Recipe: Strawberry Turnovers

Unlike my veggie/savoury turnovers, these ones...um...had a snafu. As you can see, the 2 strawberry turnovers on the left burst and leaked. I think I added too much honey and had the strawberry pieces far too small. They still tasted nice so I'll share my recipe, just bare in mind I'm still perfecting the process...

INGREDIENTS

Strawberries

Honey

The already-prepared dough (see my turnover dough recipe)

Step 1: Take the dough out of the fridge and be ready with the strawberries. Grease the baking tray or cover it with tin foil if you prefer.

Step 2: Start preparing the individual turnover dough wraps by separating each section along the fold lines; they should be somewhat rectangular but failing that, have them round for rounded turnovers. Don't be afraid to roll each sheet into a ball and roll them out again, with help from flour and a rolling pin.

Step 3: Pre-heat the oven to roughly 200˚C, or gas mark 6 (I think).

Step 4: Chop up the strawberries, then place the pieces in the middle of the small dough sheets. Add small amounts of honey, but not the spreadable kind (see photo).

Step 5: Fold the dough sheets in half. Just to make sure they don't fall apart, I personally have the upper half fall short and fold over the lower part to seal in the filling. If you want to, you can sprinkle some sugar on top of them (icing sugar is my favourite).

Step 6: Place on baking tray and press fork along turnover edges (if you want). Put loaded baking tray into oven and leave to bake for 15-20 minutes (or maybe just half that time?). Once they take on a brown tinge they're ready to take out the oven and leave to cool.

Recipe: Vegetable Turnovers

So I made some veggie-filled turnovers today. These have possibly been my best yet. They look great in this photo, don't they? My previous experimentations of this recipe included parsnip and onion; I don't think there's ever been anything wrong with onion but parsnip has always been a bit too sweet, so it tastes too sour if it goes off.

The one I ate just now was pretty darn yummy, so on to the recipe:

INGREDIENTS

Carrot

Potato

Leek

Parsley

Vegetable Oil

The dough you've already made (see my recipe for turnover dough)

Step 1: Peel the potato and dice both it and the carrot, chop up the leek.

Step 2: Warm up the frying pan greased with some oil, add in the hard vegetables (potato and carrot) and heat up. Make sure the temperature is not too high (moderate will do) and stir before they sizzle.

Step 3: Grease the baking tray, or cover it with tin foil if you prefer. Keep stirring the vegetables and once the carrot begins to turn yellow, add the leek.

Step 4: Once the leek has been added, only about 5 minutes more should be needed before the vegetables are ready to be wrapped. Add parsley, or if you want something more reminiscent of Cornish pasties, use pepper instead.

Step 5: Bring out the hardened dough from the fridge. The fold lines should give you a good idea where to separate the sections. Have the rolling pin and flour ready in case you need to reshape each bit of dough before folding it around its filling (which I always do).

Step 6: Check the vegetables and if you think they're ready (taste test if unsure, since they're about to be baked you don't want them too soft), cut off the heat. If you're using a gas cooker, then have the heat at the lowest setting.

Step 7: Pre-heat the oven to roughly 200˚C, or gas mark 6 (I think). Finish preparing the individual turnover dough wraps; they should be somewhat rectangular but failing that, have them round for rounded turnovers.

Step 8: Put the filling in the centre of each dough sheet. Fold the sheets in half. Just to make sure they don't fall apart, I personally have the upper half fall short and fold over the lower part to seal in the filling.

Step 9: Place on baking tray and press fork along turnover edges (if you want). Put loaded baking tray into oven and leave to bake for 25-30 minutes. Once they take on a brown tinge they're ready to take out the oven and leave to cool.

Recipe: Turnover Dough

I've decided I'll make turnovers tomorrow, so I needed to prepare the dough today. Admittedly, this is one of the foods I went out of my way to practice when I was planning this project, since I wasn't too confident with baking and I wasn't too sure where to start when it came to making turnovers. It turned out that the part most people focussed on in a turnover recipe was the filling, with many online recipes recommending the purchase of pre-made puff pastry dough.

No such thing is on sale in the Czech Republic, in fact, considering the amount of bake-it-yourself kits there are on sale in the supermarkets, the Czechs, it seems, are still preoccuppied with cooking everything yourself. From scratch if possible. So it was a life-saver when I found a basic recipe for the dough that I could make myself.

INGREDIENTS

Flour

Butter (not spreadable! traditional)

Some cold water

Step 1: Find yourself a mixing bowl, or a large plastic tupperware container. Depending on if you want to make 4 or 8 turnovers, you will either need 1 mug full of flour (for 4) or 2 mugs (for 8). Pour said flour into container/mixing bowl.

Step 2: Cut 'sticks' of butter and add them to the mix. Not necessarily all at once. Have 8 sticks if you prepared 1 mug of flour, 12 if you prepared 2 mugs. Add those sticks to the mixture, have extra sticks prepared.

Step 3: Trickle in little amounts of water. Take a stirrer and quickly mix together the mixture. Once it stiffens, abandon the stirrer and knead the forming dough with your hands. The idea is that all the flour you've added earlier should become part of the dough.

Step 4: Continue kneading until all the flour is used. Trickle in more water to make the mixture stick, add more butter to increase the mass of the dough. If you find you have poured in too much water and the ball of dough is becoming too sticky, add more flour to dry it.

