Lavender Cordial

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

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 :)

(Green) Smoothies

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!

Simple & Flavoured Syrups

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.

Decent Hot Chocolate

Decent hot chocolate is easy to make and uses real melted chocolate; there really is no excuse for bad stuff made from powder.

Ingredients:

• Soya Milk
• 2 squares Chocolate
• 1 shot Kahlua
• 1 tsp Sugar (optional)
• Squirty Vegan Cream (optional)
• Chocolate Shavings (optional)

Fill a mug 90% full with soya milk. Add 2 squares of chocolate and microwave until hot (2m 20s in our 850w). Add the shot of kahlua. If using unsweetened soya milk add a tsp of sugar. Stir, taste and garnish with squirty cream and chocolate shavings.

Peach & Lychee Pimms

The taste of lychee goes surprisingly well with Pimms.

I wasn't going to blog this until next summer, as it isn't Christmassy in the slightest. I've just been informed by @vegandeb however that it would in fact be in no way inappropriate to do so, what with it being the season of boozing and all.

You have 2 options for making this drink:

• Infuse peaches and lychees in Pimms directly
• Infuse them in gin and mix them later.

The latter (pictured above) is recommend as it lets you try the combination with other spirits, but it's up to you. This summer I used the first option, as I found Sainburys fake Pimms (called Pitchers) on offer for £5 a bottle. It's not as good as the real stuff, but once infused it's difficult to tell the difference.

Whichever option you choose cover a tin of lychees and a tin peaches (both drained) in an infusing jar with the booze of your choice. Give a good shake, then leave for 48 hours (shaking briefly whenever you walk past).

Once complete you can make the cocktail. You can leave infusing for longer if you want, but unlike infusion with spices and hard fruits (sloes, damsons, cranberries etc) that take months you can use soft fruit infusions within a couple of days.

Ingredients:

• 1 shot Pimms
• 1 shot Peach & Lychee Gin/Pimms
• 2 slices soaked peach
• 2 soaked lychees
• Crushed Ice
• Lemonade
• 2 Drops Orange Bitters (optional)

In a high ball glass muddle 1 lychee and 1 peach slice together. Add the alcohol and mix. Fill the glass with crushed ice, then top with lemonade. Stir and garnish with remaining peach slice and lychee.

Adding a couple of drops of orange bitters takes the sweet edge off the drink a bit and adds to the complexity of the flavour. Angostura orange bitters were vegan when last checked earlier in 2009.

Enjoy!

Spiced Watermelon

This is a cocktail that I concocted this summer, have just found a photo of on my computer and despite having nothing to do with Christmas want to drink of anyway. It is red I guess :)

Ingredients:

• 1/4 Watermelon
• 1 shot Morgans Spiced Rum
• 1/2 shot Captain Morgan Dark Rum
• 1/2 shot Southern Comfort.
• handful of crushed ice

The bottles of the above alcohol I have were bought soon after they were last confirmed vegan. You may want to check the stuff being sold currently still is before buying.

The easiest way I've found to extract the flesh from a watermelon is to cut it in half and then into 1 inch thick rings, running a knife around the edge of each to split the skin from the flesh.

Roughly chop the flesh and place in a blender with other ingredients, seeds and all.

Blend until smooth, then strain through a sieve into martini glasses and serve immediately.

Mulled Cognac

A simple, warming cocktail.

Mix 1 shot Cointreau, 1 shot VS/VSOP cognac (XO would be a waste), 3 cloves, half a cracked nutmeg, 1 inch stick of cinnamon and the zest of one clementine in a brandy sniffer. Move the glass in circles to coat the sides with alcohol, then light. Allow to flambé until the glass and liquid are warm, then blow out a sip.

Vegan Hazelnut Nougat Vodka

Not wanting to be left out from the fun of Mars Bar Vodka I instead tried hazelnut nougat vodka earlier this year. The result was an instant success, so I tried a larger batch. This time however I scrimped and used standard dark chocolate to bulk it out, which once finished I thoroughly regretted - I now have a litre of quite bitter dark tasting chocolate vodka.

Thus today I made another batch of the 'good stuff'. It's easy to make and is the only recipe I've found so far that uses a dishwasher.


Using an air tight jar in dishwasher without detergent keeps the mixture hot but below boiling point for 2 hours, which seriously speeds up a process that would otherwise either involve a bain-marie and weeks of shaking.

I used Smirnoff Blue Vodka, which I bought back when it was certified vegan. I'm not sure it still is though, I remember seeing an email floating round forums a while back saying that Smirnoff no longer state whether their products are vegan or not.

Tear up hazelnut nougat bars (I used 7) and put into a dishwasher safe air-tight preserving jar. Pour in enough vodka such that it just covers them.



Close up and place in an empty dishwasher without detergent on the top shelf and put on a hot (but not boiling) cycle.



Open the door a couple of times during the cycle, take out and give a vigorous shake. When complete allow to cool and strain into a bottle. It should keep (given the high alcohol content) for a few months.

Tastes great blended with vanilla icecream and white chocolate syrup (add soya milk to taste if too strong).

