Coconut Mango Float (Vegan)

The start of Autumn in Sydney means take advantage of the last few mangoes around before they disappear until next summer. One of the many things I miss about summer as I'm trudging through the winter months is the beautiful summer stone fruits, so it's nice to make the most of them while I still can.

Mango float is a dessert popular in the Philippines and several of it's neighbours - including parts o Australia. It's a nice simple dessert, easy to make and usually not vegan. My version has a few changes. I've used whipped coconut cream (a vegan's best friend) but I've also included grated fresh coconut because Filipino versions use young coconuts, it adds a lovely texture to the whipped cream and enhances the beautiful coconut flavour. Most recipes use whole biscuits for the biscuit layers, but I've just used crumbs because I found it a bit easier. If you like, you can layer whole biscuits and just use crumbs to fill in any gaps.

Mango float is often made like a slice, in a long dish and then cut into slices. I've made mine in jars because they look so lovely plus they're very easy to store. You could also make them in individual parfait glasses or dessert bowls, or even in one big glass bowl like a trifle. If you're making it like a slice, you'll want to start with a bottom layer of whole biscuits to make the base, but if it's in jars or parfait glasses then I prefer to start with a layer of mango because I think it's nice getting to the bottom and finding fruit!

If you like a boozy dessert, try marinating the mango in 1-2 tbsp. rum.

Coconut Mango Float

Ingredients
2 x 400ml cans coconut cream (refrigerated for at least 24 hours)
1/4 cup soft icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups grated fresh coconut flesh
3 large mangoes
200g digestive biscuits (or other plain biscuits) (you'll need more if you want to make it slice-style, as you'll need a bottom layer)

To Make:
1. Remove the cans from the fridge (the longer you refrigerate them the better), open them up and scoop out all the solidified cream. Discard any watery liquid in the bottom of the can.
2. In a bowl, whip the coconut cream solids with electric beaters until light and fluffy. Move the beaters up and down while you beat to aerate the cream as much as possible. Once it's smooth and whipped, add the icing sugar and vanilla extract and beat in well.
3. Chop the mango flesh into cubes or slices. At this stage you can add a tbsp. of spiced rum or another liqueur if you want to.
4. Turn the biscuits into crumbs either in a food processor or just crumble with your hands.
5. Start with a layer of mango and then top it with coconut cream and a fairly generous layer of biscuit crumbs. Follow this with another layer of mango and another of coconut cream. Garnish with more biscuit crumbs.
6. Set in the fridge for a couple of hours (or overnight).

Serves about 8.

If you want to make it as a slice, use a long rectangular dish. Start with a layer of whole biscuits and fill in any gaps with crumbs. Then layer mango and then coconut cream. Repeat with another layer of biscuits, followed mango and coconut cream.

This month I'm featuring lots of delicious food the Philippines.

Check out my other Filipino recipe posts:

Tofu Adobo with Pineapple & Bamboo

Lumpiang Sariwa

Lumpiang Prito with Vinegar Dipping Sauce

Pancit Canton

Guadeloupean Chilli Mango Appetiser

A fresh appetiser which packs a real flavour punch as an appetiser or a burst of freshness between courses. It looks very simple, but the strong flavours dazzle your mouth with every bite. Keep the portions small if you're having it on it's own, or have it as a mango salsa as part of a meal.

This dish comes from the beautiful French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe - my featured country for this month. It's a challenging country, with strong French creole influences combing with tropical vibrant Caribbean ingredients and even, yep, quite a bit of curry from it's Sri Lankan influences. It makes for a unique combination of dishes and flavours, but all the dishes I made were delicious. They tended towards the simple, but with lots of fresh fruit and vegetables combined to make elegant and beautiful food.

Ingredients
3 ripe mangoes
1 fresh jalapeño chilli, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, finely minced
Juice of 2 limes
Cracked pepper, to taste
Salt, to taste

To Make
1. Dice the mangoes and place in a bowl. Add the jalapeño, garlic, lime juice and then add salt and pepper to taste.
2. Mix well and then refrigerate for an hour for the flavours to permeate the mango cubes. Serve in individual small bowls.

This month I'm featuring lots of recipes from Guadeloupe!

