane was small but really very good. The sorbet tasted like it was from a supermarket, but by that point I didn't care. Unlike the other 2 courses this isn't an item on their main menu, which is a shame.

Visit #2

Our second visit was less impressive than the first. The food was still of really high standard, but we left with that "I just want to leave now" feeling.

We decided to try the tapas, which gives a taster of most of the vegan friendly things on the menu.

Whilst we waited we ordered a bread selection and some Hoisin Tofu:

The bread selection was pretty boring if truth be told (and hence no picture). The Hoisin Tofu was really good, it'd been deep fried and had a beautiful texture.

It's difficult to remember all the items on the tapas plate, so I shalln't try:

I shall mention however that it contained the nicest polenta I've ever had, by quite a long way. At least, I think it was polenta! What the meal lacked however was sauces. For instance, it included the pikelets from the main course the night before, but without the sauce they were previously served in the taste wasn't quite complete. Still, it was good to taste lots of new things.

The tapas comes served with a bowl of (extremely chunky) chips, which don't seem to fit in with the rest of the food. They were pretty good chips, but we couldn't eat them all.

My dessert was "Frangipane Tea and Cake (v/gf) - Earl Grey soaked prunes and frangipane tartine served with amaretto ice cream and hot green and orange tea tot":

The orange tea was gorgeous - sweet, rich and orangey - not the orange scented dishwater you get from herbal teabags. The almond icecream was OK, nothing to get excited about. The frangipane was a disappointment compared to the one I had the night before. The actual franipane was just as good (I assume it's the same mixture) but the prunes really detracted from the taste.

Becky ordered the dessert we've heard so much about, the "Rain Vodka Cherry Chocolate Churros (v) - Sugar spice dusted doughnut straws served with sticky dipping chocolate and Rain Vodka sozzled cherries":

I'd been looking forward to trying this for a while. The doughnuts were pretty doughnut like, the chocolate sauce OK. When the mint had been removed from the top of the cherries however the cup they were served in was visibly dirty. It looked as if it'd been through a dishwasher and something caked on.

Unsure whether to say anything or not we mentioned it to a waiter, who quickly whisked the whole thing away and promised us a new one. The good news is that it took a while to come (i.e. it wasn't the same one). Whilst we waited however another waiter (who looking at her picture in the Terre a Terre book I bought a few months back appears to be the owner) decided to come and tell us it was just icing sugar.

I wish I'd taken a picture before we said anything, as it was quite clearly not icing sugar. We both found it really dismissive and completely uncalled for. When it eventually did arrive neither of us wanted the dessert.

It's a shame really as it spoilt what was otherwise a very enjoyable two meals. Normally I'd complain, but as it was potentially the owner I don't think it'd do much good.

I'll certainly return to Terre a Terre, as the food is undeniably very good. All other waiting staff were pleasant and helpful. I just wish that particular incident had never happened.

Red Veg (Brighton)

2010-06-09T22:46:00.000+01:00

Red Veg is one of those places I'm glad exists, but can quite happily go a few years in between visits.

I first stumbled upon their (now closed) London branch about 10 years ago. I used to eat there regularly around 2004 when in the area a lot.

Red Veg serves vegan 'fast food', sort of like a McDonalds wannabe (but without all the death). Their burgers were at one time highly impressive, but now with the likes of Frys not so much so anymore.

If there was one in every town I'd probably go more often, but as there's currently only one in the country it doesn't happen very often.

The last time they had my custom was in 2006, when they served me a slab of non vegan cheese in my burger. I didn't realise until I'd taken a bite. What was most impressive about the episode was that I was with about 20 other vegans at the time and must have mentioned the word at least 5 times whilst ordering. Hence I wasn't in a great rush to go back.

The food is pretty much how its always been. They only seem to sell one burger, adding sauces / fried mushrooms to create different combinations. They do however sell excellent onion rings.

All things considered I'd rather have a plate of healthy food from Aloka, but Red Veg is worth a visit every 4 years or so just for the novelty factor

Iydea (Brighton)

2010-06-09T16:02:00.004+01:00

I haven't much to say about Iydea, other than that I've no intention of setting foot in their cafe again.

Whilst staying in Brighton we visited on 2 consective mornings (8th/9th June) to try their vegan breakfast muffins. Both times we found that they weren't available.

The first time we arrived just on their end of breakfast slot (literally within minutes). Whilst it would have been good if they'd served us anyway, I can hardly hold it against them that they didn't. We instead got our breakfast from Infinity (I'll post about that separately) and decided to try again the following day.

The second day we ensured we arrived 20 minutes before the end of service, just to be sure.

Success? Nope, they weren't willing to make any as they'd already started making lunch.

Why advertise that something is available until a certain time when it's not?

So, all in all I've nothing to say about the place really, other than that I shalln't be rushing back.

iPad & X10: The Ultimate Home Automation Controller?

2010-05-30T13:34:00.002+01:00

Since Startrek TNG I've been eagerly awaiting delivery of my PADD. Disappointed for years and whilst not perfect, my newly acquired iPad is prettty damn cool. A little on the heavy side and terrible in sunlight, but otherwise fantastic.

When I blogged about X10 in February I mentioned that I thought iPad would make a "stunning HA remote control".

Other than general reliability, since starting with X10 in 2007 I've been most disappointed by the terrible remote controls. I've 2 Logitech Harmony remotes which whilst marginally better than the 6 official remote types I've tried, still fall far short of my ideal.

X10 Commander, the iPhone app which has gotten coverage including prime time TV ads is, for me, not a lot better. Certainly not something I'd pay for, especially as if using a mac you have to pay for the serverside portion as well.

So, for a while now I've been planning on writing an iPad web app interface. I'm going to share with you how and what I've achieved so far.

Shion + Mac Mini + CM15Pro

A couple of weeks back I started looking at what free software there was available for Mac OSX for interfacing with my CM15Pro (aka CM15a). At first I found nothing, only trial software which claimed to be fully functional but turned out not to be.

Eventually I found Shion about a week ago, which whilst basic does seem to do what I need. It's currently free if you email for a license.

All you need to do is set up an X10 device for each that you have. I've currently 17 physical devices and many macros over 2 house codes.

Annoyingly and after much hair pulling I discovered that only Shion 2.0 is compatible with CM15Pro - whilst 2.1 detects the controller it doesn't work as it should.

One massively annoying thing I should mention - my mac mini absorbs X10. It's the only device in the house that does. I'm going to have to buy a filter for it shortly, which are overpriced at £30.

Apache + PHP + AppleScript

I was rather hoping to find software with a web interface, but Shion has the next best thing - the ability to interface with it by AppleScript. I'd not come across AppleScript previously (I've only been using a mac for a couple of months), but it's super simple and easy to pick up.

OSX comes with Apache and PHP preinstalled, it's just a case of enabling them. I had to edit the httpd.conf to run apache as a standard user, as otherwise it wouldn't be able to call exec() and run applescript. This isn't generally adviseable for use on the Internet, but on a secure home network it's fine.

I set about designing an iPad interface and whilst am writing it with re-usability in mind it's not ready for any sort of public release. The good part is that the actual code you need to interface PHP -> X10 is 1 line:

exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Shion\"' -e 'activate device named \"$device\"' -e 'end tell'");

For example:

if($action == "on") {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Shion\"' -e 'activate device named \"$device\"' -e 'end tell'");
}
elseif($action == "off") {
exec("osascript -e 'tell application \"Shion\"' -e 'deactivate device named \"$device\"' -e 'end tell'");
}

Simple huh?

Interface Design

The best part about being able to write your own PHP is that you can make an interface that ideally suits your house and how you naturally want a remote to look.

I thought at first about making an iPad version of Domia's 10" PictureTouch using photographs and imagemaps, but I decided to make it a bit more advanced than this.

I wanted it to look vaguely like a native iPad app and whilst I thought about using a framework (if I had several weeks to kill I'd reverse engineer AdLib) I decided it'd be quicker to make up my own interface with images and text.

I designed it on Firefox a couple of days before getting my iPad, then did some final tweaking when it arrived. I wanted an interface that would fill the entire browser but not require scrolling.

I wrote the initial interface for landscape mode, which I plan to be in most of the time whilst using the device. Annoyingly Apple decided not to make the screen 16:9, but I came up with a way of fitting everything on.

Inspired by other apps I choose to display a list of rooms down the right hand side of the screen, along with some information about each. Clicking on a room's picture changes the left hand side of the screen, showing a photograph then controls bellow.

I found that I had space for 12 devices / macros, divided into 3 tables each with a header. It suits my house to have a table for lighting, one for appliances and one for macros. I created images to place around the table, giving it a rounded corners look. Finally I created some buttons in Gimp - big enough to be pressable but not so big as to take over the display.

Where to from here?

What I have so far represents only a few hours work.

Next step is to have the interface change when the screen is turned through 90 degrees, to show all available devices / macros.

I believe in Open Source, so if I've time and effort available I'll create a reusable package for others to play with. In the meantime hopefully what I've described here will give anyone with a basic understanding of PHP enough to get going with.

Being HTML it can be used on our PCs, but I plan to make both an iPhone version and 10 foot version for use on TV.

Finally I plan to make the icon on my home screen point not to the web interface, but a public IP that redirects either to the internal address if I'm at home or a passworded public interface (connected via a tunnel) when I'm out and about.

Any thoughts are appreciated :)

A Decade of Vegan Products (2000-2010)

2010-05-12T08:30:00.007+01:00

So I decided to write about vegan products - those that are currently available and those that once were.

I figured it might be useful for new vegans or those who don't shop in as many stores that I do.

I began writing it a while ago and have been adding bits to it every now and then. It's become a bit of a monster.

Introduction

Overall, being vegan in the UK is pretty damn easy. I didn't find it particularly hard when I transitioned in Jan 2000 and things have, on the whole, gotten better. There are some exceptions, that I'll mention further on. It frustrates me when people talk about how difficult being vegan is because I know it's not. If anything it's less convenient than being an omni in 2010, but more convenient than any diet between 1950 and the dawn of time.

As well as choice increase, labeling has also improved. In 2000 supermarkets already had lists of vegan suitable products if you wrote to them (and the Vegan Society had launched their Vegan Shopper book), but most have since started labeling packaging. Coverage remains sparadic, with Sainsburys and Co-operative doing the best job. Sainsburys went through a phase a couple of years ago when their labelling got worse, but I think we're past that now. Tesco & Morrisons are on the whole a bit shit, with only a handful of products in the store labeled. Waitrose isn't good for labelling either, but do sell many vegan friendly products which can be checked on the Ocado website.

Restaurant choice and vegan awareness remains shite. I tend to avoid those which don't explicitly cater for vegans and have choice already on the menu. This isn't especially a bad thing - I saved endless amounts of money at university by not being able to eat takeaway.

Bread

I'm more than a little obsessed with bread. All in all I think we're in a worse position now than we were 10 years ago, especially at the speciality end of the scale. Though labelling has improved the choice has diminished. Still, it's pretty easy to find vegan bread in the UK, so perhaps I shouldn't whinge about it too much.

Ciabatta remains in good supply (Sainsburys olive rolls are my prefered choice) and labelling on standard loaves is much better than it was. Waitrose sell frozen stone baked pizza bases (often on offer, we get through a lot of these), have a fresh base (a rip off - not worth the money) and a fresh pizza (again a bit of a rip off with very few toppings).

Waitrose previously sold an amazing focaccia (seriously, I'd make reasonably long trips to Waitrose just for this), which a couple of years ago they replaced with something containing milk powder (milk powder, in italian bread - why?). Tesco sold a pretty good caramelised onion focaccia, complete with lumps of roasted garlic. I ate a lot of that at university (00-04). In '07 they sold a pretty decent fresh pizza base. Sainsburys sold very good pizza bases around 01-04, a ready to bake flatbread (with garlic and mushrooms) and until recently an italian flatbread (who I may have been the only customer for, as they regularly had it reduced).

