Mofo Post 5: VEGAN DÉLICES DU MARAÎCHER AVEC TARTE AU MAROILLES

Die Moorbauern kochen deftig, mit frischem Gemüse aus eigenem Anbau und sie wissen wie man ware Gaumenkitzel aus einem simplen Blumenkohl zaubert. Es gibt nur ein einziges Problem, das Aussehen dieser Delikatesse, welches die Fanatsien von pubetierenden Horrorfilmfans in den blumigsten Farben erstrahlen lässt. Und wenn auch nicht in blumigen Farben sondern stehts im puristischen Weiß erstrahlt der Blumenkohl auf deutschen Feldern, während er hier ebend nur ein Kohl ist obwohl er in anderen Ländern eine Blume sein darf. Warum müssen wir in Deutschland, wo wir doch von unseren britischen Freunden schon als "Krauts" bezeichnet werden auch noch jede Gelegenheit nutzen einem unschuldigem Gemüse wie dem Blumenkohl den fiesen Kohlstempel aufdrücken? Und ebenso verhällt es sich mit dem Rosenkohl, der zwar den Namen einer hübschen Blume als Vornamen tragen darf aber seine Herkunft durch den Nachnamen nicht verstecken kann obwohl seine anglophonen Verwanten sich "brussel sprouts" nennen dürfen und so irgendwie gesund, exotisch oder zumindest nach einem Hauch von Belgien und EU klingen.
Ich fordere die Hüter der deutschen Sprache hiermit im Namen der Gebrüder Grimm, die sich im Grabe umdrehen mögen dazu auf unsere armen Gemüsesorten von ihrer linguistischen Knechtschaft zu erlösen und Blumenkohl ab so sofort in "Cremeblume" und Rosenkohl in "Rosensprosse" um zu bennen. Und wo wir schon einem dabei sind möchte ich dafür appelieren die Tomaten nach österreichischem Vorbild in Paradeiser um zu bennen.

The bogfarmers are cooking hearty, with fresh vegetables from their own farms and they know how to turn a simple cauliflower into a true delight for the taste-buds. But their is one problem, the look of this delicacy, which will feed the fantasies of pubescent horror-movie-fans and let them blossom in the brightest colours. And if not in the brightest colour but in a modest and puristic white the cauliflower blooms at german fields since it is just a cabbage while it's a flower in other countries. Why do we Germans, called krauts by the english speaking world, use every single chance to name an innocent vegetable like the cauliflower (Blumenkohl) cabbage? And it is the same with brusselsprouts (Rosenkohl, literally translation: rosecabbage), who has a nice firstname but can not hide its origins because of his familyname. Its anglophone relatives are named brussel sprouts, sounding some kind of healthy, exotic, like belgium or the EU.
I am now asking the guardians of the german language, in the name of the brothers Grimm to release our poor vegetables from their linguistic bondage and call them "Cremeblume" and "Rosensprosse" from now one. And while we have alredy started we could name the ordinary tomato into paradeiser as the austrians do.

PS: I placed a picture of pumkin muffins on top to make this post less disgusting. Look at the muffins first then scrall down and then back to the muffins. This will save you from vomiting ;-)

http://www.arte.tv/de/europa/zu-tisch-in/Zu-Tisch-im-Nord-Pas-de-Calais/4151490,CmC=4151486.html

http://www.arte.tv/de/europa/zu-tisch-in/Zu-Tisch-im-Nord-Pas-de-Calais/4151490,CmC=4151484.html


Vegan delices du maraicher

Ingredients:

1 small head of cauliflower, remove the core and cook in salted water for 30 minutes (or until it is soft)

1/2 liter of unsweetened soymilk

40 g of starch (corn or potatoe will be fine)

1 cup of thawed frozen peas

1/2 cup of nooch

1 tsp of garlic powder

1 tbs of tomato paste

1 tbs of tahina

1/2 cup of cubed smoked tofu

salt and pepper for seasoning and a good piece of margarine for enriching

1. Heat 3/4 of the soymilk until boiling. Mix the remaining 1/4 with the starch and stir in.

2. Add the remaining ingredients and pour on top of the cooked cauliflower.



Vegan tarte au maroilles

Ingredients:

for the dough:

