Kitri

Kitri is an Indian dish with rice, beans and vegetables. Preparation is simple: throw the ingredients into a pot and cook. There are various versions of this food, some are more risotto like where the rice is first cooked in oil before adding the water, and more simple versions like this. You can use whichever vegetables you like, e.g. cauliflower, zucchini or bell pepper. Use the spices according to your own taste. The chilli I used in making this was a bit too spicy for my taste so be careful with that!

Kitri

• 1,5 litres water
• 2 decilitres whole wheat rice
• 2 decilitres mung beans
• 4 potatoes
• 3 carrots
• 5 tomatoes
• 1 mild red chilli pepper
• a pinch of oil
• 1 teaspoon salt
• black pepper
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon turmenic
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon garam masala

Remember to soak the beans the night before. Bring water to the boil in a pot. Add the beans and the bay leaves. Cook for 20-30 minutes (you can also cook the beans beforehand - in this case add the beans at the same time as other vegetables and use less water). Chop the vegetables and chilli but be careful while handling the chilli (read more about handling chilli here). Add the vegetables, chilli and rice. Check the cooking time from the package to make sure your rice gets cooked properly (if it's quick rice you might want to add it later and vice versa). Add more water if needed. Cook for another 20 minutes or until there is very little/no water remaining. Add the spices and the oil.

A Quick Curry

Curry is one of the basic vegetarian food. Whenever I'm thinking about what to cook curry is the first thing that pops in my mind. It's so easy to make. Just chop the ingredients, place them in the pot, cook, let stew and that's it. You can use pretty much any vegetables so making curry often doesn't mean eating the same food all of the time. This curry is especially quick and easy to make. Apples add a nice sweetness and balance the spiciness.

Apple-lentil curry

• 3 decilitres red lentils
• 2 onions
• 2-3 apples
• 300 grams cabbage (or Chinese cabbage)
• ½ tablespoon grated ginger
• 2 tablespoons curry powder
• 1 teaspoon chilli powder or cayenne pepper
• 6 decilitres water
• salt, pepper

Chop onions, cabbage and apples. Rinse the lentils. Heat a bit of oil in a pot and add the onions. Cook them for a couple of minutes and add the cabbage. When the cabbage is soft, add apples, lentils, ginger, spices and water. Let it stew for 10-20 minutes until the lentils are soft.

Serve with rice or bread.

Date squares

The taste of dates always reminds me of Christmas, and they're healthy too. This baked good is really easy to make. You can leave out the spices if you wish but I think that they add a wonderful taste. The best way is to bake these in a rectangular pan but I unfortunately had only round ones.

Vegan Date crumble squares

Date filling:

• 350 grams pitted dried dates
• 2 decilitres water

Oatmeal crust

• 4 decilitres oatmeal
• 2 decilitres whole wheat flour
• 1½ decilitres cane sugar
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 180 grams margarine
• ½ teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon cardamom

Chop the dates. Place dates and water in a saucepan and cook on medium heat util the dates are soft and have absorbed most of the water. Let the mixture cool down and mix it in your food processor to get a smooth mixture.

Preheat the oven into 180. Place oatmeal, flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon and cardamom in a bowl and mix. Mix in the butter to get a crumbly mixture. You might want to use your hands or a food processor.

Press 2/3 of the mixture on the base of an oiled pan. Spread the date mixture on it evenly. Sprinkle the remaining dough on top of the date mixture and press to compact. Bake for 30-40 minutes until it has a golden brown colour. Let them cool down before cutting.

Sunday Brunch

Pancakes are the perfect brunch for a lazy Sunday morning. These are extremely easy to make (the batter is made by basically just measuring all the ingredients into a bowl and whisking). Cooking the pancakes can be a challenge for some people. Just make sure the pan isn't too hot or the pancakes will burn before they are firm enough to be flipped around. The smaller the pancake the easier it is to cook it. Also remember to use enough oil!