Pasta / Noodles

Not a lot to say, other than Waitrose currently sell fresh vegan pasta. They are the only supermarket I know of to have done so in the past 10 years (they previously had some vegan spaghetti for a short period several years ago). It's well priced and thoroughly recommended.

Clearspring (vegan importer/distributor) started selling decent noodles (udon are my favourite) early on, which made their way into Sainsburys a couple of years later (originally only in health food shops). Health food shops still sometimes carry a larger range of them than Sainsburys.

Biona have sold several stuffed vegan pastas for a while now, but I don't see them very often outside London. They're alright, but nothing to get overly excited by.

I remember years ago there being a tofu ravioli sold in jars. It wasn't good, at all, so am not fussed that I can't remember the brand or know if it's currently available.

Cake & Biscuits

Not a lot has changed in so far as the number of options available. Biscuit vendors change recipes every few years, creating new options and removing others. Tesco used to sell amazingly good half chocolate dipped ginger biscuits, but I've not seen them in a while. Bourbons, fruit shortcake and fig rolls are often vegan. I used to buy packs of bourbon biscuits at university, then sit in the library doing revision, picking off the top layer of biscuit, throwing it away, eating the middle then throwing the remaining part away. Does that make me weird?

Tru-free used to sell vegan custard creams, but helpfully changed their recipe without making it obvious on the packaging.

Cake remains scarce. Gluten free cherry bakewells have been available (not sure which if any are still vegan), but the case is really crap / not short at all. Mrs Crimbles have sold vegan suitable long life cake for a number of years, but I'm not a fan and would never think to buy it. There are several vendors of allergy aware products, who make complete junk and sell it at rediculous prices.

For years vegans believed that Tesco sold vegan doughnuts, due to an error in The Vegan Society's Vegan Shopper. M&S used to sell good ring doughnuts, but I've not seen them in recent years. Co-op currently sell both jam and custard doughnuts that are pretty good. They're no longer labelled vegan due to the fact that they're made in-store, however I've read that the staff are pretty good at avoiding cross contamination (from a vegan staff member I should add!).

Several companies sell cereal / fruit bars these days. I eat Nakd products regularly (2 of your 5 a day!) and went through a phase of eating way too many Doves Farm chocolate crispy bars and flapjack bars.

Seasonal products (hot cross buns, mince pies etc) change every year (I assume based on which supplier won the contract and what raw ingredients are cheapest) - sometimes we have a good year, other times there's virtually no choice.

Baking your own vegan cake and biscuits is so easy that I've never really been bothered by lack of commercial offerings. It would be nice to just go out and buy a birthday cake on occasion, but there you go. Jus Rol have offered several vegan pastry products for as long as I remember.

Like many I was drawn towards egg replacer when I turned vegan, however I soon realised that it is complete redundant and has no real use. It's better to adapt recipes to not need egg, rather than make non-vegan recipes with it and hope it comes out vaguely similar.

Tofu

Supply of silken tofu in 2000 is comparable to 2010 - in most supermarkets.

Firm tofu supply has increased a lot however. Originally I was buying only Cauldron plain/smoked (marinated came available shortly after) from health food shops (soon adopted by Supermarkets). I switched to Taifun and Clearspot when they came available (I first found Taifun in '04). Their flavoured tofu is extremely convenient (can be eaten without cooking, or fried with onions when making curries) and though more pricey it's cheaper than organic meat. We use a couple of blocks a week (mostly their smoked types, though basil goes very well in thai green curry). We use Clearspot on the odd occasion when we eat plain or smoked.

I've encountered other brands, but nothing stands out. Tofu is sometimes available pre deep fried in Chinese supermarkets, however its really fishy smell has put me off!

Soya Milk

I personally drink Fresh So Good and use whatever is cheap / organic / longlife for cooking. There's always some in the fridge. I've tried oat / nut milks and get OK with them, but rarely buy any (certainly Oatly varieties contain sheep). Fresh So Good is an acquired taste and has been recently withdrawn from Sainsburys.

I don't get on so well with Alpro (other than their fresh chocolate milk). The Lite version is OK, but I wouldn't think to buy it.

10 years ago there were no fresh milks available in supermarkets, but already a good selection of long life. I don't remember mainstream coffee shops offering soya milk before 2003.

Soya Cream

Alpro started selling fresh single cream a couple of years ago, which is excellent in every way. We buy several cartons at a time as it has a long life. It has a neutral taste and is usable in cooking as well as with on desserts.

There are several long life single creams available, but none are in the same league.

From 2005 onwards Soyatoo have sold whippable cream, as have Granovita (I can't tell the difference). The latter is in Tesco and Sainsburys (recently we bought a year's supply when we found it massively reduced). It's not got a neutral taste and it's not a direct replacement to dairy (recently described as tasting like baby food). It's pretty good though.

Soyatoo also introduced squirty cream in 2005. It's pretty good, but some of the bottles have issues (if none comes out, shake and try again. If you just keep the nozzle held down you'll waste all the propellant) and the nozzles difficult to completely clean (growing mould if you don't do a good enough job). I'm not sure I've seen it in a supermarket, but it's in most independent health food stores.

Tofutti sour cream has been around for a long time and is pretty good. There was a hoo-hah a few years ago when it transpired that they don't always use vegan sugar, however UK products seem to be unaffected.

Margarine

Vegan Margarine was once widely available, however some time ago all margarine brands switched to selling 'spread' instead, which is margarine plus butter milk for flavour. I can't believe it's not butter, because it contains butter.

By far the best margarine currently available is Pure, which has been in most supermarkets since 2003. Their nicest spread (organic) has recently been withdrawn, due to cheapskates not paying the extra few pence per week for organic. The sunflower is best in baking, soya marginally nicer used as a spread. Typically we buy sunflower. Take care when making toffee with it - it contains water which will spit at you if you add to hot sugar.

When I first turned vegan there were no vegan margarines available that were any good. One I tried was grainy! Books suggested using tahini instead, which isn't a valid alternative in my eyes. Sainsburys introduced a dairy free spread that was at the time the best, but quickly got displaced by Pure.

Vitalite is currently vegan I believe (for a while it wasn't due to vitamin D), but we prefer Pure.

Cheese

Ten years ago vegan cheese was not good. There were a few options and all sucked. The only one I did enjoy I found after a couple of months thinking I was vegan that they contained casein, to make them melt.

In around 2004, Redwoods launched their cheezly super melting range, which to this day are my favourite cheese product. We eat 1-2 blocks mozzarella a week. It's not perfect, but it does melt and perform the vague function of cheese in many dishes. Their cheddar is very good, but for some reason only available in slices these days (where you get the amount for the same price as a block). I'm not a fan at all of their non super melting stuff.

Scheese improved their products around 2006 and I became a fan. They're not so good cooked (unless chopped on pizza), but much better than cheezly when eaten on crackers.

Many vegans are waiting with baited breath for Daiya being released in the UK. It's currently in the US only and apparently the best vegan cheese so far, by a long way.

Tofutti Cream Cheese remains the best for cooking. Scheese do versions with bits added which are OK eaten on crackers. Pure launched cream cheese recently which is widely available and not very good.

Pure have also released cheese slices which are really manky. The only vaguely palatable way I've found of serving them is melted on a burger. They were threatening to make cheese triangles, but it never came to anything.

Icecream

One of the great side effects of becoming vegan is learning about where food comes from and how it's made. When you realise that most non vegan icecream is made from vegetable oil you realise why perfectly good tasting vegan icecream is available. Swedish Glace was in health food shops in 2000, then hit supermarkets during the cholesterol awareness phase that also brought in fresh soya milk. It remains the best available, with several flavours (all good except for Neapolitan, which does a very good job of tasting just like cheap and nasty Neapolitan icecream from the 80s). They changed their vanilla a few years ago to include specks of black (assumebly vanilla, not plastic). It's far cheaper in supermarkets than health food stores.

Tofutti and Sainsburys have(/still?) sold icecream, but it's not great. Booja Booja sell icecream, which (like their other products) is nice but chronically overpriced.

Swedish Glace choc ices (fake Magnum things) are good and well priced. They've made the chocolate thicker since launch, but it could go thicker still. Including nuts and caramel would be a welcome addition too! They sell cornetto type icecreams, which are OK, but not overly exciting. Tofutti sell them too and whilst more promising (with chocolate and nuts) the cones are always soggy which really puts me off. I thought at first it must be a problem with the shop's freezer, but they've been like it consistently for years.

Various supermarkets have sold fruit sorbet over the years. Sainsburys are the only company that currently label (to my knowledge). On a sorbet related note, there's a coconut based sorbet thing that comes in pyramid shaped packets that you buy unfrozen and place in your freezer. They're pretty good, in Sainsburys and some independent shops. I forget the name, which I realise isn't overly helpful. Are you still reading this post? Isn't there something else you should be doing?

Meat Replacement

I'm not obsessed with the concept of recreating meat, however I do believe that meat replacements have their place. They make transitioning easier for some people (most of us, myself included, were bought up eating meat) and some products are nice in their own right. Other meat products are actually formats - ways of delivering food to you in a convenient form, such as burgers. Some just fail miserably - in the quest to make something that looks like meat they completely miss the point of making something that's pleasurable to eat.

We bulk buy Frys products - their sausages and burgers are very good. Not such a fan of other products they sell - their meaty strips are like chopped up burger and not good at all. They are sold in H&B and independent shops.

We also buy a lot of Redwoods products, most of whose range we like. Their 'beef' products are a bit creepy, but other than that they're pretty good. Their chicken pieces are currently my favourite. Redwoods used to sell really good sandwich filler things (chunks of 'meat' in curry sauce, BBQ etc). I have no idea why they were discontinued. Redwoods have entire ranges which are only available in certain shops. ASDA for instance sold several products for a while I've never seen elsewhere. The brand was purchased fairly recently Heather Mills (McCartney), who sells their products heated up in her VBites cafe (which I've no interest in visiting!).

H&B sell good frozen sausages. Their ready to eat range has recently had a revamp and seem to better than previous (they've been several discussions online about mouldy sausage rolls). I'm not at all fussed by the frozen cheesecakes they've just started selling or Amy's imported products.

Linda McCartney vegan options are OK (pies, sausages, sausage rolls etc), but we seldom buy them. The were originally sold in yellow boxes, then several turned non vegan when switched to red. To the amusement of my housemates at university I filled my freezer drawer with yellow boxed sausage rolls when they were discontinued, then rationed them off over the coming months.

A 'technology' known as Gardein was licensed by several companies in the UK a couple of years ago, and Tesco amongst others started selling pretty decent nuggets and other 'chicken' products. Unfortunately it was short lived.

Real Eat sell the best frozen soya mince. It used to come in resealable bags, I don't know why they stopped. It's become more difficult to find in supermarkets recently, but is in H&B and independent shops still. Redwoods fresh mince is OK in some dishes.

Taifun sell several tofu sausages, which are alright. Biona used to sell very good tofu sausages (available in Waitrose), but I've not seen them in a few years.

Chocolate, Sweets and Crisps

Plamil have been making vegan chocolate as long as I remember. Being one of the few vegan companies in the UK I should really be endorsing them, however I'm not a fan.

For a long time, Green and Blacks was the vegan chocolate of choice. They were bought out by Cadburys however and later stopped labelling vegan (going as far as listing butterfat an ingredient even when it isn't). Recently it's become Kraft and is far off the radar. Whilst organic, G&B only ever had 1 fair trade bar and in my book, fair trade overrides organic.

