All things far away… mashed together…

Vegan MoFo
Week 2: 7th-13th November 2016 International Week
November 8th: Far Away – If you dug straight down, where would you come out? Make something from that country!

Oh, this will be exciting! she thinks.

*gets on Google and finds free map tools: tunnel to the other side of the Earth*

*lands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean*

Bugger.

*checks for closest country*

Western Sahara. Well, at least I covered that when I taught my kids some geography last year, and we read a cool kids book called Africa Is Not A Country – great read, that one… So, Western Sahara borders Morocco… so chickpea tagine? Yum. But I broke my fancy tagine pot last time I moved, oof, sadness.

*twiddles thumbs sadly for hours*

*looks at MoFo blogs*

Kittens Gone Lentil has already done a tagine! Looks great! Hmm, I better do something else…

So, I’m in the ocean… Maybe I’m on a boat (no, don’t start singing that, shut up, brain). What am I going to eat? Seaweed? Yeah, why not? And the UK is in the Atlantic so I could go Anglophile and do some fish’n’chips – ie. seafu (tofu wrapped in seaweed) and baked fries… something I do fairly often as an easy meal that my kids enjoy… but hmm, I’m much more of a ruddy Scot so I’d best mess up that Sassenach food a bit, it’s too simple otherwise…

*grabs some cookbooks*

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*mashes them together*

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Voilà!

I made nori tempeh fish from Japan (well, an adaptation, clearly, so Indonesian-Japanese fusion..?) baked in Indian aloo bonda chickpea batter with sweet potato fries, North American style… to make a not-very-classic version of a British dish for this MoFo adventure in the north Atlantic Ocean… I also made some soy Greek yogurt-based tartare sauce… which is possibly of French origin. There’s chopped up capers, mustard, and other seasoning guff in it. Worked out pretty nicely!

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Have I destroyed the timeline sufficiently? … wait, what? No, not that.

I’ve tried to tear down some foodie walls between nations instead of building them. It tasted pretty good, the kids were happy with it. The tempeh fish-bondas would have been nicer deep-fried than baked, but I ain’t gonna do that on a hot day at lunchtime. The oven was bad enough!

I know a fusion day is coming up later in the week… but this is commonly how I roll in the kitchen: throw everything in the air, see where it lands… and apparently, today, it was far, far out to sea. ⛵

Or possibly in outer space. 🚀

Just having one of those days!

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Baked beans gone wild

Vegan MoFo
Week 1: 1st-6th November 2016 Treat Yourself (and others)!
3rd: Treat yourself… to a break – What’s your “easy cook” meal? That you make when you can’t be bothered to cook much?

*puts loaf of bread on plate*

*slams down tin of beans and peels back lid*

DONE. Gourmet af.

bread loaf and tin of beans

That’s homemade gorram sourdough. If I want to eat half a loaf, I bloody well will. It’s delicious.

At this point in the process of throwing together an easy meal I get to thinking, what if I warmed up the beans and toasted the bread? That shit would be lit.

pot of beans

With the bread in the toaster and the beans warming on the stove, I realise I have some leftover pressure-cooked white beans in the fridge and I add about 1.5 cups worth to the saucepan to extend the baked beans – the sauce to beans ratio is always too damn high – and I’ve just doubled the tin for a few cents. Suck on that, Heinz.

Then I get to thinking, but if I’m having beans, surely I should have some greens as well! Beans and greens all the way, baby. So I pull this out of the fridge…

salad and pickled cabbages

Pairing kim chi with baked beans on toast is a legitimate lifestyle choice. Don’t judge me, Anglophiles.

beans and stuff

See? Look at that. Beautiful. I even went a bit fancy and fried a couple of tofu sausages I bought at the stupormarket. And again –

beans again

Glorious.

food arial view

And a bit of sauerkraut for the kids because that kim chi is peppery.

Sure, you could say a proper easy meal would be just beans on toast and not accompanied by a handful of salad, a scoop of fermented cabbage, and a splatter of balsamic, and a sausage on the side… and maybe you could also say I shouldn’t mix cuisines with quite so much reckless abandon… but you’d be wrong. Sometimes in life you have to take risks. I, too, like to live dangerously. May the force be with you. Live long and prosper. I might have had a strong cup of coffee this morning, who knows.

One starts off preparing a quick-and-easy meal always with the best of intentions, and one always lets things get out of hand… if only a little bit.

Kim chi is life. Peace out.

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