On Haggis

This is a comment I made back in 2006, which is interesting in its own right.

Vegetarian haggis has been around for at least 100 years, and there is evidence to suggest that the original was veggie – it really is just leftovers plus oatmeal and spices. The oldest example I know of comes from Reform Cookery Book: Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century by Mrs. Mill, published in 1904. Apart from the butter, which is easily substituted with another fat, the recipe is vegan.

Scotch Haggis.

“Fair fa’ yer honest, sonsy face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race.”

It is to be hoped the shade of Burns will forbear to haunt those who have the temerity to appropriate the sacred name of Haggis for anything innocent of the time-honoured liver and lights which were the sine qua non of the great chieftain. But in Burns’ time people were not haunted by the horrors of trichinae, measly affections, &c., &c. (one must not be too brutally plain spoken, even in what they are avoiding), as we are now, so perhaps this practical age may risk the shade rather than the substance.

For a medium-sized haggis, then, toast a breakfastcupful oatmeal in front of the fire, or in the oven till brown and crisp, but not burnt. Have the same quantity of cooked brown or German lentils, and a half-teacupful onions, chopped up and browned in a little butter. Mix all together and add 4 ozs. chopped vegetable suet, and seasoning necessary of ketchup, black and Jamaica pepper.

It should be fairly moist; if too dry add a little stock, gravy, or extract.

Turn into greased basin and steam at least 3 hours. An almost too realistic
imitation of “liver” is contrived by substituting chopped mushrooms for the lentils. It may also be varied by using crushed shredded wheat biscuit crumbs in place of the oatmeal. Any “remains” will be found very toothsome, if sliced when cold, and toasted or fried.

Interestingly, this recipe is almost identical to modern vegan haggises, which usually involve lentils and kidney beans, plus mushrooms.

Nut Rissoles with savoury rice

Last night I made a couple of dishes from Rupert H. Wheldon’s No Animal Food. First published around 1910, this was the first book to advocate veganism and it contains 100 recipes at the back. The ones I tried last night were:

12.–Nut Rissoles
3 ozs. mixed grated nuts, 3 ozs. breadcrumbs, 1 oz. nut butter, 1 chopped onion, 1 large cupful canned tomatoes.
Mix ingredients together; mould into rissoles, dust with flour and fry in ‘Nutter.’ Serve with gravy.

28.–Plain Savoury Rice
4 ozs. unpolished rice, 1 lb. tin tomatoes.
Boil together until rice is cooked. If double boiler be used no water need be added, and thus the rice will be dry and not pultaceous.

My versions:

Nut Rissoles
1 cup mixed nuts, chopped in food processor
breadcrumbs made from 1 slice wholemeal bread
2 tbsp vegan margarine
1 chopped onion
1 can tomatoes, blended.

Mix the nuts, breadcrumbs and onions together in a large bowl. Melt the margarine and add it. Use your hands to mix it all together and add just enough tomato to bind it. Make into four burgers. Dust with flour and fry slowly – they’ll burn if you’re not careful.

Plain Savoury Rice
1 cup long-grain brown rice
the remains of the tomatoes from the nut rissoles
enough water to make 2 cups liquid

Bung all of the above into your favourite rice pan. Bring to the boil and simmer, with the lid on tightly, until all the liquid is absorbed. Remove the lid, stir quickly with a fork, then replace the lid and let it sit, off the heat, for a couple of minutes or until you need it. Alternatively, put the ingredients in your rice cooker, and cook according to the instructions.

I served all of the above with my mushroom gravy, and can recommend both recipes. The rice, especially, was delicious, even though it’s so simple.

I’ve visited the Nut Rissoles before.

What I had for lunch

Nut cutlet, roast asparagus and pineapple salsa

Today’s lunch was made very quickly using a grill pan. The main protein was a Goodlife Nut Cutlet, which is really best done on a George Foreman-type grill (but you will be horrified when you see what comes out in the oil tray). This takes by far the longest time to cook, and went on first.

