Come Dine With Me.

This Saturday two of my bff's Sal & Kip came over for my turn at our Come Dine With Me challenge. If you haven't heard of Come Dine With Me it's a UK television show where 4 people each take turns at cooking the others a three course meal. Everyone gives the chef a score out of 10 and at the end of the four dinners the winner wins £1000...now there's no £1000 up for grabs here and we've been slacking off at the scoring each other part too but it's a great excuse to get together for a fancier-than-usual dinner!

To start I whipped up the Chesapeake Tempeh Cakes from Vegan Brunch.

I love these, the crispy panko, steamed tempeh and nori make a perfect sea cake and I'm officially in love with the caper filled remoulade; I did quarter the amount of hot sauce though! If you don't have Vegan Brunch yet you should really get a copy but in the meantime the lovely Isa has put the recipe for these tempeh cakes up here.

For the main course I pulled out my copy of Vegan Diner and decided to make both the Barbecued Seitan Ribz and the Cheesy Mac.

The recipe for the Barbecued Seitan Ribz originally comes from the blog Fat Free Vegan Kitchen & I've made them once before, during Vegan MoFo on Football Food Sunday. They were so good then that I made them again but this time with more barbecue sauce and a different Mac & Cheese. The Cheezy Mac from Vegan Diner has become my very favourite Mac & Cheese recipe. It's so easy to make because you pretty much just need to mix everything together in your blender before heating it through in a pan to thicken it. It's also insanely delicious thanks to the smoked paprika and I think the consistency is spot on.

I was a little unsure what veg to serve with a meal like this but Coleslaw seemed to fit. I'd actually never eaten a coleslaw that I liked before Saturday so I'm pretty happy with my made-up-on-the-spot 'recipe'.

To make the coleslaw I just grated 1/3 of a red cabbage, 1/3 of a white cabbage and two medium carrots. I then mixed all of my grated veg together in a bowl with 4 TBS of Plamil Mayonnaise, 1 TBS of Wholegrain Mustard and a little salt & pepper. Easy.

Dessert was the course I was most excited about making and serving to my guests. I made my favourite fancy dessert, the Silken Chocolate Mousse Cake from My Sweet Vegan, and garnished it with a deep fried Oreo cookie!

The Mousse Cake is probably my favourite dessert to make because it's super easy and you don't even need to turn on your oven! It has an almond meal base and the mousse is made with silken tofu, about a tonne of melted chocolate chips and corn syrup to sweeten it. I've never found corn syrup here so I used a mixture of brown rice syrup, agave and golden syrup. I've spotted deep fried Oreo's on non-vegan blogs before & I've been wanting to try them myself for a long time. I decided that this was the perfect opportunity because being left alone with a packet of Oreo's and my deep fryer would probably just end with me feeling really sick!

To make these I mixed up a quick light batter from 1/3 cup soda water, 1/3 cup plain white flour and a pinch of salt & pepper. I then dredged the Oreo cookies in the mixture and popped them into the deep fat fryer until the batter turned golden brown. The trick to stop them sticking to the fryer basket is to put them in sideways not flat and to jiggle them with a spoon a couple of seconds after they hit the oil.

The cookies got all warm and melty in the middle and I really really wished that I had had room for a second one. It was such a fun evening, these ladies (and Nick of course) never fail to make me laugh and if I do say so myself the food was pretty great!

I'm off to Barcelona tomorrow morning to spend a week eating & sightseeing with my awesome lady friends Melanie & Carmen. I'm SO excited! I've just realised that we're staying almost next door to this amazing looking vegan bakery so expect loads of cake pictures soon!

Vegan Gelato in Brighton.

***UPDATE***

I just received a comment from the lovely Ellie that the sorbets at Gelato Gusto probably aren't vegan. They use a base for their sorbets called Pre-Gel which may not be vegan. Ellie spoke to the manager and was told that he's not sure if the sorbets are vegan. I have an e-mail from the manager at Gelato Gusto telling me that the sorbets are vegan and I'll be super disappointed if they lied to me. 

