Archive for category: Food

What the Bleat Is It?

04 May
May 4, 2013

Bleat, or ble.at, is a brand new, ambitious database and social networking site for veg*ans. The site launched just a few days ago and is still in beta, with some glaring bugs, but it seems very promising indeed. The main content areas for now seem to be restaurant and event listings, and recipes. But I gather that things are just getting started and I look forward to seeing what the site will eventually be like.

For now, content is what the site needs. Helsinki had zero entries when I joined (my profile is here), but I’m in the process of adding some content, mainly the few vegan friendly restaurants that we have here (I just added the brand new Helsinki location of Soi Soi). I guess I might also post some of my recipes there.

I realize that this may be of interest only to a small fraction of my readers, but I was excited about the new site, so there you have it! Do consider joining in and contributing if you’re a veg*an.

Tomato-Olive Seitan Roast

10 Mar
March 10, 2013

I’m off to Japan this afternoon so the blog will be even quieter than recently, but I’ll leave you with this delicious tomato-olive seitan roast, with a side of fried onions and broccoli and hazelnut-barley mix. The seitan roast was made from scratch with chopped sun dried tomatoes and green olives, and then baked in the oven for 1,5 hours. I’ve made a couple of variations of seitan roasts. They’re nice because you can experiment a little with the dough: it keeps together much better than with other methods of cooking seitan. However, the crust easily gets a bit hard and you have to use quite a lot of oil. Recently I’ve been favouring a baking method in which I simmer chunks of seitan in broth and bake the whole thing in the oven, which produces a lovely juicy texture. Anyway, hopefully I can return to the topic of food with some photos from Japan!

Tomato-Olive Seitan Roast

Tomato-Olive Seitan Roast

Vegan Shepherd’s Pie

19 Jan
January 19, 2013

The blog has been quite heavy with philosophy lately, so I thought it’s time to post some pictures of food for a change. As has been my policy recently, I don’t post the full recipe (which I don’t have written down anyway), but with some searching you can find a lot of recipes for this type of dish.

Shepherd's Pie, fresh from the oven.

Shepherd’s Pie, fresh from the oven.

The basic idea is to cook a nice stew, which we did with lentils, soy mince, carrots, onions, and (maybe?) parsnips. You want there to be some moisture, but certainly not too much, so that the dish holds together. You place the stew in an open pie crust and cover it all with mashed potato, baking the whole thing in the oven. Our first attempt at vegan shepherd’s pie was a success, as the dish held together well and tasted good. The only thing that could’ve been better, I think, is a more ideal browning of the mashed potato on the top, although you don’t want to burn it.

Slice of goodness.

Slice of goodness.

Tahini Chick Peas & Oven Roasted Veggies

11 Dec
December 11, 2012

Pretty standard fare otherwise, but the sauce was more experimental: tahini, caramelized onions, and lemon juice. Here served with oven roasted vegetables (courgettes and red peppers) with rosemary, and brown rice. We often roast our vegetables in the oven, I especially love how courgettes turn out with that method.

Tahini Chick Peas

Tahini Chick Peas

Giant Bean, Cabbage & Kale Soup

24 Nov
November 24, 2012

..and there were some carrots, barley, and soy mince in it too. Kale is something that you’d think would be popular in Finland, but it’s actually rather difficult to find. It’s a nice addition to the deep greens, which you really can’t have too much. Collard greens would be welcome too, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them here; a pity!

Giant Bean, Cabbage & Kale Soup

Giant Bean, Cabbage & Kale Soup