Cookbook Review... and Giveaway!

In keeping with my recent posts about cookbooks, I have another new cookbook to tell you all about - and give you a copy of. This one, Pies and Tarts with Heart, is by Dynise Balcavage. You may know her as the Urban Vegan from her blog, twitter account, or Facebook page. I know her as my favourite cookbook author (maybe tied with Dreena Burton, though I'm basing my love of Dynise's work on three cookbooks compared to the one of Dreena's I have). She's also one of the two people who have read and commented on my blog since it's woeful early days back in 2006. And we met in Philadelphia in 2011, and she is even more wonderful in person than she is on-screen and in-print.

It is likely that my review of her newest book will be glowing. Because she is awesome. And also because pie is awesome.

But it is not inaccurate. The book is really good.  Here are two gems we've made so far:

I brought this Creamy Chocolate Tart to share with a gluten-free friend, so the base is made with GF chocolate biscuits. For the filling, I used Whittaker's Ghana Dark chocolate, which I love. It was rich and dark and sweet and everyone loved it.

When Andy's parents were visiting, I made the No-Bake Coconut Cream Pie. This was a last-minute rush job. I got home at 4pm on a Friday and they were coming to dinner that night, along with a friend of mine. I was expecting everyone to arrive by 4.30 or 5, so I madly rushed to blend up the crust, then the filling, and get it all together. Then I looked at the recipe properly and saw "refrigerate overnight before serving". Woops. Nevermind - I put it in the freezer for a few hours and it was fine by the time dessert rolled around. And I hadn't needed to rush - no one arrived until just before 6. But this was really easy to get together in a flash. And everyone really loved it, too.

Something that long-time blog readers may have noticed is that I have a tendency to tweak and alter recipes pretty regularly. Aware that I would be reviewing this cookbook, I followed the above recipes pretty much to the letter. But the wonderful thing about pie is how mix-and-match it is.

My new favourite crust is a mish-mash between Dynise's All-Purpose Cookie Crust and her Nutty Crust. Half cookie crumbs, half ground nuts makes for a sweet but not cloying base for pretty much any filling. We filled it with vanilla custard and strawberries on another night Andy's parents were visiting, and I think they would have married it, if marrying pie were legal and they weren't already married to each other. I posted already about my passion fruit mousse tart. I also made a variation on Dynise's Banana Cream Pie, blending two overripe bananas into the pudding, instead of layering slices.

Pies and Tarts with Heart gives you a good foundation in how to do things like crusts, and makes playing around with fillings much easier. One of the things I love about it is the pictorial, step-by-step guides to crust making and shaping and decorating. In the spirit of the cookbook, here is a step-by-step to my experience with Dynise's Pennsylvania Dutch Corn Pie.

This was a recipe I tried to follow to the letter, and involved making pastry from scratch - something I have been reluctant to do in steamy Townsville. But Dynise's gentle encouragement throughout the book gave me courage, so I stuck some vegan butter and water in the freezer and hoped for the best.

I made a Basic Double-Crust Pastry, only I forgot to make it enough in advance to let it rest for 2 hours before rolling out. Freezer to the rescue again!

Tweaking my mum's practice of rolling out dough between two pieces of cling wrap, I put my pastry on  a silicon mat and put a sheet of non-stick baking paper on top. By not sprinkling with flour, it keeps the pastry moist and buttery. And then I can pick the whole mat up and flip it into the pie plate.

We have had the same wine bottle-rolling pin for years now.

Filled with sweet corn and potatoes, I then sprinkled some flour and other stuff on top before pouring over the milk. This is where things went slightly awry - I think I needed to mix the flour through, because at the end there were clumps of flour instead of a thick sauce.

 Topped, vented and trimmed, my corn pie was ready to go into the oven.

 Look, I made pastry! It wasn't a raging success, but it wasn't terrible either!

There are heaps more recipes in the book I want to try out, especially in the savoury section. I am quickly becoming the person who brings pie to things, but that's a persona I'm alright with.