There's a new gelato spot in town! Gelato Gusto opened a couple of weeks ago right on the corner of Gardner Street, at the Bond Street end. Gardner Street is already a vegan mecca with Vegetarian Shoes, the Infinity Foods shop and cafe and I's Pies so this new spot is just making my favourite street even more awesome.

I dropped them an email & was pleased to hear back from the owner who told me that they're planning to have vegan sorbet options every day which will include flavours such as Mango, Lemon, Kibana (Kiwi Banana) and Mojito. They're also planning to make a chocolate gelato and a soy based gelato in the coming weeks. As soon as I heard back from them I went down there to cheek it out, the space is lovely bright & airy and there was a queue out of the door. They had Berry, Kibana & Mango sorbet to chose from & I picked the Mango.

This was a great sorbet, really creamy . I'm really looking forward to trying their chocolate soy gelato & I peek through the window to look for it every time I walk past. There's nowhere in Brighton to get locally made vegan ice cream yet & if it's good I think it'll be super popular...I'll update you guys when it gets here!

Boho Gelato are quickly becoming a Brighton institution and I headed there over the weekend to check out the Food Festival flavours. Each flavour was inspired by and included products from other local companies.

They had six vegan sorbets to choose from... 'Seductress' Martini, Purple Haze, Strawberry, Basil & Black Pepper...

...Myzo (Vanilla Vodka, Lemon, Elderflower & Chilli), Middle Farm Cider and WJ King Blonde Beer & Lime.

After much deliberation I chose the flavour inspired by one of my other favourite Brighton eateries, Pizza Face.

This Strawberry, Basil & Black Pepper sorbet was truly excellent, the basil was perfectly blended into the strawberry sorbet and the black pepper was really subtle & just left a slight tingle at the back of the throat. The other brilliant thing about Boho Gelato, as I've mentioned before, is that they have vegan cones! I love a good cone, they make eating gelato even more fun!

Whilst we're talking about Pizza Face have you tried their Vegan Meathead yet?

It's Nicks favourite! My favourite is the Ham & Pineapple which comes with sour cream, I thought that sounded a little strange at first but it's so damn good. The only problem is that I'm kinda allergic to pineapple (even though I love it) so I usually swap it for mushrooms! We both love that you can order a tub of Boho Gelato sorbet from them with your pizza order.

Last time we ordered pizza we got a tub of the Mint Chocolate sorbet which is delicious, even Nick likes it & he hates mint! When it runs out I'll be replacing it with some Mojito or, if they have it, my very favourite sorbet, Chocolate & Blood Orange.

So, if you're in Brighton this bank holiday weekend I suggest you hunt down some gelato & if you see the new soya chocolate ice cream at Gelato Gusto lemme know!

How you doin'?!

Looking at my blog recently you'd think that I never spend any time in Brighton! I really do, I promise! Recently I've been getting involved with my local pro-choice group Brighton Pro-Choice, we've been campaigning against Abort 67 who come all the way from their church in Worthing to harass people trying to use the local bpas clinic, real nice guys, keeping it classy. We've done information stalls, handed out leaflets, gathered signatures for our petition and we also held a fundraiser where we made dinner & cupcakes and showed the film Vera Drake.

I also helped out with another local feminist groups campaign, Brighton Feminist Collective arranged a local 40 Days for Treats campaign to counter the anti-choicers 40 Days for Life campaign. Every day people took treats to the clinic and I contributed some Operation Icing cupcakes...

...Vanilla Thumbprint Cookies from The Vegan Cookie Connoisseur...

...and Isa's amazing Raspberry Truffle Brownies.

If you live in or around Brighton you can get involved in these campaigns too. This Thursday Brighton Feminist Collective are holding a Reclaim The Dance Floor fundraising night at The Blind Tiger with bands, DJ's, and stalls selling zines. Hopefully see you there! On April 15th Brighton Pro-Choice are holding a Carnival For Choice in Worthing, come along and make your pro-choice voice heard, details right here.