250 g of flour

1 cube of fresh yeast

150 ml of soymilk

1 tsp of sugar

2 tsp of salt

1 tbs of egg-replacer (don't be affraid of just leaving this out)

40 g of soft magarine, plus some extra for fatting the cake thin


for the topping:

200 g of silken tofu

6 cubes of chinese fermented tofu

2 tbs of tahina

1/4 cup of margarine

3/4 cup of nutritional yeast

2 tsp of mustard powder

1 tsp of garlic powder


1. Mix the yeast and the flour and rub the yeast into it. Add the remaining dough igrendients and knead until you have a nice dough. (You'll may have to add some flour or water) Let it rest for 30 minutes.

2. Grease your cakepan with magarine and dust wirh some flour and put in the dough. Try to spread the dough all over so that you end up with an even surface and some higher edges to hold the topping. Let it rest for another 30 minutes.

3. Mix all the toppings ingredients with a blender or food prozessor and season with pepper and salt. (It will have a very harsh taste, but we are trying to fake a strong frensh cheese here so this is ok. It will taste better together with the cauliflower.)

4. Pour the topping on top of the dough and bake for 20-25 minutes at 200 °C until it looks nice and a bit browned.

Vegan MoFo Post 4: VEGAN CARBONADE FLAMANDE

I found the non vegan version of this dish while I was watching arte (a german-frensh Tv channel). Even if beef plays the main roll here it was pretty easy to veganize it with big TVP-chunks and a bit of vegemite. I also added some more leek (the orginial recipe just calls for the green parts of it to use for the bouquet garni). I didn't had something to replace the honey-cake and dind't want to bake some agavecake or something else so I just used two slices of ordinary white bread and this did it. At the first evening I served it with oven baked potatoes which was ok but for next days lunch I mixed the leftovers with some pasta and this really knocked me off.
http://www.arte.tv/de/4151490,CmC=4151480.html



Vegan carbonade flamande

Ingredients:


about 200 g of big TVP chunks, cook in boilig water for about 10 - 15 minutes

2 big onions peeled and roughly cubed

2 big carrots washed and roughly cubed

1 clove of garlic, chopped

one medium siced piece of leek, sliced into big chunks

2- 3 generous teaspoons of vegemite

3 tbs of molasses

1/2 liter of beer (they recommed a dark one, I used "pils" which is a light but bitter beer, that people drink all over germany as a addition to the local beers)

a bouquet garni, that strikes your fancy (I had some sage, parsley, dried thyme and bay leaves), mixed with 3-4 cloves and stuffed into a teabag

2 slices of bread spread with mustard and cut into smal pieces

canola oil for cooking and salt and pepper for seasoning



1. Heat a big pot and fry the TVP chunks with some canola oil.

2. Remove the chunks and fry the vegetables until they get some brown marks.

3. Add the chunks and the remaining igrendients and simmer on low temperature for about 2 hours.

Vegan MoFo Post 3: I'm a runzatic! (NOT)

My life was so grey. I was suffering from headache all the time. I was so tired and lazy. But then someone handed me some information about living without meat and murder and now my life has changed. My name is Justus and I am not a runzatic.

Mein Leben war so trostlos. Ich hatte dauernd Kopfschmerzen und war wirklich müde und faul. Aber dann hat mir jemand ein Paar Imformationen darüber gegeben wie man ohne Fleisch und Tod leben kann und nun hat sich mein Leben geändert. Mein Name ist Justus und ich bin kein Runzatic.

A few months ago I red this post about vegan runzas and tried to make my own version. I changed quiet a lot and made I new recipe on my own but the inspiration came from the ppk blog.

