What Oil Do You Cook With? Here’s My Take on Oils
What is the low down on oils. This is a hard one. I personally don’t fry much with oil. My preferred choice of using oil is splashing organic olive oil into a pasta sauce or running it through my lunch time salad. As a caterer though I am asked to shallow fry corn fritters and burgers for lunch and I looked at the high heat point of oils and thought that rice bran was the best to use however I struggled to find organic rice bran oil and then found out how destructive that crop is to the environment. Nut oils like Macadamia and almond were the next best but many people suffer from nut allergies so not an option for me. Avocado oil also has a high smoke point but so far the budget for retreats doesn’t quite stretch to frying with avocado oil.
Spreading Kindness this Christmas with Delicious Vegan Food
What I love about vegan food is everyone can eat it. So even if you aren’t vegan, if you take vegan food along to any festive or Christmas gathering this year you will make everyone happy as it will be all inclusive. All of my recipes are gluten free so you will have that covered too. I am sharing with you this week some delightful recipes to make, a lovely traditional Christmas meal and then some poolside, picnic, BBQ ideas.
Scrambled Tofu
This is the first of two blogs I will write with lots of Christmas/festive time/ holiday type recipes. First of all I will share a scrambled tofu recipe which will have your guests on Christmas morning or any special morning going back for seconds and even possibly thirds. Then below that recipe will be links to my all time favourite recipes to make at this time of the year. Next week I will share recipes for a traditional Christmas feast and some more casual recipes for those that like to sit around the pool (or like me sit in front of the TV watching Boxing Day cricket) at these festive times.
Cooking with Seasonal Produce – It’s Asparagus time!
It's asparagus season and I need to get in quick with this blog as asparagus season is often short lived, where I live anyway. There are all sorts of nutritional benefits to eating asparagus, like it has a good source of vitamin A (which we need for our eyesight, building our immunity and reproduction of cells and it also helps with organ health) is a great antioxidant, can serve as a diuretic, apparently nourishes the digestive tract, is of course a good source of fibre and is high in B1.
Eggplant Super Ball
A few weeks back I did a little write up on Jessie Rae, one of 2016 graduated vegan chefs. Did anyone try her delectable hemp chocolate cake? If so how did it go? In this week’s blog it is Pandora’s recipe I will share with you. For those of you who didn’t read Jessie’s blog and for those who have forgotten I will do a recap. On the 5th and 6th of September the graduated chefs of 2016 came back together for two fun filled days of learning and as part of these two days they shared one of their recipes with the group, and over time, mostly when their ingredients are in season I will share with you all their delicious recipes.
Pickles
It’s pickles time again. I know it was only a few weeks back that I wrote about pickles. I’m mad for pickles these days. Who made the giardiniera from the recipe I posted a few weeks back? If you did I would love to hear from you and find out how it went. Do you have any pictures to share? If so can you please share on the recipe share page on Facebook.
Vegan Egg Mayonnaise
I was lucky enough to find myself in Fitzroy, Melbourne a few weeks back attending a 5 rhythms workshop. I hadn’t been to Melbourne for three years so it was a pleasant surprise to see that even more vegan restaurants, cafes and shops had opened up. One morning before my class I took a stroll to Smith and Deli and was amazed by all they had to offer there and also by how busy this gorgeous sandwich/salad/breakfast takeaway joint was.
Italian Pickles are so under rated
I used to buy jars of giardiniere when my surname was Di Girogio (I was married to an Italian once upon a time) and I would have devoured the jar within the day of purchasing. So when Anthea Amore of Organic Passion came and taught on the Vegan Chef Training this year, on the Italian Wholefoods day of module four I was elated when she suggested she teach Giardiniere.
Nut free recipes for those that are allergic or sensitive to nuts
Life often presents challenges and in the end it always becomes something positive. The last retreat I catered on there was someone who was allergic to a lot of nuts. Not just allergic but anaphylactic allergic so I was on super alert for cross contamination. I realised that a few of my dishes were all the more special due to using cashews in them and wanted to find a way to replicate these for this lovely retreat guest.
A scrumptious recipe for left over rice or quinoa
I always make too much rice. Is that what you do, or are you more accurate with your estimations of how much you will eat? I always cook too much so will often throw it in my salad for lunch the next day. However the other day there was far too much left over so I did some creative thinking and came up with this sweet little recipe. We had left over rice and quinoa and yum it worked so well together.