Next to that, I placed 8 narrow spears of asparagus. I love asparagus, but like to keep it as a special treat for when it’s in season, but my partner decided I needed a special treat anyway and bought me some regardless. When they were done, I moved them to the lowest part of the pan (our kitchen does not appear to be level) and braised them in a splash of sake before serving.

The pineapple salsa was based on a recipe in the June edition of Waitrose New – a free magazine produced by the supermarket to emphasise seasonal and new products. It uses their Organic Sugar Loaf Pineapple, which contributes to the Waitrose Foundation, a scheme which (according to Waitrose) complements Fairtrade whereby they put a proportion of profits into projects which improve the lives of the producers.

My version of the Spicy Pineapple Salsa (I’m not sure why they call it a salsa) recipe is incredibly simple:

200g pineapple, cut into large chunks
a few tiny chillies, rehydrated and chopped
1 tsp coriander leaf (frozen, in this case)

Grill the pineapple on a high heat in a grill pan, until nicely brown in places. Mix with the chilli and coriander. Serve.

The Waitrose version included palm sugar, but I can’t see why as it comes out more than sweet enough without it.

Edinburgh Farmers’ Market

The location for the farmers' market is spectacular, especially on a good day like this.

The Edinburgh Farmers’ Market is a weekly event, which is unfortunately on the wrong side of town for us. The withdrawal of the number 17 bus has made getting there by public transport impossible, and the fact that it’s on top of a car park isn’t an encouragement to use public transport either. So, when we go, unless we’re feeling really fit, we take the Volvo and then buy enough veg to justify it.

At first sight, the market doesn’t have much to offer the vegan, with an excess of meat stalls, and a couple of cheesemakers. They even have leaflets on the market information stall from the Meat Marketing Board promoting industrially-produced meat! But it’s not all unhealthy stuff, don’t worry.

Phantassie organic vegetables

Phantassie is an organic vegetable farm in East Lothian, and they are at the market a couple of times a month. This time round I bought red spring onions, smoked garlic, pea shoots (a green leafy veg), broad beans, white turnips and shiitake. Another regular is East Coast Organics, another East Lothian farm, who are at the market every week. Their stall provided me with a bunch of onions, another of carrots (carrot greens make good soup), one of radishes, a knobbly cucumber (good for Japanese recipes), a red kohlrabi and yellow courgettes. Meanwhile, my partner bought some fantastic plum tomatoes on the vine, and some baby plum tomatoes from the adjacent J & M Craig (one of the last remaining Clyde tomato growers) stall. The aroma from them is fantastic.

A couple of my favourite stalls weren’t there today. Ardnamushrooms grow shiitake and other fungi, and were the source of our organic shiitake block, an experiment in very local food we’d be glad to repeat some time. Carrolls Heritage Potatoes are only there on the first Saturday of the month, when tatties are in season, but they produce potatoes that I like — ones that taste of something. They have blue potatoes, purple potatoes and loads of flavoursome spuds from days of yore. I note they are now selling online, though, and have a stockist in Leith (if I can bear going into a fishmonger — I might have to send himself).

Cheery staff at the Good Soup Group.

All that shopping can be hard work, so we had a couple of snacks whilst there. I ignored him having his pig in a bun (which he complained wasn’t very good – ha!) and chose a spicy noodle soup from the Good Soup Group — the noodles were rice noodles, making the soup both vegan and gluten free. Special dietary requirements seem to be a particular concern at the Good Soup Group, and they try to source everything locally wherever possible. And then there’s The Chocolate Tree, lurking ready to ruin all of your healthy eating intentions. They do a massive range of chocolate bars, vegan chocolate hazelnut spread and vegan chocolate sorbet. The cones for the sorbet are not vegan, but they are more than happy to serve it to you in a cup instead. Messy, and delicious, afterwards my face resembled that of a three-year-old after a bath in cocoa. And I don’t care!

