No vegetable left behind

Hibiscus

2009-07-27T19:04:00.001-07:00

Speaking of delicious Toronto food, Hibiscus is the most under-rated restaurant I know. It's tucked away on Augusta in Kensington, and I'm always looking for an excuse to get their vegan buckwheat pancakes with homemade double chocolate ice cream and bananas. Amazing. The owner is a self-taught chef, and he comes up with a new delicious soup every day featuring whatever is around at the market. They have a great lunch combo in which you get about 7 different kinds of salads (lentils, broccoli, beets, quinoa), a mug of soup, and this gluten-free cracker/rice bread. Eaten at 3 pm it's enough for lunch and dinner all in one go.

Fresh vs. Fressen

2009-07-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

I was talking with someone today about two popular vegan* restaurants in Toronto, Fresh and Fressen. Fresh has been around for ages, and I really appreciate what they've done to popularize healthy, nutritious, good vegetarian food. You can bring most meat-eaters to Fresh, and they won't notice anything missing. Fresh is pretty good, and does some things really really well (sweet potato fries anyone?). I do find, though, that everything tastes pretty similar; it all has this "Fresh" taste, which is ok, but gets kind of boring.

Fressen on the other hand is one of my favourite restaurants in the city. What they lack in generally-being-on-top-of-the-situation, they make up for with interesting food that tastes like it's fresh from the dirt without actually tasting like there's parts of dirt still in it. And I love the sharing menu. Usually, being pseudo-vegan I don't get to try anyone else's dish, but here, everyone gets a little taste of everything. The reason I don't go to Fressen more often is because it feels out of the student budget. In fact, I'd be more inclined to grab dinner at Fresh, but how much cheaper is it really? Let's find out. Typically at Fressen you order 1-2 dishes per person. For dinner for 2, I pretty much always get 3 dishes. For 4, it's usually 6.

Average main course at Fresh: $11
+ tax and 15% tip: $14.29

All dishes at Fressen: $9
* 1.5 dishes/person: $13.50
+ tax and 15% tip: $17.54

Total difference: $3.25

Hm. So $15 is more than I would spend on a regular meal out because I'm cheap and I would rather cook, but if I were going to spend $15, I would much rather shell out the extra $3.25 for the deliciousness that is Fressen, even if $3.25 does equal several chickpea doubles, or a couple cups of coffee.

The only problem, of course, is that the dessert at Fressen is irresistible, so you are unlikely to get out of there for under $20.

*Fresh does serve some cheese and such

Soy Milk Panna Cotta with Crushed Blackberries and Vanilla Muscat Sauce

2009-07-27T18:12:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a rather long time, hasn't it? (Just who I am asking, I don't know). In all fairness, I have been pretty busy with my love, the Hot Yam!, but that's no excuse! I have been reminded about my failure to keep up with this thing by many people...I am ashamed!

This next recipe I made a little while ago when I was visiting the parents and had access to free (for me) dessert wine. I have to say, it was decent, a solid 7/10, but not outstanding. I was so excited to make it because it looks so beautiful, but I should have known better when I saw "agar" in the recipe.

Now "panna cotta" translates as "cooked cream" and is typically made with cream, milk, sugar, and gelatin. In other words, it's not particularly vegan. To make the dairy and gelatin-free version, I mixed together soy milk, sugar, and vanilla, added some agar, and poured the whole lot into ramekins. I've always found agar strangely more gelatinous than gelatin. It's also a little disconcerting to eat the stuff we grow yeast on in biology class. However, it does an amazing job of setting things, and when I removed the panna cotta from the fridge an hour later, they looked frighteningly perfect, and definitely non-vegan.

Next, I made two sauces. The first was basically crushed blackberries, stewed slightly so the juices started to thicken. The second was some parentally-donated dessert wine, pear jam (should've been apricot), and some vanilla. Yum.

In the end, it was pretty good, and really straightforward, but give me a brownie or a lemon square any day.

A garden dilemma

2009-05-20T16:03:00.000-07:00

As mentioned before, I originally built 2 5 foot by 10 foot beds. The other day, I planted one of the beds, but I needed more soil for the other one. I found out on the day of the garden building that the girl on the 3rd floor of my house (we'll call her Sally) wanted to start a garden too. I suggested we could share, and that we should have a discussion about what to plant. Obviously I didn't want to take over all the garden space, but 1) she had planted everything in the front and 2) I'd made the agreement with my landlord that I could start a garden as part of the lease agreement.

