Vegan Bún Chay (Vietnamese Noodle Salad) with Tofu Cheese Balls

What garlic is to salad, insanity is to art.
~ Augustus Saint-Gaudens

A few years ago, I was in Ho Chi Minh on a girls' trip away and I remember eating plenty of street food over that period in time (our Asian tummies are well trained for that sort of hardcore feasting). What I enjoyed most about Vietnamese cuisine is its range, the delightfully complex flavors of many of its dishes showcasing contrasts of taste and texture, as well as heat against cold.

So when my Instagram buddy, Joe, challenged me to take a classic Vietnamese dish and put my own spin on it, I immediately thought of this flavorful, yet incredibly simple to create, Bún Chay, or noodle salad. Usually it's made with vermicelli rice noodles, a generous handful of fragrant herbs, julienned vegetables, crunchy bean sprouts, a savory protein such as tofu, and a salty-sour-sweet sauce.

Basil, cilantro & Vietnamese mint

My spin on this was on two aspects: one was to make a more flavorful version of the tofu, in the form of Tofu Cheese Balls. I filled these up with the homemade vegan cheese from my last post and also contained Shiitake mushrooms which gave them a certain depth in flavor. Once fried, they are crisp on the outside and soft on the inside and provided that lovely contrast of heat against the coolness of the salad. 

I'd like you to think of this more as an inspiration and a rough guide than a recipe. The tofu cheese balls can be prepared ahead of time and reheated, but if you are strapped for time, you can simply serve the bún with deep fried sliced tofu, which is quick and easy to cook. Variations could include marinated tofu to add more flavor, baked tofu for a healthier version, or adding meat or seafood for a non-vegetarian version. Just feel free to include more or omit some vegetables, use any herbs you like and have available, but most of all, be creative and enjoy creating your customized bún chay.

My second spin on this dish involves a tweak on the sauce. Traditionally, bún is served with a sauce called nuoc cham, which includes nuoc mam, or fish sauce. Here, I've made a quick vegan version using soy sauce and minced nori. This is a trick I've learnt (from watching Heston Blumenthal's Mission Impossible food series) to introduce umami to the sauce and enhance the intensity of its flavor. The nori can work surprisingly well in a variety of other dishes too, and I can't wait to show you in future posts. In the meantime, enjoy!

Vegan Bún Chay (Vietnamese Noodle Salad) with Tofu Cheese Balls

Serves: 2 to 3

Noodles:

100g/4 oz dried rice sticks or vermicelli

Greens:

1 1/2 cups shredded red cabbage and/or lettuce

1/2 cup mung bean sprouts

1/2 cup julienned cucumber (I made ribbons)

1/2 cup julienned carrots (I cut mine using flower cutters)

Large handful of mixed herbs, coarsely chopped or torn (basil, mint, cilantro; if available, rau răm or Vietnamese mint)

1 large red pepper, deseeded and julienned

Sauce:

1 sheet nori, minced finely in a blender

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

2 tablespoons soy sauce

2 tablespoons sugar

4 tablespoons water

1 clove garlic, crushed

Tofu Cheese Balls:
Makes: 15

450g/15oz firm tofu, well drained

150g/5oz soft cheese (I used vegan mozzarella)

1 cup Shiitake mushrooms, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 small onion, sliced finely

3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

4 tablespoons cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon pepper

oil, for deep frying

Garnish:

2-3 tablespoons roasted peanuts, chopped

For the noodles

Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add rice sticks. Stir and cook until noodles are white and tender but still firm, about 3-5 minutes. Drain in a colander and rinse under cold water, fluffing the noodles to separate the strands. Drain again completely.

For the greens

Prepare the greens and set aside. (May be prepared ahead of time and kept in the refrigerator.)

For the sauce

In a small bowl, whisk together ingredients for sauce. Set aside. (May be prepared ahead of time kept in the refrigerator.)

For the tofu balls

1. Place all ingredients (except oil) in a food processor and blend until homogeneous.

2. Place about 1 tablespoon of tofu mixture on palm of hand and roll into a ball. If mixture is too sticky, moisten palms with a little water before rolling.

