Silence...

... means that I've been busy with a new project: reopening Kitchen Revolution. Except instead of focusing on baked goods (my usual vegan margarine supplier doesn't carry said margarine, boo. Am working on it.) I'm doing savory food.

Where to find me? Check out my table at Mercato Centrale, the new food / farmers market in Bonifacio Global City on Saturdays, 6am to 12nn. I peddle vegan brunch (sausage, tofu scramble, garlic brown rice) and weekly specials (sometimes pasta, sometimes sandwiches. Maybe sushi? I like to play it up). I'm on Facebook -- if you are too, then friend me!

Funny story how I decided to reopen. After a year in New York attending cooking school and interning at awesome restaurants, I was in a sulky, couch potato, lying-in-fetal-position mode for a month after coming back home. Didn't want to do nothin' except watch DVD's of Brothers & Sisters and Desperate Housewives and think wistfully of my past life. I'm not gonna lie, the transition from a fast-paced city to sleepy suburbia was difficult. I can go on and on about how New York's the greatest thing since sliced bread... but I'll spare you the details.

It was the 16th of November, Tuesday, about 2am -- I was up doing what everyone does at 2am -- checking Facebook. And some friend was tagged in a bakery business's photo of an ad for a new upcoming food market. The ad looked great, the market sounded promising (organic, healthy, vegetarian, blah blah), and I decided that I needed to be part of it. The market opened on the 21st, a Sunday. So from Tuesday to Sunday I was on autopilot, fixing my menu, buying ingredients and equipment, troubleshooting, cooking, setting up shop. Man, that week drained the hell out of me, I think I lost 3 pounds. I also did not sleep from Saturday 10:30am until Sunday 4:30pm.

Fast forward to present time: I'll be at the market every Saturday through February and it's great. My parents should thank Mercato C for getting me out of my funk. I actually don't mind waking up at 4am on a Saturday to set up shop for the market, even though it's gotten in the way of my social life (note that I never really had a social life to begin with...). I love not having a corporate job although I do miss the paychecks. I love "going to work" (making a mess in my kitchen) in shorts and a tank top and no make up. And I love going to the market and meeting other vendors who aren't necessarily vegetarian, but sell interesting stuff.The table on my right sells healthy vegan cakes and cupcakes; the one on my left does home delivery vegetable detox juices. The table behind me does sales for community supported agriculture. And a lot of farmers there sell gorgeous organic produce, herbs, grains, and beans.

Organic lemongrass bought at the market straight from the farmer, 

probably harvested the day before -- P35 / US$0.80 for 8 stalks.

If you live in Manila, do check out Mercato Centrale -- 30th St and 9th Ave, Bonifacio Global City. It's behind The Spa on Bonifacio High Street. Do check out what the market has to offer, and if you're curious, check out my table in Tent 1.

PS Apart from the market, I do have plans to get vegan food into the mouths of Filipinos. Catering, cooking classes... I'm workin' on it!

San Francisco hearts vegans, again

Before moving to New York for cooking school, I spent a few days in the San Francisco Bay Area to visit some relatives. My cousin Edric and his then-fiance Nerissa (now happily married) were gracious enough to take me to Greens Restaurant for a fancy vegetarian meal. I think that was my first time to eat in an upscale vegetarian restaurant.

For our first course, we ordered a sampler of:
1. Brown and wild rice salad with cherries, pluots, cirtrus, and pecans

2. Warm yams with maple and ginger

3. Cranberry pear relish
4. Grilled fennel

5. Golden and chioggia beets
6. Grilled Italian bread 

Edric and I ordered the mesquite-grilled brochette. This dish came with mushrooms, yellow finn potatoes, peppers, red onions, cherry tomatoes, yams, fennel, and tofu with charmoula and cherry almond quinoa.

Nerissa ordered the red curry with fall vegetables, cashew jasmine rice, and cabbage slaw.

For dessert, we had the carrot cake with toasted almond sorbet and vanilla bean quince compote.