Vegan Runzas

Ingredients (makes 6):

dough:

250 g of flour

1/3 cup of sugar

1/3 cup of canola oil

1 cube of fresh yeast

1 tbs of salt

125 ml of soy milk, plus some extra soymilk for brushing

2 tbs of organ no-egg egg replacer

filling:

1 cup of TVP-flakes, reconstituted with boiling water ( I also added some smoked tofu and leftover weißwurst)

1 tbs of vegemite

2 onions, rouhgly chopped

1/2 smal head of nappa cabbage, roughly chopped

3-4 tbs of tomato ketchup

2 tsp of liquid smoke

canola oil for frying

salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Mix the flour with the crumbled yeast and rub it in. Add the remaining dry ingreidnets and stir well. Now add the wet irgedients and mix and knead until you have a nix elastic dough. Set aside for 30-45 minutes.

2. Heat a non-stick pan and fry the TVP with some oil intil it gets some niced goldenbrown marks. Add the onions and the cabbage and fry until the vegetables are done. Mix the vegemite wit 1/3 cup of boilg water and add it. Fry until most of the water has evaporated.

3. Add the liquid somke and the ketchup and season with salt and pepper.

4. Divide the dough into six parts and roll them out to a rectangular shape (about 0,5 to 1,0 cm thick). Place a good portion of filling on top. Wrap the long sides of the rectrangle together and then press the short sides togther.

5. Place on a baking sheed lined with baking paper and brush with soymilk.

6. Bake at 180°C for about half an hour until they have the colour you see at the picture. Brush with soymilk 2-3 times during baking and one time after baking.

VeganMoFo Day 2 part 1: O'zapft is! Weißwurst with soft pretzels, sweet mustard and sliced radish

Weißwürste heißen Weißwürste weil sie weiße Würste sind.
Diese Weißwürste waren wundervoll doch eines waren sie nicht, weiße Würste.
Sie Braunwürste zu nennen hätte allerdings mit Sicherheit die ästhetischen Anforderungen an den Namen einer Speise gesprengt und so entschloss er sich die Braunwürste trotzdem Weißwürste sein zu lassen und sich damit ab zu finden, dass eine vegange Speise nicht immer eine hundert prozentige Kopie ihres omnivoren Vorfahrens ist. Und auf eine andere Art waren die Braunwürste viel weißer als das Orginal dann Bei ihrer Herstellung wurde nicht ein einziger Tropfen Blut vergossen.

OK, this is a short text so I am going to translate it. Maybe I am going to do this again but please, I am not a professional translater.

Whitesausges are called whitesausages because they are white sausages.
This sausages were wonderfull but there was one thing the weren't, white sausages.
Calling them brownsausages surely woldn't have met the aesthetic requirements for the name of a dish and so he decided to let the brownsausages be whitesausages anyway and to accept that a vegan dish is not an exact copy of its omnivore relative. In an different way the brownsauages were much whiter than the original because there was not a single drop of blood shed during the makingprocess.


Weißwürste

Ingredients:

1 smal can of kidney beans (white beans could have been better)

4 tbs of canola oil

6 tbs of soy sauce

2 tsp of vegemite

1 tso of salt ore more if you like

1/2 cup of nutritional yeast

1 smal onion, diced very finely

about 1/2 cup of finely diced parsley

1- 1/2 tsp of mace

1- 1 1/2 cups of gluten flour


1. Drain half of the kidneybeans liquid. Mix the rest of the beans and liquid with the oil, the soy sauce, the vegemite, the parsley, the mace, the nutritional yeast and the salt (everything except the onion and the gluten flour) and puree into some kind of batter.

2. Mix in the onion. Mix in the gluten flour and knead well.

3. Use alluminium foil to form and wrap sausages liked you'd do for any other steamed sausage and steam for about half and hour up to 45 minutes.

