Posts tagged ‘bread’
Friday Feast: Olive and Butter Bean Spread
The basis for this recipe comes from a cookbook my ex-colleagues got me when I left my previous job. You know you’re leaving friends when they give you a book called Vegan Italiano as a goodbye present. What champs. 
We initially made this hoping it would be an acceptable substitute for Yankee Elv’s old favourite, cream cheese and green olive sandwich. It’s not the same (you can’t really mimic cream cheese with beans), but I like it better. The cream cheese used to be quite heavy, whereas this is light and perfect for warm days, especially straight out of the fridge. I’ve kept this in the fridge for a week without it going bad. It might keep longer than that, but I’m not sure as it’s never lasted that long!
This recipe is nearly the same as what’s in the book, but we increased the lemon juice, onion and olives. I’m not a lemon-y kind of person, but the addition of a little extra lemon gives this spread a really fresh flavour. We also usually use kalamata olives (the original recipe calls for green or black olives), but I think we tried green ones once and they were nice too. Plus we mix the onions and olives in – the recipe says they should be used as a garnish. Weird.
I especially like it spread on sourdough or grainy quinoa and flaxseed toast. Yum!
Olive and Butter Bean Spread
Ingredients
- 425g (16oz) can butter beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 tab extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tab lemon juice
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 2 to 3 tabs diced red onion
- 2 to 3 tabs chopped kalamata olives
- toast, whatever kind you like
Method
- Place the beans, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper in a food processor and whiz until smooth.
- Mix in the onion and olives. (You can process them if you want, but personally I think the flavour gets a bit lost without the little pieces.)
- Spread on toast and eat it all up!
Friday Feast: Cranberry Pecan Bread Pudding
A few weeks ago, I was looking through the cupboard and fridge thinking about what food I needed to use up. I try to avoid wasting food. If you want to know more about why, have a look on the Wasted Food blog, cos Jonathan Bloom lists a bunch of reasons.
Anyway, I found half a stale baguette, some pecans that were on their last legs (or would have been, if pecans had legs), and some apples. The baguette was like a rock – there was no eating that unless it was significantly softened somehow, which prompted me to think of a bread pudding. However, I was never the biggest fan of the kinds of bread puddings I had as a kid. They were made of white sandwich loaf (too soft, which made for a soggy pudding), with milk, eggs, sugar and sultanas. I’m not big on sultanas in sweet food, although I love them in curry. My childhood memory was not what I wanted for a bread pudding. (Sorry Mum and Dad, I know you like it, but it’s not my style.) So I hunted down a new recipe.
My google-fu did not fail me, and I found a recipe for Cranberry Pecan Bread Pudding in the Dairy Free Cooking section of About.com. There seems to be some good stuff there, so it’s worth having a look. I tweaked the recipe quite a bit (halving it, then increasing some ingredients, reducing others, swapping nutmeg for cardamom), but I’m really happy with the end result. It’s American tasting (hello cranberries, apples and pecans), but it’s got a special little something something that makes it unlike the typical American fare (probably the ginger and cardamom). The consistency was soft, but not soggy, and the nuts added a lovely bite.
I actually made it with only a quarter of a chopped apple, but I couldn’t taste it at all, so I’ve increased it to a whole apple in the recipe below. I increased the pecans too – I used only a third of a cup, but Yankee Elv insisted it needed more. Otherwise, she loved this pudding though – and so did I!
Cranberry Pecan Bread Pudding
Ingredients
- 4.5 cups stale bread, cut into 1.5cm (about half an inch) cubes
- 1/2 cup dried cranberries (currants might be a good alternative if you prefer them)
- 1 apple, finely chopped
- 1/2 cup pecans, chopped or crumbled
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1/4 tsp cardamom (or you could use nutmeg)
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 cups plain non-dairy milk (I used soy)
- 1 tab vegetable oil
- 1/3 cup liquid sweetener (I used agave nectar)
Method:
- Preheat the oven to 190°C (about 350°F).
- Lightly oil a medium-sized heatproof dish (such as a pyrex dish) and set it aside.
- In a large bowl, combine the bread cubes, cranberries, apple, pecans, cinnamon, ginger, cardamom and salt until well mixed.
- Using a wooden spoon, stir in the non-dairy milk, vegetable oil and liquid sweetener until well combined.
- Allow the mixture to stand for 10 minutes, so all the bread is soaked. The liquid should be almost gone.
- Spoon the mixture into the prepared dish and bake until mostly firm and golden brown, about 35 to 45 minutes.
- Serve warm with non-dairy custard (which I make the same way as dairy custard, just with soy milk. Please note: there are no eggs in my custard, ever!)
Friday Feast: Vegan French Toast
Yankee Elv has made me vegan French toast before, but this is the best one so far. She got it from the vegancooking community on Livejournal, which is a fantastic resource for recipes as well as general advice. It’s from this Fronch Toast and Eggplant Parmasean post. It was super tasty, and not soggy like the last recipe we tried, although that may have been partially because the toast sat in a low oven for 15 minutes, staying warm while the non-vegan French toast was cooked for Mr Teeny-bop. We ate our French toast for dinner, with maple-flavoured syrup and agave nectar. Nom!
The original version of this recipe came from the Post Punk Kitchen, and called for chickpea flour instead of gluten-free plain flour, to give it an ‘eggier’ taste. We didn’t have any on hand though. We can’t get soy creamer in Australia, so instead of doing half a cup each of soy creamer and soy (or rice) milk as the recipe called for, Yankee Elv just used a whole cup of soy milk. I was sure we had cornflour in the cupboard (called cornstarch in the USA), but when we looked in the pantry there was none. We used custard powder instead.. it’s just yellow-tinted, vanilla-flavoured cornflour anyway, and it worked just as well. Besides, we have heaps of it and it needs to be used!
The French toast was also cooked it in Nuttelex (vegan margarine) in the pan, instead of oil – which, in my opinion, was a better idea; the oil would have given it a funny taste, I think.
Vegan French Toast
Tasty vegan French toast!
Ingredients:
- 6 slices of bread (we used slices from a small, reasonably dense loaf of sourdough)
- 2 tab cornflour (aka cornstarch; we used custard powder)
- 1 cup soy milk (or other non-dairy milk)
- 1/4 cup gluten-free plain flour (or chickpea flour, or regular plain [all-purpose] flour)
- cinnamon to taste (Yankee Elv just shakes some on top of the mixture, dips the bread in, then adds some more – that way each slice gets a decent amount of cinnamon)
- Nuttelex (vegan margarine) – enough to lightly grease the pan
Method:
- Mix the soy milk and cornflour in a wide, shallow bowl or container until cornflour is dissolved.
- Mix in the gluten-free plain flour until it is mostly absorbed (some lumps are ok), then sprinkle in some cinnamon.
- Melt the nuttelex in a pan over medium heat.
- In batches, or one at a time depending on the size of your pan, soak the bread slices in the mixture and transfer to the pan. Sprinkle some cinnamon on top of the mixture before soaking each slice.
- Cook each side for about 2 minutes; if they are not brown enough when you flip them over, heat for 1 to 2 more minutes on each side. They should be golden brown with flecks of dark brown.
- Serve immediately, or keep them in a low oven for a brief time before serving, if required.
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