Now, the part you have all been waiting for... the giveaway. Dynise's publishers have a copy of Pies and Tarts with Heart to give away to one lucky Australian! You have until Saturday, 12 October at 8am, QLD time to enter. I will choose the winner randomly and announce who you are in another post on Saturday. You can enter up to 2 times: (1) by leaving a comment on this post telling me your favourite kind of pie and (2) by popping over to my Facebook page and sharing one of my posts about the giveaway. Make sure you return here to leave a comment saying you have done so. And give me some way of contacting you so I can let you know you've won.

If you're not in Australia - sorry! There will be a few giveaways for North Americans this month - keep your eye on the blogosphere, or just get yourself a copy. It's cheap, and totally worth it. You're still welcome to comment, or to like me on Facebook - but let me know in the comment if you're not eligible!

Get commenting, and sharing, and make some pie!

Lemon and Sage Burgers

These patties are a little bit gourmet, in as much as burgers ever can be classy. They're also quick and easy - we had them on a Friday night for dinner, which is usually our laziest night in the kitchen. A bit of forethought is required, unless you use canned beans. The inclusion of lemon was inspired by a bag of Myer Lemons grown by a friend of mine. We happened to have a roasted eggplant in the fridge waiting to be used -- you see, our eggplants remain in high-intensity fruit-production mode, so sometimes we'll throw a whole one on the barbie to use later in the week -- so we turned it into a really nice condiment that really complemented the flavours of the burger.

Lemon and Sage White Bean Burgers

2 cups of cooked cannellini beans, drained
1/4 c. olive oil
juice from 1 lemon
1 tsp. dried sage
1/2 c. polenta (corn meal)
1/2 to 1 c. gluten flour
salt & pepper

I cooked my beans on the weekend and put them in a container with the olive oil, lemon juice and sage, and left them to 'marinate' in the fridge all week. If you're using tinned beans, or just haven't planned ahead, just mix them all in a bowl. When you're ready to make the patties, mash the beans with the olive oil, lemon juice and sage until most of the beans are broken up. Stir in the polenta, and salt and pepper to taste. Then mix in 1/2 c. of gluten flour. Knead for a few minutes, adding more gluten flour if they feel soft. The dough should be pretty sturdy, because these were nice, firm burgers. Form into patties.

Cook on the BBQ, or in a frying pan, or in the oven. We did ours on the barbie, over very low heat. The delicate flavours in these wouldn't taste very good charred, I think, so cook until just lightly browned.

Eggplant mayonnaise
1 medium eggplant, roasted and then cut into chunks.
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. vegan mayo (like Praise 99% fat free, which we used)
salt & pepper

In a blender, food processor or mini chopper, blend up the eggplant chunks with the olive oil and lemon juice until it is pretty smooth. Add vegan mayo and whiz it through to mix. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

We had our burgers on bread rolls with the eggplant mayo, some malabar spinach from the garden, and cucumber.

Quick meals.

To prove that I do eat vegetables, here are two post-moving meals that we scraped together despite our diminished pantry. Both quick to prepare, with minimal hands-on cooking time. This is both a good and a bad thing - I love cooking, and love eating food that has been lovingly prepared. But, Andy and I are increasingly busy at work, and with a house and garden to spend time on as well, quick & easy meals become a necessity. That they are still healthy is the positive thing to focus on, I guess! (Incidentally, both of these meals are gluten free, and soy free.)


First, a pressure cooker risotto. This time it worked beautifully - we used a red onion, and a bit of balsamic vinegar, which gave the rice a pleasantly pink hue. The risotto also had butternut pumpkin, broccoli, and aniseed. It was very delicious.