Vegan White Chocolate Syrup

After discovering that Routin 1883 white chocolate syrup is vegan a few months back we've managed to get through a whole litre of it. White chocolate syrup is great in (ice)cream cocktails, but £6 a bottle (exc postage) is a little steep.

I waited years for vegan white chocolate to come available in the UK (in the meantime conducting several experiments with cocoa butter, which whilst resulting in some great white chocolate massage bars wasn't overly edible) and when it did (Organica) was quite disappointed.

The new Dairy Free White Chocolate Buttons in supermarkets are both a lot nicer and cheaper than Organica. Thus I decided to have a go at making some white chocolate syrup myself to save on cost.

The results are pretty good, and worth blogging.

It should be noted that this doesn't create a litre of liquid that tastes like melted white chocolate, it tastes like syrup (i.e. mega sweet) with white chocolate flavour in. It should be used as an ingredient not drunk neat and should be used sparingly!

Ingredients:

• 275g white sugar
• 600ml boiling water
• 150g white chocolate, broken up

Method:

Simple - put all ingredients in a pan and bring to the boil whilst stirring. Immediately take off the heat and stir until disolved. Decant into a clean bottle and allow to cool. Should keep for several months in a cool place. Some of the chocolate may start to solidify if kept in the fridge.

Christmas Vodka

It's not too late too start off a batch of Xmas Vodka. The longer you leave it the better, but 1 month should be enough.

I've made this a few times now and the process is very simple. Mix in an infusing jar:

• 1 litre vodka
• 4 cups cranberries, pricked
• 2 sticks of cracked cinamon bark
• 2 cracked nutmegs
• 20 cloves
• 2 tsp corander seeds
• 4 inches of split vanilla bean
• 220g castor sugar

The taste of the vodka you use will be present in the finished product, so use a medium quality vodka rather than cheap and nasty stuff. If the cranberries have been frozen they should be thawed first. The exact combination of spice you use is up to you.

Close and shake the jar for several minutes, then each day during the first 2 weeks violently for a few seconds.

The end result is sweet, dark red, alcoholic and like Christmas in both taste and smell. It can be drunk neat, but is better in cocktails; giving a Christmas taste in place of regular vodka. Mix it with red vermouth (such as Nolly Prat; Martini is not vegan), Cointreau and orange juice for a mulled wine cocktail.

Vegan Baileys

Baileys is (according to their website) a combination of Irish whisky (produced from whey), cream, cocoa, sugar, vanilla, caramel and a vegetable oil based agent to prevent separation in storage.

There's no absence of recipes on-line for Baileys, however almost all contain ingredients not in the original, such as condensed milk, eggs, coffee, coconut milk, rum, kahlua, Scotch whisky, American whiskey and vodka. Whilst (some) may be great tasting drinks in their own right, their accuracy must surely be questioned - despite popular misconception Baileys is not a coffee based liqueur.

Unimpressed by recipes that I've tried (really I should have known better than to even try the coconut milk version), I have in my latest attempt gone back to basics and produced something from the actual ingredients (or as close to as possible), with Jameson's Irish whisky (produced from grain not whey) and Alpro fresh soya cream in place of dairy cream (as it's by far the closest I've found in taste and consistency).

The quantities of each ingredient isn't specified by Baileys, however the finished product is 17% alcohol by volume, which means that it must contain 38.6% whisky (if information from Wikipedia that 44% alcohol by volume whisky is used).

Using this knowledge and mixing 1 shot whisky, 1 shot cream and 1/2 shot cocoa-glucose syrup gives a drink that is far more like how I remember the original than anything else I've tried.
It's not right though - too chocolaty and not smooth enough, with a harsh alcoholic after-taste that some might like but would certainly put your average Baileys drinker off.

After a few attempts using part cocoa-glucose syrup, part simple syrup, a few drops of vanilla and varying the quantities I found what seems to be the closest to the original I've ever tasted:

• 1 shot Jamesons
• 1/3 shot chocolate syrup
• 2/3 shot simple sugar syrup
• 2 drops bourbon vanilla
• 1.5-2 shots alpro cream

I wouldn't like to claim it's a 100% reproduction of the original, as both my lovely assistant's memory and mine are probably slightly off. I'm also well aware that all alcoholic drinks taste better the more you sample! It is though honestly pretty good.

I used simple syrup purely as it's what I had to hand - we always keep a bottle made up in the fridge for emergency mojitos. I think it may be worth making syrup up for the purpose, using water, sugar, cocoa, and vanilla in appropriate quantities for a more accurate taste.

I'm looking forward to trying it out in some cocktails / food. As it's Christmas the first cocktail that I tried was:

• 2 shots 'baileys'
• 1 generous scoop vanilla soy ice cream
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

The cinnamon in it really works! It was a creamy, smooth, luscious consistency which went down very well drunk with some heated home-made mince pies and custard:

I'm excited by this as it means I can now start playing with cocktails and recipes that call for it, which for the past 10 years I've not been able to try. Kahlua is one of my favourite liqueurs, but Baileys it isn't.