3. Heat oil to 350F/175C and deep fry balls until golden brown. Drain excess oil on paper towel and serve hot.

To serve:

Divide the noodles between two bowls. Arrange greens and tofu balls on top or the sides and garnish with peanuts. Just before eating, drizzle with sauce to taste and toss.

French Fridays with Dorie – Vegan Tomato Cheese Tartlets

This week’s French Fridays with Dorie assignment was easy enough, it’s a concept more than it is a recipe of tomato and mozzarella (or goat) cheese slices arranged over puffed pastry rounds. The perfect dish for when you have an abundance of tomatoes and very little time or idea on how to use them up.

What’s interesting here is that the puff pastry discs aren’t supposed to be cooked to puff-fection but rather, are flattened during baking by weighing them down with another baking sheet on top. They result in heavier but still crisp and flaky rounds, with the flat base making it easier to spread a pesto paste or olive tapenade on them and place the tomato and cheese toppings.

For the spread, I made some fresh lemon basil pesto from my plant that was growing out of control in the garden. It seemed I had run out of ideas on ways to utilize that basil too lately, so what a relief to be able to store some of the leaves in a jar in the form of pesto. 

I’m also slowly trying to give up dairy products (it’s damn hard, given my love for baking and desserts!) so this week, I used store-bought vegan puff pastry and also came up with a quick and easy version of mozzarella cheese. And what is quicker and easier when it comes to setting ingredients in a semi-solid form than agar agar? Yes, it seems odd, but the texture of the vegan cheese turned out very similar to soft mozzarella. Plus it crumbles and shreds too if the consistency is made a little thicker and it sets firmer. Think healthy pizza, yay!

I haven’t shared my own recipe with my FFWD posts in a long time, so I’m happy to share this cheese one with you. It’s basically a mix of silken tofu, agar powder (not flakes), ground cashews and almonds, rice vinegar and garlic. Blitz everything in a food processor, bring the mixture to a quick boil and pour into a mold, leaving it to cool down and then set in the fridge for several hours. If you have access to this non-dairy cream substitute, MimicCreme (I don’t), then just replace the nuts with a cup of this vegan cream and your ‘cheese’ texture will turn out smoother than mine looks here.

The blended 'cheese' mixture 

This vegan tomato tartlet salad, drizzled with balsamic vinegar, tasted better way than I expected. Vegan food in general tends to get a bad rep, because we do expect it to taste bland and often look boring, and as you can see that’s clearly not the case here. In many of my future FFWD posts, I’m going to show you how to bring sexy into vegetarian or vegan cuisine. I’ve had so many successful experiments with substituting ingredients for the real deal that I need to put them down as solid recipes and share them with all of you out there - before I forget it all! The French may not approve of my cheese blasphemy this week, but hey, sometimes I feel we should do what we need to in order to align the outside world with our evolving inner selves. :)

Have a peaceful weekend, everyone!

Homemade Vegan Mozzarella
Ingredients:
1 package extra soft silken tofu (about 340g)
1/2 cup ground raw almonds
1/2 cup ground raw cashew nuts
3/4 cup water
1/2 tablespoon salt
2 cloves garlic, finely grated (or 1 teaspoon garlic powder)
1 teaspoon rice vinegar
4 teaspoons agar agar powder

Method:

1. Place all ingredients except agar powder in a blender or food processor, and blend on high until it becomes a completely liquid consistency. Place the mixture in a small saucepan, stir in the agar powder, and allow to sit for 5 minutes.

2. Bring the contents of the saucepan to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Be careful, as the hot mixture will sputter. Remove from heat and pour immediately into a baking dish or mold. 

3. Smooth over the mixture as if you were making a batch of brownies, then place into the refrigerator for a few hours until completely set. Use as you would like any of your favorite cheeses. It shreds, slices, and even melts like real cheese under a hot grill!

 

5 Star Makeover: Inside Out Melitzanes Imam Baildi – Eggplant, Sesame and Fig Stuffed in Tomato

This month’s theme of the 5 Star Makeover Challenge hosted by our talented friends, Lazaro of Lazaro Cooks and Natasha of Five Star Foodie is Greek Meze. We were supposed to put our own spin on a classic Greek meze dish or create something new altogether to bring to the table.

hosted by 5 Star Foodie & Lazaro Cooks!

