German "Matjes"

Today, I want to show you, how to make "fish" out of eggplants. I´m going to show you, how to make a german meal called "Matjes". This is a matie filet marinaded in a cream sauce with onions, apples and pickles. If you use the eggplant the way, I will show you, it will taste almost exactly like the original and very fishy. The inspiration for this recipe comes from a similar recipe out of the cookbook "Vegan. Tut gut - schmeckt gut" made by the german vegan chef Jerome Eckmeier. (If you click on the title, you will be linked to the amazon page.)

Ingredients:

2 eggplants (use longer and thinner ones)
Salt
1 medium onion
1 big apple
pickles (gherkin) out of a glass (you will use the water of it as well)
250g soy yoghurt
100ml soy cream
dill
salt and pepper
1 nori sheet
vinegar
sugar


Directions:

At first, take your eggplants, cut off the top and cut them lengthwise in 5mm thick shives. Salt those to let the water get out. Wait a while and then use paper towels to dry your eggplants, before you cook them in salted water for five minutes. For the marinade, mix the yoghurt with the cream. Add 3 tablespoons of dill. Cut your onion into stripes and crush them a little with your hands to make them a little less harsh in taste. Cut your apple and 3-6 (maybe more) pickles into small pieces and mix everything together with the marinade. Now take your cooked eggplant sheets and dry them well with paper towels. Now cut off the skin of the eggplants, so you are left with a very soft inside piece of the eggplant that already reminds one of fishfilet. Now you need to season your marinade with salt and pepper and sugar, till you reach the point were you like it. Then mix in 1-2 Tablespoons of vinegar and then add the water from the pickles. Be careful, because it is very sour. But I ended up having at least half of the water mixed inside my marinade. Cut your nori sheet into very small pieces and add it to your sauce. It will give it a very fishy taste. Now put in your eggplant fish and cover them in your sauce. Cover everything up and leave it in the fridge for at least 2 hours, best over night. This meal tastes best, when served with potatoes.

Enjoy your meal!

Geeky Food: Game of Thrones inspired Lemon Cakes

I bet, if you had the chance, you´ve watched the season premiere of Game of Thrones. Sadly, I´m in Germany and I didn´t have the possibility. Instead I thought of making the famous lemon cakes to please myself and I hope you like the recipe.

Besides, I decided to make this a series, because if I´m honest, I love recreating food from TV Shows or movies, whether it is this lemon cake or for example the Ratatouille from the Disney movie. I hope, you are interested in this kind of recipes, as well. You´re gonna get them anyway ;)

The cakes turned out not only delicious because of their bitter-sweet lemony flavour but very pretty as well.

Ingredients:

250g flour
150g sugar
150ml soymilk
2 teaspoons baking powder
12g lemon zests
20ml oil
the juice of one lemon
1 pinch of salt
2 tablespoons soyyoghurt
1 whole organic lemon
fat and sugar to grease and cover the form

Directions:

At first you have to take your muffin tray (I used one for 12 muffins) and grease the forms. Than add some sugar and spread it in the forms. Take your organic lemon and cut very thin slices (you have to make the slices as thin as possible, so you can eat them), you put inside the individual muffin forms. Now take a bowl and mix all the dry ingredients together. Take another bowl and mix the wet ingredients excluded the yoghurt. Mix the wet and dry ingredients together and stir it, until you have a batter without lumps. Finally add the soy yoghurt and spread the batter in the muffin forms. Bake everything on 180°C or 360°F for 20-30 minutes.
Let everything cool down completely, till you take it out of the forms. The lemon cakes can be served perfectly with powdered sugar.

Enjoy your meal!

Leftover creations: Hawaiian Quesadillas

This new series, I want to start, will be named leftover creations. On here, I want to share recipes, which aren´t ones that I regularly cook or eat, but things I create mostly by the end of the week, using all the ingredients that have been left. Therefore these creations might seem a little weird from time to time, but be sure, I won´t share a recipe, that I haven´t eaten myself.
This particular recipe is based on a huge craving for hawaii toast (is this a thing outside of Germany? It´s basically a toast with a slice of ham, a slice of pineapple and baked in the oven with cheese). But since I had a lot of unused tortillas left and not so much vegan cheese, the idea of a quesadilla came to me. I hope, you like the recipe.

