All about.. Rewild

After three weeks in Rome me and Matteo finally had the chance to go to Rewild, the only vegan restaurant in Rome. It's said to think that a 5 million people city has just one vegan place to eat. Well, better than nothing. They open just for dinner and it would be too late to go with baby boy - and we're still fighting to get him a new routine after the moving out of Ireland - so we asked them if we could go earlier and they agreed to open the doors like two hours before to have us ;-)


The place is not that close from city center but you can get there by subway, so it's all good. It's a nice and big salon and people are the nicest. Their menu is huge, from starters to deserts and they have the classic Italian way of eating: starter, primo, secondo, dolce. And we wanted it all!


I have to apologize for not having good pictures but I only had my phone and it was dark there. But I'll go back - as many times as it's possible - and I promisse a good photo shoot in the future.


First me and Matteo ordered two sandwiches, with different types of burgers. Both delicious (and huge!). Than for primo(usually some kind of pasta) we ordered lasagna and raviolli (and these pictures aren't nothing close to show how good they were). We could stop here and just ask for dessert but we asked for secondo (usually meat). I asked for a kamut seitan and vegetables medallion and Matteo got a sliced seitan thing. I didn't taste Matteo's one cause it was time to breast feed little boy but mine was a piece of heaven!

To close the night - yes, we had more - we asked for the veganisu, or vegan tiramisu, of course. It was great that I could order it for two reasons: it's made with orzo and not coffee (and I'm not having coffee) and it doesn't have liquor (to attend their straight edge audience)! I have just one thing to say about it: I could it a piece of this veganisu every day of my life.

So, if you come to Rome - better, when you come to Rome - don't worry about seeing the Pope but go to Rewild!

When in Rome

I'm probably not doing as the romans do for most of the time but I'm eating pizza bianca and pizza rossa everyday and gelato three times a week, so life is good!

You can find ice cream in every supermarket 

Gelarmony - My favourite place in Rome

 From the local market

 Mother's Day lunch

my first mother's day with a lovely lunch cooked by Matteo

 Brunch at Il Margutta RistorArte

 Not even close to coffee but I really like it

Baby boy enjoying the sunny days (L)

New life. More love. Less cooking

Our Italian-Brazilian baby boy arrived on the 28th of January and we couldn't be happier. We're now adjusting to the new life, filled with the biggest love ever. 

Of course there's not too much cooking going on and Matteo is doing most of it but this week I ate Amy's Dairy Free Rice Macaroni and Cheeze and it was an amazing surprise. Matteo got it in the health store at Dundrum and the only thing I wish is that it was cheaper (it's imported), but it's worth to have it from time to time and it's really practical.

And now that I'm a vegan mom, any tips of good blogs to follow?

The simple life

Happy 2012 everyone! I hope you all had an amazing end of 2011 and are ready for this brand new year. I was always a big fan of New Year's Eve and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it's summer time in Brazil and I always celebrated it with friends and family. But since I'm in Europe I'm not going to big celebrations anymore (went one year and that was it) and this year wasn't different. But this year I've made a very conscious decision to spend the NYE at home with just Matteo and his mother who is visiting us. And this decision has all to do with my only resolution for 2012: to live the simple life. I think the most important thing pregnancy have taught me is to take it easy and enjoy simple things. And it worked pretty well for me in 2011 so I want to do it more and more in 2012.


For our NYE we decided to have simple (here ya go!) food and not any kind of complicated meal. We'd have just appetizers and alcohol free drinks (both me and Matteo don't drink alcohol at all). Matteo would help me with the preparation and we'd play cards. We ended up having Tomato Rosemary Scones from Vegan Brunch, Sun-Dried Tomato Dip from Veganomicon, pistachio nuts, hummus (this was the only thing we didn't make ourselves) and a lovely Capers Dip which Matteo came up with the recipe from his mind while he was preparing the other dip. Everything was delicious and 2012 arrived just like that: simple and bringing us happiness.