Greek food is something that’s fairly unfamiliar to me, as I’ve never been to Greece and there aren’t any Greek restaurants out here in Brunei. My meze experience has therefore been limited to Turkish and Middle Eastern ones, and luckily there are many similarities between these and the Greek meze. So this is my take on an originally Turkish dish that’s become a Greek classic, Imam Baildi, literally meaning “the imam fainted”.

Traditionally, Imam Baildi are boatshaped, hollowed out eggplants stuffed with vegetables and herbs, and topped with tomatoes and/or cheese. In my version,  I decided to turn the Imam Baildi inside out and stuff the eggplants inside tomatoes instead. I could easily have used red tomatoes, but I quite fancied the idea of pairing tart green tomatoes against a sweet, savory and nutty filling. As it happened, there was an abundance of green tomatoes in my mother’s garden so I used those and they were perfectly bite-sized.

What I did was to scoop out and chop up the insides of the 6 small tomatoes and 2 eggplants, sauté all that in 2 tablespoons olive oil for about 10 minutes along with chopped dried figs, fresh oregano, ground cinnamon and cumin, garlic, onion until softened. That filling was then seasoned with salt and pepper and stuffed into the hollowed tomatoes, topped with black sesame seeds and these were roasted for 15-20 minutes in a hot oven, not too long so the tomatoes still retained their shape and had a bit of a crunch. 

I had read somewhere that during the Great Lent, about 40 days before the Greek Holy Easter, most Greeks would fast and avoid eating meat and dairy products. So this would be a suitable, quick and tasty vegan dish that could complement any meze spread in a Greek kitchen during that time.

Lazaro will be doing a round-up of all the participants’ meze offerings on Friday, and because I’ve already seen some fantastic and creative ideas from the others, let me assure that you won’t want to miss that post. You can recreate some of these dishes for munchies for when you watch the opening of the London Olympics that very same day. Better still, gather some friends and family round that day for a proper meze party to celebrate the Games!

Rosemary Garlic Flaxseed Kringel Bread

The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.
~ M.F.K. Fisher

I only just realized that this blog had surpassed its 2 year anniversary last May, but with with everything that was happening in my life around that time, it had completely slipped my mind. So yay, happy belated 2nd blogoversary to my baby, Foodiva's Kitchen! What better to commemorate the occasion than with a bread post? Now those of you who have been following this blog know that I am ever so slightly obsessed with beautiful breads, especially the baked, yeasty kinds. I blame it all on my time in Europe, when I found it quite impossible to walk past a bakery everyday without being drawn in by the waft of the freshly baked loaves. Oh, and walking out with at least one each time! 

So a while ago, I came across several posts featuring a traditional Estonian festive bread called Kringel Bread. Originating in Germany, it's a sweet bread often flavored with cinnamon and almonds and it's usually baked in Estonia for special occasions such as holidays and birthdays. Kringel just means 'circle' or 'ring' so the bread is basically one that's been twisted into the shape of a pretzel or a simple ring. 

I actually made this bread quite a while ago and the draft post had been lying dormant in my posting schedule  all this time, waiting for the day when I will have the desire to fine-tune it and finally press the 'Publish' button. I'm not quite sure why it took me so long to get this out because it really is a pretty and scrumptious tasting bread. Instead of a sweet-bread, however, I opted to make a savory one using a filling of fresh rosemary, garlic and flaxseed. And just because I was on a healthy streak the day I made this, I exchanged the plain flour with whole wheat flour...it made me feel better about scoffing down almost all of the Kringel on my own afterwards :).

It's an impressive-looking bread once it's baked, but don't be scared off thinking you can't make it as it's really quite simple to shape. Once you sprinkle the flattened dough with the filling, you just have to roll it up into a cylinder, slice it in the middle leaving one end intact, twist the two ropes around each other and finally join the ends together to make a circle. That's all there is to it.

Enjoy making this bread for your loved ones and friends and don't forget to be adventurous with the filling!

Off to Yeastspotting this goes!