 
I would say that Weird Fish is an example of a very vegan-friendly omnivore restaurant.


 
There were many a vegan dish on the menu -- I mean, I didn't have to settle for leaves and tomatoes for my meal! Quite refreshing, really.



For our appetizer, we ordered the Buffalo girls -- seitan with buffalo sauce and vegan ranch dressing. My main course was the Little B Stack -- grilled yams, tofu, vegan mozzarella, and barbecue sauce.




If there's one thing San Francisco has that New York doesn't have, it's vegan frozen yogurt.



Fraiche serves both organic dairy (vanilla and chocolate) and soy (vanilla) frozen yogurt. And c'mon, who doesn't like fro-yo? I ordered mine with figs, graham crackers, and maple syrup.




And of course... a visit to San Francisco isn't complete without a stopover at Maggie Mudd, an ice cream parlor which pleases both vegans and non-vegans alike.

Vegan options galore:

And in the spirit of fall, I ordered the pumpkin pie sundae -- pumpkin coconut ice cream topped with marshmallow sauce, whipped cream, and a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg on a bed of crushed graham crackers.



Maybe this is the ice cream withdrawal talking, but all I can say is... You need to try this sundae, because it rocked my world. If I had to pick only one vegan-friendly place to eat in San Francisco, it would be Maggie Mudd.

For more on San Francisco vegan eats, check my posts here and here.

Errr...

I know I know, I'm a blogger failure -- I've been MIA for 11 months. I had a pretty good excuse though... 

 

I finally got off my ass, quit my job, hopped on a plane and went to cooking school!

Not only did I learn such nifty things as...

playing with a cookie recipe to turn a crap cookie into an awesome vegan one,

baking galettes to high heavens such that I can whip one up with my eyes closed,

and slicing fennel paper thin by hand -- I got to live in NEW YORK!

Being away from home and living in the Big Apple was nothing short of a dream. Not only did I meet and make amazing friends from all around the world, I was exposed to the vegetarian food industry. A vegetarian food industry actually exists. Am I geek to geek out over this??

I even had the privilege of interning at two places: Pure Food and Wine (a raw vegan restaurant) and Dirt Candy (a vegetarian restaurant).

Ugh. Such an awesome experience, literally. I just got back from the trip a few days ago and am still suffering from withdrawal symptoms.

So right now, my homework is to write about the whole experience. Expect posts on:

1. How easy peasy it was to be vegan in the city
2. Cooking school
3. Farm animal fun at Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary
4. And lots of other fun stuff.

 Let me end this post with...




Ice cream. Only in New York can you get cake-flavored soft serve vegan ice cream. Lula's Sweet Apothecary, I will always hold you close to my heart. You too, New York.

Kinda overdue Yummy Magazine feature

Blogging about this for posterity's sake. So back in September, Yummy Magazine asked me to send them a box of cupcakes for a feature on baked goods being sold through Multiply. My vegan cupcakes ended up being featured in their October issue :)

So nice when vegan food gets representation in mainstream media, no?

Vegan activism in the workplace

The workplace is a great place for vegans to be food activists. Back when I worked in an office, my co-workers liked to bring packed lunches as did I. As long as you have fantastic tasting vegan food to share, people will listen to you harp about the health and compassionate benefits of a vegan diet. It helps when you don’t sound condescending and don’t talk about the animal cruelty part of an omnivorous diet.

Instead, focus on the positive: how you can get maximum flavour by using herbs and spices; how roasting or grilling vegetables will make a veggie lover out of a veggie hater; how tofu gets tasty from absorbing any marinade you soak it in; how beans are the most versatile ingredient there is and add heartiness to soups and main dishes.

Of course, the health benefits is a bonus too: yummy food doesn’t have to kill your arteries with cholesterol; you can solve that constipation problem without relying on psyllium husks or Fibrosine; you can easily manage your weight by eating whole food; and this isn’t a health benefit but a benefit nonetheless – plants are cheap. You can make a cheapy vegan dish and have it taste gourmet-ish.