Just before I went away Veg Fest came to Brighton. Yay! I spent the first day hanging out with my PPK buddies eating food and then on Sunday I worked for the wonderful Ms Cupcake. Unfortunately all of this hanging out and working made me pretty slack at taking photos but there are a few. Me & Nick got there early on Saturday & my breakfast of choice was this tasty Black Forest cupcake from Sweetcheeks. It was a firm but moist gluten free treat and it actually made a great breakfast as the frosting wasn't too sweet.

After a walk around all of the stalls upstairs we went downstairs to see the lovely ladies from Veg Out. These guys are awesome and they catered our wedding so we always make sure to find them to say hi and to eat their delicious treats. This year they had loads of miniature food so of course we grabbed a plate to share.

We picked (clockwise from the back) the Avocado Lime Pudding, Chocolate Banana and Ginger Ganache, Sweet Potato Globe, Mini quiche, Frangipani Tart & a Mango Chocolate thing that I can't remember the name of. Everything was great but I think my favourites were the Avocado Lime Pudding and the Frangipani Tart. So damn good.

When lunchtime rolled around there wasn't a doubt in my mind about what I'd be eating, the fish & chips were top of my list! I'd never seen these guys at Veg Fest before & I was excited to try something new.

The fish was SO damn good, really, well, fishy! I went back for seconds.

There was plenty of other awesome food at the Fest, Vegusto were there with their plate of cheese samples, Amy's had samples of their soups, chilli, and more importantly, the gluten free Daiya mac & cheese. On Sunday I had a Wheaty kebab and a lot of Ms Cupcake treats, the new Peanut Butter Snap bars are to die for & I have a new favourite cupcake flavour, English Rose.

La Palma.

I just got back from spending a week chilling out with Nick on the tiny island of La Palma in the Canary Islands. It was awesome to spend some time hanging out in the sun this early in the year.

We swam in this beautiful rock pool by the ocean...

... and messed around by the pool at the little villa we rented.

We hiked through Los Tilos rainforest to this beautiful lookout point...

...and I read a lot of books (some of which were really fucking good and one of which was so terrible I almost set fire to it!).

I also got really really excited about seeing real life banana plantations!

The first thing we did (after grabbing our luggage & picking up our hire car) was drive to the store to find vegan eats, it was about 8pm on a Friday and most places were closing but we managed to dash into a Spar Supermarket in Santa Cruz to grab some stuff for dinner & breakfast.

We found the same corn based margarine that we loved in Mallorca last summer and we also picked up the usual staples; pasta, herbs, canned tomatoes, rice, olive oil, fruit & veggies.

SPAR also make an own brand version of the ubiquitous Fillipino biscuits, these little chocolate covered O's were my favourite treat when I went on a language exchange program to Spain when I was 15 & I was really excited to discover this vegan version. I may or may not have brought back 9 packets!

As well as having awesome vegan friendly treats in the Supermarkets La Palma also has a lot of small health food stores. The first one we went to was Vida Sana which we found out about on Happy Cow. It's in the tiny village of Tijarafe which was about a 30 minute drive around a mountain on very very scary roads from where we were staying near Todoque.

We picked up a lot of great stuff here including my favourite Nirwana Noir chocolate, Streich spread, pesto, soya béchamel sauce, washing up liquid & peanut corn snacks.

We also grabbed this enormous hunk of seitan, a smaller hunk of seitan and some spelt seitan steaks.

They also had tofu (plain & flavoured) and tofu & mushroom tortellini.

That night I made a pasta dish with the tortellini, some delicious local oyster mushrooms, and a sauce made with the soya béchamel & some Vegusto we snuck over in our suitcase.

The next day we went to the nearest town for a look around and to check out a vegetarian restaurant we found listed in the Lonely Planet guide. Unfortunately once we'd grabbed a table at the veggie restaurant, La Vitamina, we realised that they are definitely not a veggie restaurant! They did have an English menu though and we spotted a sentence on the back page saying to ask them for the vegan or gluten free options. We did just that and they made us a big plate of all of their vegan options which we shared...