Here's the recipe of the Capers Dip:

Ingredients:

1 cup white beans, drained

1/4 cup capers

2 tablespoon olive oil

1/3 cup nutritional yeast

3  tablespoon water

salt

1  tablespoon French's mustard

Put the white beans, capers, mustard, olive oil and water in the food processor or blender and mix it until smooth. Add the nutritional yeast and salt and blend it again. Check if it's salty enough to your taste.

Cover and chill for at least half an hour. Serve it with crackers or slices of fake meat or vegan cheese.

A very special Christmas

After reading posts and seeing pictures of Christmas meals I have to say my Christmas wasn't that special or creative this year. But at the same time it was a very special one cause it's the last month of my pregnancy and it  made everything a little bit different for me. I wasn't feeling that much into the Holidays as I've said here before and I got many cupcakes orders to delivery on the 22nd so just after everything was done I was able to think about the food for the weekend.

Matteo's mother and sister were here one more time and it's really nice to spend the Holidays with them. Can't describe how excited my mother-in-law is to become a grandma! To make things easier for me we decided to keep both menus (for the 24th eve and 25th lunch) simple and Matteo did most of the cooking this year (yes, I have the best husband in the world).

A Brazilian friend of mine is in Dublin for the Holidays and I invited her to come here on Saturday afternoon cause she couldn't come for the eve. So I baked some vanilla and almond biscuits based on this recipe. We ate them with vegan nutella and they were really good. 

For dinner we got some snacks for starter and Matteo made mac'n'cheese. It was cool cause it's not an Italian dish even being done with pasta and it was appreciated by the Italians in the house. We had a vegan panettone from Vegusto afterwards and it was a really nice surprise (my sister-in-law said it tastes like the regular ones). We closed the night opening the presents.

For Sunday lunch I baked these "cheesy" crackers (the only difference is that this time I've used nutritional yeast and Redwood Soy free Cheezly cheddar style and not parmesan) and we had lots of appetizers prepared by Matteo that included guacamole and  hummus, between other yummys. For the main dish he did cotechino servito con polenta e lenticchie (this dish became very popular in the house) and we got more panettone for dessert.

As you can see, nothing fancy or difficult or even new, but it was perfect. We had a great time and spend quality time at home with people we love. I missed my family a lot again and thought about my grandma a lot too, but it's the bad side of living this far from them. Anyway I was able to Skype them on Sunday morning and this completed my Christmas.

Now I'm preparing myself for a quiet New Year's eve. What are you doing next weekend?

Last minute bruschetta

Yesterday Matteo decided to do some bruschetta for us for dinner time and I wouldn't complain about it, love all variations of this Italian food. As usual he doesn't have a recipe for what he cooks, but I'll share how he made it with you. It was delicious!

Recipe

Ingredients:

2 ciabatta bread

7 or 8 sliced mushrooms

2 medium shopped tomatoes

1 shopped onion

2 garlic gloves (1 sliced and save the other one)

2 tablespoon shoyu or any similar soy sauce

1 tablespoon vegetable margarine

2 tablespoon nutritional yeast (optional)

herbs

salt

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Slice the ciabatta bread in two and put them in the oven until they get golden on top and a little bit crispy on the edges (about 5 to 6 minutes).



Fry onion and garlic until golden (use a teaspoon of vegetable oil if you want or just fry them with water). Add the mushrooms and let them fry for 3 or 4 minutes. Add salt, herbs and soy sauce and let it cook for another 2 or 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes (if you want you can let them out of the filling and add them raw on the top just before eating) and let the mix cook for another minute. Add the margarine and nutritional yeast and cook until the margarine melts and create a creamy sauce.


Rub some garlic in the bread slices and place the mushroom sauce on top of each slice.

(vegan) Pumpkin white chocolate chips cookies

As you can see I had enough pumpkin to make a few recipes! I've done the pie, cupcakes for the World Vegan Day and cookies (made them twice and still have pumpkin to one more batch!). I was inspired by this recipe from the blog have cake, will travel - one of my favourite blogs ever. I hadn't regular chocolate chips and decided to try the white ones, even not being sure if they would suit with pumpkin. And I really enjoyed the combination and also Matteo, who has eating most of the cookies!

