(vegan) Pancake Tuesday

Savory pancakes/crepes with
seitan white sauce filling

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Shrove Tuesday is more commonly know as Pancake Tuesday or Pancake Day. And to be honest, this year I heard some of my Brazilian friends talking about this "pancake day" but I've never heard about it when I was living there (maybe it was just me being a dumb...). Well, since I'm living in Dublin, I wouldn't let pass one more opportunity to cook and eat pancakes.

I was thinking about breakfast pancakes but it didn't happen, so I did crepes/savory pancakes for lunch and a "special edition" for dessert. I thought I would explode after eating all them but it was 100% worth it.

Unfortunately I didn't heard about any place/restaurant in Dublin making vegan pancakes. Hopefully next year!

Peanut butter butter cream frosting
cherry and berries jam
soy cream

Subversive

Every time I write about savory pancakes I feel like a subversive. Subverting the natural order of things sounds good sometimes. And make me think about the rebel I used to be when I was younger. Not in a political or social-cultural way, although believing that I could do something to make this world a better one was the main reason to go to hardcore shows, becoming vegan and straight edge. But well, I was never a person of big actions.

So, bringing all this 'subversion' to the food universe, I decide not just to cook savory pancakes (or crepes) in the way I usually do, but to serve them like the classic ones. It was my second time doing this and I hope fans of sweet classic pancakes don't go mad on me!

To make things a little bit different, I added some herbs (basil, black pepper and paprika) to the dough recipe I always use. The sauce was made with 2 cup tomato sauce, 2 tbs shoyo, 2 tbs soya cream, one vegetable stock cube and 2 chopped vegan sausages.

With this easy recipe I made my way back to the kitchen after almost three weeks just studying for my exams. Matteo said he will lock me there and enslave me! Hopefully it will help me to come up with more stuff to the blog ;-P

Polenta flour - Part I

A few days ago Matteo bought a package of polenta flour. I won't write too much about it today 'cause I have some plans about this for the next days, but for those who don't know, mainly my Brazilian friends I could say, polenta flour is corn flour, the flour we all use to make polenta. Having said that, this post is about the dough that I did today for our lunch pancakes (or crepes, call them in the way you want).

When my best friend Clarissa came to Dublin in March I cooked the frittata for her and Dennis and she decided to make them back home. She did the first day just as my recipe but for the second time she didn't have chickpea flour and she decided to use the corn flour and said that it had worked perfect. So yesterday I decided to use the polenta flour to make some pancakes. I just changed 1/2 cup of the regular recipe. The final result was amazing. The dough was soft, with a great texture. I did the pancakes opened and used the soy sauce that was supposed to be the filling as layers.


And if you want to make some gluten-free recipes, this flour is a great substitute as well! It is tasty, gives a nice yellow color to your dish and it is delicious.

Together is better!

Since the New Year we (me and my sister-in-law, basically) are trying to cook a perfect vegan frittata (a very good Italian dish, that's like the Brazilian omelet). We did some good food those days but it wasn't what we expected. Today I decided to try a mix of frittata, omelet and crepe/pancake, everything together. Also I'm trying to cook more things without soy because me and Matteo eat almost everything with soy.

I still have a package of chickpea flour, so I decide to use it with my traditional crepe/pancake recipe. As Isa Chandra says in her book "Vegan Brunch", chickpeas flour "lends an eggy flavor to omelets and crepes as well as a pretty, pale yellow color". The result was amazing and I'll cook it a lot of times this year, for sure.

Recipe:

(I made almost 1L of the final mix, that was enough for 6 big frittatas)

2 cup self-raising flour
1 1/2 cup chickpea flour
3 cup cold water
1 cup vegetable oil
salt
1 chopped leek
3 big chopped mushrooms
1 cup chopped spinach

You can use basically all the vegetables you want with the basic dough, it will work!