The plate had a mild veggie curry, roasted brussels sprouts, pan fried potatoes, mushrooms marinated in a sweet sesame sauce, cous cous, roasted chickpeas and sweet fried bananas. The bananas were certainly a random addition to this savoury plate but Nick loves sweet bananas and was happy to eat them! My favourite parts were the mushrooms and chickpeas and we both enjoyed the curry and potatoes.

La Vitamina also have a huge selection of freshly squeezed juices and smoothies, I got a massive glass of freshly squeezed orange juice which was delicious.

Right down the street from La Vitamina, on the corner of Calle Aridanz, is a health food store called Bubango Verde. Like the other health food stores we found on the island it's not totally veggie but they had the Nirwana Noir chocolate, various spreads & a good selection of tofus.

They had some great fresh produce too so I picked up some tomatoes, lettuce and squash. I also got some awesome Hello Kitty pasta!

On the drive back from Los Llanos to our villa we stumbled upon yet another health food store!

Bio Canana, which is located on the LP213 between Los Llanos & Puerto Naos, has a bakery inside which sells delicious fresh baguettes and alongside the usual soya milks and gluten free pastas they had a whole case of seitan, Nirwana Noir chocolate and agar powder which is almost impossible to find in the UK.

Overall La Palma was a great place to catch some early spring sun, it would have been easier to eat out if I spoke better Spanish but I like to cook and the fresh produce and health food stores were great. Oh & not many things are cooler than a black sand beach!

Edinburgh Part VI

I seem to end up in Edinburgh with Nick about once a year, in 2010 it was for our friends wedding and 2011's excuse? Christmas shopping! We took an early December trip up there (thankfully on a plane this time!) and discovered some wonderful new places to eat as well as returning to our favourite eateries from trips past.

Our first discovery this time around was The Chocolate Tree, described on Happy Cow as an artisan chocolatier with an attached cafe it sounded right up our street. We headed there after an incredibly windy walk on a hill and it was the perfect cosy place to warm ourselves up.

The hot chocolates we ordered were literally the richest, thickest hot chocolates either of us had ever seen. They were delicious but super intense & neither of us managed to finish them. This may have been due, in part, to the unbelievably amazing slices of chocolate mousse cake with berries we ordered. The cake wasn't labelled vegan but when I asked if there were any vegan desserts they pointed me in the right direction.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that this may well be the best cake I've ever eaten in a cafe or restaurant...close contenders for the top spot are the Raspberry and Dark Chocolate Truffle Cake from Mildreds in London and the Chocolate and Black Cherry Gateaux from Napfenyes Etterem in Budapest. It's certainly up there in the top three! The Chocolate Tree is also a chocolate shop so we did the decent thing & bought a few bars to take home. How could we resist with flavours like Maple Pecan and Sea Salt Caramel?!

The second awesome discovery on this trip was Hanam's. We also spotted this place on Happy Cow & as it's situated right by Edinburgh Castle it's the perfect place for a bite to eat whilst checking out the touristy area of town. We visited this Kurdish & Middle Eastern eatery at lunchtime on a Wednesday and the place was packed but they happily squeezed us in.

I started with the Falafel plate which came with hummus and salad.

This was good, perfectly fried falafel balls and fresh salad. Yum. The main course was the real star of the show though. I ordered Qaysi which I had never heard of but it was described on the menu as "a sweet and sour delicacy, made with dried apricots, sultanas, yellow split peas & subtle spices." This came with Naan and Rice and I chose to pay the extra £2 (I think) to have the pomegranate rice.

This was a pretty ridiculous amount of food but every bit of it was delicious. The stew was indeed subtly spiced, I loved how sweet it was and the apricots were huge and moist. The pomegranate rice was totally perfect, you could tell that it had been cooked in the pomegranate puree and I enjoyed the addition of other dried berries to the dish. I thought the naan might be unnecessary given that we were having rice too but it was the perfect thing to soak up the juicy stew. I still think about this meal often and I have been tempted on more than one occasion to hop on a plane to Edinburgh just to head for Hanam's!