I didn't follow the recipe and decided to try something new, so here's my recipe:

Pumpkin white chocolate chips cookie

1/2 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 cup white flour

1 teaspoon nutmeg 

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup vegan margarine

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup pumpkin purée

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Cook the pumpkin and when it's cold, dry the water and mash it. Using your stand mixer, cream together margarine and sugar. Stir in pumpkin and vanilla until combined. Add flour, nutmeg, salt and baking powder and mix. Stir in chips. Divide the dough into 12 equal portions, place on parchment pape and flatten your cookies. Preheat oven to 180°C and bake the cookies for 15 minutes or until golden on top and around the edges. Wait 10 minutes before transferring them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Pumpkin and chocolate cupcakes for the 

World Vegan Day event in Dublin

Pumpkin pie

Most of my friends (mainly the vegan ones) love to cook and this is great. From time to time we exchange recipes, tips and even products (I enjoy sending food gifts). Cinthia is one of these friends. She lives in Brazil and I sent her a while ago a box that had, between other stuff, nutritional yeast (we can't find it in Brazil). She made a recipe called "Escondidinho de abobora e PVT" (it's really hard to translate this cause "esconder" means "hide" but "escondidinho" has nothing close to it in English as far as I know... but "abobora" means pumpkin and "PVT" is  "TVP", texturized vegetable protein). A few weeks ago Matteo got me a huge pumpking and I really wanted to try some new recipe and I went for this one. It looks like a pie but it also sounds like a potato/pumpkin pure.


Well, let's get down to the recipe so you can figure it out what it is! And thank you Cinthia for it ;)

"Escondidinho de abobora e PVT"

Ingredients:

 

- 1 kg pumpkin

- 2 medium potatoes

- 1 tablespoon vegetal margarine

- water

- 180g of fine texturized vegetable protein (TVP)

- 2 tablespoon olive oil

- 1 small onion

- 1 teaspoon minced garlic

- 340g ready tomato sauce

- Salt, pepper, nutmeg, sweet paprika, fresh basil, fresh oregano to taste.

 Preparation:
 Peel the potatoes and pumpkin and cut into cubes. Cook them separately in water, because they have different cooking times. When they are really soft, remove from heat. Squeeze the potatoes with a masher (or a fork). Try to dry the pumpkin first with your fingers to squeeze out excess water. In a saucepan, combine the potatoes and pumpkin,  add the margarine and salt to taste (and if necessary water). The puree can not be too much soft (got to have a firmer consistency). Keep stirring it constantly until the desired point. Remove from heat and set aside. Meanwhile, soak the soy protein (with warm water). In a heated pan add the olive voil and fry the onion and garlic. Add the TVP. Lower the heat and add the tomato sauce and a cup of water. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg, sweet paprika, fresh basil, fresh oregano, and with the pot half-covered, let the sauce ascertain. Once you are done, remove from heat. Take a rectangular bowl. Place a first layer of puree, then the protein with the sauce and, finally, another layer of puree. Sprinkle nutritional yeast on top and bake in the oven temperature to 200 ° C from 20 to 30 minutes.
 PS. I've added a layer of spinach leaves between the sauce and the second puree and it tasted delicious.

(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.

(Italian) Vegan Mac and cheese

Although this dish involves two ingredients very popular in Italy - pasta and cheese - it is not an Italian dish and it's not popular there. I'm not sure if it is or not popular in Brazil at all but I'm sure I've never eaten it there. So I've never eaten the non-vegan version of mac'n'cheese. But I do love both ingredients and I was delighted when, a few days ago, Matteo decided to make it for us in a day that I was really tired to cook.

Matteo - aka my husband - is not that type of person who likes to follow recipes. He can read them but he ends up doing everything in his own way. And it was the same with his mac'n'cheese dish. I would say it came out pretty good and reminded me the classic Italian "pasta al forno". So I'd say this is kind of an Italian recipe for the dish, a very easy one. You know, pasta should be always fast and easy!