First mix the flours, the water, the vegetable oil and the salt in a food processor (or blender). If you want, you can cook the vegetables for 1 or 2 minutes but I just added them direct in the dough. Preheat a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Use 1 cup increments to make big frittatas. Use the back of a regular spoon or a spatula to spread the mix. Let it cook for about 3 minutes and try to flip it. Cook for other 2 or 3 minutes.

Matteo loved it! I think I got close to the regular frittata today and he was so excited that he also ate it with bread, like a sandwich (pane e frittata).

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Como tenho visto que muitos dos meus leitores sao brasileiros, decidi postar a receita do omelete/frittata tambem em portuges (sem acentos, me desculpem):

Essa receita da praticamente 1L de massa, que rendeu 6 frittatas bem grandes:

2 xicaras de farinha com fermento (na verdade nao muda muito usar a sem fermento tambem nao, mas com essa ela fica mais alta)
1 1/2 xicaras de farinha de grao-de-bico
3 xicaras de agua fria
1 xicara de oleo vegetal
sal a gosto
1 alho poro fresco picado
3 cogumelos grandes picados
1 xicara de folhas de espinafre picadas

Na verdade voce pode fazer a receita usando legumes variados, da proxima vez quero tentar com brocoli e couve-flor.

Bata as farinhas, a agua, o oleo e o sal em um processador ou liquidificador. Se voce quiser, pode refogar um pouco os legumes/verduras antes, mas eu usei crus mesmo. Acrescente a massa e misture. Aqueca uma frigideira grande e antiaderente e despeje a massa usando 1 xicara para frittatas grandes ou 1/2 para menores. Frite por 3 minutos e vire (com cuidado). Se voce achar que a massa ainda esta muito mole, espere mais 1 ou 2 minutos. Frite por mais 3 minutos e esta pronta.

Hello 2010!

Finally I'm making my first post of 2010! Hope everybody had a great time. I had an amazing Christmas and New Year with Matteo's family around! We had so much fun together that the only thing I missed was my family. But we can't have everything. 2010 is starting in a good way and I'm happy. 2009 was a better year too (I will write about it later).

As I told you last year, Christmas in Italy was always with a lot of food. Two days (25th and 26th) just to stay at home and eat! Well, this year we were in Dublin and I'd like to make things in my way too, so we had the first celebration in the night of the 24th, with a great dinner and the presents being opened. And we had the Christmas lunch and the St. Stephen lunch too.

December 24th: strogonoff

December 25th: snacks, risotto and frittata

December 26th: pasta al forno

December 26th: more frittata

Everyday: cupcakes

My sister-in-law ate my vegan cupcakes for the first time and she loved them! She stayed here until today and we had so much fun! Hope she can come back more times this year. And, of course, we kept cooking delicious vegan food all these days!

Special cupcakes for my sister-in-law, Elena. She loves blue!

Omelets (recipe from the Vegan Brunch book)

Savory and sweet pancakes

Happy 2010!
Go vegan!

The same, but different

I am still baking more than cooking, so I don't have too much to blog about. But last Saturday I did some different things that I want to share.

I made my classic crepes/pancakes but decided to change a little bit the dough and the filling! In my usual dough recipe I added 3 teaspoon of oregano to give a special taste. My usual filling is made just with savoury flavoured soya protein mince and herbs but this time I added 2 fresh leeks. The result was delicious. And as I said before, everybody loves pancakes!


Still on Saturday I decided to make a pie with some strawberries I had. We bought the pastry and I covered it with chocolate chips, Italian "crema pasticcera", raspberry jam and fresh strawberries and put on the oven for 20 minutes. This picture is ugly as hell but the taste was unbelievably good! I want to make it more times, but I need a pie pan first (and, of course, a better camera).

For the rest of the days, I am always baking my vegan cupcakes!


Oh, and on SundayI went to the cinema with a lovely Irish friend to see "An Education". I loved it! Yes, I do have a life outside the kitchen :P

Vegan Mofo III - Day 19 - Pancakes

Back to my "Vegan Food Top 10", I couldn't let the pancakes (or crepes) out! I cook them a lot and I also blogged about them sometimes. But yesterday I think I made the best ones.


