Vegetarian Shepherd's pie

I have a vegetarian friend in Sydney with whom I exchange recipes and cooking ideas. One day she baked a vegetarian casserole/pie dish and described it as a shepherd's pie - and I thought, what a bloody great idea! A shepherd's pie which allows vegetarians or animal-friendly people to enjoy the comfort of a wholesome pie while keeping in line with their eating preferences.

I made a pie with the key ingredients of puy lentils and purple sweet potato. It was an ad-hoc adventure so I didn't record the recipe. From memory, for the base I used puy lentils, diced onions and carrots, canned tomatoes and some form of tomato pasta sauce (basic ingredients for a lentil casserole dish). The top was just mashed purple sweet potato with a bit of olive oil. I baked it in the oven to give the pie a crusty top - in my opinion, nothing beats the texture of baked mash potato.

Although the lentil base had lots of sauce before I baked it, the lentils soaked up most of the liquid - next time, I'd use a bit more sauce (sometimes the oozing moistness of the pie base makes the pie ever so scrumptious). The sweet potato topping was a bit dry so I had to sprinkle some olive oil on it after it was cooked. In hindsight, I should have mixed the topping with some margarine or some more oil before baking it.

The dish looked a bit bizarre with the purple topping, but this is what I loved about it. It was comforting meal ideal for the cold winter day.

Bon apetit!

live green - eat lentils and fake meat

It was Canberra’s first Living Green Festival – a showcase of all things hippie, including vegetarian and organic food, lifestyle products, environmentally friendly clothes/home items etc.

I got an Indian spiced lentil pattie from the ‘My Rainbows’ café stall. It was served with satay sauce, beetroot salad, lettuce and yoghurt raita. It was fulfilling, tasty and made me go: if vegetarian food is always this tasty, why am I not a vegetarian?

My friends got things from the Asian vegetarian stall – probably run by Au Lac. This included vege skewers and peking duck wraps. They were a bit apprehensive of the pseudo meat, but I thought it was tasty and delicious.

healthy colourful homeless

Even though I don't have a proper 'home' right now, I can still eat healthy and colourful food :). Green lentil salad with spinach, carrots, tomatoes and maybe black olives:

Rama's Fiji Indian Restaurant

People often say that as you age, the novelty of birthdays wears off… Well at the risk of sounding selfish and immature, I’ve always made sure I do something special for myself on my birthday. It’s the one day where I can go: I shouldn’t feel bad about putting myself first and treat myself to something nice – to eat of course J.

Also, since it is usually me who organises dinner events and outings, my birthday was one of few chances where I could sit back and let others organise things for me. I requested that we go to a casual, healthy restaurant with a ‘different’ cuisine. A colleague of chose Rama’s – a Fiji Indian Restaurant in Pearce.

It was a while ago, but these pictures jotted my memory of what we ate. For the entrée, we got vegetable pakoras. These were essentially bits of cauliflower, potato, eggplant, onion rings and capsicum dipped in spiced lentil flour and deep fried ($10). They looked kinda absurd when they came out on the plate – bright orange and strangely smooth. Are they edible? What is the orange stuff? What would it taste like? Eating the pastry/batter didn’t shock me as much as the look of it. It wasn’t particularly flavoursome or spicy – which I guess is expected out of lentil flour. The excitement of the dish definitely lies in its appearance and the way it’s been prepared.

I can’t remember everything we ate, but it included:

*Goat Curry: pieces of meat, on the bone, cooked with fresh spices and coriander leaves 21.00

*Palak Panir: home made cheese cooked in a smooth spinach sauce 19.00

*Vegetable Bombay: potato, beans, carrots, peas and cauliflower, cooked in

spicy coconut milk 18.50

Looking at the prices now, I think Ramas is a bit pricey (you’d def get cheaper Indian elsewhere in Canberra). But I shared 7 dishes with 8+ people, so it didn’t cost too much. I can remember not crying (always a plus) because the dishes weren’t too spicy. According to one of my friends, who has a Fiji Indian background, this cuisine is often a lot less spicy than Indian food.

At Ramas, there were no mishaps with the customer service nor we found weird objects in the food.

I’d definitely go again and its one of the better Indian restaurants that I’ve been to. But maybe I’m just saying that because I can’t cook much Indian and I think they are all great *embarrassed flush*.

Rama's Fiji Indian Restaurant

Pearce Shopping Centre

Cnr. Macfarland & Hodgson Cres.
Pearce ACT 2607
http://www.ramas.com.au/

daal kofta curry

My mum recently extended her asian food repertoire and courageously took up Indian cooking. She went to the local community college to sign up for an Indian Vegetarian cookery course, which was led by a lovely local Indian lady. I was inspired by her bravery and experimented one weekend by cooking Daal Kofta Curry, from scratch. I combined pure spices to make a Madras curry spice mix, made my own breadcrumbs, made my own daal, clumsily made my own kofta from the potentially-sloppy daal, and made my own curry sauce. It was tiring but I should feel proud of myself for conquering this massive task, especially as my dinners are usually only 30 minute efforts.

I got the daal kofta curry recipe from http://www.veggienumnum.com/2010/09/dal-kofta/ - the recipe uses about 20 ingredients! Impressive! Despite my amazement at the long list of ingredients, I'm sure that there are some Indian dishes that use many more spices. I guess there are also some overwhelming Masterchef 'taste-test' episodes which have dishes with billions of ingredients. Nevertheless, the 20 ingredients in this recipe was very achievable in a home kitchen.