A couple days ago, I ran into Sally and suggested again that we have a discussion so we could plan what to plant. She agrees. But I get home from work today, and much to my surprise, the entire second bed is planted with seedlings. At this point I don't even know whether we've doubled up on plants because she never told me what she wanted to plant or how much space she wanted to use.

Obviously I'm kind of disappointed, as I had a plan for the second bed. I was willing to share it, of course (well not of course - I did want to use the whole thing, but that seemed greedy!), but I'm annoyed she didn't even tell me what she was doing. The other thing is that I've paid for all the wood and soil that went into the construction, which obviously wasn't cheap. This was supposed to be my summer project, and I feel rather silly and childish for feeling as upset as I do by someone else commandeering part of it without even telling me!

I'm worried some sort of discussion with Sally is required - not my forte.
Thoughts, oh wise friends of mine?

Upma Polenta, Fricassee of Roasted Asparagus and Spring Onions

2009-05-18T09:17:00.000-07:00

The best thing about this cookbook is that everything has a really silly name, making the food sound a whole lot more complicated than it actually is. In celebration of my favourite season, asparagus season, the first dish I made was the "upma polenta, fricassee of roasted asparagus and spring onions". Now I usually hate polenta, as it typically is one solid mass of flavourless corn-mush. This, however, was surprisingly delicious.

This dish calls for all kinds of delicious spring vegetables - asparagus, peas, and lots of herbs. I didn't have access to spring garlic, so substituted leeks, and I had no idea what "kokum" was (still don't really know), so I left that out all together.

First I made the polenta, except that it wasn't really polenta but rather Indian semolina aka cream of wheat semolina aka "Suji". I hadn't heard of that kind of semolina before so was surprised to find it in the grocery store in Stratford of all places. A giant bag for $1.79 -bargain. In one pot, I toasted the polenta in a bit of oil. In another pot, I added a bit more oil, the mustard seeds and cumin, toasted until they started popping into my eyes, and then threw in the shallots (I love shallots), chiles, and ginger. It turns out that if you add a whole chile pepper to the recipe when it calls for half, the polenta will be very spicy. Be warned. When the polenta was toasted, I combined it with the shallot mixture and added some warm vegetable stock, cilantro, and chives.

Next up: the fricassee. Now I'm not sure why this is called a fricassee, since that typically implies something cooked in a cream sauce. Being vegan, this fricassee obviously lacked cream. But it also lacked sauce. Hm. Anyhow, making the 'fricassee' was really straightforward since I'd prepped all the vegetables beforehand. I sauteed the spring onions, shallots, asparagus, leeks, sugar snap peas, ginger, and chiles. When they were cooked but still crunchy, I added more cilantro and chives.

Next - plating! I used a ring mould (mold? I never know) to shape the polenta into a disk and then placed the asparagus mix around it. Voila!

I then made my not-super-enthusiastic family eat it. They claim they loved it. I thought it was good but not mind-blowing. The polenta was really delicious - all the chiles, ginger, and herbs gave it quite a kick - and I much prefer the wheat 'polenta' to cornmeal. The chile flavour provided a great contrast to the crunchy green-ness of the asparagus and pea mixture. Would I make this again? Probably, but I think I'd put half the chile mixture in with the asparagus, like I was supposed to!

Vegetable Garden

2009-05-16T10:08:00.001-07:00

To make the food taste even better, I started a vegetable garden in my back yard. I plan on using this blog to keep track of the garden so I know what I planted and when/where. My friends and family helped me build 2 5 foot by 10 foot raised beds. Somehow I convinced my mother to fill the back of her new van with about 5 cubic yards (!) of soil which we then shovelled into the gardens-to-be.

Last weekend, I started planting. Some of the seedlings will have to wait until it's a bit warmer, but for now, I planted sugar snap peas, spinach, beets, lettuce, onions, leeks, purple and orange carrots, and rainbow chard. Massive thanks to Mr. Jon Pipitone for a bunch of the seeds (he'll have permanent stealing privileges).

The other bed still needs a bit more soil, but it'll hopefully grow fennel, peppers, garlic, and lots of herbs. I'm also going to use a couple of big containers for my delicious tomato plants. Pictures to come soon!

Hello, world!

2009-04-02T15:49:00.000-07:00

Inspired by this, I decided to spend my summer cooking everything out of my favourite cookbook, Great Chefs Cook Vegan

This is where I'll post pictures of my glorious successes (and failures).