Recipe

300 g pasta (penne or rigatoni are the best options)
grazed dairy-free cheese


For the sauce:
1 unsweetened plain soy yogurt
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/4 cup rice milk
1/3 cup soy cream (or rice cream)
2 tsp french mustard
1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
2 tsp soy sauce
salt
pepper
herbs (parsley or basil)

Preheat oven to 180°C. Put the pasta to cook while you prepare the sauce. Put the yogurt, the rice milk and the soy cream in the mixer and mix it until get a homogenous mix (a few seconds would be enough). Add the olive oil, french mustard and soy sauce and mix it again (another few seconds). Finally add the nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and herbs.

Mix half of the sauce with the cooked pasta and put it in a glass container. Add the rest of the sauce on top and the grazed dairy-free cheese (we used Redwood Soy free Cheezly cheddar style). Take the glass container to the oven for 30 minutes. Serve it hot.

3rd Blog Anniversary

Last Sunday was the third anniversary of this blog and I have to confess that I never expected it would last that much!

It all started as a way of sharing my new food adventures in Europe and now it's basically a part of my life. It also means that three years ago I left Brazil and the life I used to have to start again in a far far away land. It wasn't always easy but the food was always an amazing part of my journey. So many new foods, so many new places and so many awesome people. This blog was the space to share all the new flavours I was trying and my new adventures in the kitchen. And through this small place I've met so many cool people!

The first semester of 2011 was crazy and super busy for me and I couldn't share everything I wanted here, but now things are calm again and I'm trying to cook more, visit different places and write more. I have new plans for my life now that my Master is almost done (just have to do the presentation of the thesis in September!) and I'm excited.

I can't share too much yet, but I'd like to thank everybody who reads this blog - knowing me in person or not! It's being a pleasure and I hope I could inspire some of you to become vegan or to be more adventurous in the kitchen.

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!

All about... Viasko (Berlin)

As I said in my last post, we tried to do our best in the few free hours we had in Berlin (and when I say "do our best" I mean eat as much vegan food as we can). So after going to the Vegan Sommerfest we went to Viasko, a vegan restaurant opened last year.


Viasko looks like an Irish pub cause it was one before the actual owner buy it! And he decided to keep the design and decor the same and I have to say, I loved it. They serve food day and night and also a brunch on Sunday (have to go back to go to this!). I'm not sure if I'll be able to put in words how much me and Matteo enjoyed the place. The owner is really nice, speaks English and made his best to make us feel comfortable there. They have the menu also in English, which helped a lot. We were so excited to try the food that we decided to order (each one of us) starter and main course.

When I saw the starters coming I thought "Oh boy, I'll never be able to eat this and the main course!" but I was there to try. I had a "Überbackene Tomaten-Auberginen-Tofu Canapés", which looked like bruschetta and tasted amazingly and Matteo had an "Auberginen-Kartoffel-Strude" that was composed by some salad (some kind of coleslaw), mayonese garlic sauce and a huge strudel filled with potatoes and aubergine. It was delicious too, I've tried it of course. Our pictures don't look great cause I was using my phone this time and it was dark inside too, but you can have an idea of the awesomeness!



After eating enough for one lunch time, the main courses were still about to come! I have to say I ended up eating more than usual but wasn't able to finish my dish (this is never a problem cause Matteo - almost - always can do it!). Matteo was very Italian with his dish, asking for a gnocchi dish ("Hausgemachte Kartoffelgnocchi") and I tried to be as "local" as possible ordering a "Soja-Schnitzel „Wiener Art" (Soya Schnitzel Vienna Style). Well, it turns out that Schnitzel is an Austrian dish but I still thought it would be closer to some German food than any other Italian dish they had in the menu. Everything was just perfect, from presentation to flavours!




After eating more than we could, the owner suggested us to take one of the cakes of the day. OMG, I could not eat nothing else but we decided to take away a slice (and it was the delicious closing of our Saturday night).

I have to say that Viasko is now one of my favourite vegan places in the world. If you're going to Berlin, please go there and share your thoughts with me after!