Divine is our favourite. It's cheap in supermarkets (until recently 89p for 100g), fairtrade and tasty. We use far too much of it. Organica is organic and overpriced, but some milk chocolate loving people find it the only palatable non dairy alternative.

I've eaten a lot of Ritter Sport Marzipan over the years. I've had to stop myself from eating it, as I consume a bar with too much ease. It's sometimes on offer in Tesco (we've been known to buy 10 bars at a time).

Up until 2006 there was no such thing as vegan white chocolate. I tried making my own after going through the lengthy process of acquiring cocoa butter, but achieved only chocolate smelling massage bars. Then organica white was released, which was an instant disappointment. Like their 'milk' it's overpriced and tastes more like Caramac than white chocolate. To add insult to injury it goes funny when melted. Within the last year bags of dairy free white buttons have been released, which are excellent in every way. We buy 10-20 bags at a time, open them all and store the contents in a tin. By weight they work out cheaper than organica, I just wish they'd start selling it in bars to cut down on packaging.

I've never understood carob.

Booja Booja make pretty good truffles, however at those sorts of prices I'd rather eat Montezumas. Tescos started selling "Gianduiotti" a year or so ago, which is rather tasy hazlenut chocolate. Sainsburys have recently started selling chocolate covered caramels. They're very good, but again terribly overpriced. Talking of overpriced - Hotel Chocolat. I just can't fathom how they are still in business - their product is no better than divine yet 5x the price. What sort of a name is Hotel Chocolat anyway?

Vegan marshmallows are available, but again way, way, way overpriced and not 100% identical to their gelatinous counterparts. Turkish delight isn't far off, which is available at cheaper prices.

There are several products made for people with allergies that are vegan, but most of them are overpriced and disappointing. I used to buy slightly odd chocolate mini eggs, but didn't see them this year.

Wrigleys have always made vegan gum. Choice of sweets from other mainstream manufacturers however remains shite. There's no reason why more vegan sweets couldn't be manufactured, but the companies choose not to (I assume it's more profitable that way).

Choice of crisps has remained roughly the same, with Kettle and Tyrells at the high end of the market, various walkers at the bottom. Walkers have changed recipes a few times, but there's currently a good selection (though none are labelled). Kettle have recently changed recipes, removing previous vegan options and created new ones. Tyrells are my favourite, but then I'm not a great crisp eater.

Ready Made Sauces / Pastes

We're in pretty much the same situation we were 10 years ago here, with many sauces being vegan but not marketed as such.

Something that has gotten better is Thai curry paste. Originally I found none in supermarkets not containing (shell)fish. The first jar of green I found was from a Chinese supermarket (and is to the day one of the cheapest and best I've tried). These days there are several widely available options.

We use jars probably more than we should, but it's one step up on a week night from really lazy 'stick it in the oven' food.

There are a few things I miss, such as the sundried tomato hemp pesto that Sainsburys once sold. It was pricey but very good. This reminds me; I've not used hemp seeds in baking for ages. I must rectify this.

Drinks

Not a lot has changed here over the past 10 years. Labelling has become a bit better, with Sainsburys, M&S and Co-op marking vegan wines. Tesco & Waitrose have some listings on their respective websites. Some beer and cider companies label (Batemans, Westons etc). Famous brands of beer change recipes every few years. When I was at university the only beer on tap in every local pub was Stella (aka wife beater), which meant I got more pissed than friends on pub crawls who were drinking weaker beer. It then went non-vegan until recently, which when I tasted it again my university days came flooding back... :D

Various lists have been available on the Internet of vegan alcohol, but they get outdated very quickly and become rather meaningless. Barnivore is currently the best site, which records the date and response from the company.

Co-op drew our attention to the fact that not all juice is vegan (as the fruit may have been glazed with shellac), by being the first supermarket to label products as not vegan. It should also be mentioned that some juice is clarified with gelatine.

Household Products

We currently use Method:Home for cleaning products, which came available within the last couple of years (Homebase, B&Q, Waitrose, Sainsburys) and is very good. When I say we, actually I do very little of the cleaning ;)

We use their granite, stainless steel, wood & glass cleaners/polishes, as well as range of accompanying microfibre clothes. We use their all purpose spray, bathroom and toilet cleaner.

Until a couple of years ago we all believed Ecover to be vegan (including The Vegan Society, who accredited their products), when we found that actually they do conduct animal testing afterall. Vegans were left instead with Clearspring and Bio-D, both of which are unfortunately substandard. I struggled to find a dishwasher detergent as good as Ecover (Bio-D's gel is crap), but eventually found Co-op's tablets which as just as good (and often on offer, when we buy several boxes). Bio-D's rinse aid is OK, which we still have some left of from a 4 litre bottle I bought several years ago. Co-op have recently started selling vegan dishwasher cleaner, which is good news.

There are lots of choices for washing detergent / softener. We currently use Co-op's liquid detergents, as neither of us got on with ASDA's. We were using Simply previously (who sell powder in capsules, in tubs from Waitrose, Sainsburys etc), however not all of the powder dissolved in each wash and eventually blocked our drain.

Washing up liquid supply has fluctuated several times. Currently we're using Co-op, as Sainsburys seem to have stopped labelling their's.

Astonish products are vegan, but of all we've only tried the oven cleaner (then only vegan one I could fine). It seemed to work pretty well.

Candles are something that many don't realise aren't all vegan and those that do think you have to pay through the roof for overpriced tea lights. Ikea have recently started specifying which of their candles are made from animal source and which are not. They have a good selection and prices are sensible.

Toiletries

There always been a good choice of Shampoo / Conditioner. Currently I use Superdrug (who have gotten very good at labelling recently) 2 in 1, but my hair is happy with Co-op and Original Source - all of which are cheap and often on offer.

There are many premium brands that have vegan options. I used to use Neals Yard, but it all got a bit expensive. My partner uses Lush, but I think their hair products are overpriced for the amount of time they last.

Lush do have some good products and I've tried a large number of those that are vegan suitable. They started labelling vegan products around '04 and have a good choice. I'd recommend their massage, moisturiser, lip balms and shower products. The bath bombs are good, but seriously overpriced. Their shaving cream is the worst I've ever tried. Original Source sell good, cheap, vegan friendly shaving gel. Lush soaps are nice, but I'm not a fan of solid soap. Simple sell cheap, no nonsense, squirty anti bacterial hand soap (cheapest in Morrisons) and Method:Home sell more interesting flavours / foaming stuff.

Kingfisher vegan toothpaste has been available as long as I remember. Co-op whitening is good, though we're currently using Beverly Hills formula whitening, which is easier to find. Co-op sell the only sensibly priced vegan mouth wash I know of (blue tastes better than green).

Perfume / Aftershave

This is more of a tricky area, with limited choice.

Ted Baker products are vegan (according to them). The Stella McCartney range is vegan (according to various sources, but not them directly). The Jean Paul Gaultier range is vegan, however they sell fur and are on my naughty list.

DIY

Having renovated (gutted and started again) a house recently I've done a lot of research on this topic. It's vegan where possible*, with stone, wood, laminate and natural fiber carpets. All walls, plaster and woodwork was painted with Ecos Paints, which are vegan, environmentally friendly and very good (pricing similar to that of premium paints, like Farrow and Ball (who won't say if their products are vegan or not)). There's no wool, leather, feathers or silk in any of the furnishings (including mattresses, sofas and cushions).

When vegan products have been available they've been used. The reason for the * is that whilst we've not knowingly used anything that isn't vegan, there are products which probably are vegan but no manufacturer will state for sure that it is suitable. Thus risks have to be taken with certain things, which isn't great, but reality. Obviously I avoid brands I boycott due to animal testing and will err towards no product rather than one I think has a good chance of being non vegan.

There are several other vegan paint options available now (including those that come in powder form). I am however happy enough with Ecos (having used Lily White, White, Olive and Vanilla matt paints, white gloss, wood sealer, wood gloss, wood varnish, plaster sealer).

Is that all?

For now. I've probably missed out loads of things and I'm not going to re-read it all and check for grammar :)

Courgette Pasta

2010-05-09T11:48:00.004+01:00

Who'd have thought that a fruit as disgusting as courgette could be actually quite pleasant raw?

Though I get on OK with cucumbers, courgettes have always creeped me out a bit. Maybe it's something about their furry skin or that they go mushy when cooked. With the exception of ratatouille, up until a week or so ago you'd have been hard pushed to find me voluntarily eating courgettes.

Saf last weekend has done weird things to my view on food, specifically to do with eating hated vegetables in raw form.

Kale (one of my top 5 most hated veg) was grotesquely disgusting when I first tried it a couple of years ago. It had been cooked up with a bit of oil, garlic and was apparently very nice according to the person I ate it with. Not so, my gag reflex went into overdrive.

This week I actually chose to go out and buy a bag of curly kale and try it raw in a smoothie. Having blended a handful up with a banana and some apple juice it actually was drinkable. Not the nicest thing I've ever tasted, but the banana did a good job of hiding the taste and it was very similar to the spinach smoothies I've been having recently. Spinach (in case you're wondering) is OK when raw, as it's more like a salad leaf than yucky cabbage. It's bearable in certain instances when cooked, such as in lasagne. Yesterday morning I blended a handful spinach, handful kale, 2 bananas and apple juice. Again it was OK - not amazingly tasty, but OK and more raw greens than I've possibly ever consumed in one go.

So anyway, back to the purpose of this post. Since last weekend I've made 3 'pasta' dishes from raw courgette. The first 2 used shop bought pesto, yesterday's (and that which is detailed / photographed here) with fresh pesto. It doesn't take an awful lot of prep and does taste good. It's better with some chopped up sundried tomatoes added, but we'd run out when I made this batch. I sometimes add other nuts and/or balsamic vinegar to pesto, but balsamic isn't strictly raw (the grapes are cooked during the process).

Ingredients (per person):

1 large courgette (or several small)
Fresh basil leaves
Extra vigin olive oil
Olives
Pine Nuts
Sundried Tomatoes
Chopped garlic
Sea Salt

Using one large courgette is easier than using smaller ones. To make the noodles use a julienne peeler, taking first a strip off the underside so you have a stable base. You can leave skin on or peal first (the latter being nicer, but less nutritious). Chop off the opposite end from which you start each slice.

You have 2 options - shave off slices then cut into noodles, or do long cuts along the length, so each slice comes off already in noodle form. If using the second method, I found through trial and error that cutting slices 90% of the way through leaves enough connecting tissue to hold it together whilst you slice. Otherwise it can get a little unmanageable.

When you've created your noodles, sprinkle with salt and set them aside in a bowl. I'm not a great fan of salt, but if you don't add it they won't soften and become pasta like.

Blend all other ingredients together in quantity of your choice, or chop the basil, olives, tomatoes and crush the nuts in a pestle & mortar.

Toss together with the courgette and serve.

It would go exceptionally well with some warm crusty bread, but all thoughts of such things must be banished! :O

Vegan London Food Binge

2010-05-03T12:07:00.001+01:00

24 hours, 4 restaurants, £200.

Having once visited London and eaten at its vegan restaurants on a regular basis (2000-2004 - I was a student with endless free time and cheap train tickets) I've since been visiting less and less. Not through a dislike of our capital, but through ridiculously expensive walk up fares and slow trains that really don't encourage you to use public transport. In the meantime various new places have popped up that we've yet to try.

To celebrate my partner's birthday we decided to book a hotel and cheap train tickets in advance, then go for an all you can eat food binge, to make up for lost time.

The reviews of the 4 places we ate at (Sagar, Inspiral, Saf & Zilli Green) follow. They range from Exceptional to OK, disappointing and robbery.