Check out my other Guadeloupean recipe posts:

Mango Chilli Appetiser

Salsa Piquant

Creole Salsa 

Choko Gratin

Vegan Orange Curd Swirl Yoghurt with Sunset Fruit Salad

Giving a loved one breakfast in bed is one of the nicest and simplest things you can do for someone, start their day with a wonderful surprise and let them know you're thinking of them. It's a lovely gesture for a partner, parent, best friend or even house mate. My partner's birthday was last month and I always like to make sure he starts it with breakfast in bed. But he's much keener on a lighter start to the day than a fry up, a big breakfast, waffles or even pancakes. After living together for about 3 years now, I'm glad to say I knew him well - his eyes lit up when he saw this beautiful, colourful and fresh breakfast.

That was a while ago, and I've had these photos in my file since. But it seemed like Valentines Day might be a good excuse to share it with you. I'm a firm believer in not indulging too much on Valentines Day (see my post from last year with this fun bouquet of melon hearts), we don't do anything together for it - plus I don't need any more excuses to eat lots of chocolate and drink more. But if you want to do something special and thoughtful for your partner, then this gorgeous breakfast in bed is just the ticket (without encouraging them to be unhealthy).

It's a bit of a cheat - the yoghurt isn't home made - but the delicious flavourful orange curd makes your plain vanilla yoghurt really, really special. Just use your favourite brand of vanilla yoghurt (vegan if you're vegan, of course). You can prepare the Orange Curd Swirl Yoghurt the night before so that it's ready to go in the morning.

I chose these fruits because they were beautifully seasonal, but also because of the vibrant hues that look so lovely together. Feel free to change up the fruits used - but try and stay in the orange and red spectrum because it gives the Sunset fruit salad it's name. :)

Ingredients:
1 tub your favourite vegan vanilla yoghurt
1 mango, seeded and chopped
3 apricots, seeded and chopped
1 punnet strawberries, washed and sliced in half
1 pomegranate, seeds only (you won't need a whole pomegranate, just use as many of the seeds as you like)
2 passion fruits

Vegan Orange Curd
Zest of 1 orange (hint: zest before juicing!)
1/2 cup fresh orange juice (should be about 1 naval orange)
3/4 cup coconut milk
3 heaped tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp turmeric (just for colour, if you make with blood oranges then leave this out)

To Make:
1. First make the curd: Combine all the curd ingredients in a small saucepan and whisk well to combine. The cornstarch will be lumpy at first, but if you keep whisking the lumps with go (it's ok if there are just a few remaining, they'll cook out). If you want to avoid all that whisking then I guess you could use a blender.
2. Place the small saucepan over a medium heat. Whisking constantly, heat it for about 2 minutes - or until the contents of the pan are hot but not simmering or boiling (if it starts to simmer, reduce the heat immediately!). Once hot, reduce the heat and continue stirring for another 3-5 minutes. The curd will thicken suddenly quite a lot. Once this happens remove from the heat (still stirring) and swirl through your bowls of vanilla yoghurt. Chill in the fridge while you make the fruit salad.
3. Place all the chopped fruit in a bowl and toss together. Serve with orange swirl yoghurt.

Serves 2.

Vegan Mango and Passionfruit Strudel

There are a lot of desserts on my "work out how to make it vegan" list. I try and limit how often I make desserts though, so often the list doesn't get looked at for a long time. The monthly Sweet Adventures Blog Hop usually makes me get out my list and give one of them a go, although I'm not sure if that is always a good thing. This week I'm starting a new weights and exercise routine, along with a bit of an increase in protein intake and a definite decrease in dessert. This, obviously, is not a good start! Oh well. Wish me luck for the next 12 weeks of not making stuff like this!

Strudel was one of the things on my list. I haven't eaten strudel for years! It wasn't hard to veganise the creamy filling. The secret, as with many vegan creamy things, is nuts. Soaked nuts can substitute almost any creamy thing you can imagine, and it works beautifully here. The fruits I normally associate with strudel are apple, apricot, peach and cherries. However, since the summer weather is in full swing here (it's been hot!) I thought I'd give it a summer tropical twist by using mango and passion fruit. The results were delectable!

