Easy like Sunday morning

This title can sound strange in a Tuesday (also for being a Lionel Rich song?!) but I decided to finish my posts about the last travel to Berlin before changing the subject or I would get lost. Usually I feel lazy about cooking on Sunday but since I've not been cooking that much lately cause of my thesis now I'm in the kitchen every day! Good or bad, that's how it is. I am not working so I have a lot of free time to take care of the house.

Last Sunday I went to the basic pasta (spaghetti) cause, yeah, it was still a lazy Sunday. But I decided to do a different sauce using the rest of the coconut milk I had and I remembered one sauce that I used to do a lot in Brazil with tomato sauce, coconut milk and sun-dried tomatoes. In the north-east of Brazil, in a state called Bahia, it's very common to have dishes that have a lot of coconut milk and black pepper (many of these recipes came from Africa). And I really like this mix. I didn't have sun-dried tomatoes at home, so I decided to use cherry tomatoes. It is an easy recipe, perfect for a Sunday meal!

Cherry tomatoes and coconut milk sauce

7 or 8 cherry tomatoes (cut in half)
1 cup coconut milk
1/2 cup tomato sauce (homemade or canned)
1 chopped onion
1 or 2 chopped gloves
5 or 6 chopped Brazilian nuts
1 vegetable stock cube
salt
black pepper
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Fry the onion and the garlic in hot oil for 4 or 5 minutes, until they get a golden color. Add the cherry tomatoes and let them fry for another 3 or 4 minutes. Add the tomato sauce, the stock cube and black pepper. Let it cook until boiling. Add the coconut milk and keep cooking for another 2 or 3 minutes, stirring the sauce from time to time. Add the Brazilian nuts and taste it to see if you want to add salt. Serve it hot with your favourite pasta.

I also had some soy-free vegan cheese on the top of my plate! Delicious and a 100% vegan and soy-free recipe!

Food with family and friends

I can't believe we're back for almost three weeks and I still didn't have time to post my photos here from my hometown. But it's a good sign, it means I'm busy and being busy sounds good for now (have to finish my thesis until the middle of July!).

My dissertation is about food, so you can imagine how much I've be reading and writing about it. And one thing that I really agree is how much food is a social "tool", how is good to prepare and share food with people you love. And I have to say that I had a lot of this amazing sharing - of food and love - in Brazil. After the tour we went to my hometown to spend two weeks with family and friend and I was also in an important "mission": to know and baptize my newly born niece (L)!

In the first week we went to this fancy place with my parents and I didn't know if we would be able to find food to me and Matteo there, but silly me, Brazil has the best fruits and vegetables ever and there's always some options for vegan. So we ate well and had tons of fun:

The place:
built around a river with natural hot water

Tropical breakfast
(the only thing we took was the soy milk)

Lunch time

Dinner time

For the rest of the days I was just eating with my parents at home or with at friends:

One of my favourites: pastel de soja

Dinner with lovely friends:
spicy beans soup/cream (caldo de feijao)

Sfiha night with more lovely friends
(sfihas filled with pumpkin and broccoli)

Last night with friends:
couldn't leave Brazil without having açai
(this one was with mint, so refreshing!)

And on the last Saturday there I had the chance to do something I wanted since before going there: cooking a vegan meal to my family. I'm the only vegetarian in the family and my parents are not into it at all (well, my dad is curious about trying everything but not my mom or my brother). So there was this family lunch on Saturday to celebrate my niece's baptism and they've asked me to cook. Because my mom doesn't like a lot of things, me and Matteo decided to go basic: we'd cook corn risotto (what a surprise, but my sister-in-law loves it and asked me for that, so not my fault this time!) and pasta with two simple sauces - ragu and white sauce. Have to say it was a success and everybody enjoyed the meal and had a great time. I couldn't be happier.

We're back! Stronger than ever

Smoked tofu burger - Vegacy (Sao Paulo)

After basically one month I'm back in Dublin. Have to say I had the best time.

Ten days with Purification made me feel even stronger about the values I have, about the choices I've made and about what I believe: hardcore, veganism, straight edge. South America is an amazing place to go and play if you love hardcore and if you're vegan straight edge. If you fancy watching a hardcore metal (vegan) band with me playing the bass, here's a video:

After the tour I went to my hometown to spend time with my family and it was just perfect. But this post is about the tour and about all the vegan food we had on the road! I'll post some photos and I have to say that we had more time to spend in Sao Paulo, Brazil, so most of my pictures are from there. And Vegacy is still my favourite vegan restaurant ever.

My favourite snacks and soda - Vegacy

Salad buffet - Vegacy

Vegacy serves the best feijoada ever

We spent three days in Buenos Aires and basically all we had was Chinese food! I'm not sure about other vegan options in Argentina, but I hope there's more than that. But we had the chance to go to a vegan take away place with good food and one of the best food we had in Buenos Aires was on Saturday night, before the gig. The guys from "Comida Vegan Delivery" made us an excellent catering with three different types of burger, empanadas, mayonnaise and hummus!

Chinese vegan food

Vegan take away place in Buenos Aires

Vegan food before Purification's gig in Buenos Aires

In Chile we stayed less than 24 hours but we had a delicious lunch at my friend's house (who were putting out the show) and Cintia is an amazing cook. She also bakes "empanadas" and cupcakes so during the show we could taste some of her amazing vegan food.

Cintia's vegan cupcakes

(vegan) Snacks make me happy

I wish I knew the translation to all Brazilian snacks. I'm not sure if they even exist though. But there's one thing that I'm pretty sure: they are amazing. Snacks are suitable for a lot of things: lunch break at school or university, to birthday and wedding parties, or just something delicious to eat when you're not that hungry to have a meal. They are very popular in Brazil and there are a lot of variety of them. They are sold everywhere too, from fancy places to shops on the roads. Unfortunately, they are never vegan. So the only ways to a vegan person like you and me to eat them are cooking or ordering.

Today I'll try to help you with the first option and I guarantee that you will be a happier person when you taste these snacks called "pasteis" (or "pastel" for the singular). A few days ago I saw a recipe in one of the Brazilian vegan blogs that I follow - A Delicia de Viver o Que Acredita - and decided to try it. The recipe is just for the dough cause you can be very creative with the filling and use basically whatever you want (just like the "sfihas" recipe that I've posted here before). I used a basic soy mince (TVP) + broccoli filling and it was delicious. But the most traditional filling is a sweet corn pure (recipe for this coming soon!).

These vegan "pasteis" go into the oven, but there are other "pasteis" that are fried and I hope I will try them soon to share the recipe here too.

Recipe - Dough

2 cup plain flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 full tablespoon (or 1/2 cup) vegetable (vegan) margarine
3/4 cup soy milk (or water)(I used soy milk)

Make the filling and set it aside.

Combine everything in a bowl using your hands until it forms a smooth ball that pulls away from hands (add more flour if you think it's necessary). Open the dough and cut it in circles using a glass, put the filling in the middle and close the edges with your fingers (two "silly" but important tips here, that I've learned from my grandmother: moisten your fingertip and pass on the edge before closing it and use a fork to close it and not your fingers). Brush the outside with olive oil or soy sauce (shoyo) to give a nice colour. Place them in a baking sheet and take it to the oven (200º C) for 15-20 minutes or until the "pasteis" become golden brown.





Enjoy it!

PS. Receita em portugues aqui!