Sagar

2010-05-03T12:05:00.001+01:00

I discovered Sagar (South Indian, vegetarian) by chance in autumn 2008, on Percy Street in London. It's sandwiched between Soho Wine Supply on one side (the only shop in the UK I've found selling vegan sweet vermouth) and Camerino (omni Italian restaurant, who did a genuinely good job of catering for me when on a work do there). Two doors down is Joi (vegan chinese, where I've been more times than I'd like to admit).

Though not fully vegan, Sagar has a separate vegan menu with a lot of choice. We returned due to their amazing onion bhajis - unlike any we've had before and very good.

We weren't overly hungry (Friday lunchtime), so ordered some bhajis and popadums to munch whilst waiting for our main courses. As with before; the bhajis were excellent and a generous portion size. For some reason they served condiments to us with one non vegan option, which they pointed out we shouldn't eat. Why include it, or if realising on serving it shouldn't be there, not take it away?

For mains we had masala dosa and some kind of aubergine curry with garlic rice.

The dosa itself was good, but filling a little uninspiring - more like spicy baby food than curry. The garlic rice was tasty, but a little overpriced (£3.95). I can't comment on the slimy vegetable dish, but am informed it tasted good (though a little too spicy).

Sagar's food is, on the whole, well priced. The two of us ate for £23 with soft drinks. You get a lot for your money and the food is reliably OK. I'd certainly return, but not before trying many of the other restaurants on my list.

Inspiral Lounge

2010-05-03T12:03:00.003+01:00

I've heard a lot of hype about Inspiral since it opened a couple of years ago. The main reason for visiting was their cakes, of which Tiramisu was the most exciting.

Camden is more or less how I remember it - a mass of tourist tack and overpriced imports, marketed at middle class rebellious teenagers and wannabe hippies. An endless warren of market stall selling more or less the same stock. There are exceptions to this and a few good shops (such as Oddballs juggling shop just over the bridge), but in general it's best avoided (or visited at 10am on Sunday when at its quietest).

Inspiral was, how shall I say this? Not my cup of tea.

It was overcrowded with smoky incense and small, oddly shaped tables (i.e. not in a good way). The cakes were overpriced (£4 a slice) and disappointing. The tiramisu cake was not tiramisu how I remember - whilst well presented it seriously lacked any kind of flavour, let alone tiramisu. The peanut butter cake was over sweet and unimpressive for the price. We had a scoop of icecream which according to the board was meant to come in a vegan waffle cone, but instead came in a paper cup.

For some unknown reason they use wooden cutlery, which as well as being bad for the environment is unpleasant to eat off (try licking a spoon made of wood, ick).

Inspiral sell all sorts of things we didn't try, so there's a chance that at a less busy time it's more pleasant and I'd consider returning. All in all this time however, it wasn't for me.

Edit: Their website says their tiramisu cake has a money back guarantee! I feel an email coming on....

Saf

2010-05-03T12:01:00.001+01:00

As the vegetable hater you all know me to be, the concept of attending Saf was more than a little disturbing. Though I like trying new things, expensive raw vegetables don't have quite the same allure as a nice wedge of focaccia or slice of lemon cake; especially vegetables I actively dislike.

I'm pleased to say however that I was pleasantly surprised by Saf - it was one of the best restaurant visits I've ever had. We each ate 3 raw courses and were buzzing for hours afterwards.

Saf is located outside the centre of London (on the edge of Zone 1) in a building with high ceilings, good decor and comfortable seating (choose a table at the rear for better seats than at the front). We arrived at 7.30 on Friday evening and by 8.30 it was almost full.

Service was excellent (for once it was worth the 12.5% 'optional' charge): we were well looked after by people who knew about and could explain components of the dishes they were serving.

We ordered a couple of cocktails whilst choosing what to eat, which whilst took a while to come were very well presented. A little on the expensive side, but interesting and unusual flavours that had had more work put into them than mixing the contents of store bought bottles together. Mine (a Rhubarb Triangle) contained balsamic vinegar and basil, which unfortunately didn't quite work for me. I'm glad to have tried it and it was drinkable. I've not considered balsamic to be a cocktail ingredient before, but as someone who sometimes drinks it neat from the bottle I'll be doing some experimentation with it.

We were a bit in the dark when it came to food, as the menu we were presented with was different from that on their website and from which we'd received recommendations. More disappointingly there was no cheese board (which we'd been particularly looking forward to) or taster plate.

For starters I chose Cannelloni (raw courgette slices, rolled with cream cheese, served with salsa and some kind of oil), Becky chose Pesto au Poivre (cashew cheese, tortilla chips, dehydrated tomato).

Mine was a little on the small side, but really tasty (coming from someone who doesn't like courgettes this is praise indeed), the cheese extremely good and generously portioned.

For mains we chose Salsify Fettucine and Lasagne. We ate half each and surreptitiously swapped mid way through.

I've always been somewhat sceptical of the whole fake pasta thing, but this really worked. It was quite obviously not your normal sort of pasta, but it was a good compromise between soft and crunchy, without the weird taste I'd expect. I've not had the pleasure of salsify before, nor for that matter knew what it was until I googled. It was (if wikipedia is to be believed) very popular in the UK a few hundred years ago.

I was more a fan of the lasagne. Again it bore very little to the lasagne we cooked earlier in the week, but was full of olivey goodness.

Disappointed by the lack of cheese platter, the manager agreed to let me order a macadamia cheese dish from the lunch menu, whilst Becky had the raw chocolate torte.

As others have mentioned the dessert sizes are small, but it was by far and away the best raw chocolate thing I've tried (I had a slice of disgusting raw 'chocolate cake' at a vegan festival a few years ago). The cheese was also good, though came with an insufficient amount of tortilla chips and think I preferred the cashew.

The lemonade we ordered to come with dessert arrived several minutes after we'd finished, so we had an odd (over sweet) lemonade course.

All in all Saf was the introduction to raw food I've been looking for. It was good, tasty, healthy food I could imagine eating more of without feeling like I'm punishing myself. I'm not looking to turn 100% raw over night (if ever), but we both agreed to trialling a (mostly) raw day once a week.

They have an unpolished iPhone recipe app (ingredients don't tally up with instructions) and various of their recipes can be found online. I'll certainly try making their nut cheeses.

The bill came to £88, which whilst on the more expensive side was worth it for the experience and is justifiable given the amount of prep that goes into their dishes. We'll definitely return.

Zilli Green

2010-05-03T11:59:00.002+01:00

Since it's launch in February we've heard mixed reviews for Zilli Green (vegetarian Italian restuarant in Soho, owned by Aldo Zilli), but based on the menu wanted to check it out for ourselves.

Whilst I still think the Guardian article was a little harsh, the experience was not a good one and the food not worth the price. We left feeling deflated and a bit like we'd been robbed by Aldo himself.

I don't feel particularly compelled to write a long blog post about it, if I thought it'd achieve anything I'd rather funnel my effort into writing a complaint.

We visited at lunchtime (arriving at 12.30pm), having been to Saf the night before (i.e. it had a lot to live up to). We were the first people to arrive in what was a small and over cramped restaurant (it's never a good sign when they have to move the table to let you into your seat, then move it back pinning you in!). Service was disorganised and cold - not worth the 'optional' charge.

By 1.30pm it was about 20% full (not exactly buzzing), but we at least benefited from a short wait in between courses.

We ordered a meze to nibble whilst waiting for starter, which was genuinely tasty and worth it's price. My sushi for starter wasn't either of these things however - it was worse than supermarket bought vegan sushi. I can't remember what Becky's starter was - it was that memorable.

My main course was an overpriced burger, served with over manicured, under flavoured chips. Though hungry I left part of the burger. Becky had a tofu+noodle dish that was alright, but fairly uninspiring and with an ungenerous amount of tofu.

We ordered a dessert platter for pudding, which again we ended up leaving some of. The lemoncello cheesecake was quite nice, but not worth the money. The tiramisu cake was better than Inspiral's (some have said it's the same, but it was layered differently) in terms of taste, but still no where near real tiramisu in taste (the Guardian's subliminal advert for dairy quote isn't far off). The carob torte was simply vile and left half uneaten.

The bill came to £62, including 1 alcoholic drink. It was half as good as a meal from The Warehouse in Birmingham costing £30-£40.

I really can't recommend Zilli Green to anyone, especially when there's so many other places to find vegan food in the area.

(Green) Smoothies

2010-04-16T09:46:00.005+01:00

You may or may not have noticed the distinct lack of vegetables featuring in recipes on this blog.

There's a very good reason for this - I just don't like most of them. I turned vegan in January 2000 (a new millennium's resolution if you like) only for animal rights (not a dietary requirement).

I'd say I know a fair amount about nutrition - I eat a balanced diet, am in good health and have not to my knowledge had any problems as a result of it. I saw a nutritionist at university when experiencing tiredness problems, who said I had the healthiest diet of any student she'd ever encountered. It turned out my tiredness was more related to the hours I kept / all night partying!

I'm not however obsessed with green vegetables, nor do I believe that consuming huge amounts of sprouts is required to be vegan.

My favourite ingredient in the whole world is wheat - it's so versatile (think cake, cookies, noodles, pasta, bread etc). I love bread, have you noticed? I eat a fair amount of tofu and am not completely averse to lentils. I like fruit and salad leaves, if combined into a meal and not just served up whole (I'm not a rabbit). I do like some veg when cooked up with other things; leeks, carrots, onions, artichokes are just a few.

What sets me aside from other fussy eaters is however a strong desire to try and like new vegan food. It's not that I don't try to incorporate more veg into my diet, it's that every time I do it ruins what was otherwise a good meal. I'd genuinely like to derive the same enjoyment others do from eating things like kale, broccoli and cauliflower - without invoking my gag reflex.

I think a large part of the problem is that I don't have the taste buds for bitter food. I don't like tonic (quinine) or ale (hops). I can physically drink them, but I don't get any satisfaction out of a G&T at all - quite the opposite of what some people do.

The downside of loving carbs and spending a disproportionate amount of my life sat in an office is that I often consume more calories than I burn, leading to the addition of slightly more weight than I'd like. I've tried various techniques to remedy this over the years (gym membership, swapping sweet snacks for savoury, cutting out snacks, denying myself dessert etc), but eventually I come back to the same problem - if I consume the amount of food that I want and enjoy doing then my body will naturally find a BMI of ~28 unless I'm doing regular cardio. I find nothing more mind numbing than cardio for the sake of cardio (especially when shite music is being pumped through the speakers).

My latest ploy involves tackling these 2 issues (cutting carbs, eating more fresh fruit & veg) and exploring my vague raw food curiosity. Over the past week I've been consuming 2 portions of fruit/veg before leaving the house, through way of smoothies. I've found that it is possible for green smoothies to taste good.

Do I feel better for it? Don't be daft. I don't go in for the whole psychosomatic hippy bullshit. They are remarkably tasty however and very easy to prepare. It's completely possible to hide a handful of spinach in a drink and not notice its presence (other than the colour, of course).

Green Smoothie

My favourite green smoothie thus far consists of:

Apple Juice (glass)
Celery (6 inches)
Cucumber (2 inches)
1 Banana
Baby Spinach (generous handful)

Blend all ingredients together until smooth. Simple?

I've been fiddling with the quantities of each ingredient and found those to be the best. Banana gives it a real sweet lift, but 2 bananas is too much. I've never fully appreciated the strength of celery's flavour until I tried 2 sticks instead of 1 - too much. You can leave out the cucumber without much flavour change.

Morello Cherry & Dark Chocolate Smoothie

I thieved the idea of this drink from Innocent's smoothie book (published/ purchased before they became Coca-Cola and were promptly added to my boycott list).

Apple Juice (glass)
Frozen Morello/dark cherries (10-15)
1 Banana
25g melted chocolate

Blend the juice, cherries and banana whilst melting the chocolate. Set to a low speed, open the lid and pour in the chocolate. Blend for a further few seconds until totally combined. It should go a beautiful dark red, with specks of chocolate and cherry skin.