Vegan in Reading

A couple of weekends ago I went to Reading to visit my oldest bestest friend Jude. Jude's brilliant and I was super sad when she moved away from Brighton last year. In one of her many jobs she works at The Reading International Solidarity Centre which coincidentally serves great vegan Ethiopian food at their Global Cafe. The kitchen at The Global is rented out by Tutu's Ethiopian Table every day except Sunday & Monday & they have a vegetarian section on their menu where everything is 100% vegan. Unfortunately we drank quite a lot of cider & sloe gin before going out to eat which meant that I forgot my camera & my phone. I'm a real winner! You'll just have to trust that it's well worth the trip.

I ordered the special vegetarian platter which comes with injera or rice & any three vegetarian dishes. I went for the Injera with Ater Wot, Difen Misr Wot and Tikel Gomen and Jude ordered Injera with three other veggie dishes so that I could try all of the vegan stuff, this is one of the many reasons she's a great bff! Everything was flavourful and delicious (although a little on the spicy side for me!) and I think the Ater Wot was my favourite.

We visited The Global again over the weekend to play Jenga & drink coffee. I remembered my camera that time!

I like everything about the global, it has a great community atmosphere, lovely people, great food, good booze & fun board games. Perfect.

The next day we went for lunch at Tampopo, a small chain of East Asian restaurants. The set up at Tampopo is very similar to both Wagamama and Pho which I like but Tampopo also label vegan options right there on the menu.

As soon as I saw the menu I decided that I had to have the Vegetable Tempura. I see tempura on a lot of menus but it's never usually vegan so I was pretty excited.

This was delicious, I really loved the shiitake mushrooms & the broccoli and the batter was perfectly light and crisp. It came with a side of plum sauce which went perfectly with the crispy fried vegetables.

To stick with the Japanese theme I went with the Yaki Udon for my main course.

This tasty dish is described on the menu as 'Chunky udon noodles with leek & red pepper, wok fried in soy & rice wine', I was pretty surprised when the dish arrived and also contained mange tout, mushrooms, bean sprouts and shredded nori. For me these were definitely pleasant surprises & it was even better than I'd expected.

Other dishes I spotted that sounded pretty great were the Vietnamese Com Hué, Korean Chap Chae & Indonesian Tahu Goreng.

Tampopo have a pretty great vegan friendly dessert section which is quite surprising for a chain place.

I really don't like ricey creamy desserts or bananas though so I got the mango sorbet!

This was a great sorbet, full of real mango and no horrible ice crystals.

Another great surprise was vegan LUSH soap in the bathroom, I love touches like this, it's so much nicer than the usual nasty hand soap.

Tampopo have locations in Manchester, Leeds, Reading & Bristol and I would love it if they'd come to Brighton. Hopefully I'll be able to eat at Tampopo again soon, I've been wanting to go to Manchester for ages so perhaps I should hurry up & make that trip.

On my way to the station on Monday morning I decided that a burrito was clearly an amazing breakfast option so I stopped off at Mission Burrito. Mission Burrito are a sponsor of Bristol Veg Fest so I thought they'd have some vegan options & I wasn't wrong.

I chose a burrito with rice, black beans (the pinto beans contain meat), the vegetarian filling which consisted of sautéed mixed peppers and red onions, guacamole & salsa verde. The staff were super friendly and helpful when I explained that I was vegan and I really liked that they had all of the salsas on the counter with chips to dip so that you could test them.

I did take a picture of my burrito but burrito's always look terrible in photos so I'll just let you imagine! Mission Burrito have locations in Bristol, Bath, Oxford & Reading and are currently looking into places to open their next location, Brighton please!

One other place I stopped off at in Reading was a little cafe called Picnic, they do a great soya latte & it was super cosy inside. I'd never realised how vegan friendly Reading was & I'll definitely be heading back there soon.