4. Serve with sweat mustard, sliced radish and a soft pretzel.

VeganMoFo Day 1: Getting started, sigar böregi, harusame salad and culurzones

Es war ein Tag wie jeder andere sonnige Herbstag auch doch mit einem winzigen Unterschied.
An diesem Morgen umgeben von kalter Nebelluft begann ein Tag, an dem ein Abenteuer beginnen sollte, eine Reise zu den Genüssen des selbst gekochten Essens, die ihm in der letzten Zeit abhanden genommen waren. Ein rundlicher gewordener Bauch, Kopfschmerzen und schlechte Laune zeugten von dieser Odyssee irgendwo zwischen Backofpommesfrites und fettigen Hartweizennudeln doch nun war die Zeit gekommen um wieder frischen Wind in seine Küche zu bringen.
Schon in der vorangegangen Nacht hatte er in Vorfreude auf sein bevorstehendes Abenteuer von Kürbissen geträumt. Er ging in diesem Traum durch den Garten seines Geburtshauses und fand dort ein Beet, das von einer Großen Zahl von Kürbissen bevölkert wurde, Butternut, Hokkaido, aber auch große, orange Halloween-Kürbisse waren dort in einer Dichte angehäuft, in der sie unmöglich dort gewachsen sein konnten und sie beflügelten seine kulinarische Fantasie.
Wie von Zauberhand wurde also der Gedanke in seinen Kopf gepflanzt ein Gericht zu kochen, das Kürbis enthielt und seine Wahl fiel sofort auf sardische Culurzones mit einer Hokkaido-Kürbis-Füllung, die er in mit gerösteten Mandelblättern und Salbei aromatisierten Margarine schwenken wollte. Doch bevor er sich des Abends an dieses Projekt begeben würde, musste er noch zwei Gerichte aus seinem Repertoire für eine Geburtstagsfeier herrichten: Sigara Böregi und Harusame-Salat.
Die gefüllten türkischen Gebäckröllchen gingen ihm einfach von der Hand, denn er kochte sie nach einem Rezept, dass er vor über einem Jahr selbst entwickelt hatte. Schnell und sicher füllte er die dreieckigen Teigplatten mit der Tofu-Füllung, rollte sie fest zusammen, bestrich die Enden mit seinen Fingern mit Wasser und versiegelte die Röllchen mit dem selben Handgriff. Während dieser Tätigkeit stieg ein ersten Anflug von Leichtigkeit in ihm auf und nach dem er vierundzwanzig Röllchen gefüllt und goldbraun frittiert hatte lag auf der Arbeitsplatte seiner kleinen Küche ein Kunstwerk, das ihm das Gefühl gab etwas wunderbares geschaffen zu haben.
Als nächstes folgte der Harusame Salat, der an Regen im Frühling erinnern soll. Und da war es, das einzigartige Farbenspiel der Leuchtenden Gemüse und Nüsse umgeben von asiaatischen Glasnudeln, die ihn warhaftig ein wenig an dünne lange Regentropfen, die im Frühling und Sommer manchmal wie Bindfänden vom Himmel fallen, erinnerten. Er stellte die beiden Schüsseln bei Seite und freute sich auf die Zubereitung der Nudeln.



Harusame Salad

Ingredients:

100- 150 g of glass noodles

2 bellpeppers, cut into stripes

1/2 cucumber, quartered lenghtwise and cut into thin slices

2 big carrots, grated

1/2 cup of roasted cashew nuts

2 tofu schnitzel, sliced and fried

3 tbs rice vinegar

2 tbs chilli oil

1 tbs canola oil

2 tbs soy sauce

2 tbs sugar

1 tsp salt

2 thai-chillies, finely chopped



1. Cook the noodles in non-salted water for like 3 minutes until they are soft. Drain them and wash under cold water to prevent them from sticking together.

2. Mix the noodles with the vegetables, cashews and chillies.

3. Combine the other ingrendients to a dressing and mix with the salad.

Hunting for ramsons and two soups for spring

A gourmet at work.

The monster from the forest.

The little boy searches for ramsons.

Last friday my kids and I went to the forest to harvest some wild ramsons. Around here the season for ramsons is almost over because they are starting to get blossoms and getting a bit bitter, so we took the last chance to get some ramsons (We call them "Bärlauch" in german.) My daughter was just sitting aroung and trying to destroy the blossoms and my son helped to harvest the ramsons, but he ate all of the leaves he collected.

At the weekend I made two soups: A cucumber soup and a white asparagus soup.