Eat and Two Veg

Look at all that lovely spinach!

Last week, at home in Edinburgh, my partner and I had been pondering where to go for breakfast that could both cater to me, and keep himself happy. We forgot about the one place that has build-your-own breakfasts (the Auld Hoose) and so ended up having something completely different instead.

This week, we were in London, so things should have been better. I admit I’m surprised that Eat and Two Veg was the only place coming up on searches to do vegan breakfasts, but it wasn’t too much out of the way, so we went along.

It fit the bill. I got a completely vegan breakfast which consisted of some grilled smoked tofu, beans, mushrooms, toast, lots of spinach –something I’ve only seen in Australia (and one posh cafe in Belfast) before — and half a large, half-cooked tomato, which got handed over to my partner before I took the photograph. I like raw tomatoes, and ones that are thoroughly cooked, but there’s a halfway stage I really dislike, and it seems to be a standard part of cooked breakfasts. Fortunately, he likes them that way. He got his eggs, (veggie) sausage etc. We both came out satisfied and happy. There was neither too little nor too much food, it was nicely cooked, although the toast was more like warm bread, and it tasted great.

Vegan breakfast choices could have been improved if they used vegan sausages, and the main menu looked almost bereft of vegan options. We’ll go back, but only for breakfast.

Eat and Two Veg, 50 Marylebone High St, London, UK, London W1U 5HN. (Warning: the restaurant website is all Flash, so presumably they do not welcome customers with visual disabilities).

A couple of scary links

A vegan blogger in LA decided to go completely over-the-top and test food from their local allegedly-vegan eateries, and the results were terrifying. 10 of the restaurants came out okay, with no evidence of contamination with egg, caesin or shellfish in their food. Most of the others showed some contamination, usually egg (which is an especial problem for me), but one of them was a massive FAIL!, with the blogger concluding that it might be deliberate deception rather than accidental cross-contamination.

The main problem seems to lie in fake meats imported from Taiwan, where the labelling rules are less strict than in the US (or Europe) for that matter. The ingredients lists are usually translated directly from those on the packaging for the local market. The good news is that the Taiwanese government is aware of the problem and is in the process of implementing some of the strictest laws in the world regarding the packaging and labelling of vegetarian food. The Taiwanese “meats” might be dodgy right now, but in a few months things will be much better.

The other link is to a site which is the antithesis of vegan, but is still interesting from a general foodie point of view. The author of Fancy Fast Food takes standard meals from fast food places and messes around with the presentation to make them look like haute cuisine. Nothing is added to the meals to achieve this except the occasional simple garnish.

Israeli anarcho-vegans

There’s a chance I might get to go to Tel Aviv next year. I doubt I’ll have any particular trouble finding food there, but I will make sure to visit this place.

Café Nom de Plume

Last night I ate at Café Nom de Plume in Edinburgh’s LGBT Centre on Broughton Street for the first time. It’s been a long time coming, with Alan and Colin taking well over a year to get the place to their liking.

The menu is varied, inspired by dishes from all over the world. Vegetarian and vegan options are clearly marked, but only on the specials board, not on the main menu. I opted for the tomato and mint soup, which consisted mostly of tomato cooked down just enough to be really tasty, yet still have some texture. I followed it with stuffed vine leaves with red pepper salad, which turned out to be an enormous plate of stuff, including hummous and pita bread. I was full, and did not eat all of my greens.

The beer range isn’t bad either, including Schneider Weisse and the Leifmans Kriek and Frambozen, back after a break when the brewery went bust and was taken over by Duvel. The only thing that’s changed about the beer is a 6pt note on the label indicating who the new owners are.

The beer is expensive, but the food is good value. There aren’t many vegan options, but what there is was interesting and delicious.

Veggy Steady Go!