Ingredients:

2-4  wheat or corn tortillas (you need an even number)

canned or fresh pineapple (leftovers will sure be enough)

smoked tofu
to marinade the tofu, you need:
soysauce
lemonjuice (or lime juice. Almost every sour liquid will do the job)
hoisin sauce -> I love this stuff. I bought it lately on amazon. You can check it out, if you follow this link: http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0050O7MAW/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1638&creative=19454&creativeASIN=B0050O7MAW&linkCode=as2&tag=aveganmindblo-21&linkId=UQPABJMZ24TGQO6W (I´m really sure, that this is a vegan one, since the E numbers appear safe, but feel free to correct me)

vegan cheese (I only had one slice left, so I made a sauce out of it)
For the cheese sauce:
200ml of almond milk
1/2 cup of nutritional yeast
1 teaspoon of oregano and 1 tablespoon of parsley
1-2 Tablespoons of cornstarch
Salt and pepper to taste


Directions:

First take a small pot and mix the almond milk with the cornstarch. Turn on the heat to high, add the vegan cheese and let everything first melt and then thicken up. When its done, add the yeast, the oregano and the parsley and set everything aside. Take a pan and turn on the heat. Chop your tofu to flat chunks on a size you prefer. I used 2x3cm pieces (kind of) and added them to the pan. Add all the sauces and fry it in the marinade (not the cheese sauce! I´m talking about hoisin and soy sauce as well as your lemon juice. This process takes only a few minutes. Make sure nothing burns. Then take your tortillas. Spread the cheese sauce on one of them. Add the pineapple chunks and the tofu and top it with another tortilla. Put your Quesadilla in a big pan and fry it on each side for several minutes until it´s crunchy but not burned. You can use a dish, to flip it, without destroying your quesadillas.
It turned out especially tasty, so give it a try and

Enjoy your meal!

All time favourites: Chili

Especially when the days are still a little cold and I am craving a hearty dish, I go for my version of a vegan Chili. Most vegan Chilis go for a meat substitutes, such as tofu. As I like my Chili lighter and a little more fresh, I won´t use any substitutes wheather they are soy- or wheatbased. Instead I go for a variation of beans and different spices. 

Ingredients:

1 can of crushed tomatoes

1-2 cans of different beans (I used kidney beans and black beans, but chickpeas work great as well)

1-2 bell peppers (I usually go for the orange or yellow ones, since I like them more. But you could use, whatever you want)

1 onion

1-2 gloves of garlic

1 lemon

Cumin, Paprika, Thyme and Coriander (I would use a pinch of cumin and at least half a teaspoon of everything else)

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 tablespoon oliveoil

Directions:

Add first you have to finely chop your onion and the garlic. Then heat the oliveoil in a pot and fry the onion, until it´s slightly translucent. Next you add the garlic, stir everything for about 30 seconds, and add all the spices. Stir for another few seconds, then put in the beans and the crushed tomatoes. You need to turn down the heat and let everything simmer for at least ten minutes. Use the time, to get the juice and the zest from your lemon and cook yourself some rice, to eat with your chili. When your chili has cooked properly, you can add salt and pepper to taste and finally add the lemon juice and the lemon zest.

With the lemony taste, the chili gets a really fresh flavour, which totally matches with the spring wheather. The chili also tastes great when it´s cooled down or when you heat it up the following day. To give everything an even more special touch, I would try to add some mint.

Enjoy your meal!

Veganize it! Twix

In the series "Veganize it", I plan on making a vegan version of commonly known unvegan foods. This time I tried veganizing the Twix bar. For those, who don´t know this product: it is basically a stripe of light cookie, topped with caramel and covered in chocolate.

Ingedients:

For the dough:
150g flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking powder
50g vegan butter
4-6 tablespoons of water
1 pinch of salt
(I originally added 60g sugar, but it turned out way too sweet. If you love very sweet foods, you could add sugar, but the bar will turn out sweet enough just because of the caramel and the chocolate.)

For the caramel:
8 tablespoons of sugar
1 tablespoon of agave nectar (you could add maple syrup instead or just leave it)
6 tablespoons of soy cream
3 tablespoons of vegan butter

finally a lot of chocolate (at least 200g) so you have enough to cover everything.


Directions:

At first you have to mix all the dry ingedients for your cookie part very well, then add the butter and start kneading. Slowly add the water, until you have a perfect dough. Leave it covered in the frigde to rest for at least 30 minutes.
Then you have to put it in a form which must be baking save. It is best, it you get a already rectangular shape and your dough isn´t thicker than 5mm. (mine was way too thick) Bake it in the oven for 20-30 minutes (or until it is done) on 180°C or 360°F. Then leave it to cool completely.

For the caramel, you have to add all the ingredients in a cooking pan and stir it on high heat. After a while, everything starts getting darker and when you have reached a golden brown caramely color, your caramel is done and you can add it on the cooled cookiepart. (don´t forget to stir the caramel the whole time, while heating it!) Leave the caramel topped cookie part cool completely again. Finally cut it into parts (you could use a regular twix, to get the size right). Melt the vegan chocolate and cover your vegan twix in it. Leave it to cool again and it is ready, to be eaten. It is a great gift as well!