Pancakes don't sound like a very healthy breakfast but I made these with whole wheat flour and there's only one tablespoon of sugar! The blueberries add some sweetness and also have lots of vitamins. The pancakes do suck in a lot of oil while they're being cooked but vegetable oils have a lot of vital unsaturated fats.

Vegan Blueberry pancakes

• 2½ decilitres (whole wheat) flour
• 1 tablespoon cane sugar
• 1½ tablespoons baking powder
• 1½ tablespoons oil
• 2,5 decilitres soy/grain milk
• 1½ decilitres (fresh or frozen) blueberries

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Whisk in oil and milk. Stir well. Fold in the blueberries.

Drop two spoonfuls of batter on a hot greased pan. Cook it until the pancake is firm enough to be flipped around. Cook until both sides have browned (Remember to add oil on the pan in between cooking each pancake!).

Serve with honey or maple syrup.

Peanut Butter!

Here's another excellent vegan biscuit recipe. These are not chewy like the double chocolate-chip cookies but they have a nice and rich peanut butter flavour. Peanut butter is something that every vegan should at least sometimes have in their cupboards. As a vegan you can't put cheese on your bread to get some proteins so peanut butter is a great choice. It also has vital unsaturated fats and magnesium. Make sure that you choose unsweetened peanut butter. The ingredients list should have the maximum of two ingredients, that is peanuts and salt. So if you happen to have some of this delicious butter in your kitchen cupboard why not bake something with it!

Fruity baby-foods are excellent egg-replacements in baking. You can just as well use any fruit mash but baby foods just come in such good portion sizes (a rule of the thumb is to replace one egg with one small can of baby food). You can choose pretty much any flavour you like but in this recipe I recommend using something yellow, like mango or peach.

Vegan Peanut Butter Chocolate-chip Cookies 

Makes approximately 20 cookies.

• 100 grams margarine
• 1½ decilitres cane sugar
• 1 decilitre mango flavoured baby food (or fruit mash)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 1 1/4 decilitres smooth peanut butter
• 3 decilitres flour (I used half whole wheat and half all-purpose flour)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 80 grams dark vegan chocolate chips

Preheat the oven into 175°C. Cover a sheet pan with bakery paper. Beat the butter and sugar with a mixer until it's fluffy. Beat in the peanut butter, vanilla sugar and baby food. Mix the flour and baking soda in a separate bowl. Add the dry ingredients into the peanut butter-mixture and mix well. Fold in the chocolate chips. If the batter is too soft to form into balls put it in the fridge to cool down.

Roll the dough into approximately 3cm balls. Place them on the baking sheet 5cm apart. Press the balls down with a fork to make a crisscross pattern. Bake the cookies for 10 minutes or until the edges have just slightly started to brown. Let the cookies cool down.

Summer in your mouth

I wanted to come up with some use for the blueberries in the freezer that were picked up last summer. Blueberry muffins are such a classic baked good and there probably are as many blueberry muffin recipes as there are bakers. Even though muffins are easy to make, they are surprisingly hard to get right. They often end up too dry, too fluffy or too sweet. This recipe gives them the perfect texture and a wonderful rich taste. These simply happen to be the best blueberry muffins I've ever tasted. And the best thing is that they're egg-free and can easily be made vegan! Just use soy yoghurt and soy/grain milk. If you use dairy products please choose the organic option. I made a few changes into the recipe but the original one can be found in http://www.inerikaskitchen.com.

You can use either frozen or fresh blueberries. If you use frozen ones don't defrost them! Otherwise the berries will bleed into the batter and the whole batter will turn blue. Take the berries out of the freezer just before adding them. Half of the flour I used was whole wheat and the texture was still great. I also added 70 grams of dark chocolate chips because we just happened to have some chocolate in our cupboard. The chocolate is a great bonus and adds some extra richness to the flavours.