I can’t resist Japanese bookshops wherever I am, even though my ability to read Japanese is pretty limited at the moment. When I was in Seattle I found myself in Kinokuniya browsing for filthy gay manga anything of interest. It was there that I spotted the first two issues Veggy Steady Go!, which bills itself as Japan’s first vegetarian magazine (日本初のベジタリアン・マガジン！！) and urges us to eat more vegetables (もっと野菜を食べましょう！- this is the form you always see translated as “Let’s do whatever!”). Now, cookery is one of the areas where my ability to read Japanese is a little less limited, and resistance was futile.

Issue one includes the traditional article on going vegetarian and material about different style of vegetarian eating, including macrobiotics, raw foods, something called Natural Hygiene, whose proponent looks really unhealthily skinny, and ayurveda. There’s news about products of interest to the vegetarian, and a travel guide – brief articles on Germany, Denmark, and New York and longer in-depth pieces on London (but why is that fish shop mentioned?), Paris and, unsurprisingly, Japan. There are recipes – a curry, vegan carrot muffins (I’ll be having a go at that one), risotto, a French-style macrobiotic dish etc, all of which appear to be vegan.

Issue two focusses on vegetarian people, with interviews with a couple of actresses, a woman who runs a café and an author, plus two people who talk about being vegetarian in London and New York respectively. There’s a three page item, probably advertorial, on the Maman Terrace shops and restaurants in Tokyo and Osaka — I’ve eaten at the Osaka branch, and it wasn’t bad at all. The article I most want to translate is on Shoujin Ryouri – the cuisine of Zen temples, and my favourite food in the whole world. It seems to focus on two places where you can eat the cuisine.

There are many more recipes (hooray!), and they come from all over the world. There’s an Indian-style chickpea curry, Jamaican baking, Spaghetti alla Genovese and potato salad — the latter, as is common in Japanese magazines, being to advertise a particular brand of soya mayonnaise. There’s a feature on vegan home cooking. The travel guide concerns itself with vegetarian eating in Okinawa, a part of Japan where they eat more soya and fresh vegetables than anywhere else in the world, but also tend to put pork in everything. They’ve also noted the existence of Lush cosmetics.

I notice from their website that there’s a new issue out, but I’m not sure where I’ll be able to get it in the UK as I haven’t seen it in either of the Japanese bookshops in central London.

Nutmeat and rice hash

Having made the 1911 nutmeats, I now have to find something to do with them! Fortunately, the same book I used has a good number of recipes. Because I had the ingredients to hand, I opted for the Trumese and Rice Hash, the instructions for which read Use boiled or steamed rice in place of potato in the preceding recipe. So, making that substitution, here’s the original recipe:

Put trumese and double the quantity of cold [cooked rice] … through food cutter, using the next coarsest cutter…. Mix carefully. Simmer without browning, chopped onion in oil. Add the mixed trumese and [rice], pour consommé or nicely seasoned gravy over and set in the oven to heat, and brown over the top….

The onion may be mixed with the trumese and potato, all put into a baking dish, nut butter stirred with a cream with consommé poured over and the hash baked for ¾-1 hour. Finely sliced celery, celery salt, or any of the sweet herbs, powdered, may be substituted for the onion. sage may be used occasionally with the onion.

Well, first impression is that that would be pretty bland, so I added one or two things to the consommé. There’s also the problem of nut butter, as it could mean one of two things in this period — either peanut butter as we understand it, or a solid vegetable fat made from nut oils. The former made more sense to me. Here’s what I did:

2 cups cooked brown rice, defrosted if necessary.
1 can trumese, cut into fine dice.
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tbl peanut butter
1 tsp vegetable stock powder, or to taste
1 tomato
a small amount of water
vegetable oil for frying

Preheat the oven to about 160°C. Chop the onion finely and fry gently in the oil until opaque, then add the garlic, trumese and rice. I also had the end of a carrot, so I chopped that and added it too. Give it a good stir and let it heat through. Blend together the peanut butter, water, tomato and vegetable stock until you get a medium creamy sauce. Mix it all together, transfer to a large shallow baking tin and stick it in the oven for about 40 minutes. This is what came out:

Trumese and rice hash, fresh out of the oven

If you like crispy bits on your rice, you’ll adore this, as it’s the aforementioned crispy bits surrounding a moist centre. But it was still bland even though I’d added the tomato and used brown rice. Whilst I won’t make this exact recipe the same way again, I can see a lot of promise for the basic dish — it’s not difficult to use herbs and spices, or a more strongly-flavoured stock. It would work with tofu (go for the smoked or hazel nut varieties), or any of the commercial fake meats out there, and leftovers could be added to it as well. Using cooking rings on a baking tray would give a more refined presentation.

This amount would serve four with plenty of vegetables and maybe a sauce.

Early 20th century nutmeats revisited

I first experimented with making my own nutmeats over four years ago, and wrote up my experiences in the Vegan Cooking community on LiveJournal. I based my recipes on those given in Evora Buckram Perkins’s Laurel Health Cookery. It was a bit of a palaver, and at the time I commented:

It is easier to buy a tin of Nuttolene, but this is a useful recipe to know in case of drought.

Well, it has come to pass that there is a Nuttolene drought. Goodness Direct claims to have it in stock, but I haven’t seen it in the shops for over a year now. The customer comments over on that site hint at discontinuation after 105 years in production – it was invented, as a paté, by Dr. Kellogg himself, and went on sale in late 1904. I’m not sure when it turned into the more solid product I’ve been craving, but the difference seems to be simply the amount of water used.

Since my efforts four years ago, I have acquired a number of gadgets that might make the task easier. Firstly, I have just bought a pair of mug-shaped, loose bottomed cake tins, with a capacity of just over 1.5 cups each. I don’t know what they were intended for, but they struck me as just the right shape for nutmeats. I also have a 600w Braun hand blender, with a large liquidiser attachment, and a Kenwood Major with the meat mincer attachment, the latter serving perfectly well as a nut mill. All of these, in addition to the pressure cooker, should make the task easier than in 2004, and considerably easier than in 1911!

The only change I’ve made to the recipes I used in 2004 is to reduce the amount of water in the Nutmese (the Nuttolene-type nutmeat). The quantities given fit nicely into one of the tins mentioned above. For the record, and in case Vegan Cooking ever goes away, here they are:

Nutmese

½ cup raw peanuts
1 cup cooked peanuts (see below)
a tiny smidgen of salt (very optional)
approx ¼ cup water.

Put the cooked and raw nuts into a blender and grind together. Add salt and water, and grind some more till it’s smooth. Put into a greased tin, and cover with grease aluminium foil. Steam for at least 2 hours in a pressure cooker.

Wrapped up and ready to steam

Trumese (Protose-type nutmeat)

½ cup peanuts, cooked
½ cup blanched peanuts (be lazy, buy them ready-blanched)
½ cup vital wheat gluten flour
½ cup water
1 tsp cereal coffee (see note below)

Grind up the peanuts as for Nutmese. Add the wheat gluten and blend a bit more, then add the water and cereal coffee and blend until it turns into a dough, like a slightly heavy bread dough. Put into tins and steam as above.

I had expected to need to mix this up by hand and run it through the mincer a few times, but the Braun hand blender can just about handle this amount of dough. If I made a double quantity, I’d have to use the Major.

Cooking peanuts
Peanuts take about 80-90 minutes to cook in a pressure cooker. I made up a large batch and have frozen the leftovers. Cooked peanuts look like pinto beans, so labelling might be important.

Cereal Coffee
I found it very difficult to get hold of a cereal coffee that did not contain chicory (which would taste foul). I used Yorzo Instant Original from Lima Foods, which is made entirely from roasted barley and nothing else. I’m thinking that a tablespoon full of shoyu, and a reduction in the amount of water used, would be a good alternative.

The finished nutmeats - Nutmese on the left and Trumese on the right.