Yes - I realise that this isn't green. This was my weekend smoothie. There've been various rumours circulating for years about the benefit of dark chocolate in your diet, which I'll cling to in this instance.

A note about blenders

If you don't own or need a new blender, invest in one with a dishwasherable glass jug, powerful enough to crush ice/frozen fruit and without useless gimicks. My first blender - a Kenwood Smoothie maker was complete junk. It wasn't dishwasher safe (like the shop claimed), was difficult to clean and had a completely useless tap, which got clogged up easily and ensured a lump of unblended silken tofu every time when using it to make desserts.

In most instances you can clean a glass jugged blender with running cold water, if you do it straight after blending. For slightly more stubborn ingredients, running at low speed with a little washing liquid and 1/3 water for 30 seconds will do the trick. Any cleaning that takes more than 1 minute can be done in the dishwasher.

A note about drinking

Slow down! It's possible to drink a smoothie in 5-20 seconds. This isn't good however, when 10 minutes later you're driving to work and come over quite queezy. Sip and enjoy whilst you tweet, facebook or whatever it is you do in the morning.

If you've any tried and tasted (green) smoothie recipes you can share with a green veg hater, please let me know!

Chocolate Egg Eating Festival Greetings

2010-04-07T19:24:00.002+01:00

It's been a good year for both vegan chocolate eggs and accidentally vegan hot cross buns.

My excuse for not being a better blogger this week is that we're away on holiday in Dorset at the moment.

We made 2 cakes for the day itself, a standard chocolate buttercream and a made up almond marzipan one. I substituted 100g flour for 100g ground almonds and vanilla essence for almond in my standard sponge. I then added a layer of marzipan to the batter and cooked at a lower temperature for an extended period. The resulting cake got covered with marzipan and lightly grilled.

It tasted pretty damned good, but was quite moist and would be better suited as a bakewell tart sponge rather than a cake in its own right. I'll blog it if I ever get round to it (there is some shortcrust pastry that needs using as it happens.......)

Hazelnut Truffles / Reverse Engineering

2010-03-29T07:46:00.002+01:00

I've been a bit crap at blogging recently - too many interests and not enough time.

I tend to go in phases, dedicating the little time I have mostly to one thing for several weeks/months, then move on. Recently I've switched attention to iPhone development - whilst I've a general dislike for Apple I find potential for an additional revenue stream through releasing apps quite appealing. I purchased a mac mini 2 weeks ago and am learning Objective-C, which is similar enough to other languages I 'speak' (I mainly code Java, Perl & PHP but have a working knowledge of Python, TCL, C, C++, C#, JavaScript and various others).

Programming and cooking are not too dissimilar. One of my interests is network protocol design and reverse engineering - figuring out how new applications talk over a network/the Internet so I can write my own code that captures, interfaces with or modifies traffic passing between them.

Reverse engineering ranges from trivially easy to insanely difficult. More often than not application programmers are not experts in networking, so use either an existing protocol their language has an API for (such as HTTP) or implement their own crude protocol in plain-text. Better programmers write their own protocols for efficiency, which makes the task a bit more complex. If encryption is used it's unlikely (though not impossible) that you'll get very far, though it may be that only the payload is encrypted and control data is still modifiable.

Recreating commercial food products is often easy too, following a similar process and pattern of logic. Start with facts (ingredients listing, literature about process etc) and informed guesses (has it been cooked?), write a plan (recipe) then move to testing. It's likely it was made using similar techniques to those you're already familiar with, modified only for preparation in bulk.

Product wrappers in the UK (and most places) list ingredients in order by weight. If a percentage is shown on an ingredient then you know that each ingredient preceding has a higher percentage and each afterwards has lower.

Knowledge of the chemical properties of ingredients helps, particularly how they interact with others. Figuring out why an ingredient was included allows you to guess at processes employed (such as an emulsifier), the stage in which it was added, perform substitutions (for a 'nicer' or more readily available ingredient) and omissions (we don't need preservatives or colouring agents). McGee on Food and Cooking is an excellent book and reference guide on the properties of ingredients. Wikipedia is good too.

Companies sometimes hide actual ingredients under another product or category, such as flavourings. It's not always easy to discover what the components of these are, beyond taste alone.

For sake of example (not gluttony of course) I'll introduce the concept with a nice (but chronically overpriced) vegan truffle that is widely available and doesn't need naming. They're easy to make and the ingredients cost a third of the finished item price.

The ingredients on the wrapper are: chocolate (55% cocoa), coconut oil, hazelnuts (18%), cocoa.

An observation test shows that the amount of cocoa (used for dusting) is negligible. Thus if we ignore it for now and know that 18% is hazelnuts then the rest must be coconut oil and chocolate, both in larger amounts than 18%. 18% coconut oil is a lot, so it's fair to guess that there's not a lot more than this in the product. Let's say that 20% is coconut oil and 62% is chocolate.

55% cocoa solid chocolate is cheaper and less bitter than higher concentrations. I'm choosing to use 70%, which I personally prefer and fairtrade bars of are readily available. It will make the end product slightly more bitter and less creamy, but given the amount of coconut oil in the product I really don't think it needs any more fat.

I'm going to use a 100g bar of chocolate, and guess that 20g of it used for coating. 100 / 62 = 1.61, so 1.61 * 18 = 29g hazelnuts and 1.61 * 20 = 33g coconut oil.

Coconut oil is solid at room temperature. As it needs to melt before adding the first step is to place the bottle in some boiling water, then set aside until later.

Grind the hazelnuts to a fine powder - I made mine slightly too course. If sugar was an ingredient I'd guess that they'd been made into praline, but the company in question tends to favour raw products and I'll leave this step out.

If water were included it'd be possible that a hazelnut cream had been made, but as it's not just chop and melt the 80g chocolate, then stir in the hazelnuts.

Stir in the melted coconut oil and pour into a foil tray approximately the size of 10 truffles. As the chocolate won't be visible after coating and dusting (nor will it want to crack when bitten into), we don't need to temper it first.

Place the mixture in the freezer, then melt the remaining 20g chocolate. Adding some extra chocolate to it will help with dipping (I added another 30g).

I have every confidence that you can find an alternative use for any wasted chocolate (ours got melted again with golden syrup and marg, then poured on icecream with pieces of mazipan and maple syrup).

When set, turn the block out onto a chopping board and trim the sides. Cut it into 10 portions.

You can see that I left a few larger pieces of hazelnut in the mixture, which sunk to the bottom.

Dip each truffle in chocolate in turn, placing on a plate that has been dusted with sieved cocoa. As the chocolate solidifies sieve cocoa onto the surface. Place in the fridge to set, then roll each in further cocoa.

Keep in the fridge, but remove and leave at room temperature for 15-20 minutes before consuming for optimum consistency.

Vegan Oxford Fail

2010-03-15T10:55:00.008Z

With weather last Sunday as perfect as you could ask for it seemed like as good a day as any to check out what Oxford has to offer. We'd been aware of The Gardeners Arms for a while, so it made sense to go for a wander then have a meal there afterwards. Oxford is about a 50 minute drive, door to door.

Though I've been to Oxford several times on business and to visit people, I'd not really ever been to have a look at its shops. The only shop I had been in in the past decade is Central Furniture (opposite Oxford University Press, where I once had a meeting). This perhaps gave me a somewhat skewed belief that perhaps Oxford contained many independent shops worth visiting.

How wrong could I be? The Oxford we saw was almost exclusively chainstores - grotty ones at that. The few independent shops we found were mostly closed (I guess it was a Sunday).

Mid way through our shopping fail we found a branch of shakeaway, who make overpriced but reasonably pleasant soy milkshakes (they charge 99p per shake extra for soya). The first took 10 minutes to come, the second 5 minutes later. The music playing was overloud (I'm all for loud music, but not that loud), the staff had colds and upon finishing one of our 'vegan' milkshakes we found gelatine containing non-vegetarian marshmallows in the bottom.

I wrote to them afterwards and they seemed genuinely apologetic. I don't however feel inclined to ever go back.

I'd like to say I like The Gardeners Arms, but I'd be lying if I did. It's down a cute, narrow road near the town centre, in an area known as Jericho. The closest free parking on a Sunday is a few streets away (other roads are residents only). The building is character packed, but poorly furnished with very few decent tables and a leather sofa (an odd choice for what describes itself on its website as being Oxford's Premier Vegetarian Restaurant). The table we got was way too small to eat comfortably at.

The food is not restaurant standard. It's pub food, which being a pub is understandable. Why market it anything different? Most of their food can be prepared vegan, though they have no vegan puddings on their menu. The prices don't reflect the quality - for £9 a main-course you get a lot better in most other vegetarian restaurants.

They don't seem to sell starters, so we got a couple of side dishes whilst waiting. The chips were fries - almost certainly bought in frozen and pretty tasteless. The garlic flatbread was kind of tasty, but weird and oily (impossible to eat without getting melted 'butter' all over your fingers). We both chose the special, which turned out to be a standard mushroom pie but with roast potatoes instead of non-roast.

The pie's pastry was excellent. It was very yorkshire pudding-esque and the best thing about our experience there. The pie filling was OK - nothing special but edible. The roast potatoes were seriously some of the worst I've ever had the displeasure of eating. The red wine gravy tasted like standard bisto. All in all it was pretty disappointing - we felt robbed.

I never like to say bad things about a vegan friendly business, because i genuinely want the few that we do have to succeed. The Gardener's Arms however needs a good kick up the arse if to gain us as customers or recommend other people to visit. Either they need to improve the seating, quality and choice of food, or cut prices and market it as pub food not a 'premier restaurant' (I realise that as Oxford's only vegetarian restaurant they can do this). If I were out on the piss and found the pub I was in could make me vegan food I'd be delighted. I wouldn't however ever go back there only for the food, unless I was pretty desperate.

So, all in all, it didn't quite work out :). Oxford itself is a pretty place with lots of old buildings. I'd certainly give it another go, with guidance from someone who knows their way around.

Sunshine

2010-03-08T09:36:00.002Z

I like winter - to an extent. I enjoy watching the seasons change and totally get the concept of it being a period to reflect, to create your own warmth and to look forward to the year ahead.

I know we're forever whinging about how crap our weather is in the UK, but the last couple of months have been consistently colder, greyer and snowier than any I remember. Romantic season watching aside I've been ready for summer for quite a while now.

My ideal climate would consist of 2 weeks winter, 2 weeks spring, 4 weeks autumn and 44 weeks summer. Enough time to enjoy the unique offerings that other seasons bring (beautifully coloured leaves, snow etc), with the option to spend evenings outside in sandals and a single layer of clothing the rest.

It's not that I find lack of sunshine depressing per se, rather that its presence really boosts my energy levels. I've used a light box for the past couple of years which helps to a degree, especially when having to get up and go to work whilst it's still dark outside. It's no substitute however for the real thing.

I know the obvious answer is move to a warmer climate, but I like the UK and for all it's failings it's a pretty great place to live.

So, rant aside; yesterday we had proper sun for the first time in ages.

Our coatless walk was on reflection a little cold, but it was so refreshing to be outside enjoying the light. For a few moments on Sunday afternoon whilst relaxing by the window bliss was achieved.

Alcohol isn't the answer to many things, but having a glass of something good in your hand when you've nowhere else you need to be often helps.

The following drink was concocted and worth remembering / recreating again:

2 Shots Summer Pimms
1 Shot Cucumber Gin
1 Shot Simple Syrup
8 Shots Orange Juice
3 Strawberries
Crushed Ice

Muddle / crush the strawberries in the bottom of a cocktail shaker and add the rest of the ingredients. Shake until your hands go numb from cold, then stain into 2 glasses. Float a 1-2 tsp of the strawberry puree on each.