Vegan/ Egg-free Blueberry Muffins

• 4 decilitres flour (I used 2 decilitres whole wheat and 2 decilitres all-purpose flour)
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1½ decilitres cane sugar (and more for sprinkling)
• 1 1/4 decilitres soy/grain/organic milk
• 1 1/4 decilitres soy/organic yoghurt
• 75 grams margarine
• 4 decilitres blueberries

Preheat the oven into 200°C. Place 12 muffin tins on a sheet pan. Mix the flour, baking powder and soda in a large bowl. Place the sugar, milk, yoghurt and butter in a bowl and microwave it for one minute or until the butter starts to melt. Whisk until there are only little bits of butter floating in the mixture. Add the blueberries into the flour and toss to coat. Slowly and carefully add the milk-butter-mixture in.  Fold until just incorporated. Don't over-mix! Little streaks of flour are okay. Divide the batter into the tins and sprinkle sugar on top. Bake for 25-28 minutes or until a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbles clinging to it and they have a nice golden brown colour. Let the muffins cool down.

A not-so-traditional Italian delicacy

We had some guests coming for a visit and I had to come up with something to bake. We have a several decades old bottle of Amaretto liqueur sitting in our shelf and I decided to give it some use. The result was a bit modified version of the classic Italian delicacy. The cacao-flavoured sugar cake absorbs a lot of liquid so the cake is deliciously moist. The quark adds freshness to mascarpone and the coffee and Amaretto just make it perfect. If you don't want to use Amaretto any almond or coffee liqueur is fine. If you want to avoid alcohol you can also use water and almond extract. 

A word of warning: This recipe is not vegan. Nor is it healthy. But it's so incredibly delicious that it makes up for all that. Because of both ethical and nutritional reasons I use only organic dairy products and eggs. The factory farm cows are pumped full of hormones to make them grow faster and they are also fed with antibiotics to prevent them from getting infections. All of that is in their milk so next time you buy milk think of all the hormones and drugs you're putting in your body. The same thing applies to the eggs. Also several viruses, like the H1N1 spread from factory farms. Using growth hormones and drugs is forbidden in organic farming so at least when buying organic animal products you know what you're eating.

This recipe is a lot easier than the traditional tiramisu recipes but it has the same wonderful taste of Italy. I highly recommend using organic eggs and dairy products to not only make the cake taste better but to also make it better for you.

Organic Quark Tiramisu

Cake:

• 4 organic eggs
• 1½ decilitres cane sugar
• 1 decilitre flour ( feel free to use whole wheat)
• 1½ decilitres dark unsweetened cacao powder (and more for sprinkling)
• 1 teaspoon baking powder

Moistening:

• 1 decilitre strong black coffee
• ½ decilitre Amaretto liqueur

Filling:

• 2 organic eggs
• ½ decilitre sugar
• 250 grams organic quark
• 250 grams organic mascarpone cheese
• 3/4 decilitres orange/apricot marmelade

First prepare the cake. Preheat the oven into 200°C. Cover a sheet pan with bakery paper. Sift together the flour cacao powder and baking powder. Beat together eggs and sugar until the mixture has thickened and turned pale yellow. Mix the dry ingredients into the sugar-egg mixture. Spread the batter on a sheet pan and bake for 10 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Lay the cake upside down on a another bakery paper sprinkled with sugar and carefully remove the paper it was baked with.

Now prepare the filling. First beat the eggs and sugar just like you did with the batter. In a separate bowl beat together quark and mascarpone. Add the mascarpone-mixture into the egg-sugar-mixture and mix well. Mix in the marmalade.

Cut the cake in half. Mix together the coffee and Amaretto. Use half of the moistening on one half of the cake. Spread half of the filling on the cake. Lay the second half on top, moisten it and spread the rest of the filling. Sift some cacao powder on top. Let the cake rest in the fridge for at least a couple of hours before serving (you may also prepare it the day before serving).

Read more about factory farming:

In English:
http://www.greathealthconnection.com/2011/meat-from-factory-farms-full-of-dangerous-hormones/

In Finnish:
http://kulma.net/mkevat/hormooni.html
http://www.taloussanomat.fi/ihmiset/2011/02/06/taman-jalkeen-et-enaa-syo-elaimia/20111728/12