All about... puff pastry!

salty pie with broccoli and leek

After one year living in Dublin I still don't know where to find many things, so sometimes I stay months without eating something or using some ingredient I like. That happened with puff pastry. It is not easy to find a vegan one in Brazil too, but in Italy it is, so during the 3 months that we spent there last year we had eaten this a lot.

Last week we found a vegan option at Marks & Spencer so I decided to make a lot of food using it. We had salty pies, some snacks and some special twists. There are so many things you can do using this amazing pastry! And the best thing, it comes ready to cook! Sometimes is great to have this option close to you.

little snacks with pesto + tofu and tomato + vegan cheddar

One thing that I wanted to try were some "garlic puff twist" that I saw in the amazing blog Just The Food during the Vegan MoFo! Mines weren't garlic ones. I used extra olive oil instead of Earth Balance with basil, parsley and black pepper and we had them with some gnocchi. Easy, fast and delicious!

Veganize-se: para os meus leitores brasileiros!

Mesmo tendo um blog em inglês, o Brasil ainda é um dos países onde possuo mais leitores: amigos queridos, conhecidos, desconhecidos, todos interessados nas minhas aventuras pela cozinha e pelo mundo vegano.




Quem me conhece sabe que sou jornalista e que trabalhei nos últimos anos com conteúdos voltados para web e celular (mobile). Pensando nisso decidi me juntar ao Lembreto, um serviço de canais de conteúdo para celular. O nome do meu canal é "Veganize-se" e terá em média 5 mensagens por semana, que o assinante recebe direto no celular. As mensagens serão sempre em português, relacionadas ou não com o conteúdo postado aqui no blog :)

Para assinar o canal, basta clicar aqui ou enviar "ASSINAR VEGANIZE" para 49523.

Espero você no Veganize-se também!

Happy World Vegan Day!

The world says thanks for everything you do for the animals and for the planet.

Vegan Mofo III - Day 31- Hamburgers and potato wedge

That's it, the end of the Vegan MoFo. And I promised that I would finish my Top 10 and I will. But I realized that I don't have pictures of none of the one million burgers and potato wedge (these potatoes are a "must" here in Dublin and they are delicious!) that we eat at home. We don't have food for dinner, just sandwiches, so we are always eating hot dogs or burgers. And we love it. So this is my complete top 10, hope next year I can come back with more recipes or great pictures.

Vegan Food Top 10:
Cupcakes
Mushrooms
Pizza
Soup
Risotto
Pancakes
Pasta
Parmegiana burger
Rice & beans
Hamburgers & potato wedge

(I still have one more post for today, so I will be back in a few minutes :P)

Vegan Mofo III - Day 30 - Rice and beans

I want to finish my Vegan Food Top 10 and I couldn't let this combination out! Rice & beans are the best Brazilian combo and it's part of our menu at least once a week. And the best thing is that you can eat with so many other things and have a nutritional and colored meal (you know, you should have a lot of colors in you plate always). I am still using the canned beans but I am planning to buy some black beans to cook here and make some other great Brazilian food, like feijoada.








Vegan Food Top 10 until now:
1. Cupcakes
2. Mushrooms
3. Pizza
4. Soup
5. Risotto
6. Pancakes
7. Pasta
8. Parmegiana burger
9. Rice & beans

Vegan Mofo III - Day 30 - Trick or (vegan) treats II

Yesterday I decided to make some "new" cupcakes (or some that I hadn't done before) and my choice was inspired in the "Toasted Coconut Cupcakes" from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World. I did them a little bit different, but keeping the two most important ingredients: the coconut milk and the cocoa powder. And I can tell you that they are my favorite ones now! They taste so good that I could spend the Halloween weekend eating them all. But they are not for me, but for the Govinda's restaurant.


And I'd like to make some Halloween decoration too, but hadn't nothing at home (and didn't have time to buy), so I did some colored frosting that remember the best thing about Halloween: the colored treats :)


Happy (vegan) Halloween! And have fun :)

PS. I'll be back later to finish my Top 10!

Vegan Mofo III - Day 28 - Chocolate cookies

We have just a few more days of this amazing Vegan MoFo and I'm really happy to be involved this year for the very first time. The blog has a lot of new readers and my loyal readers are always here to support me (L)!

Last Sunday I have no cupcakes to bake because Monday was a bank holiday, so I decided to bake some cookies (instead of doing nothing at all). I don't know why but I had never baked cookies before and it is something so easy to do! I wanted the regular chocolate cookies and none of my cook books have them, so I saw a lot of recipes in the internet and made a mix of them to bake my own cookies.



So, my recipe is (one more vegan cookie recipe!):

2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoon cocoa powder
2/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup oil
2/3 cup chocolate chips (or if you want more, go for it!)

Pre-heat the oven (175ºC) Mix all the dry ingredients. In other bowl, mix the wet ingredients and whisk it. Combine all (use your hands to do this). Make the balls with the size you want and place on ungreased sheet pan with at least an inch between each ball. Put them in the oven and bake them for 15 minutes (I saw different times around the internet and this one worked for me, but keep checking on them every few minutes). They will be done when they seem a little bit softer then you want them to be. They will harden up some as they cool.

And before I forget about it, this is the picture of the last "Pasta al forno" that my husband cooked for us. This is one of my favorite ways to eat pasta and it's so easy to make it (I need to remember to blog the recipe soon):