Warning: this drink goes down very, very easily. It's probably worth making 2 batches (or a jug) in advance.

I'm really loving the cucumber gin I made a while ago at the moment. It's really quite impressively cucumbery and a little goes a long way (you could probably lower the shot to a half if you're less of a fan). I've been a big lover of Pimms since it's vegan status was confirmed a few years ago and strawberries are always good.

Apple & Quince Tart with Cardamom Cream

2010-02-22T22:55:00.009Z

Suffering from a bad case of man-flu; compounded by 9 hours at work, I decided on Monday evening to cheer myself up with some dessert. I can't remember the last time I made an apple tart, but it was certainly a while ago.

I've been aware of the existence of quinces since an excellent meal at The Quince & Medlar in 2008. Ever since I've been wondering what they taste like (there were no quinces in the meal). It's not a fruit that I've ever seen in shops before; apparently you either grow them yourself or find someone who does.

I read a few months ago that quince jelly/jam goes very well with apples, so decided to incorporate it into a tart. Having previously only seen the jelly sold at an astronomical price in a deli I tracked some down at the reasonablish price of £2.09 in Waitrose (stocked with chutneys as opposed to jams). Quinces are (so I'm told) pear like fruit with sour flesh that once cooked becomes reddish and sweet. The jelly is reddish, sweet, slightly grainy and tastes somewhere between apple and strawberry. It's certainly not unpleasant.

As you can see from the picture, this is a shortcrust pastry tart with a layer of fruit purée, topped with apple slices, then glazed and baked. Normally you'd use just apples in the purée and glaze with apricot jam (which you can do if you can't find quince jelly), but I added 75g jelly to the purée and glazed the top with 50g. As I've not had quinces before I can't tell whether the tart tastes quincy or not, but the red colour comes through and I'm pretty pleased with it.

Ideally you'd use dessert pastry instead of standard, however I've not seen ready made vegan dessert pastry in shops (almost all standard shortcrust that is sold is). If I were less lazy I'd make my own, but it doesn't make an awful lot of difference. As an alternative you can roll out a disc of puff pastry and top it instead, making a more tart tartin style thing.

Next time I need to use a dish with slightly shorter sides, so there's less exposed pastry. Using a loose bottomed tin allows you to transfer it to a serving dish, however as the pastry shrinks away from the sides during cooking it's easy to get the first slice out of the dish you cook it in.

Ingredients (8 servings):

1 Sheet Shortcrust Pastry
2 Bramley Apples
5 Cox's Apples
1/2 tsp Cinnamon
75+50g Quince Jelly
25ml Water
Sugar
Margarine
150g Soya Whipping Cream
3 Cardamom Pods

As you can see; it's a relatively simple dessert to make. Most of the prep time is taken up peeling and chopping apples.

Start by peeling and dicing the bramley apples. If you don't have bramleys in your country then use whatever is sold as a cooking apple (generally larger, green and not overly sweet). You want to dice them into fairly small chunks, as this will make the cooking time shorter.

Heat a knob of margarine in a pan and add the diced apples. Cook over a low-medium heat for 10-20 minutes (dependant on the size of the dice), stirring occasionally until you can easily squish them under the back of a spoon.

Add the cinnamon and sugar to taste, stirring until you get a purée. Add the 75g quince jelly and stir until combined. Set aside and leave to cool.

Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 200^oc (180^oc fan) and roll out the pastry on a floured surface, so it's a little larger than your dish. Wrap the pastry around a rolling pin and unroll over a greased dish, such that it comfortably sits within it and doesn't need to be stretched. Press the pastry against the sides with your fingers and cut off excess with a sharp knife.

Described as pointless by Delia; I quite like my ceramic baking beans. Prick the base, cover with baking paper and weigh down with whatever it is you use instead (rice supposedly works, but I've always thought this is somewhat of a waste). Cook in the oven for 10 minutes then remove and take the paper away.

Place 50g quince jelly in a small pan with 25ml water and leave to warm through over a low heat, stirring occasionally. Don't let it boil - it just needs to combine into a syrup.

Peal and chop the apples into slices. Having a bowl of cold water to put the slices in as you cut them will shop them from oxidising and turning brown.

Spread the purée out over the pastry and top with the apple slices in a pattern of your choice.

Pour over the quince syrup, using a pastry brush to ensure that all surfaces are covered. If you've not got a silicone brush yet then now's the time - they're easier to clean and unlike non-synthetic brushes they aren't made from big bristle.

Cook the tart in your oven for around 35 minutes, checking it every so often to make sure it's not burning.

Crack the cardamom pods and grind the contents to a fine powder (discard the shell). Whisk in with the cream and chill until required.

When the tart comes out of the oven allow it to cool slightly before serving. As well ensuring that you don't burn your mouth this allows the purée to firm up slightly, making cutting easier.

Use a large sharp knife to cut and extract slices. As the pastry shrinks away from the dish during cutting you should have no problems getting it out. It can be served warm or cold.

White Chocolate Torte

2010-02-20T14:11:00.012Z

You'll have to excuse me whilst I make all the white chocolate based things I've been lusting over during the past decade.

I was always under the impression that tortes contain egg, but having done some reading up recently it would appear that about half the recipes online consist of only chocolate and whipped cream. A few years ago even this would have been pretty impossible to veganise, however now it's really quite easy. Having read 10-15 recipes I concocted a vegan version, which I'm now blogging for your reading pleasure.

A fair few recipes use a crushed amaretti biscuit base. As vegan friendly amaretti biscuits aren't available (that I know of) I made a standard biscuit base, adding 1 tsp almond essence. For me this was too much - next time I'd use 1/2tsp. My partner however thinks it was just right.

The top is just white chocolate and whipping cream, in a ratio that allows it to set up when chilled to the point where it can be cut into slices. As the white chocolate drops I'm using are ultra sweet already the torte is a bit sweeter than I'd like. Hence making a relatively tart raspberry coulis to serve it with.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out aesthetically and honestly it tastes pretty good. I think it could use some refinement however - find a way to make it less sweet and take out some of the almond flavour (either less essence or using ground almonds instead).

Ingredients

250g Digestive Biscuits
50g Margarine (melted)
1 tsp Almond Essense
300ml Soya Whipping Cream
200g White Chocolate Buttons
150g Raspberries
50g Icing Sugar
1/2 tsp lemon juice

Start by making the biscuit base. Place the biscuits into freezer bags and smash with the end of a rolling pin. If you use a food processor ensure you don't make the crumbs too fine. You're aiming for a uniform crumb - not too big, not too small.

Melt the margarine and whisk in the almond essence. Pour over the biscuits and combine until fully coated.

Place the biscuits into an oiled loose bottom 8 inch tin, then press down with the back of a spoon. When compacted as much as you can use your fist to really press it down, ensuring an even thickness across the surface. As a tip - if it doesn't hurt your knuckles you're not pressing hard enough! Getting it nicely compacted now will ensure it won't fall apart when you come to serve.

When complete place the tin in the fridge to set up the base while you make the topping.

Start by melting the chocolate in a bain marie. Yes, I know I've said previously that bain maries are for whimps, but they really are quite useful for white chocolate, which is far more prone to burning than dark. You need a pyrex bowl that will fit over a pan of boiling water, such that the bottom of the bowl isn't touching the water. Take care as steam escapes from around the edge of the bowl and stir the chocolate as it melts. You really don't need much water in the pan - the last thing you want is it bubbling over the edge and into the chocolate (which will ruin it).

Once the chocolate has melted allow it to cool. Meanwhile whip a 300ml carton of soya whipping cream (I used Granovita, which we acquired a year's supply of recently when it was on offer in Sainsburys, at 32p a pack). It doesn't really increase in volume that much, but after a couple of minutes with an electric whisk the texture will change and it become more light. When the chocolate has sufficiently cooled; fold it into the cream. If the cream is too cold or chocolate too warm then you won't achieve the smooth consistency you're aiming for.

When combined place the topping over the base and smooth out. Chill in the fridge, preferably overnight so that it completely firms up. If you skip this step you won't be able to cut it and it'll be a big mess.

As and when it's had time to chill you'll need to remove the torte from the tin. The easiest way to do this is to use a blow torch (over your oven top, ensuring there is no oil/fat which could ignite), as this causes the metal to expand and torte against it to melt slightly. You'll get a much cleaner result using this method than by sticking a knife down the side.

If using a loose bottomed tin (rather than a springform tin); place the bottom over an upturned mug and slide the sides down. Use a palette knife to remove the torte from the tin's base and transfer to the plate from which you'll serve. Place the torte back in the fridge whilst you make your coulis.

Coulis is very simple to make - just blend raspberries with icing sugar and lemon juice. If using frozen raspberries allow them to thaw first.

Once blended force the mixture through a sieve with the back of a spoon, to remove the seeds. Using a sieve larger than the one in the photograph below makes the process a lot easier! (I conceded in the end and washed up the big one).

Slice the torte up and drizzle over the coulis in a more artistic fashion that I was able to achieve, then serve.

Musings on: Home Automation

2010-02-18T09:59:00.013Z

Warning: This post has nothing to do with vegan food, recipes or cocktails. If reading my blog for one of these you can safely give this post a good ignoring. It falls into the "odd interjection of other things dependant on mood" category that I plan to use to blog about things I like.

Home Automation is a topic that interests me and is as such something I've been dabbling in for a number of years. The concept is simple - network your home's electrical devices together, allowing the state of each to be remotely manipulated.

Why bother?

The most obvious benefit this brings is being able to control them using a remote without getting off the sofa or out of bed. You control your TV by remote already, so why not the lights?

Whilst it could be seen as being rather lazy there's something nice about being able to check you turned everything off downstairs from bed and being able to turn fans on throughout the house without opening your eyes when you wake up too hot in summer.

The real fun and automation part starts when you bring a computer into the mix, allowing it to control devices automatically dependant on the time of day, whether you are home, what you're doing etc. This can save you electricity by turning off devices not in use, taking devices completely out of standby (i.e. turning them off at the mains), setting brightness of lights according to how much daylight there is etc. It can also help with security - by learning your preferred lighting patterns it can replicate them each day whilst you are on holiday.

We use ours mainly to create macros such as lighting scenes, that can be activated from one button press. When we go to bed we press "Downstairs Off" (turn off lights, AV gear etc) and "Upstairs On" (turn on our bedroom lights and dim to desired level). The computer turns the garden lighting off automatically at 11.30pm; having turned it on at sunset (the time of which it calculates each day). "Watch DVD" on our lounge remote turns on the TV, home cinema amp, sub, blu-ray player, sets the inputs accordingly and dims the lights lower than we have them for "Watch TV". As well as remotes in each room we have switch panels on walls for activating common macros:

We have (but have not integrated yet) proximity sensors, that allow the computer for instance to turn hallway lighting on at 25% if someone gets up at night.

A dirty little secret

I have a dirty little secret. Well, actually I have several, but the one of relevance to this post is the fetish I have for lighting.

I like warm sunlight the most, but failing that; decent functional and mood lighting, along with sparkly things and pin pricks of light.

Including LEDs there are currently 25 bulbs in the kitchen, 12 in the lounge, 14 in the hallways, 29 in my study, 446 in our bedroom, 19 in other rooms and 202 outside. This total of 745 and excludes all the candles and the several thousand 'stars' generated by my 2 laser projectors.

You'll be pleased to know that most of the lights are low energy and less than 1 watt each - I'm not a complete eco terrorist.

What else?

Some people automate their blinds and curtains, however the price is pretty astronomical (starting at £300 for a small window). Heating system control is common too, but I don't quite trust a computer with that - the same goes for door locks. The security system used to link in (which being connected to the phone line meant I could dial in and change settings from a mobile phone), but in practice this wasn't overly useful.