Rosemary Garlic Flaxseed Kringel Bread

Ingredients:

Dough

300 g all-purpose or wholewheat flour (2 cups)

1/2 tsp salt

125 ml lukewarm milk (1/2 cup)

20 g fresh yeast (0.6 oz fresh yeast or 1 envelope active dry yeast)

30 g melted butter (1/8 cup)

1 egg yolk

1 tbsp sugar

Filling

50 g softened butter (1/4 cup)

2 tablespoons finely chopped rosemary

3 garlic cloves, minced

3 tablespoons flaxmeal/ground flaxseed

Method:

1. Mix the yeast and sugar with the lukewarm milk and let it sit a few minutes while the yeast bubbles and foams up.

2. Add the egg yolk, the melted butter, the flour and the salt, then knead the dough and shape into a ball.

3. Place the dough in a large, greased bowl, then cover and place in a warm space and let rise until doubled in size (about 1 hour).

4. Preheat oven to 200°C (about 400°F). Dust your work surface with flour, and roll the dough out to a rectangle with a thickness of 1cm.

5. Spread the melted butter across all of the dough, then sprinkle the rosemary, garlic and flaxmeal on top.

6. Roll up the dough into a cylinder and using a knife, cut the log in half length-wise but leave one end still joined up.

7. Twist the two halves together, keeping the open layers exposed as shown in the photo tutorial. Form into a wreath shape, weave the ends together and pinch to seal. Transfer to a baking tray (buttered or lined with a cookie sheet or silpat).

8. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until the top is golden brown. Cover with a foil halfway to prevent excessive browning of the dough.

9. Reduce the oven temperature to 180°C (350°F) after 5-10 minutes to stop it burning. Remove from oven and leave to cool on a rack for about 5 minutes before eating.

French Fridays with Dorie - Crunchy Ginger Pickled Cucumbers

Earth laughs in flowers.
~ Henry David Thoreau

A friend once told me that the way someone prepares food is an innate expression of their soul. I'm too scared to even ponder what my food says about me, nevertheless I couldn't resist turning this week's French Fridays with Dorie cooking group assignment into something that Dorie had probably never envisaged - visually, anyway - when she was writing up her award-winning cookbook, Around My French Table.

It's an easy recipe with no cooking involved, Crunchy Ginger Pickled Cucumbers. Dorie suggested that we cut the cucumber into chunks and add minced ginger and red pepper flakes to the pickling liquid. So what did I do? I sliced the cucumbers across into rounds and punched out holes in the middle using a round cutter I use for making donuts. And instead of mincing the ginger, I decided how lovely it would be if the ginger was turned into teeny flowers. My flower shaped fondant cutter proved handy for this task and I was glad it got some usage because having never ever worked with fondant, my exotic cutters were lying in my baking cabinet doing, well not very much. Please don't ask me why I even have so many of them in the first place....that's like asking why I have more pairs of shoes than I'll ever need. It's just one of those unresolvable mysteries of the universe!

In place of the red pepper flakes, I thought fresh sliced red pepper would complement the green of the cucumber and still give off some heat. For an extra dimension of flavor, you could sprinkle some minced herbs, either cilantro, parsley or chives on top of the cucumbers just before serving but I chose not too, because after cutting out all those miniature ginger flowers, why would I want to hide them? These pickles are quick to prepare and make such pretty picnic food, I will definitely be thinking up new ways of serving this up in future. Oh, and there will always be a more interesting way just around the corner!

5-Star Makeover - Raspberry Salmorejo with Balsamic Caviar

"Between soup and love, the first is better."
~ old Spanish saying

First of all, thank you for the outpouring of compassion and well wishes from everyone following my last post. I am very grateful and overwhelmed by how kind everyone has been, however soon after that grief started to kick in and I suddenly found myself in that weird place called 'shut-down'. Luckily I recognized this and immediately made the decision to take a hiatus from this blog (and also others) for a few weeks. If I hadn’t been coming round to your lovely blogs to say ‘Hello’ or ‘Wow!’ lately, well this is the reason.

