Vegan on the Prowl

Oct 14, 2011

I ♥ Avocado

If wishes were horses, I would own a farm full of Avocado trees. I've planted two and wish they would start bearing me the damn avocados. I'm so obsessed with them that I once went six straight months in three different countries eating them at least twice a week. So it's not a surprise that this post is dedicated to my favourite fruit and I'm so going to want to eat one after writing this!

About 12 feet tall now!

Avocados are almost tasteless. I know what you're thinking, 'what an anti-climax!', right? All this for a tasteless fruit. But it's buttery like no other butter, juicy and succulent like nothing else in this world and it takes on the flavour of anything you add to it so beautifully. There are no tiny pits or seeds that you need to spit out while eating it, there is nothing in between you and that fresh, green bite of heaven.

Not many people in India know how to deal with this big green 'dinasour egg' looking fruit. Most of the people I have spoken to have said they don't like the taste of it. (But it is tasteless!) You probably just don't know when or how to eat it. I have done a post earlier about guacamole where I also go on to digress about sprouting the seed into a plant. But what do you do with the ripe light green almost-goo thats inside? How do you know when it is right? Do you know how to buy it?

Fear not, because in all my avocado (read guacamole) experiences I have some knowlegde about buying this fruit and using it effectively. Here is what you need to look out for:

1. A Dark Green (Not black) clear skin with minimum or no blemishes

2. Should be hard to slightly hard when you touch

3. Should not have fungus or damaged skin (on the top of the fruit) near where it joins the tree

4. Could be any shape or size, but is usually round like an orange or pear shaped

Where to buy it?

In Bombay, you can get it now in almost any suburban vegetable market. Usually the guys with the "fancy vegetables" like broccoli, zucchini, celery, etc. have it. But I prefer to buy it from Crawford Market.

When to buy?

Avocados are now available almost all year round. But I have heard that the ones after summer are the best. All (or most) of the avocados come from Karnataka to Bombay. Sometimes if you are lucky you will get the Pondicherry ones but I like to believe that the people in Auroville eat it all up, because that is what I did in the two months I spent there.

What to do with them?

Wait till they ripen! It is a very important phase of the fruit. So many ways to hasten the process, but the avocado will take it's own sweet time. Sometimes it can take upto two weeks, so be very patient. Let me tell you it all pays off in the end. If you cut into an unripe avocado be ready for some bitter experiences which will put you off the fruit forever. The best way to know if it is ripe is to press the fruit with a finger. If the skin gives in without too much pressure and you have made an indentation on the fruit, it is ready. You will learn from your mistakes. I have been so eager sometimes to eat the fruit that I cut it open too early and end up with a bitter taste. Sometimes the fruit is not bitter even when it is slightly unripe.

This time I was in for a surprise when I went to pick avocados from my usual vendor. The avocados were bigger than I have ever seen, even bigger than the ones in Mexico! They were literally the size of musk melons, each weighing a kilo! I was jumping inside at the thought of having a HUMONGOUS portion of Guacamole which is exactly what I did for breakfast. This fruit was so big, it made me easily one and a half kilos of guacamole which K and I polished off for breakfast one morning with some toasted bread. We were so full after that we couldn't eat lunch.

The Avocado is as big as my face!

Orange v/s Avocado

Ready for the Guac!

Everytime I buy avocados I decide I am going to try something different with at least one of them. Almost all the time they end up as guacamole because I just cannot resist temptation to eat it immediately. This time I held back and made some avocado ice cream (Yes I made something sweet again, I have cavaties remember). Depending on how big the avocado is, you blend the ripe avocado and add a sweetener with some flavouring. I made some chocolate icecream with it and served it up with some chocolate cake and chocolate ganache since the ice cream was not sweet enough. There is a lot more you could do with it also like put it in raw salads, put it inside sandwiches, burgers or tacos and even puree it to make a raw pasta sauce or mousse.

I don't know why but only when it comes to the avocado, I have no patience to try anything else with it. It's only if I have had two ripe avocados waiting to be opened on the same day will I try anything else with it. I know, I'm crazy.

All hail the Avocado.

Chocolate Avocado Ice cream with Dark Chocolate Cake

Oct 9, 2011

Eat and Meditate - Chole/Chana Masala

I was saving this post for tomorrow, but since the Vegan Mofo Iron Chef Challenge #1's secret ingredient is Chickpea and since the challenge ends soon, I can't stop myself.

Have you ever tried making Chana Masala or Rajma without Onions and Garlic? I just did and it's quite awesome! Why would I do something like that? Sometimes it's nice not to end up with skin smelling of onion/garlic for the next three days. It does happen if you eat more garlic than anything else and most often when you eat out. I don't know why but restaurants really love their garlic and may be they think that without the addition of the same, food won't taste good. Even Italian food in India ends up tasting only of garlic. I just can't stand it anymore.

