February 2008

This bean stew was all kinds of delicious even if it looks kind of bland. I love making and eating stuff like this; it reminds me of the foods I grew up with. My dad is a chef so we had a lot of exotic fine dining foods every now and then when I was a child, but in the end most of the cooking done in our house was just basic down home cooking. I think that the food we eat leaves a permanent print in our brain just like smells; this might be why it feels so comforting to eat the same kind of food as we ate in our childhood. All the foods I have eaten and tasted have places, people and events attached to them, all I have to do to remember them is to smell, eat and taste those foods of the past.

Bean Stew

This serves 4 and takes approximately 20 min. to make.

-2 cups vegetable broth

- 2 bay leaves

-3 medium sized onions

-3 medium sized carrots

-100g mushrooms, I used shiitake mushrooms

-1/2 cup red wine

-3-4 tbls (gluten-free) soy sauce, I used tamari

-2 tbls any kind of flour, I used quinoa flour

-800 grams cooked beans, that is two basic cans of beans, you can use any kind of beans, I used black beans and brown beans

-2 tbls olive oil, or peanut oil

- salt and black pepper, some tabasco (optional)

Start by pouring your veg. broth into a saucepan with the bay leaves and diced carrots, bring them to a boil on medium heat. Prepare your mushrooms and onions by slicing them, heat your skillet on medium heat and add your oil into it. Sautee your onions first in the skillet until they are tender, then add your mushrooms and sautee them with your onions for about five minutes. Add two tablespoons of flour into your skillet and mix it together with those onions and mushrooms. Mix your red wine with your soy sauce and pour it into your skillet, let everything cook together until it thickens.

Transfer the onion mixture into your saucepan, add some salt and pepper according to taste and let everything cook for about 10 minutes, then add the beans and let it cook for five minutes.

Serve with some rice or mashed potatoes.

Popularity: 4% [?]

This recipe is for a vegan gluten-free no bake cake, which means that it is also egg-free and milk-free.

All the ingredients in this cake are adjustable and you have two options with the base as well. It is not time consuming to make or difficult at all, the only con with this cake is that it is not instant since you have to let it sit in the fridge for at least a couple of hours, preferably over night.

The taste is very fresh if you use silken tofu and yogurt for the filling as I did, if you prefer a richer tasting cake I would suggest using whipped cream in the filling instead of yogurt or silken tofu, whipped soy cream is available in most stores under the brand name Soyatoo.

Using agar-agar is fairly easy, just stick to the instructions on your packet and it should work out fine. I used agar-agar flakes.

I used an 8 inch springform pan.

Gluten-free no bake cake

The Filling-

-300 g silken tofu

-3 cups or 7,5 dl berries or fruit

-250 g plain or vanilla soy yogurt

-2 tsp vanilla extract

-2/3 cup or 2 dl sugar

The agar-agar mixture-

-10 tbls agar-agar flakes

-2/3 cup or 2 dl fruit or berry juice concentrate

The base-

Option one (this is a low carb cake base)

-1 cup or 2,5 dl of almonds ground into a powder

-50 grams margarine or oil

Just mix them together and you have your cake base

Option two

-2 cups or 5 dl corn flakes ground into a powder

-50 grams of margarine or oil

Mix them together and put the mixture into a fridge for ten minutes before you start spreading it.

Start by lining the base of your cake pan with baking paper, cut it into a circle matching the pan. Then make your cake base and spread it with your fingers on top of the baking paper in the cake pan, you can wet your fingers with cold water occasionally so that the base will spread more easily.

Mix your filling together with a blender, after you have mixed it into a smooth paste start preparing your agar-agar. Add the flakes into your juice concentrate and pour them into a saucepan, let them cook together for approximately five minutes stirring constantly, then add them to your filling mixture and quickly blend them together.

Pour on top of your cake base and let it sit in a fridge overnight.

Decorate your cake with fresh fruit or berries before serving.

Popularity: 5% [?]