The first step was to make the Madras Curry paste, which I got from: http://www.taste.com.au/how+to/articles/2707/madras+curry+paste. This recipe had an extra 10 ingredients!! Eeeek. The final product of the curry paste is shown in the below collage, in the top left hand corner. The smell of this fresh Madras paste was amazing. This might sound weird, but it smelt quite 'smooth' - what I mean by this is that it didn't pierce the inside skin of my nose with a high percentage of 'heat' or hot spices. I would definitely use this recipe again.

Using the first recipe (http://www.veggienumnum.com/2010/09/dal-kofta/), I made the base for the Daal Kofta. I've cooked very little Indian food before and I knew that kofta has the soft texture of meatballs - so I wondered why the recipe called for crunchy cashew nuts. Much to my surprise, the cashews gave the kofta some texture and substance. The tinier cashew crumbs added a wonderful thickness to the curry sauce.

A wonderful thing about this recipe is the surprise of the raisin or sultana that you place in the centre of each kofta (picture below). The sweetness of the dried fruit added a playfulness and ZANG to the curry. It was really lovely!

I baked the kofta until they were golden brown. I ate a few too many of the kofta at this stage and would be happy to have them as a meal in themselves or tossed in a green salad. Nevertheless, I made the curry sauce mentioned in the recipe and VOILA. You can see the final result in the bottom right hand picture below. The picture is a bit more dull than the one in the blog which I got the recipe from, but that could just be the quality of my camera. This dish lasted me almost 5 days and was sooooo satisfying. It reminded me of the wholesome food my mother cooks at home :). Happy times!

i heart visitors to canberra

I LOVE having my friends visit me in Canberra. Milly came down from Sydney for a weekend, and we had a raaaaanggge of food. One night, we were classy and had a sit-down Thai dinner. We were yuppies the next day and had a cafe lunch. Most of the time, we were preparing our stomachs for alcohol or were in a rush so relied on bread and dip. After getting super drunk, we got New York style pizza. You can tell much about our activities on the weekend, just by looking at the list of food that we ate.

Zen Yai Thai

This next set of pictures were at Zen Yai Thai @ Civic. I had the lemon grass chicken and it was fantastic. The lemon grass gave the chicken a crusty exterior, as if it was deep fried (but healthier). It was the perfect combination between sweet, savoury and spicy. Milly had the tofu stir fry which was nice as well. It was definitely one of the more 'authentic' Thai places, as opposed to those places which claim to cook Thai food but tastes like my mum's Cantonese cooking.

ZenYai Thai

111/117 London Circuit

Canberra 

Edelweiss Gourmet Deli
For much of the weekend, we feasted on bread and dip. The dips were Carrot and Pumpkin/Rosemary, which we bought from Edelweiss Gourmet Deli @ Woden Westfield. It was very pricey - we paid more than $10 for a small container but they were more than amazing. I preferred the pumpkin dip, which was rich, creamy and full-bodied. The rosemary really enhanced the pumpkin so at every bite, you'd get the best parts of roast pumpkin, as if it just came straight from the oven. The carrot dip was light but full-bodied as well. A bit 'crisp' even. It's not as creamy but still delicious.

Edelweiss Gourmet Deli

Woden Westfield

Gus' Cafe
Milly's has a friend from Canberra and we all caught up over lunch/brunch at the Gus Cafe in Civic. As of now, I've brought nearly all my Canberrian visitors to this cafe. I like this cafe because of its dark brown relaxing decor, ever changing Specials menu, vegetarian-friendly food and friendly atmosphere. The prices aren't the best, (from $15 for a decent sized cafe meal) but I'm willing to pay a bit more just to spoil myself every now and then. This time, I had an egg-white Mediterranean omelette. It was tasty, healthy and had a decent portion of veges in it. There aren't many cafes that serve egg white omelettes (cholesterol-friendly), so I get super excited when I find one :D. While this meal was satisfying, I swear they put bacon in it, even though it wasn't on the menu.

Milly had lentil croquettes - they were okay. Crispy (as expected) on the outside, which complemented the soft lentils inside. They also had a good spice to them. It was a bit heavy as there seemed to be a high proportion of breadcrumbs mixed with the lentils.
The third dish in these pictures were Mexican enchiladas, I think. Although I didn't try them, Milly's friend didn't have anything to complain about :).

Gus' Cafe
Shop 8 Garema Arcade
Bunda Street, Civichttp://www.guscafe.com.au/index.html

New York Slice Pizzeria

Milly and I went to a graduate party on Saturday night. We drunk too much, too quickly and had to balance it out with food - of course with the oily, fast and unhealthy type. We went to New York Slice- I think they are named this because New York is known to have really large (and good) pizzas. I've always wanted to go to this place because they always display pizzas three-times-the-size-of-my-face and a range of pizzas. It always seemed like the perfect guilty snack... and it lived up to my expectations that night. I think we got the mixed Vegetarian option (my memory of that night, for obvious reasons, isn't great). The pizza I had in New York was def better, but I have no major complaints about this place. The base was crispy, the pizza was hot and fresh enough. Perfect for your post-drunken feast or quick snack.

New York Slice Pizzeria

Garema Place, Civic

Canberra

http://www.newyorkslice.com.au/