Being a South Indian, our daily cooking is all vegetarian and also doesn't involve onion and garlic. Of course now with the bastardization of traditional cooking with the invention of the microwave, non-stick and what not, even the ingredients added to traditional foods are changing. Of course some call it invention, but excuse me for not liking onion in my sambar unless it is an Onion Sambar.

My great-grandmother to this day won't touch food with onion and garlic. I did ask my grandmother why it wasn't added in food then and why to this day she also is just like her mother (except on Sundays..haha). She said in those days, left over water from fish farming was added to grow Onions and Garlic. But I think somewhere the roots of these decisions lie in Ayurvedic cooking where onion and garlic were considered Rajasic and Tamasic (the energies in these foods don't allow you to meditate). Even if you do certain meditation courses, they will tell you not to eat onion and garlic. Apart from the South Indians, Jains also follow these guidelines and also omit all root vegetables for many more reasons.

So this recipe is something that my great-grandmother, grandmothers and mother would enjoy. If you wouldn't tell anyone that it didn't have any onion and garlic they wouldn't believe it.

Oh and it also has no oil and is gluten free of course!

Serves 2 to 4

You need:

1 cup Chickpeas/ Garbanzo beans (If using dried, soak for 8 hours,drain and cook in fresh water)

6 ripe tomatoes

1 inch piece of ginger (omit this for the jains)

2 green chilies (optional)

3 pieces of Tamarind soaked in just enough warm water for ten minutes

1 tsp Cumin Seeds / Jeera

1 tsp Coriander Powder

2 tsp + 1/2 tsp store bought or home made chole/ rajma masala (I used Everest Masala for this)

1/2 tsp asafoetida / hing

A small piece of Jaggery

Rock Salt

Salt

Puree the tomatoes with the ginger and green chilies if you're using them.

Heat up a wok / kadhai and add the Cumin. Toss it around a bit and it should start emitting a beautiful aroma. Quickly add the coriander powder, rock salt and chole masala. Stir is around a bit and make sure it doesn't burn.

Add the tomato puree carefully. You have to let this cook really well. This step is the key. Stir is once in a while to make sure it's not burning at the bottom, if it is, add very little water and turn the heat down. It comes to an almost ketchup stage after about 12-15 minutes. It should be much more darker in colour and should be spluttering small bubbles all over.

Looks like a million-eyed monster face!

In the mean time, squeeze 'the life' out of the tamarind and use only the pulp. Add this to the tomato gravy once you are satisfied with the thickness of the gravy. Add the cooked chickpeas and the jaggery with about half cup water.

Let it cook away till the gravy reaches the desired thickness. Add salt and 1.2 tsp more of the chole masala.

Take it off the heat, squeeze half a lime and garnish it with some fresh coriander.

Serve hot with brown rice or rotis.

Buckwheat & Banana Flour Pancakes with Video!

It's VeganMoFo Sunday and it's time for some gluten free, oil free pancakes!

Off late for no rhyme or reason I have been trying a gluten free diet. It basically means I avoid anything with wheat and it's relatives. Here, even though wheat is such a major part of the diet, it's not that difficult to avoid. I have no signs or symptoms of any intolerance or allergy, but every once in a while I like to give myself some challenges.

It's very easy when you're cooking for yourself and also becomes easier if you are chosen for a trial for a new vegan lunch service for one whole week and their lunches are wheat free! What fun. I enjoyed the dabbawala delivered lunches for a week, but sadly that was only lunch.

Living in a Gujrati dominated suburb of Bombay has it's advantages. During the months when people are fasting most of the days, all these incredible non wheat flours suddenly come into the grocery stores. I always tend to bend towards the unknown and so I pick stuff that I wouldn't normally use. On one such pit stop I found Banana Flour. Banana Flour is common in the south of India. It is made out of dried raw bananas and thus is very starchy. It is made into a porridge and fed to babies who are just beginning to eat. I just bought it not knowing what to do with it.

I have been wanting to make wheat free pancakes for the longest time. I had a whole pack of lovely Organic Buckwheat Flour (another 'fasting' flour, also called kuttu, kutti) which is so commonly used in gluten free baking. I mixed in some Banana Flour and made lovely sugar-free, oil-free pancakes with them. These pancakes are super healthy, super fluffy and super tasty.

This post if specially for Harini, who is such an inspiration with her lovely personality, amazing food and tasty photos! She is specially trying to cook up gluten free stuff for her daughter and this would be a perfect Sunday morning breakfast for her!

I made a short time lapse video of how I made the pancakes which you will find at the end of this post!

You need:

1 cup Buckwheat Flour

1/2 cup Banana Flour

A pinch of baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 tablespoon Date Syrup or any sweetener of your choice.