Making your co-workers vegan should not be your #1 goal when sharing your food and discussing vegetarianism with them. People need to make the decision by themselves and on their own time. Your main goal should be to inspire your co-workers to think about the food they eat.

I think I’ve been a fairly good vegan activist in my workplace. I’ve already inspired a former co-worker friend to go vegetarian merely by sharing my lunch with her and sharing cooking tips. Two other co-workers have voluntarily tried TVP (texturized vegetable protein). In fact, I bought TVP granules for them to cook into spaghetti bolognaise, lasagne, burgers, and siomai at home.

Apart from sharing lunches with co-workers, office festivities are another tool to get vegan food in the spotlight. About a month ago, the October celebrants in my former office hosted a merienda for everyone on our floor. I think we served food for about 50-60 people. The others brought barbecue, baked macaroni and drinks; I volunteered to bring a pasta salad and brownies.

Here is a recipe for the farfalle and black bean salad I made for an office birthday celebration. The great thing about this dish is that it was so easy to make, and cheap too! The recipe feeds 8-10 people and you’ll end up spending about P25 / US $0.52 per person.

Farfalle and black bean salad
Ingredients
1 bag, 250g dried black beans / black sitaw, cooked
1 bag, 500g farfalle / bow-tie pasta, cooked
1 bag, 1kg calamansi, juiced
1 head garlic, grated or chopped finely
½ to ¾ c. vegetable oil – olive or combination of olive and canola
1 ½ kg tomatoes, seeded and chopped finely
1 large yellow bell pepper (optional), seeded and chopped finely
1 head onion, chopped finely
1 bag, 100g basil, chiffonaded
Salt and pepper
Additional calamansi juice or vinegar if needed, such as cane, balsamic, or red wine

1. Place the pasta in a large salad bowl. Combine the calamansi juice and garlic; add half of this mixture to the pasta. Drizzle in the vegetable oil – the amount is up to you. Add enough to lubricate the pasta, about ½ to ¾ cup. Toss to coat. The pasta may seem sticky because of the starch, but just be patient with it. The dressing will loosen it up.
2. Add in the black beans, tomatoes, bell pepper, and onion. Add the remaining half of the calamansi-garlic mixture as well as salt and pepper. Toss to coat.
3. Add the basil to the salad and toss. Taste and if needed, season with more salt and pepper. If the dressing seems to be lacking, add more calamansi juice or vinegar.

Suggestions

1. Serve the pasta in a large bowl and top with a basil branch.
2. This pasta is perfect for potlucks because heating it up is not an issue. This can be served cold or room temperature.
3. Play around with the ingredients:
• Pasta – aside from farfalle (bow-tie), you can use: orecchiette (litte ears), conchiglie (shells), ruote (wheels), fusilli (corkscrew), penne, or macaroni.
• Legumes – aside from black beans, you can use: kidney beans, cannelini / white beans, lima beans, chickpeas / garbanzos, lentils, even mongo.
• Vegetables – you can use: cucumber, julienned carrots, singkamas, roasted eggplant, etc.
• Herbs – aside from basil, you can use: cilantro (wansoy), rosemary, tarragon, parsley, dill.
• Acid – aside from calamansi juice, you can use: lemon, lime, or even vinegar such as cane, coconut, balsamic, or red wine.

Vegan MoFo fail + news shmews

Hey Vegan MoFo'ers, sorry for my embarrassing Vega MoFo performance. Nine MoFo's is really sad. But I have a good excuse. I was busy all October trying to help victims of Typhoons Ondoy and Pepeng. So things got busy. Which is too bad, because I wanted to blog about awesome things, like:












My lentil and quinoa Sunday lunch, which Francis seemed to like.

Vegan food activism in the office which you can definitely do at least once a year or when it's your birthday and your coworkers require you to feed them. In this case, it's a farfalle and black bean salad which I believe knocked their omni socks off.

