Travelling Vegan - Venezia, Italia

Venice as romantic as it sounds and has been made out to be in fairy tales and history books is quite a charmer. You will overlook the fact that there's an open almost-sewage flowing through the city (mind you a sewage in Europe is very different from a sewage in Bombay), and will be awestruck at how someone probably just stopped the clock in Venice. She just doesn't seem to have moved beyond the 1950s, at least from the outside. From the inside, Venice is warm, loving and will invite you to lose yourself. You don't want to trust anyone but yourself in Venice, she has mischief flowing through her veins, in the narrow alleys and graffiti-ed back lanes.

Venice was the most alive city we stopped at. At any given time there will be people, drunk or not so drunk. Venice is a lot like what Bombay is now, just replace the pot holes with waterways and the rickshaws with water taxis. The only thing you can drive in Venice is a boat. We even saw packages on a DHL Express boat sailing by at a not so express speed, a water ambulance and policemen zooming by on police boats. It's quite a sight.

Once we got past all the water, tourists, canals and restaurants by the canals we got to the food. Sometimes the weather smells fishy, other times there is a cool sea breeze blowing through the air. Our first meal was dinner in Venice and we were worried we wouldn't get anything to eat since we only got there after 10pm. Venice is alive and kicking all through the night, we learned. The food is not very different from the other cities and mainly sticks to the basics for the tourists. We also saw a very interesting Japanese restaurant near the Grand Canal. The only difference in Venice is that the condiment tray comes with Red Wine Vinegar and Not Balsamic Vinegar.

The best Bruschetta ever! EVER!

Pizza with Black Olives

Got me some flavoured Soy Yogurt.

Gelaterias are aplenty and many of them had the frulatis or what we call sorbettos here. One Gelateria on all the vegan lists was Gelateria Il Doge. Il Doge has a few gelatis made with rice milk. It's much more lighter than a frulati or a gelati made with soy milk, but it was good none the less.

Il Doge - looks run down because it poured on us that day

Chocolate Gelati made with Rice Milk

Strawberry Frulati

If I had a kitchenette, I would've cooked my way through Venice. The vegetable markets were full of huge peppers, zucchini, egg plant, salad leaves, artichoke hearts, beans. All the markets have small boards naming the produce, price and the origin of each produce - peppers and egg plant from Sicily, Zucchini from St Erasmo, assorted salad leaves sourced locally.

Summer Berries

Zucchini with flowers intact

Check out those peppers! HUGE!

Salad, anyone?

Venice has many bakeries with their products displayed in their windows. Everything looked beautiful and I managed to find something vegan -brittle(Italian chikki) made with different nuts. My favourite was hazelnut. Brittle is usually just nuts and caramalized sugar cut into flat pieces and sold by weight.

Hazelnut Brittle

Giant Pizza

Breads with faces

Since Venice was our last stop, I shopped till I dropped. I bought every imaginable pasta thats not so common here, organic Italian tomatoes, Arborio rice for risottos, olive oil, vinegars, porcini mushrooms, olives. I found quite a few specialty shops selling mostly vegan goodies. They had mock meats, vegan cheese, gluten free pastas, sea weeds, flavoured tofu, rice cream and so many other interesting things. Something about shopping for food and kitchen related goodies gives me a high. My refrigerator right now looks like I'm stocking up for the end of the world, hopefully I'll start using everything soon!

Italy is amazing, not only for whats there to see but also for what you can eat. Vegan or not, Italy has a lot to offer and I hope someday I can go back and devour the country.

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Vegan More Kozambu (Buttermilk Gravy)

More Kozambu (pronounced More Koyambu) is a typically South Indian gravy that is usually made with More (Buttermilk). It is a spicy, sour mix of buttermilk and red chilli with vegetables.

This one is made with Peanut Buttermilk. It sounds complicated, but its's worth the effort.

So to start off, you need a cup of peanuts. Soak it in water over night. The next morning, drain it and put it in a blender with 2 cups water. Strain this pulp and what you get below is Peanut Milk. You can put the pulp back in with 1/2 cup water, blend it one more time and strain it out.

The Peanut milk now has to be set like you usually would set cow's milk. You could use dairy yogurt as a starter, but strict vegans prefer not to. So I set it with Rejuvelac. I'd suggest you soak the peanuts and the wheat at the same time, so the next morning you can use the rejuvelac to set the milk into curds. You might not get the same consistency as dairy curds the first time around. But if you continue to use this as a starter to set further trials of peanut or soy milk even, the end result will get thicker as time passes.

Since we are going to use it for a buttermilk type preparation, it's okay if the milk sets into a watery state. It takes about 8 hours for the peanut milk to set. I still get some curds that look like it's set on top but when you stir it there's only a watery mess below.

Seems like a lot of work! Anyway, once you have your (somewhat) set curd you can stir it up if you're going to use it as a buttermilk.

The buttermilk can also be made into a vegan Masala Chaas (Buttermilk with Masala)

Just add some Asafoetida, grind curry leaves and some green chillies together, salt and water. Chill it and have it after your meal. It's really really good!

For the More Kozambu, you need:

Any vegetable (carrots, red pumpkin, capsicum, drumstick) I used White Pumpkin which was steamed earlier

2-3 Red chillies

a little Tamarind

1 tsp rice flour

1/2 teaspoon Fenugreek Seeds (Methi)

1/2 Teaspoon oil (optional)

1 cup Peanut Buttermilk (recipe above)

Salt

Curry Leaves

Grind the Red Chilli, Tamarind, Fenugreek seeds and the rice flour. In a saucepan, add this mixture to some oil or just add it in the hot saucepan. Stir it around a bit. Add the Peanut Buttermilk, the vegetable, salt and water.

Let it simmer for about 6 minutes. Garnish with curry leaves. And it's ready to be served!

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