Step 5: Once the ball of dough has been formed of all the contents in the mixing bowl (or large tupperware) and it's dry enough, sprinkle flour onto a table top, plonk the dough ball on it and take a rolling pin. Roll out the dough until it is an even sheet about a fingertip thick (said fingertip pressing against a table), try to keep it as rectangular as possible. (My dough sheets tend to be ovals.)

Step 6: Fold into quarters and either a) wrap it in cling film or b) place the folded sheet in an uncovered, exposed container. Put the sheet in the fridge. It has to be left there for either a few hours or overnight, to make sure it hardens.

Discussion: Vegan Junk Food

So what is one of the most well-known, commonly eaten, simplest to make food types that can be included in all diets?

Chips. (or French Fries)

Go on, try and deny it. Unless animal oil is somehow used, there is nothing that stops chips getting eaten in a vegan diet. But even then, people can still point out that a vegan diet is generally healthier than one including meat, since it still avoids all those chemicals and preservatives found in junk-food meat.

Hmm, but the vegan junk food list isn't limited to just chips. Sweet potato chips, prawn crackers, pancakes with syrup, non-meat and cheese subs from Subway... well, whether Subway sells junk food is still hotly debated, but it's certainly fast food, so I'm counting it.

Pasta...2 guesses what I had for dinner tonight

So, one of the most vegan-friendly, easiest to cook meals is your bog standard boil pasta then add sauce spaghettis. It's yummy and refreshing when you have it once in a while, but when you have it frequently - like I did when I was roaming between hostels in Australia - it gets rather boring.

Recently, I discovered that pasta is a good way of using up spare ingredients you have lying around. Don't have any further use for that garlic? Chop it up and stir it into the sauce. Add some chili too. Have broccoli that needs using up? Cut it into florets and boil with the pasta. I've discovered broccoli goes great with napolitana sauce. Chopped kohlrabi boiled with the pasta is also great. There's even other sauces to accompany pasta that include carrot as an ingredient.

There are also the obvious accompaniments like olives, mushrooms, mozzarella cheese, shrimps... ok I'm starting to wander away from the vegan-friendly motif. I will say though, that parsnip never seems to go well. It's always a bit too...sweet.

Thinking about sandwiches

I played Badminton for only the 3rd ever time in my life today, the last time being nearly 8 years ago at my school. I had so much fun, even if I did have to learn how to serve properly.

Linking that to what I want to write about here, well, I came home rather hungry and the first thing I did was reach for my remaining slices of bread and pickled gherkins. That's when I got to thinking about sandwiches: their simplicity and versatility.

Now, you can easily make them vegan-friendly by not spreading butter or margerine on the slices of bread. While not a full-time vegan myself, I frankly never do, mainly because I discovered many years ago that the marg interferes with the natural flavour of the filling. I blame this on an incident while on holiday in Germany a great many Summers ago. My mum was preparing brötchen (hardened bread rolls) for our lunch while we embarked on our 8-hour car ride from Germany back to London, and that's a rough time estimate including the time to cross the Channel, in either the tunnel or on the ferry. So for our lunch, we stopped at a minimal service station, basically a place with a petrol station, a shop, some toilets and lots of park benches. I was looking forward to my brötchen of sliced sausage and hated the overbearing taste of margerine that came with it. Yuck.

So if I do spread anything on bread slices for sandwiches these days, it's paté as an accompaniment to sliced gherkins. And maybe some sort of flavoured cream cheese with sliced salmon, but that's unlikely. Whenever I'm fortunate enough to have salmon as a sandwich filling, I just slice it up and have it between soft white bread slices.

What else do I like as a sandwich filling? Hmm, let's see. Egg mayonnaise, despite not being a mayo fan. I'll also admit that I much prefer my mother's home made egg mayo than the stuff she buys at Sainsbury's. If only she'd make it again...

While at uni, I got into the habit of buying paninis at least once a week from the union canteen. I ate either prawn mayo or cajun chicken as the filling. But there was a good reason I didn't eat too many paninis: every single one got stuffed with tons of cheese, which got melted. Not exactly healthy. (I would have personally preferred having less cheese, but oh well.)

I'm kind of glad I'm not at uni anymore, I would have failed this lent exercise instantly. Now here's something to think about: is Nutella suitable for vegans?

Recipe: Potato Wedges

Tonight has ended up being my evening of chores, so it's only fitting that I share with you a recipe perfect for cooking a lazy meal in a short amount of time.

INGREDIENTS

Potatoes

Spices and Herbs

Olive Oil (out of all the oils, this one heats up the quickest)

Step 1: Without peeling the potatoes, chop them up into wedge-shapes. About 2 fist-sized potatoes should provide a decent portion.

Step 2: Pour in to the frying pan a thick amount of olive oil and heat the pan to the highest temperature. When adding the chopped potatoes, stir them round the pan to make sure all are covered in oil.

Step 3: Once the pan is heated, turn down the heat to medium temperature (don't want the wedges to burn). Stir frequently, and add in the desired herbs and spices, even a little salt if you wish. My favourite spice mix to use is the cajun chicken spice mix - looks, smells and tastes very authentic.

Step 4: Serve the wedges when they're ready. They should look golden and roasted with brown edges. If you're not certain, taste test ;).

Messed-up experiment

So sorry I didn't put a new post up yesterday. I went out for the afternoon and found myself occuppied half the day, it was pretty late when I got back.

I had to use up the vegetables I had, so I attempted to make some sort of soup with the rice noodles. I screwed that up when I drained too much of the water away, so I ended up eating mixed noodles and veggies. It tasted nice, but I'm not writing the recipe here as it needs refining. I'll no doubt try again during the next 40 days.