Being vegan in Hong Kong, which was hecka easy.

And other non-MoFo topics, like despedida food!

Despedida meal #1 at Healthy Kitchen in Serendra; featured: fresh Thai spring rolls.

Despedida meal #2 at Som's, Rockwell; featured: Pad Thai.

Despedida dinner at home with the family; featured: tomato and aubergine linguini.

Why despedida? Well I temporarily closed up my baking shop and resigned from my real job because I'm gonna be away from home for at least half a year... I'm going to culinary school in New York! Which is another reason why I've been neglecting this blog -- I have been busy with work, baking and getting ready for school. I'm excited for this new adventure because I can't wait to seriously hit the culinary scene.

Watch out Manila, I'm gonna set you on vegan fire!

Gorgeous grilled vegetable sandwich: Vegan MoFo #9

This will be a quick post as the photo speaks for itself. Had a lovely brunch with my 2 lovely cousins, Miren and Monica, and my brother's girlfriend, Bea at Cafe Mary Grace in Alabang Town Center. We came for the chica session but I gotta say, this vegetable sandwich somehow stole the show.

Hey vegans! Cafe Mary Grace may not have a lot of vegetarian breakfast / brunch options but don't feel sad. Grilled vegetables on foccacia was some kind of awesome. It's usually served with caesar dressing inside but tell your server to kindly substitute the dressing with the tomato-wansoy salsa. The salsa is actually one of the fillings of one of their omni sandwiches. If your server doesn't seem to relent, just ask for Glen - he was our server who was only too happy to follow my vegan wishes.

The homemade potato chips is usually served with garlic mayo -- go ahead and sub it for the salsa, but do yourself a favor and just get good old-fashioned ketchup. It's hard to scoop salsa with tiny chips.

What made this sandwich gorgeous? Uber-smoky eggplant and balsamic-glazed oyster mushrooms. Cafe Mary Grace usually adds in grilled zucchini but with the whole Typhoon Pepeng catastrophe, it's been difficult to get fresh vegetables from Benguet. They ended up doubling the eggplant -- no complaints from this customer! I heart eggplant, I can eat it all day.

For vegans who miss puchero: Vegan MoFo #8

Holy crapparoni, I’ve missed 2 days of MoFo’ing. I gotta get my ass into shape…

What I’d like to share today is a vegan version of another childhood favorite: puchero.

I think this dish is something every Filipino family has its own version of. Puchero actually came from Mexican and South American cuisine. It arrived in the Philippines via Spain and I guess, puchero is one good thing we can thank our colonizers / slavemasters of 300 years for.

Puchero, Spanish for “stewpot”, comes from Argentina, Uruguay, and Spain. According to Wikipedia, the preparation and ingredients of the dish vary by region. Spain particularly likes chickpeas while Argentina and Uruguay like theirs meat-based. Puchero is usually made up of a soup of meat and vegetables.

Here in the Philippines we use chicken, beef, cabbage, baguio pechay / Chinese cabbage, and potatoes. We also like having boiled saba / cooking bananas served on the side. For families who can trace their roots to Spain (fun trivia, on my paternal grandfather’s side we get our Spanish blood from a friar), we like adding chorizo / pork sausage and chickpeas. I believe puchero is usually eaten as a hearty soup but for those with Spanish influences, we like ours soup on the side, meat and veggies served separately, and with rice.












I fondly remember the Sunday puchero tradition upheld in my family. We usually chop up the meat and veggies and mix it with rice, tomato sauce, olive oil, and vinegar in a huge wooden bowl. Each of us had an assignment, whether it’s chopping the meat, or the veggies, or pouring the sauce. My dad usually added the final touch, whether it was a splash of vinegar or a dash of salt. It was a family affair and it was so satisfying to sit down and eat the fruits of our labor.

When my brother Michael and I turned vegan, we no longer joined in this tradition. We missed the family food preparation. When everyone else would enjoy the puchero, we would have some completely different vegan meal.