PS.: The restaurant is also very pet-friendly, allowing dogs inside :)

Potato-spinach Blintzes

I can't believe it took me so long to buy the vegan bible Veganomicon but I (finally) got it a couple of months ago. But I did it in the middle of my thesis writing so I didn't have time to cook anything from it until a couple of weeks ago. Still in the middle of the craziness I decided to cook potato-spinach Blintzes for lunch during the week. It was a lot of work but the result was worth it. Recipe is not difficult but you end up preparing three dishes to make one (crepes, smashed potato-spinach and the sauce).

I won't post the recipe here cause it's part of the book, but I will share the mushroom sauce recipe I've made cause I didn't use any from the book and did my own sauce.

Mushroom sauce recipe

Ingredients

2 cup sliced mushroom
1/4 cup soya milk
1 tablespoon white flour
1 vegetable stock cube
1 glove
1 shopped onion
1/3 cup Shoyu (soya sauce)
1 tablespoon mustard (ready to eat one such as French's)
black pepper (as you like it)

Mix the milk and the flour in a bowl and separate it. In a hot pan fry the onion and garlic for 3 or 4 minutes and add the mushrooms. Fry it for more 3 or 4 minutes and add the milk and flour mix. Add the stock cube and let it cook for another 2 or 3 minutes, stirring it a few times. Add the black pepper, soya sauce and mustard and cook and cook for another minute. Serve it hot over the Blintzes.

And here's some pictures of the potato-spinach Blintzes cooking process:

Pasta with meatballs

You might don't know that, but spaghetti with meatballs are rare in Italy. They were "created" by Italian immigrants in the US in the early 20th century. In Brazil they are popular too, maybe not that much as they are in the US, but still. But being married with an Italian made me think that eating spaghetti with meatballs is weird so I stayed more than 6 years avoiding trying the vegan version of this dish. But last time we went to Italy, my sister-in-law cooked spaghetti with meatballs so I felt free to try (you know, it was kind of an authentic Italian "bless"!).

A few weeks ago, in the middle of the craziness I was going through to write my thesis, I found time to cook vegan meatballs. I wanted to make them using texturized vegetable protein (TVP) and couldn't find any recipe in my cookbooks (found some great ones with lentils). So I decided to do at my own, remembering what I've used before as ingredients to make TVP burgers.
We didn't have spaghetti at home that day so we ate the meatballs with other pasta, but it was good the same!

TVP meatballs recipe

2 cup small TVP
1 vegetable stock cube
1 shopped onion
1 glove
1 cup white flour
extra flour
1/4 cup vegetable oil
salt and pepper (as you like it)
nutritional yeast

Dissolve the stock cube in hot water and put the TVP to hydrogenate (it's is important to do this with hot water). I've learned that dissolving the stock cube in the water and using it to hydrogenate the TVP gives it more flavour. Let it hydrogenate for at least 20 minutes. Dry it and put the TVP in a bawl. Mix the onion and glove with TVP. Add the oil and salt and pepper. Start adding the flour in small amounts and mix everything using your hands. Keep adding flour and mixing until you have a good texture to make the balls with your hands. Instead of covering the meatballs with bread crumbs before frying them I used nutritional yeast and it worked pretty well. Fry in a hot non-stick pan and fry it for 3 or 4 minutes (you shouldn't need more oil to do that). Take the meatballs to the oven for an additional 10 minutes to ensure they're thoroughly cooked. Add the meatballs to your favourite tomato sauce recipe (I just used a ready to go one this time) and serve with pasta (spaghetti would be the right one!)

Cheesy vegan omelette - Pic by pic

I finally sent the first version of my thesis to my supervisor. Now I'm having a two days break until he gets back to me with suggestions and comments. Have to say it again: can't wait to be done with this.

Besides writing, I'm just cooking our daily meals. Nothing special but some good bits. Yesterday I've made a "cheesy" omelette, which was also soy free. We've bought the soy free Cheezly (cheddar style) from Redwood and I've decided to try it on the vegan omelette. It was a really good cheese alternative and for those who lives in Ireland or in the UK Redwood is a great option.