(vegan) food photography

I was feeling very tired today (and particularly heavy) so the husband decided to cook our dinner. Not happy with just the cooking he thought we deserved a nice presentation too. He made white risotto, Linda McCartney Country Pies and dressed the plates with a lovely water crass, rocket and spinach salad.


My only "job" was to photography and eat! Couldn't be better, have to say.

Bits and pieces

I'm doing a lot in the kitchen in the last days but nothing that new - what doesn't mean that's nothing different going on.

Last Sunday Matteo (the pizza king of this house) decided to try Hanna's (Bitter Sweet) pizza white sauce that I've seen a few weeks ago and was very excited to eat. We bought Nutritional Yeast for the first time and used two different tofu (green and smoked) in the pizza and the result was amazing. The sauce is really easy to make and it's delicious. And I had it with a natural orange and grapefruit juice (L).


On Monday, Valentine's Day, after a busy day I baked a chocolate cake to Matteo. Yeah, I'm eating it too so it wasn't just his treat in the end!



On Tuesday, to keep going with the sweet tooth and also because I'm back on baking in a daily basis, I decided to give a try in a real decorating activity. Everybody in my mum's family is an artist, with amazing motor coordination skills and I'm not that good on this kind of thing. Anyway I decided to make a teddy bear from scratch. The result is here:



And also on Tuesday I made a risotto (again? yeah, you know I love it) with the last broccoli, carrot and parsnip of my first organic bag! Today we'll get another bag and I can't wait to see what's on it :D



So this is it. I have a giveaway to announce soon, so keep coming here :P

Lovers gonna love

I'm not sure if I'd ever wrote about the fact that it was just after becoming vegan, 13 years ago, that I started to eat a lot of vegetables in a regular basis. If not, I'll make a list someday about everything I added to my diet. My family is not a huge fan of vegetables and I didn't like most of them. But being vegan is about not using animals but also about having a healthier life. To have all the vitamins I need I had to welcome a lot of new elements to my life. I learned to love some of them, but I still hate a few.

One of these vegetables that I really don't like is beetroot. It's has a beautiful colour, I have to say, but I can't stand the taste. It is an important vegetable however, rich in iron (and calcium, and zinc, and folic acid and vitamins B1, B2 and C). So if you like it, good for you!


A few weeks ago Matteo started to buy them and to make a juice (beet + orange). I tried and... nope. Can't drink it too. It wasn't the fist time I had it, I used to drink it many years ago in the place I used to work. It wasn't good, it's still not.




But in an effort to have at least a little bit of this precious vegetable I decided to make something that I really like with it to see if I could eat: risotto! So last Saturday I made a very creamy risotto with beets and zucchini - had to use something that I liked to balance it too.

The result was beautiful. Really, the pictures are not that great, but it looked great! It wasn't the best food on earth but I have to admit that I liked it. Matteo loved it, no doubts about it. But, yeah, I didn't hate it. I ate all my plate :)

If you want to try it, make your favourite risotto recipe and add small pieces of beetroot in the end (before 5 minutes to the end), so you won't cook it too much and it will keep most of its properties.

Risotto primavera - pic by pic

First, a confession to make: I cheated on the title. It's not exactly "pic by pic" 'cause I missed one or two steps. But the most important steps are here. A lot of people think that it's hard to cook a risotto. I disagree, but maybe I have some Italian gens that I don't know about them in my body, 'cause I really think that risotto is one of the easiest dishes too cook.

You can find the recipe I usually use here. For this one I used spinach and mushrooms.

Garlic, always garlic. And if you like, onions too.

Rice + spinach + mushrooms + water + vegetable stock cube

The final (and super important) touch: the vegan margarine

♥

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!

And December arrived!

First of all, I am stoked that it's already December. Time is really flying. Last December I wasn't that happy and a lot of things were hard for me with my moving to Dublin. It was my first Christmas in ages far from my family and friends. But now things are getting better and I am excited. Matteo's family is coming in the end of the month and we'll spend some great time together.


Last Saturday I delivered a vegan cupcake order for a wedding reception and it was really good to see everything ready:



I am still busy baking (have some orders for next weeks) and having no time to cook and write here, but I think it's better in this way. But yesterday I made white risotto (or risotto alla piemontese). It was almost like the traditional one (of course in a vegan version), but I added some personal touches: some parsley, cherry tomatoes on top and I baked some potatoes wedge because Matteo always thinks that risotto is not enough for a meal. And he said that my risotto is better than his and this is really nice coming from an Italian guy.


I still want to post some things here (like another interview) this month and I will organize myself to make it!

Happy December!

Vegan MoFo III - Day 9 – Risotto

Today I realized how unfair I have been with one more of my favorite food: risotto! I didn't find a post about it here! But you know, can be just my lack of tagging. So, let's talk about this wonderful Italian dish!

Every time I think about my life before being vegan I realize that I didn't eat too many kinds of food because there are a lot of things that I just started to eat a few years ago. To be true, in the case of the risotto, I just started to eat it with more frequency after Matteo arrived. Yes, I know, shame on me!! But it's never late and for the last (almost) 5 years I have been eating a lot of it. And you can imagine that I was just eating it, not cooking it, 'cause I have an expert of Italian food at home. And he knows how to cook the best risottos ever: risotto alla milanese (the yellow one, sometimes with mushrooms), risotto primavera (with vegetables), risotto alla piemontese (the white one).

But yesterday, excited with my new food processor (am I the only silly person in the world that gets excited with it?!), I decided to cook my first risotto (sometimes I helped Matteo, but never did it all by myself), that I called “Brazilian risotto”. Yes, it is green and yellow! We are having a small problem in Ireland to make risottos (maybe this is the reason that I didn't blog about it yet): we can't find the arborio rice anywhere anymore. So we stayed a few months without cooking risotto but a few weeks ago Matteo found another kind of rice: the parboiled. It's not the same thing but it works. I think my risotto was good and I did enough to lunch and dinner!

lunch

Recipe:

250g parboiled rice (the best quality is Arborio, Vialone Nano or Carnaroli)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil (or olive oil)
2 vegetable stock cubes
1 chopped onion
1 sliced zucchini
1 cup of broccoli
2 or 3 teaspoon turmeric
black pepper and parsley (optional)
1 tablespoon vegetable margarine
vegan parmezano

Put the oil in a pan and heat it for a minute. Add the chopped onion and let it fry until it turns gold. Add the rice and let it fry, stirring it, until it gets transparent. The traditional way too prepare risotto is to have the water with the vegetable stock cube (called brodo) separated and add it step by step while the rice is cooking but we cheat on it! Well, we learned from an Italian woman (my mother in law), so I think it's totally fine! So, our way to do is: add the water (enough to totally cover the rice and one inch more), the stock cubes, the turmeric and let it cook for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring it. Add the zucchini, the broccoli and the herbs. Let it cook until the water is mostly absorbed (you have to check it from time to time, but it will take more or less twenty minutes). At this point you have to try the rice to see if it's soft enough (using the Arborio rice is easier to notice that). If it's not, add more water (one cup) and wait the water being absorbed again. Don't forget to stir it sometimes or the rice can start to stick to the pan. When the water is almost gone, turn off the heat and wait 2 or 3 minutes. Add the vegetable margarine and stir it again. Serve it with vegan parmezano on top.

dinner

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