I hope, you enjoy making this. Tell me what foods you want to see veganized.


















Me veganizing well known unvegan things like twix

All time favourites: Thai Curry Soup

Today I want to share one of my favourite recipes with you. I like it so much, I could eat it everyday and would never get tired of it. It´s probably not even close to real thai curries, but since one always has the oportunity the increase the spicyness or adapt the recipe otherwise, I will share it anyway.

Ingredients:

150g rice noodles
1 can of coconutmilk
1 can of chickpeas
2 (or more) teaspoons of red thai curry paste
2-3 gloves of garlic
1 small piece of ginger
the juice of 1-2 limes (I like it very... limy?)
about 2 tablespoons of agave nectar (or the sweetener you personally like the best)
Salt and pepper to taste

For the vegetables in it, you´re free to use, what you prefer. I would always go for spinach. In this case, I also used sugar snaps and tofu (which isn´t exactly a vegetable). Other great options are bell peppers or carrots.


Direction:
For this soup I pretty much just throw everything in one pot. The only exception are the rice noodles, which soak in hot water, until they are done. In a large pot, I put the coconutmilk, the chickpeas, the curry paste, the minced garlic and ginger and all the frozen vegetables (if used). Simmer this on medium to low heat, for about 10 minutes or until the vegetables are defrosted. Now throw in the other vegetables and add the lime juice, the agave nectar and salt and pepper. To serve it, use a bowl and add some of the noodles at first. Then top it with the soup. If the soup turns out too thick, add some water. Serve everything hot.

If you try this at home, please tell me, which vegetables you used and whether you liked it. :)

Enjoy your meal!

Milkalternatives - too many options?

Sometimes, as I wandered around at the supermarket shelves, I got quite lost according to the huge offering of milk alternatives. For that reason, I want to use this post, to tell you about my favourite milk alternatives, what I use them for and why I don´t like some of the others.

Nearly every big supermarket has plenty of different options to buy vegan milk. Today I want to talk about the most common ones and my experiences on them.

Soymilk is probably the most known milk alternative and I have used it for a long time. I think concerning the texture of the milk it gets quite close to cow milk. But in most cases it has a very strong soy taste. Because of this I stopped using it. Another reason is, that I usually use soy cheese and soy yoghurt, not to forget tofu but I wanted to decrease my soy intake.

Instead I usually use almondmilk. Almondmilk tastes pretty much like almonds. I prefer it, because I like this taste a lot and I think you can use it for sweet recipes as well as for example the base of pasta sauces. The only disadvantage is the price, because in Germany it costs more than twice as much as regular soy milk.

A milkalternative that I only use on occassion is hazelnutmilk. I would reccomend to only use it for sweet recipes. But for those I like it even more than almond milk. It gives treats like hot chocolate a very special touch. The reason I more likely buy almond milk is, that I can use it for more recipes.

Ricemilk was the first alternative I ever tried. I really didn´t like it at all. This kind of milk tasted very watery and not good at all. In some stores they would sell a mixture of soy- and ricemilk which wasn´t good eather. If you like the taste of ricemilk, it is very good, because you can get it for a pretty low cost.

I like oatmilk a lot. I like the taste and the  texture. The only problem is, that you can´t get it in every supermarket in Germany. But when I can get it, I usually buy it. As almondmilk you can use it for sweet and savory meals. Still I want to warn you because I have heard from other vegans, that some of them think, oatmeal tastes like straw. If you like the taste of oats and oatmeal, you will most likely like it and in my opinion, oatmilk is the easiest milk to make it yourself at home.

Speltmilk doesn´t belong to my favourites, as well. I don´t like the taste and therefore I don´t buy it. 

The last one I want to talk about is coconutmilk. But I don´t mean the fatty canned one (don´t get me wrong, I love this one, but I prefer it in curries and not in my cereal). I am talking about the lower fat ones, like the one you can get from alpro. You can check it out here:

http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B00KLIIDPA/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1638&creative=19454&creativeASIN=B00KLIIDPA&linkCode=as2&tag=aveganmindblo-21&linkId=WPRVL6L3LLSJ7M52

It is not as aromatic as the canned coconutmilk, but I really like this one. Especially for asian dishes in which I don´t want to use as much fat. But it can also give your breakfast cereal that special touch. But I don´t like it as my everyday milkalternative, because it has quite a strong taste in comparison.

I hope you got an overview on the varieties of vegan milk. Tell me which ones you use and whether you know any other types.

Lots of love!