Cucumber Soup

Ingredients

2 big cucumbers peeled, deseeded and cut in to big chunks (its better to use smaler cucumbers, which are used for pickling and cooking but it's diffcult to find them at springtime)

1 big onion, chopped

2 tbs of olive oil

1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock

1 glass of white wine

1/2 of soycream

a hand full of ramsons, roughly chopped

4 tbs of chopped dill

salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Put the onions and olive oil in at pot at medium heat and cook until the onions become a bit transulent.

2. At the chopped cucumbers and a bit of salt and cook for 4-5 minutes.

3. Add the white wine and waint until the alcohol is gone.

4. Add the stock and heat until it's boiling.

5. Add the rest of the igrendients and puree with a hand-mixer until smooth.

Asparagus Soup

Ingredients

the peal of 1 kg of white asparagus (safe the pealed aspargus for your maincourse)

4-6 stalks of pealed aspargus cut into medium siced chunks (you can't see them at the picture because they drained in the soup)

2 tbs of olive oil

1 glass of white wine

1/3 cup of magarine

4-6 tbs of wheat flour

1/2 cup of soy cream

some chopped herbs for garnish (I used dill and ramsons)

salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Saute the aspargus chunks with the olive oil until they've got nice brown marks.

2. Heat 1 litre of water in a pot along with the peal of the aspargus and boil for half an hour. Drain the stock and remove the asparagus peal.

3. Take an other pot, melt the magarine, add the flour, keep stirring and add the wine and the aspargus stock. At last add the soy-cream, season with salt and pepper and reduce until it's as thick as you like it.

4. Garnish white sauteed aspargus and the herbs.

Stielmus Durcheinander

Stielmus is a name for the ediable greens of a special kind of turnip.

As far as I know it's only known in the Rhineland, Westfalia (both regoin in the very west of germany) and some parts of netherland.

It has a very subtile taste. It's very fresh and watery and reminds of daikon radish but lighter.

I think it would be great served raw in a salad but the most common and traditional way of preparation is to cook a stew with starchy potatoes, which is called "Durcheinander".

Stielmus, which is also called Rübstiel is one of the ancient, local vegetables, that is nearnly forgotten and it's even seems to get more unknown from year to year.

When I was a child it was available at most of the markets in my hometown Düsseldorf, which is the capital of the region and the state of Northrhine-Westfalia.

Nowadays it's hard to find and you have to go to a farmers market, a healt food store or a very well stock greengrocer at the market.

Last staturday I took out my kids for a little walk and went to the most famous greengrocer at the bigest market of the town called "Schier".

They have all the fruits and vegetables, you can imagine, the quality is out of the world and the prices are as high as nowhere else, but they seemed to be the only greengrocer carryin "Stielmus". That made me said because it's a really big market.

The stielmus was expensive, up to 4 € for two bunches of it with a waight of a bit more than one pound. That's really pricey for the greens of a turnip but the quality was out of this world. I and my two year old son began to snack the smallest and lightest little greens of it. He even learned the word "Stielmus" and wanted more and more.

Yesterday a went to the organic food store and looked for Stielmus but the price was even higher and it seemed to have lost most of its freshness.

If you want to cook it at home and can't get Stielmus, which should be the case for most of you, you could maybe try to cook it with chicoree, chard, or the greens of other root vegetables.

Stielmus Durcheinander

Ingredients:

500 g of Stielmus, washed and chopped (throw away the biggest leafes because they are bitter and your aiming at the stalks)

500 g of starchy potatoes, peeled and roughly cubed

1 1/2 cups of vegetable stock

4 tbs of margarine

1 tsp of mustard

2/3 cup of unsweetened soy milk or cream or any other non-dairy milk

1/2 cup of white wine (optional)

salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Put the potatoes, stielmus and stock into a pot.

2. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer until the potatoes get mashy. (about 25 minutes)

3. If there's a lot of stock remaining try to put it away.

4. Mash with a potato masher.

5. Season with mustard, salt, pepper, soymilk and wine.

The result should be like a liquid form of mashed potatoes, where you can stil reconginze pieces of the potatoes and the stielmus. Maybe some kind of potatoe risotto.

Enjoy as it is or as a side dish with fried tempeh, chickpea-cutlets or any other fake meats.