I'm not so fussed on AV distribution. I don't illegally download movies, so don't need to to stream from PC to TV (though supposidly I can do this on my Bravia anyway). I used to have a MythTV server in my batchelor pad for streaming music and recording/timeshifting TV, but as I like my neighbours I tend to wander round the house with wireless Sennheiser headphones on instead these days.

My previous HA / AV server was an ultra quiet / mostly passively cooled Linux box. I didn't like the fact that it was drawing so much power constantly though, so now I don't run MythTV I've switched to a small embedded device instead.

We have an energy monitoring device too, which can be hooked up to a PC every now and then and plot graphs / calculate costs. Though currently broken when it works it displays our current wattage and glows a different colour accordingly, so we can see at a glance when we leave the house whether we've left anything switched on (also useful for seeing if the oven is still on when sitting in the lounge).

Costs?

There a several different technologies available that allow you to achieve these things, with varying levels of success and reliability.

The most reliable systems use their own cabling and cost £10,000 to £100,000+ to be installed and maintained (examples here). As a luxury product these tend to only be found in the homes of rich and famous.

Falling into neither of these categories and having 10 inch thick walls that don't make cabling much fun we currently use a more basic technology called X10, which uses RF for sensors/remotes and the house's existing powerline cabling for communication between devices. The downside of this is that it's slower and not 100% reliable (part of the reason why I'm not using it for heating).

X10 has been around longer than I have and the complete system so far has cost about £700 (much of it purchased over time, second hand from ebay). As a modular solution you can get started for £100-£200 and build on it from there. Some of the modules need embedding in walls / ceilings, but most can be plugged into sockets, such as this one:

The modules are undoubtedly overpriced for what they are - if mass produced they shouldn't cost more than £250 for an average house. I don't fully understand why, given the technology is 35 years old its use isn't more widespread.

Aimed squarely at the hobbiest end of the market rather than luxury living the modules and remotes pretty damned ugly. As such as we use IR dimmers for our main lights, then a Logitech Harmony remote in the lounge and an IR->X10 converter for other devices.

There are cheaper, more restricted and debatably crapper systems available, such as Domia Lite, which I dabbled with for a while but ultimately got rid of. If you just want to turn devices on/off on a cheap looking remote you can pay as little as £3 per socket. You won't however been able to add computer control with these systems or do anything more fancy.

Some people buy £500+ remotes and have £1000+ touchscreens embedded into their walls. I'm a bit more budget constrained than that, so am looking forward to the Apple iPad being released, which as well as a general web browser whilst sitting on the sofa would make a stunning HA remote control.

Pancakes

2010-02-15T10:11:00.012Z

With Pancake Day looming I thought now would be an opportune moment to blog a vegan pancake recipe.

The pancakes we eat in the UK on Pancake Day are the large thin type, similar to crepes. They're basically just batter fried off on a non-stick pan, with little to no fat. You can either use a pan purchased with a non-stick coating or a traditional pan with natural coating developed over time. Whilst less romantic the former is easier, more hygienic and dishwasherable.

I've realised in the past few years that it's not so much the ingredients of the batter that matter, rather the consistency of mixture and temperature of the pan. Therefore for a simple batter all you need is plain soya milk and plain wheat flour - no egg replacer or shite like that. As they pancakes will be filled you needn't worry too much about developing their flavour.

Ingredients (makes 6 pancakes):

125g Plain Wheat Flour
350ml Soya Milk

Whisk the ingredients together, using an immersion blender if required to get it lump free. Heat the pan over a medium high flame and brush with a small amount of margarine.

Pour a ladleful of batter in the centre of the pan, then tilt to get even distrubtion. If required poor a little extra batter into any holes. If the pan is hot enough the batter should start to dry out and bubble within seconds - being ready to flip in 90-120.

Gently ease the edges after 30-60 seconds with a spatula and check it's cooking underneath. When golden ensure the pancake is fully loose and flip it over. Cook for up to 30 seconds on the other side, then serve. You'll probably find the first one doesn't work - this is quite normal.

The 'video' that follows was shot last night on my extremely crap iPhone 3G's camera (which wasn't designed to do video), after I'd had several cocktails and was feeling the effect. As such the quality and cameraman skills are somewhat lacking, but you should be able to gauge the general technique.

Last night's were filled with warm cherry compote and served with vanilla icecream, but lemon juice and sugar is more traditional. You can be as creative with fillings as you want - either sweet or savoury. Favourites include soya bolognaise, blackberry & apple stew, chopped banana & chocolate sauce.

Sundaes

2010-02-11T09:34:00.008Z

The rambling that follows is dedicated to one of life's many pleasures: ice cream sundaes.

With a bit of prep I can think of no reason why vegan sundaes can't be just as delicious and varied as their omnivorous counterparts (minus the pus of course).

The basic formula consists of ice-cream with 2 or more of the following: hot chocolate sauce, fruit, mousse, cream, syrup, sorbet, cookies, cake, brownie, sprinkles and nuts - in combinations and ratios to suit. The picture above is of last night's Black Cherry Chocolate Kirsh sundae.

Chocolate Sauce

Vegan chocolate sauces are simple to make, requiring only a couple of minutes. You can make them in a microwave on half power, but using a pan over a low heat allows you taste as you go. The core ingredients are dark chocolate, soya cream and syrup, with anything else added for flavour. Before freah soya cream came available in the UK I used a small amount of margarine, but as well as being not as good this seriously isn't advisable on health grounds!

You can use white chocolate if you want, but I find you just end up with an over sweet, off white, vanilla sauce that you could have made for half the price without. White chocolate is IMHO much better melted and drizzled on top.

Ingredients (for 2 people):

75 - 100g Dark Chocolate
Fresh Single Soya Cream
Syrup: Simple / Agave / Golden

Warm a pan over a super low heat (use a bain marie if you like faffing around / washing up and are scared of burning the chocolate) and add the broken up chocolate and a splash of soya cream. Stir and remove from the heat as the chocolate starts to melt. Add a dash of syrup and stir until you have a smooth, glossy sauce. Add more cream and syrup as required, being sure not to add too much. Simple syrup is better than agave and golden, as it leads to a less sticky sauce (though maybe you like that?), is easier to pour (unless you have a squirty bottle) and is far cheaper than agave.

Flavour ideas:

Peanut Butter: Melt a spoon of smooth or chunky PB with the chocolate.
Coffee: Kahlua or Tia Maria will give a standard sauce a good coffee kick. Both are quite sweet so you'll need less syrup. Add them after the pan has been taken off the heat so you can control the amount of liquid and ensure the alcohol isn't evaporated off. Garnish with chocolate covered coffee beans if available.
Cherry: Use kirsh (Luxardo was vegan when last checked) to inject cherry flavour into the sauce.
Orange: Using Cointreau (confirmed vegan). I've seen vegans using Grand Marnier, but personally avoid as I've not seen an email from the maker confirming its vegan status.
Coconut: Add coconut cream in place of soya cream.

So as not to compete with: some fruit flavours are better carried elsewhere rather in the sauce itself.

Fruit

I know some people would disagree, but as far as I'm concerned tinned fruit cocktail holds no place in modern society. Tinned fruit can be good for some fruits if no fresh alternative is available (or you're lazy).

Personally I prefer fresh berries, either whole, crushed or made into sauce / compote.

Tinned lychee, pineapple, vanilla ice-cream, coconut cream and crystallised palm sugar however make an excellent sundae.

Think about which flavours work together in cocktails when coming up with new ideas.

Mousse

Soya whipping cream (soya too or granovita) added to melted chocolate works best. You can use silken tofu if you prefer, but soya cream leaves no tofuey aftertaste. A dash of liqueur is a welcome addition (Kahlua & Cointreau are obvious choices), but you need to be really sparing with it and add in small amounts, so as not to make the consistency too thin. You can add a small amount of icing sugar if needed for sweetness or to thicken the mixture. Chilling or freezing (for an hour or so) will help to firm it up.

Cake / Brownie / Cookies

If you've got any of the above to hand then add chunks to the mix. Heating brownie / chocolate cake slightly may help with moisture/gooeyness. Warmed icing is always good.

If making cookie dough for the purpose of eating raw then use your favourite cookie recipe without raising agent (bicarb, baking powder etc) and with plain in place of self raising flour. This will get rid of the nasty aftertaste. Chilling it will help make it easier to work with when serving, however freezing may make any bits (chocolate, nuts etc) a bit too cold and unpleasant when eating.

Syrup

Commercial coffee / cocktail syrups (such as Sweetbird and Routin) are available in flavours you may not otherwise think be available to vegans. Butterscotch is my favourite, poured over vanilla icecream, whipping cream and garnished with mixed chopped nuts.

See my previous post here for info on making your own syrups.

Garnishes

Squirty soya cream works well, topped with nuts, sprinkles and/or fruit.

If lazy use chopped mixed nuts as they come from the supermarket. If feeling energetic you can make your own praline: toasting chopped nuts under a grill on a metal baking, with brown sugar or simple syrup.

Crystalised palm sugar (Waitrose) can be used as a garnish - it won't dissolve into the ice-cream and has a good crunch (without cracking your teeth).

Mitsu has an excellent post on vegan sprinkles available in the UK on her blog. Most sprinkles sold have either gelatine, insects or their secretions in them, so take care!

Serving

Any sturdy glass will do, but sundae glasses can normally be found for £1-£3 each. If making a giant portion to share then consider investing in a glass serving bowl (the one I have I think is meant to be a fruit bowl!).

Long handled spoons (sold as either icecream or latte spoons) are important if using long stemmed glasses. I previously had a set of cheap spoons made by Stallar, but have recently acquired a gorgeous set of Alessi Big Love spoons, which are well worth the money (the bowls however look IHMO utter shite).

Layer the flavours together, being sure not to let the icecream heat too much in direct contact with a warm sauce. If serving to others then consider having the ingredients set out and let your guests make their own.

UK Vegan Blogs

2010-02-08T03:40:00.005Z

A month ago I posted a list of UK vegan food blogs that I've found with posts in the past 6 months.

It's 3.45am. I have a stressful day ahead that starts at 7.30am. Having gone to bed at 11.30pm and lain awake till 2am I eventually got up and have been listening to music whilst writing various bits of code, in the attempt to make myself more sleepy.

One of the bits of code I've written is a Google Maps mashup (see above), that shows blogs by location. They're grouped by area - green is 1 blog, yellow 1-5 blogs and red 5+ blogs. Click each marker for a list.

Im' not sure what this achieves, but I'm going to be now. ;)

Coconut Lychee Mocktails

2010-02-07T10:59:00.010Z

Cocktails don't have to be alcoholic to be good. Whilst having read this blog you could be forgiven for thinking I'm a raving alcoholic; in reality I make cocktails for taste not alcohol content and drink on average 6-10 shots a week.

Alcoholic drinks make good cocktails mainly because you can stock a wide range of flavours without worrying that they'll go off. Additionally the slight alcoholic edge causes you to sip your drink and enjoy it over a longer period (tasty non alcoholic slip down far too easily).

I generally find non alcoholic cocktails boring because they tend not to be very intense - mixing fruit juice together isn't very exciting. It is possible to find good examples however, so I'm blogging one I created recently (based on a dessert that I'll blog another time).

Ingredients:

5 Shots Lychee Juice
8 Shots Pineapple Juice
2 Shots Coconut Cream
1 Shot Simple Syrup
1 Passion Fruit

Coconut cream is the thick liquid you get when you don't shake a can of coconut milk (i.e. it's double concentration coconut milk). You can sometimes find it in cartons (blue dragon I believe). It's not the same as the blocks of creamed coconut.