They came out of their tins pretty easily. Some water got into the Nutmese, making it more like the original paté, but the Trumese came out beautifully – it’s good and solid. I will experiment with using as little water as possible in the Nutmese, but really I’d rather be able to go just up the road and pick up a tin or two of Nuttolene.

Update: the Nutmese solidified considerably on cooling.

Why I take emergency rations on long-haul flights

I am just back from three weeks in the States and have been suffering at the hands of airline caterers again. I’m quite disappointed, because the airlines I chose, Air France and Delta, are ones which have previously fed me rather well.

This first meal was served to me on an Air France flight from Paris CDG to Seattle-Tacoma on May 8th.

VGML meal served in Air France economy class CDG-SEA

It was technically the second meal of the flight – a light lunch prior to landing. My first meal went astray due to a game of musical chairs played at Edinburgh, and then at the gate – the cabin crew couldn’t find me. Travel hint: if you have your seat changed, let the cabin crew know where you were originally seated, and where you are now.

By lunch time, they knew where I was, and I got my special meal. It wasn’t bad – roast vegetables and couscous, with a fruit strudel and a piece of wonderful dark chocolate to follow. I only have one complaint about this meal, and that was the spread which contained milk powder. It was only possible to determine this by reading French in 2pt white type on a pale green background.

My next journey was by train, from Seattle to Portland. It took forever given the distance, but was just about quicker than flying if you take into account travel to and from airports, time for security etc. I raided Uwajimaya and had a nice selection of Japanese goodies to keep me going. There was some vegan food available in the buffet, in the form of hummus and crackers, and some interesting microbrews.

The big-name airlines in the US are trying to compete with the likes of Southwest (the airline on which easyJet modelled itself), without the smiles, so there was no food on any of the domestic flights. No food, but they were still happy to leave an aircraft on stand for 90 minutes, not doing anything and just costing them money. The state of vegan food at the airports was dire, too. I managed a peanut butter and jam sandwich at Baltimore, which might have been vegan (I wasn’t going to ask at this point, due to hunger). It was far too sweet for me, but it did fill me up.

And so, eventually, I made my way home via JFK to Edinburgh on a Delta 757. Alas, they seem to have acquired Northwest’s caterers for this is what they think constitutes a good vegan meal:

Vegan meal served on a Delta flight between JFK and EDI, May 26th 2009.

It was awful.

It was simply boiled vegetables with white rice, a green salad, a roll and a fruit salad. They had contrived to simultaneously over- and under-cook the vegetables. They were cooked for long enough to lose their colour and flavour, but were still hard. Even the mushrooms were boiled. The only flavouring used was an excess of salt in the rice. The salad was just as flavourless and the main ingredient in the dressing was high fructose corn syrup. The roll looks as if it would be quite tasty, but I was not able to find out, as the spread was another dairy one, containing whey and other milk-derived ingredients. It was even marked Kosher-dairy, and it wasn’t because the rabbis were being paranoid about stuff made in the same factory as dairy products.

The fruit salad was the only thing I ate. It wasn’t that bad.

I wonder if I’d been given a vegetarian low-fat meal instead of the one I asked for?

There was no special breakfast available, but the standard offering included a bagel and a banana. Banana is quite nice spread on a bagel.

Today’s vegan oddity

I’m back on the road, and I have yet again managed to try something for the first time, because it doesn’t usually come in vegan form. In this case, it was a cinnamon roll from Cinnamon Works in the Pike Place Market in Seattle. With frosting. It didn’t last long enough to be photographed! The bakery does loads of different vegan sweet treats and is rather too close to the hotel! It also does gluten-free goodies.

As if my waistline wasn’t suffering enough, there’s a creamery nearby that offers vegan ice cream and waffles, and there are plenty of coffee shops that are Not Starbucks. We found one that sold artwork and prints by local artists (I bought one by Tomoko Briggs, decent coffee, iced green tea but, alas, no vegan food.