All this isn’t even newsworthy, so why am I telling you about it? It's not that I think anyone out there is pacing for my recipes or stories, in fact I’m still amazed that in between the chaos of stuff on the internet and the lushness of life, someone out there would want to pause to read my stuff. I’m just trying to say that I felt sad, burnt out and needed some time out to recover, perhaps make some space for new things, more creative and loving things. I am not that type of person who can write, create or participate in something just for the sake of it, I needed to feel that it’s really coming from the heart or I’d rather not be doing it at all.

Anyway, now that my art-making, love-initiating engine has cooled down sufficiently, I’d like to restart it with this chilled soup recipe – Raspberry Salmorejo with Balsamic Caviar. Salmorejo is a typical dish from Cordoba in the south of Spain, it's similar to a traditional tomato gazpacho but richer and has the velvety texture of vichyssoise due to the addition of bread. As you can see in the above picture, I had picked a lot of tomatoes from my parents' farm last weekend and could have gone down the traditional tomato Salmorejo way. But I wanted to kick it up a notch for this month’s 5-Star Makeover Challenge and went with raspberries instead.

hosted by 5 Star Foodie & Lazaro Cooks!

Berries in cold soup make a lot of sense to me, it's light, refreshing and perfect for warm weather. I just needed to carefully balance out all the flavors because this could have very easily turned into a smoothie rather than a savory appetizer. 

I served mine up with extra raspberries and brunoise-cut (very small cubes) bell pepper, basil and onion placed at the bottom of the serving glass. It makes for a lovely and flavorful hidden surprise for anyone eating this. To complement the raspberry flavor of the soup, I also made balsamic caviar out of balsamic vinegar and agar agar. A few flower-shaped croutons and a cucumber ribbon completed the dish. It was fun and very simple to make, and a great initiation into chilled soups for me - yes, it's my first time eating it too! 

Thanks to Lazaro and Natasha again for hosting this monthly event. I'm really glad I decided to participate and am looking forward to the round-up of all the chilled soups this Friday over here.

Raspberry Salmorejo with Balsamic Caviar

Makes: 4 servings

Raspberry Salmorejo 

100g stale white bread (1/2 baguette)

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons raspberry vinegar

400 g (14oz) frozen raspberries

1/5 garlic clove, peeled

120 ml extra virgin olive oil

100 ml mineral water

1/2 tsp salt

1. Break the bread into small pieces and mix with the olive oil, vinegar and water in a bowl, Set aside while you make the soup.

2. Process raspberries with the rest of the ingredients in a food processor until smooth. Pass mixture through a fine sieve.

3. Put strained mixture back in the processor (rinse it beforehand), add the soaked bread and salt and blitz it into a smooth puree. Keep in the fridge until serving. It needs to be really cold before serving so allow for a few hours in the fridge before serving.

Brunoise of Raspberry, Bell Pepper and Basil

1/2 handful of basil leaves

75 ml (2.5 oz) extra virgin olive oil

25 g raspberries, sliced into 4

15 g peeled red bell pepper, cut in cubes

5 g of finely chopped onions

Salt

1. Process the basil with the olive oil until smooth.

2. Mix the basil oil with the rest of the ingredients and reserve.

Garnish

4 cucumber ribbons (cut them thin lengthwise with vegetable peeler or mandolin)

4 tablespoons balsamic agar caviar (see below)

Croutons

Balsamic Agar Caviar

1 cup light, vegetable oil

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 teaspoon agar agar powder

Extra equipment: Needle-less syringe or small plastic pipette

1. Pour oil into a tall, vertical container such as a glass. Place the oil in the freezer for at least 30 mins. You need the oil to be very, very cold because you'll need to inject the agar agar into the oil later on.

2. For the agar solution, stir the agar powder into the balsamic vinegar in a small heatproof pan. Warm this up on the stove or microwave until it just starts boiling. Take it off the heat, let it cool for a minute and start to fill the syringe or pipette with the liquid.

3. Inject agar solution drop by drop into the oil, just underneath the surface. You can adjust the size of the spheres by the amount of liquid you inject. Let the droplet float down to the bottom of the glass. 

(Note:  The cold environment surrounding the agar droplet would cause the agar to solidify immediately. To get very round spheres, the glass needs to be tall enough for the droplet to form into a perfect ball as it falls slowly to the bottom. Note: If you're making a lot of spheres, the temperature of the oil may rise, so return it to the freezer to make it cold again).