It's possible to find lychee juice in cartons, but if not just buy lychees in juice and strain. The easiest way to do this is using a tin opener make a large hole on one side of the lid and a small hole on the other (for air). The following picture hopefully illustrates this:

Shake all ingredients (minus the passion fruit) with ice until your hand starts to go numb from the cold:

Strain and float the contents of a ripe passion fruit over the top. The seeds will eventually sink but you'll drink through a layer of passion fruit juice which is really rather good.

Veggie World (Bletchley)

2010-02-07T09:52:00.005Z

A short deviation from recipes for a restaurant review. One of the benefits of being a vegan who refuses to pay to eat in restaurants that don't explicitly cater for vegans (I'll eat if work are paying and I'm reasonably confident that they understand) is that unless you live in London or Brighton you don't get to do it very often. When you do you're more inclined to make an effort and go somewhere good.

I heard about Veggie World a while back, but was put off slightly by the name and proximity to anywhere else. Last night however we decided to brave the 75 minute drive and give it a go.

We had high expectations having read the menu, so were more than a little bit worried when TomTom announced that we'd reached our destination on what appeared to be an industrial utility road at the edge of a housing estate. Thankfully Google Maps led us onto the parallel running road, which turned out to be the reasonably pleasant looking high street. We drove past it once and eventually found it on foot.

The restaurant is essentially a take away with 8 tables. They've not gone to a lot of effort to make it restaurant like, but it was clean and welcoming enough. There were people already eating there, which is always a good sign.

I really can't fault the service at all; the waitresses were friendly, attentive and fluent in English (unlike many places I've eaten). Food is cooked to order, the amount of choice is phenomenal and waiting times short. Rather than marking items that are vegan it instead marks the few items that are not, which is always good to see. The menu has pictures for each dish, but is a little difficult to read (too many pages, with the title for the page in a similar colour to the background - A4 would have been better):

Please excuse the terrible quality of my iPhone 3G's camera. For starter we ordered a appetiser plate for 2 (ribs, wontons, satay skewer, spring rolls and crispy seaweed), sweetcorn soup and prawn toast:

The satay and wontons were awesome. The ribs a little strange but quite pleasant. Spring rolls were crispy but small and a bit boring. The seaweed is not something I'd ever order on its own, but as a garnish it did a good job and tasted pleasant enough. The soup was very good. Prawn toast would never be my choice (I didn't like fish when i was an omni), but it didn't taste fishy and tasted a lot more fresh than other that I've tried.

Next time I'd definitely go for a full portion of the satay skewers, a soup and possibly the wontons.

We were pretty full by the time the main course came! - Chicken fried rice, duck chow mein, pork balls and sesame chicken. I did take a photo, but it's too terrible to show and doesn't make the food look at all good.

The chow mein is 100% how I remember non-vegetarian takeaway chow mein. It was fabulously good. The sesame chicken (with accompanying sauce) was very tasty. The rice was nice enough, but the pork balls a bit disappointing - my chicken balls are a lot better. Luckily they let you takeaway what you can't eat and for the first time ever in a restaurant I took them up on the offer. We ordered some rabbit buns to eat in the car on the way home which were pretty much how I expected them to be - sweet bean paste in squidgy bread.

They don't serve alcohol but seem to allow people to bring their own (or buy it from the off license opposite). They do the whole endless cups of jasmine tea for £1.20 thing, which as I was driving was good enough for me.

Despite my moaning it was undoubtedly the best vegan Chinese meal I've ever had. The staff were lovely and price (considering we took away enough for Sunday lunch) very reasonable (£43 for 2 including drinks and 15% tip). The quality of food is quite considerably better than the London buffets (which are in themselves to new vegans very impressive). We'll certainly go back again and would recommend it to others.

Simple & Flavoured Syrups

2010-02-06T09:42:00.008Z

Simple Syrup is not complicated. Primarily used to add sweetness to cocktails it's a useful thing to have around in the kitchen when making up recipes. Though available to buy it's far cheaper to make yourself.

Simple syrup consists simply of sugar disolved in water, in a ratio by volume of between 1:1 and 2:1. There's no right or wrong ratio to use, I have a sweet tooth so 2:1 is my preference. It is possible to dissolve more sugar this than this, but doing so requires an emulsifier (when gum arabic the result is called gomme). You can use white or brown sugar, the latter making the resultant liquid a pleasant golden colour.

Ingredients to make 1 litre:

1 Pint Water
900g Sugar

Heat water in a pan with the sugar and stir until fully disolved. Try not too boil or let too much of the water evaporate. Once done allow to cool, bottle then store in the fridge. I normally make a litre at a time as it keeps for several months.

It's possible to inject flavours into the syrup whilst heating, that will then come through in the drink (cocktails, coffee etc) you make. Commercial vendors choose names for their flavours that grossly over exagerate the contents, such as tiramisu for coffee, marshmallow for vanilla etc. When you're sold a Gingerbread Latte all you're getting is is a standard latte with cinamon and ginger syrup. Examples of those that you can make yourself include:

Tea: add tea bags (earl grey is a common choice) then remove when infused
Coffee: Replace water with good quality brewed coffee.
Chocolate: Melt the chocolate in water as it heats. See my white chocolate syrup post for more info.
Herbs: Mint is the obvious choice. Muddle in the pan with a bit of water, then add the rest and sugar. Strain before bottling.
Spice: Add whole/cracked spices (cloves, nutmeg, cinamon etc) to the water then strain before bottling.
Fruit: Substitute juice for water or use peel.
Colourings: Easily add blue, red, green colour to cocktails. Syrup will sink in most liquids, allowing you to create naff 'sunrise' effects.

It's prudent to make a small amount first, then a larger batch when you know its good.

Jaggery Dosa

2010-02-05T08:39:00.005Z

Jaggery Dosa (or Vella Dosa) is a sweet Indian pancake. Jaggery is another name for palm sugar, which despite not being overly popular in the UK can be found when you go looking. They are sweet and tasty enough to be eaten on their own, or can be filled with ice-cream.

It should be noted that whilst palm oil production is infamous for its destruction of rainforest and animal habitats; palm sugar is not made from the same type of palm. Instead it is made from the sap of coconut and sago palms, whose cultivation do not appear to be linked with deforestation. It's not available in all supermarkets - currently Waitrose is the only store I've seen consistently selling it. If you can find it in an independent asian supermarket it will undoubtedly be cheaper.

The basic recipe is similar to that of pancakes, but it's somewhere in between uncommon and unheard of to use eggs in the batter, making it much more vegan friendly. Wheat flour and water are the main ingredients, with rice flour, spice and palm sugar for sweetness.

I've only had this in a restaurant once and was very impressed with it when I did. I don't remember tasting any spice in it at all, but it was at the end of a huge meal and I could have missed it. Unfortunately the restaurant (which was one of Leicester's finest vegetarian eateries) no longer exists :(

There are many recipes available online with similar ingredients but applied in varying ratios. There is probably no correct ratio, so I tried a couple of batches last night, using an average of several recipes and recording the quantities in grams and ml (I mean come on: cups, why would you do that?).

The first batch I made used wholemeal flour and came out looking fantastic, but witha course texture from the bran that detracted from the experience. The second batch used plain flour and slightly more rice flour. They worked really well, but didn't develop the lovely golden colour looked more like a regular pancake than a dosa.

I'm blogging both recipes for now and will next time try to find middle ground by using brown flour. I used ground cardamom and pistachios in both. The latter were my addition and I think they work well.

Common Ingredients (for 5 dosas):

40g Palm Sugar
100ml Boiling Water
100ml Cold Water
1 Cardamom Pod
10 Pistachio Kernels

In addition the wholewheat batch used 100g wholewheat flour and 20g rice flour. The second batch used 100g plain white flour and 35g rice flour.

The mixture is easy to make - you dissolve the palm sugar in the boiling water, add the cold water and strain. Grind the pistachio and cardamom to a course powder (discarding the cardamom shell) and mix with the flours. Add liquid a little at a time, stirring as you do.

You're aiming for a thinish lump free batter - I ended up adding a splash more water in the wholewheat batch, where as the plain was just right.

Once complete heat up a crepe pan (worth investing in, but a frying pan will work if you don't have one) over a medium to high heat. Rub a little sunflower oil across the surface with kitchen paper then add a ladleful of mixture. Start by pouring in the centre, then around in a circle. Use the bottom of the ladle to spread into a large circle. Add a drizzle of sunflower oil over the top.

The pan should be hot enough to cause the dosa to start to bubble and firm up quite quickly, but not so hot as to cause the dosa to firm up on impact (making spreading rather difficult) or to burn the sugar. As it cooks it should start to come away from the pan on its own, although it may need some gentle coercion around the edges (I found a metal palette knife to be best for this). Once the underside has browned and all liquid firmed lift the dosa and flip it over.

Cook the underside to the point where brown spots appear. Transfer to kitchen paper to remove excess oil and serve immediately.

As with all pancake making you should be prepared for the first to not work. If it takes too long, doesn't bubble at all, sticks and refuses to turn over without breaking apart then your pan isn't hot enough.

They can be folded with a bit of melted margarine and eaten on their own, or filled with vanilla ice-cream. The photo at the start of this post has some chocolate syrup drizzled over the top, but this isn't really needed.

I found the cardmom a little strong - next time I think I'm going to experiment with using cinnamon instead.

Intermission

2010-02-04T16:45:00.002Z

Miss me?

The more than a little creepy photo shown above is what as kids we were presented with instead of BBC1 when we got up too early on Sunday mornings. Code named Test Card F it was supposedly used by engineers to aide with calibration. Everyone knows however that it was really used to scare children back to bed and not wake up their parents by having the TV on.

My current hiatus from the world of blogging has been caused by a technical fault, which is currently being worked on. I'm not suffering from a lack of things to post about, but rather I've been experiencing a lack of ability to take vaguely decent photographs of things I've made of late. I don't like posts without pictures and I don't like crap pictures, so I'll return when I'm back into the swing of things.

At the weekend I painted what until I have money to build a home cinema I'm affectionately calling my studio. I've quite a bit of lighting equipment that's too bulky to use in the kitchen, so I'm going to endeavour to use it more now that I have a permanent setup and no excuses not to.

Keema Naan

2010-01-26T08:28:00.011Z

Having created a decent vegan version of peshwari naan last week I made a flippant remark at the end of the post that keema was next. Ironically I seem to have had as much interest in the latter as in the former.

I've only had keema naan once that I remember, which was about 15 years ago. I personally remember it as having tandoori meat inside (i.e. bright red), but all recipes I've found online seem to just use mince with ginger, cumin and garam masala. Thus for this attempt I did similar, using soya mince instead of lamb.

The results were pretty good. I'd make it again and would be happy to be served it in a restuarant, but can't vouch for its accuracy to the original.

The recipe uses the same dough and method as the peshwari. Update: Use 5ml agave (not 10ml) and 1 tbsp fresh chopped coriander in the dough for a better balance of flavour/sweetness.

Filling Ingredients

100g Soya Mince
1 Small Onion
2 tsp Garam Masala
1/4 tsp Ground Cumin
1/4 tsp Ground Ginger

To ensure the naan don't split/burst when rolling the mixture needs to be dry and individal pieces not too large. I used Realeat frozen soya mince, which I reconstituted with boiling water, allowed to cool, drained then chopped throughly. Ideally I'd have tried Redwoods' soya mince, which is slightly finer and doesn't need reconstituting. Alas there was none in the fridge.

Finely dice the onion and fry in a little oil with the soya mince for 5 minutes, or until softened. Add the spices and continue to cook for 2 more minutes, ensuring that it does not burn. Allow the mixture to cool whilst you roll out the naan, then spoon the mixture on to them, fold over and re-roll in the same way as the peshwari recipe. Try to get them as thin as possible without bursting or the contents coming through the dough. You may find whilst rolling that you get air pockets forming, if so just pierce with the end of a knife. Cook and eat.