Ingredients
1 cup raw blanched almonds
1/4 cup agave nectar
3 tbsp maple syrup
Zest and juice of 1 lemon (tip: zest lemon before you juice it!)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup water
2 passionfruits
1/2 cup flaked or slivered almonds
1 mango, thinly sliced and skin removed
6 sheets filo pastry, thawed
1/2 cup vegan margarine (nuttelex), melted
Icing sugar, to dust

To Make
1. Soak the almonds over night, or for at least 4 hours.
2. Preheat oven to 170 degrees.
3. Place the drained soaked almonds, agave nectar, maple syrup, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla extract and water in a food processor. Process until completely smooth, scraping down the sides often. This may take a little while, depending on your food processor. Should take between 5 and 8 minutes to get it completely smooth.
4. Remove the pulp from the passion fruits and fold the pulp through the creamy almond mixture.
5. Slice the flesh off the mango (you can suck on the seed while you cook), remove the skin and slice.
6. Lay out two sheets of filo next to each other with the edges overlapping (see pictures).  Brush all over with melted margarine and layer another two sheets on top. Layer with melted margarine again and add the last two pieces of filo (so you should have three layers all together).
7. Layer the almond cream in middle of one of the sheets of pastry (once again, see the picture). Top with sliced mangos and slivered/flaked almonds. Fold the bottom and edges over onto the filling and gently flip the strudel over and "roll" it up right to the end. You'll probably want an extra pair of hands to help you with this, as it's a little bit delicate. But if you rip the pastry a bit it doesn't matter, you'll hide it when you roll it all up.

8. Brush the top with the remaining melted margarine. Bake in the oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until the pastry is golden on top.
9. Remove from oven and allow to cool. You can serve it warm (let it sit for at least 15 minutes) or at room temperature (don't chill!), dust with icing sugar before serving.

Makes 1 strudel (serves about 6).

Tirk Salouk Swai (Cambodian Mango Chilli Salsa)

In June last year, I had a month of Cambodian/Khmer food as part of the world food challenge. Unfortunately I didn't really think ahead to the difficulties of having Cambodian food in June - namely, that it was winter and that Cambodian food makes use of a lot of delicious tropical fruits like pineapple and mango. I've learn't my lesson on this now though, and when people request new countries I try and place them in an order to suit the seasons, rather than just the order that people request them in!

When we had our delicious month of Cambodian food, I found some recipes for Tirk Salouk Swai and I really wanted to try it! Combining fresh sweet tropical fruit with sour tangy lime juice, hot chilli and fresh herbs is so far up my alley that it's set up a shop there. Unfortunately, mangoes in winter is a problem. I was determined though, and I found a fruit shop selling mangoes from Mexico for $10 each. The price hurt but I bought one anyway to make the salsa. Sadly, the mango was of an awful quality. I couldn't cut it up into cubes, it just disintegrated into a stringy mango mush. There was no way I could post it up on the blog. So, I vowed to try again when summer came around and beautiful Aussie mangoes were cheap and in season.

To celebrate the new year and the festive season, I had a group of my fabulous friends and faithful tasters over to have some of our favourite dishes from the year again. It was a great excuse to have another go at the Tirk Salouk Swai. It turned out perfectly this time (phew!) and was the perfect fresh accompaniment on a hot summer say. This salsa would go down very well if you brought it to a BBQ or family lunch, plus you can knock it together in a matter of minutes. 

Tirk Salouk Swai

Ingredients

1 large ripe mango

1 long red chilli

Juice of half a lime

2 shallots (scallions), chopped

2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander 

2 pinches salt

To Make

1. Peel the mango and slice as much of the flesh off the seed as you can. Dice and place in a bowl. Now, because you're the cook, you get to suck on the seed and get any remaining mango off it.

2. If you don't want the salsa too hot, slice the chilli lengthwise and remove some of the placenta (that's the pale bit that the seeds are clinging to) before finely chopping. Otherwise, leave it all in and finely chop the whole chilli.

3. Add the chilli, lime juice, shallots, coriander and salt and stir well. Set aside for at least 20 minutes before serving, to let the flavours develop. You can make several hours in advance and keep refrigerated, however, best not to make it the night before as the fresh herbs will wilt and start to brown.

If you're making it for a big gathering, I would suggest doubling the quantities, this recipe makes enough for a party of about 4-5 or a party of 6-7 which includes a couple of people who don't like chilli :)

Check out my other Cambodian recipe posts:

Hot and Sour Mushroom Soup

Kho Manor Nung To Hu (Pineapple and Tofu)

Cambodian Spiced Eggplant

Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Parfait (Borbo Skor La-Pov)

Num Chet Chien (Banana Nuggets!)

Khmer Lemongrass Vegetable Curry

Nem To-hu Sap (Vegetarian Summer Rolls)

Tirk Salouk Swai (Mango Chilli Salsa)

Cucumber & Vermicelli Salad