The second meal is an improv ful salad. Ful is a dish made from fava beans, with the consistency of refried beans. When I was in Ethiopia, we ate ful for breakfast, straight up in a bowl, topped with chilli and tomato, with crusty bread. We had this from our favourite cafe, called Yeshi Buna, one of the many places in Ethiopia where they roast, grind, and brew coffee beans all in the middle of the restaurant. The smell, as you can imagine, was pretty amazing. When I returned home from Ethiopia, I posted the recipe for ful onto VegWeb. Last year, I googled the recipe and found that it had been copied, verbatim, to several places on the internet. Including my commentary about Yeshi Buna. At first I was a bit stroppy that I wasn't attributed, but now I'm a bit meh about it all - it's the internets, afterall. Anyways, we still make ful the same way, except with cooked beans instead of tinned. It's as delicious as I remember. This day, though, we didn't have any bread of any kind, so we served on lettuce, and topped with avocado & cucumber. It was still delicious.

Kitty paws not recommended as a side dish.

What are your healthy but quick go-to meals?

Pressure Cooker Risotto - the good, and the disastrous

A few weeks ago Andy got himself a full-time job (which is how we can afford to buy a house). So we're both a bit busy, and relying on easy-quick dinners many nights. One thing that we discovered at the start of the year is pressure-cooker risotto. I use the term 'risotto' quite loosely, because it is really more of a sloppy, saucy rice than the creamy, lovingly-stirred rice that is risotto. But, it's easy, it's tasty, and it hits the spot. And it's modular - we usually have pumpkin and olives, but sometimes use spinach, other times zucchini, and so on. So it's a great weeknight dinner. Most of the time. (Cautionary tale of disaster and woe beneath the recipe!)

2 T. olive oil
1 onion, minced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 c. arborio rice
750 mL vegetable stock
2 c. chopped pumpkin
a handful of kalamata olives
spinach leaves

Heat oil in a pressure cooker pan and cook onions until translucent. Add garlic and stir, then add rice and cook, stirring, until the rice smells toasty. Add pumpkin and stock, put on lid, and bring it all up to pressure. Cook at high pressure for 6 to 9 minutes (we leave it on the heat for 7 minutes, then turn off the stove and let it sit for another 2). Cool by running cold water over the pressure cooker lid. Open, stir in olives and spinach, and let stand uncovered until all the liquid is absorbed. Adjust seasoning and serve.

Now, one night a few weeks ago, we got home especially late (for us, about 6.00) because we were signing the contract for our new house. So we were excited, and tired, and hungry, and perhaps a bit over-ambitious. We had some leftover potato-leek soup in the fridge. Andy wanted to mix it in to the risotto at the end of cooking, like cream. I thought there was too much, but said it would be fine to use the soup instead of stock. So we sauteed our veggies, toasted the rice, poured in some soup and a bit of extra water, and put everything on to come up to pressure. And started to smell a horrible smell. Again, I said, it will be fine, we'll just avoid scraping the bottom when it's done cooking so we don't stir up the burnt bit. But after a few minutes, and an increasingly bad smell, we had to abort. We opened the cooker to find a blackened, stanky mess.

We hate, hate, wasting food. So we tried to salvage the pumpkin. Andy scooped it out, I washed the burnt rice off, and we put it in a tupperware. Later, we realised the burnt smell was embedded in the flavour of the pumpkin, and our work was a waste - the pumpkin went into the bin anyways.

We burned some oil, to try to get rid of the smell. Still, for at least a day afterwards, our place (and my hair, and hands) had a residual burnt-risotto smell.

But this left us hungry and food-less, and 7pm was quickly arriving. Andy thought on his feet, pulled some veggie burgers out of the freezer, and started cooking up a mixture of red onion, the olives & spinach we hadn't yet added to our disastrous risotto, and some frozen red capsicum. Meanwhile, I started building the burgers - and disaster struck again, as the tin of beetroot spilled all over the bench.

But eventually, we got our messes cleaned up. We overcame our disasters. We ate burgers and celebrated buying a house.

So I can see at least three morals to this story: (1) good things and bad things happen, and you just have to get over the bad stuff and focus on the good; (2) pressure cooker risotto is a great time-saving meal, so long as you use stock and not soup; and (3) always open beetroot over the sink.