1 tsp vinegar

1 tablespoon Flax meal

1 tsp Vanilla Essence or One Vanilla Bean scraped

Water

(These pancakes are not sweet at all. If you like your pancakes sweet, add more date syrup and reduce the water added to the batter)

Mix the flaxmeal with 2 tbsp water and set aside for 10 minutes. In a big bowl mix the Buckwheat Flour, Banana Flour, Baking soda and salt.

After ten minutes, the flax meal-water mixture would've become a stiff, thick, gooey mix. Make a well in the center of the flours and add this flax mixture, vinegar and vanilla. Add water and start stirring it till you get a nice thick meal. When you pull up the mixture with your spoon and drop it in, it should be stringy like in the picture below.

On a hot iron tawa/pan (I don't use non-stick stuff) put about 1/2 a teaspoon of oil and spread it around. Put a small spoonful of this pancake mixture in it and let it cook on one side. This is the way we usually start making doasas at home. We put a small amount of the dough/batter on a hot pan and let it cook on both sides before we start making the actual dosa/uttappam/ pancake. I guess it makes sure the tawa is evenly heated and if done properly, you don't need any oil for the rest of the dosas/ pancakes, etc. Of course this also depends on your batter, but this worked very well for these pancakes.

So just dab a nice big spoonful of the batter, spread it around quickly and carefully to about 1/2 inch thick and let the heat do the magic. Turn it over after about 20 seconds and let the other side cook. Drizzle with date syrup, add a few bananas or whatever fruits you fancy and enjoy them hot.

Don't forget to watch the video!

Oct 6, 2011

Lime and Nutmeg Jelly

It's Vegan MoFo day 6 already and I am under prepared. I'm aiming for at least 20 posts, thank god for that bottom limit! I don't think if it wasn't the Vegan Month of Food, I would have even clicked so many pictures in advance. Problem is I click the pictures and don't write down the recipe. So I end up having to recollect every teaspoon of whatever I put into that final picture.

Today it's time for something sweet!

I hate going to the doctor, let alone the orthodontist. When last week we went to get K's very bad teeth fixed, I decided to let my mouth be looked into. I shouldn't have. I knew I was asking for trouble. She took a very pointy instrument and jammed it into four of my molars and said what I didn't want her to say. I'm all for doctors and the like (not really), but getting treated conventionally is not my cup of sugar. I'm in the business of making sweet stuff, I eat meals between desserts and I brush once a day. I think I was asking for trouble. I bought one week from her and said I would do the fillings next week. I'm not going to.

I'm going to give myself six months to treat these cavities naturally. She warned me about a root canal if I ignore them. Little did she know, I'm also not into root canals.

So I have taken an oath. Unless absolutely necessary (i.e. only when I'm baking orders) I am not going to indulge in anything sweet and also start brushing twice a day. It's tough, very very tough. And here I am writing about a jelly that is setting in the fridge.

Since I'm off the refined sweets, I made this with a not so refined sweet - date syrup. I'm using the store bought variety for this recipe, but you could as well make it yourself. I made this recipe long back for a vegan potluck that I hosted, I have tweaked the recipe since then and find that it sets better now.

This recipe uses agar agar which is a sea weed. It needs heat to get activated and hence needs to be heated with liquid for it to set. In Bombay we easily get agar agar sheets (aka China Grass) in local grocery stores. Since it is difficult to dissolve when it is so big, I put it in the blender to make it flakey.

You need:

1 cups freshly squeezed Coconut Milk

2 tbsp agar agar big flakes (If you have fine powder you reduce the quantity of the agar agar)

1 cup water

1/4 cup or more date syrup / Sugar/ Jaggery (add little at a time while you taste depending on how sweet you want it)
Juice of 1 lime
Vanilla Essence
Nutmeg Powder
A pinch of turmeric powder for colour

Boil the water with the Agar Agar flakes till it is completely dissolved (it takes about 5 minutes). Add in the coconut milk, sweetener, vanilla essence, turmeric. Bring it to one boil and take it off the stove. Now add the lime juice and stir. Put it into the serving bowl and let it stay absolutely still. I keep it inside the fridge so it sets faster. After about 10 minutes, sprinkle the nutmeg powder on top and make some art. Leave it in the fridge for about 45 minutes.

It sets like a jelly and is so much fun to eat.

Serve cold.

Picture courtesy Harini Prakash

Oct 4, 2011

Bloggers Everywhere!

It's October and it is Vegan Mofo time! For the first time I will be taking part along with over 650 vegan bloggers from across the globe in the 2011 Vegan Month of Food! And I can't think of a better way to start it off other than with a Bloggers Dinner!

Every month Rushina gives us food bloggers from Mumbai a change to meet up and indulge. This time it was at the ITC Maratha's West View Grill. Famously know for the 'Girls on the Grill', their speciality is the grilled course. You can choose from a variety of food and have it grilled while you enjoy your salad and soup course. Then of course, you get dessert!

I will let the pictures do the talking!