"Humm... Huummmm... Huuummmmm!" was the sound that I heard from Matteo when he tried my pumpkin pancakes. Yes, pumpkin again (I told you!). I used the regular dough (recipe here) and for the filling I made a pumpkin puree. All you will need to make it are 1/2 pumpkin (make a soft cream with the food processor, I used also the skin), 1 tablespoon butter, 1 vegetable stock cube and black pepper. You can make it like a regular "potato puree" (mashed potatoes).

The best thing about pancakes is that you have endless options of filling. So, use your imagination and share your ideas with us too :)

Vegan Food Top 10 until now:
1. Cupcakes
2. Mushrooms
3. Pizza
4. Soup
5. Risotto
6. Pancakes

Circles*

Last Saturday I cooked pancakes/crepes (we call them pancakes in Brazil, but many people around the world call them crepes) just for me and I ate a lot! I used Fry's Vegetarian Mince to make my sauce and added some cherry tomatoes and Irish mushrooms (I forgot to say how hard it's to find mushrooms in Brazil and how expensive they are, so here I eat them always). Of course I had sauce for 3 days, but it's ok, it's delicious.

The recipe of the pancakes are here.

I had two with the salty sauce and the last one with vegan Nutella. So good! So not part of my diet!

And yesterday night I baked and decorated these vegan cupcakes:

I finally created a Flickr album for some of my sweet vegan treats, check here!

This week will be full. Gig, dinner with friends, visit of a Brazilian friend, my birthday. Hope you're having a great time too ;-)

(* Dag Nasty - Can I Say)

Can't stop cooking pancakes

Yes, I love pancakes. And I really think everybody does. If you didn't eat some in your life, you should try. If you don't like them, don't talk to me any more ask me to cook some for you.

The best thing about pancakes is that they're easy to cook and you can fill them with anything you want, salty or sweet. And I think my recipe is the easiest in the world:

2 cups white flour
2 cups water
1/5 cup oil
salt

Mix everything in the blender and it's ready to cook (it should be more liquid than creamy). Most of the times I don't totally follow the recipe, so don't worry that much about the quantities. The most important thing to make the pancakes right is the frying pan. You really need a good non sticky one. I tried some times with others and it just pissed me off doesn't work. Let the pancake in a plate for 2 or 3 minutes before fill it and roll it. After cooking and filling all pancakes, you can put them in the oven with some vegan cheese on top and let them cook for 5 minutes.

Everybody loves pancakes

The first time I ate pancakes wasn't so much time ago. I don't remember when exactly it was, but it was after I became vegan, for sure. My family has not the habit of eat them. Moreover, they don't eat lot of things. My father is more open to try, but just him. I don't know from who I got this love for food and new experiences... Well, the thing is that I tasted the pancakes when I was living with a friend that is vegetarian and she had a vegan recipe! And it is so easy to do!!

The American style of making pancakes usually has honey or chocolate syrup on top. But in most countries of South or Central America, we have a different way to make them. They are usually salted and, while also having eggs or milk or both, are rolled and served with a filling of meat or chicken. Another difference is that we eat them at lunch or dinner and not for breakfast.

After this good friend taught me how to do them (in the South America style), I have never stopped cooking and eating them. The best thing is that you can fill them with different kinds of sauce! And to fry them is always fun too! It's an awesome food to cook to your friends or family. Well, maybe not for mine, but this week I cooked pancakes for my husband's family. They had never eaten them before and they loved them too, as all of my friends that tried my vegan pancakes before!

I cooked some salty pancakes first, with a sauce made of tomatoes, tofu, sausages and a kind of soy milk cream! These ones I suggest you to eat closed, filled with the sauce. Very, very good!! And to finish, I cooked some to eat as a dessert. We ate them with vegan ice cream and chocolate syrup and my husband's sister ate a pancake with two different flavors of fruit jelly. The sweet ones you can eat either opened or just folded in the middle. It's up to you!

I can tell you that pancakes are a guaranteed success!
Try to cook some for your friends or family, then tell me if they liked them.