4. Pour the oil through a strainer to retrieve agar spheres. You can re-use the oil. Rinse the spheres under running water to get rid of the oil and keep in the fridge if not using immediately. 

Assemble and Serve

1. In the bottom of a glass, place a base of the raspberry brunoise making sure you do not touch the sides of the glass.

2. Taking the same care, cover with raspberry salmorejo.

3. Finish with a ribbon of cucumber, a spoon of balsamic caviar, croutons and a pinch of salt flakes.

4. Serve immediately before it gets warm.

French Fridays with Dorie - Olive Oil Ice Cream Tart with a Quinoa Crust

Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone. 

~ Mitch Albom

Both my parents hail from big families, with at least 10 siblings on either side. I therefore grew up surrounded by as much love as there was chaos and drama. When our massive family gets together a few times every year - up to 4 generations of individuals bearing similar genes -  we always needed to prepare food and anecdotes to entertain around 250 people! Ours is very much a matriarchal family, with my grandmothers acting as the glue that holds every one of us close together. 

I am dedicating this week's French Fridays With Dorie post to my beloved grandmother (my father's mom) who had left us for good last Monday. The past two weeks was hard on all of us because she had become very ill over that period of time. Except for my 5-Star Restaurant Wars commitment, blogging had been relegated to the back of my mind as I'd wanted to savor every moment that I could spend with my grandmother. She was was my confidante, my best friend since birth and she was unconditional love personified. Although I truly miss her physical presence, I am comforted by the fact that she is now at peace and that she will always be by my side no matter what.

Our last picture together.

So back to this week's Olive Oil Ice Cream. In all honesty, I forgot that this was the week for this recipe - okay, I also forgot today was Friday - until I saw my fellow Dorista, Patty, post something about her ice cream on Instagram. I was curious about the use of olive oil in ice cream and wondered how different it would be compared to regular custard only ice cream. Patty (sorry to keep using you as a reference point) also made a rustic apricot pie to go with her ice cream and that inspired me to want to make something else to go with my ice cream too. I just couldn't figure out what.... drew a complete blank, nada. While I was busy staring into space for inspiration, this packet of quinoa was staring back at me from the kitchen counter. Hmm...would quinoa make a good crust? Well, I decided to put it to the test, and lo and behold, it did make a good crust! It was pretty easy to make too, which was a real bonus.

To make two 3-inch tarts, I simply boiled 1/4 cup of mixed quinoa (mine was red, black and plain) and added a tablespoon of flaxseed meal to it while still hot and moist. The flaxseed becomes sticky and hence acts like a 'glue' binding the quinoa grains together. I then pressed the mixture into the base and sides of a mini-tart pan and left the crust to cool down completely while I made the ice cream. You can chill the crust in the fridge or freezer to firm it up further.

The plain nuttiness of the quinoa and flaxseed played off well against the sweetness of the ice cream. What I also loved was the contrast in textures, the silky smoothness of the ice cream versus the gentle chewiness of the grains. It felt like there was a micro-party going on inside my mouth while I ate this ice cream. Oh, those red hearts made from raspberry puree? They're for you, grandma. May your strength and love continue to live in all of us.

As I said, last week was a pretty intense time for me and my family. Despite that, I did manage to carry out last week's assignment of Lentil, Lemon and Tuna Salad. The intention to participate was there but my heavy heart just couldn't think of anything pleasant or engaging to write in a post to go with my dish. So I'm now taking the opportunity to share my pictures from last week in this post. I hope this doesn't turn into a  'two-in-one' habit...

I made a few adjustments to Dorie's recipe: I used yellow lentils instead of lentils du Puy, cilantro instead of scallions, lemon juice in place of preserved lemon and black rice vinegar instead of red wine vinegar. In spite of the changes, this dish tasted great and it's something I'd like to make again. And again :). I served mine wrapped in lettuce leaves and although it looked like a light meal, the lentils still managed to fill me up.

I'm pretty sure the FFWD site has been turned into an enticing ice cream parlor this week thanks to everyone's participation. If you'd like to have a virtual taste, head on over here.

Hope you all have a beautiful, sunny weekend :).