Last Sunday we had puchero for lunch and for the first time we were able to enjoy a vegan puchero! It felt completely familiar at once and incredibly satisfying to eat. We missed our puchero. For our version we cooked our vegetables (cabbage and baguio pechay) and saba bananas in gently boiling water until tender. Chickpeas, usually an afterthought, became one of the main stars of the dish. We cooked ours in garlic, onions, tomatoes, salt and pepper.

And I confess, I missed chorizo – or rather, the smoky saltiness it imparts. Luckily I had a stash of homemade vegan chorizo (off Isa’s Vegan Brunch cookbook) in the freezer. I threw in a couple of chorizos in a sautee pan with about 1 inch of water and simmered them until tender. I then sliced the sausages in half, and then in quarters diagonally. So as not to throw out the now flavorful cooking liquid, I sautéed some sliced onions in it with a splash of olive oil until tender. After setting the onions aside, I added another glug of olive oil in the same pan and fried up the chorizos.


Eating puchero after years of no puchero was… nothing short of amazing. We didn’t have the time to slice up the chorizo and veggies and mix it up with chickpeas, rice, tomato sauce, olive oil and vinegar like our family usually does but it was rewarding just the same. I got bits of everything and couldn’t even fit rice onto my plate.

If you come from a family that regularly eats a meat-based puchero – you can have your puchero veganified! So to summarize:

1. Cook vegetables and saba bananas separately from the meat.
2. Gussy up your chickpeas – cook them with garlic, onions, and tomatoes.
3. Fry up your favorite vegan chorizo, either store bought or homemade. Check out Julie’s Spicy Italian Sausages, they’re a good substitute.
4. The puchero seasonings – tomato sauce (cooked with garlic and onions), olive oil, and vinegar – are already naturally vegan!
5. Mix everything together and dig in!

String beans that will make you sing: Vegan MoFo #7

You've probably grown up having your own fair share of sucky vegetables. You know what I'm talking about -- vegetables steamed, blanched or boiled to flavorless oblivion, sometimes sauteed in grease and some bits of animal protein, often discolored from too much cooking. Blech.

The humble string bean (here at home, known as the Baguio Bean) is almost always the sad victim of under- or overcooking. I quite frankly detest steamed or blanched string beans because they're just so... boring. Eating blanched string beans feels like a chore. This is why omnivores are omninivores and not herbivores.

I love string beans, they're one of my favorite vegetables. They're dirt cheap and easy to cook so they taste awesome. And and and, if you've got a party and want to serve your guests a non-salad vegetable, string beans are the way to go.

Beans before being stuck in the oven, and they already look lovely.

My favorite way to cook beans? Roast 'em. Lay them on one layer on a baking sheet, brush with olive oil, sprinkle on a good dose of sea salt and black pepper, that's it. No need for some fancy spice blend, leave that for carrots and potatoes. Pure heaven. I can eat these all day.

They usually cook for 20 minutes in a 400 deg F oven, but I like mine quite toasty so I leave them in for an extra 10 minutes. Heck, just eyeball it. Just make sure they don't turn too yellow-green.

Definitely make them garlicky by topping the beans with a smashed garlic / olive oil / salt / pepper mixture before sticking them into the oven. The garlic should be well lubricated in oil so it doesn't burn.

String bean love!

Vegan birthday dinner 2 - a photo essay: Vegan MoFo #6

Best birthday dinner, especially when you didn't have to lift a finger to make it or have to clarify a hundred times that it's vegan.
Thanks mom.Samosas from Assad's Mini Mart on Jupiter St., Makati

Lumpiang Macau: friend spring rolls stuffed with seasoned shredded tofu, served with sweet and sour sauce.

Japchae: Korean glass noodles with vegetables topped with toasted sesame seeds, spring onions, and sauce (sesame oil, soy sauce, ginger, brown sugar)

Fried tofu slabs to go with the Japchae.