African Kachumbari (Chadian Tomato & Onion Salad)

Kachumbari is a common salad eaten in various African countries including Rwanda, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Malawi, Congo and Chad. As part Chad Month (which was all the way back in February 2012!) I made this lovely fresh African salad (for other recipes see the links at the bottom of this post - but excuse the photos, it was right when the blog first started). I've remade it now because I really felt like eating it again, and because I thought it deserved some better photos! This time I've used a combination of red and yellow small roma tomatoes, because it just looks so pretty and these lovely yellow roma tomatoes are at my local supermarket at the moment. You can make it with a mixture of any heirloom tomatoes, cherry tomatoes or just regular tomatoes (which would be most authentic). Given that tomatoes are the hero of the dish though, I'd encourage tasty vine-ripened ones, as if you buy tomatoes which taste like nothing then your salad won't taste like much!

The main elements of the dish are tomatoes, onion and citrus juice. There are lots of variations depending on region, this version includes cucumber and fresh chilli. If you like hot, add an extra chilli or just leave the hot bits in (the placenta -which is the white bit which the seeds are attached to - is the hot part of the chilli, not the seeds).  This salad is perfect paired with the Chadian Sweet Potato Fritters (see link below) and is a light and tasty addition to any gathering, potluck or group meal.

African Kachumbari

Ingredients

1 small red onion, thinly sliced (or diced)
4 tomatoes, sliced (or diced)
1 Lebanese cucumber, sliced (or diced)
1 chilli, seeds & placenta removed and sliced
Handful of fresh coriander, chopped
The juice of two limes

How to make:

1.Combine all ingredients in a mixing bowl and toss until well combined
2. Serve immediately.

Serves 3-4.

Check out our other Chadian recipes: 

Chadian Breakfast Bouille

Millet Balls with 3 dipping sauces

Chadian Sweet Potato Fritters

Chadian Irio 

African Loz 

Maharagwe 

Quinoa Soba Noodle Salad with Bok Choy & Sesame

This autumn/winter I planted some bok choy for the first time, it grew quickly and beautifully into big gorgeous green leafy bunches of bok choy. However, I actually wasn't that sure what to do with it - because I've never been a big fan of it. I find it's a bit of a fine line between delicious crunchy fresh bok choy and slimy pieces of goo that get all stuck up in your teeth. It occurred to me that since I prefer it only super lightly cooked - maybe I shouldn't be cooking it at all? Turns out it makes a beautiful, crisp and fresh addition to an Asian salad. So - ingredient one: a big beautiful bunch of bok choy picked fresh from my garden.

Now - enter my next batch of ingredients. I have to say, I get plenty of emails from PR companies trying to get me to push products - as do most bloggers. I virtually never even bother to answer any of them, because I'm very picky. But the other day I got one from Spiral Foods, which was much more up my alley. They sent me a box of lovely foods to cook with:

It was quite an exciting piece of mail! I've got quite a few dishes floating around in my brain to make with all these lovely things, but the first thing I had to go for was the lovely packed of Quinoa Soba noodles. I've never had them before so I couldn't wait to try them out in combination with my beautiful home grown bok choy. The dressing is simple for 2 reasons - firstly because of the lovely flavour of the noodles, and secondly because the star of the dressing is the Spiral Plum Vinegar. Yum!

Quinoa Soba Noodle Salad with Bok Choy & Sesame

Ingredients
1 packet quinoa soba noodles
1 large lebanese cucumber
1 bunch of bok choy
1-2 tbsp pickled ginger sliced, sliced (to taste, it depends how much you like pickled ginger)
4 tbsp plum vinegar
1 1/2 tbsp sesame oil
1 tsp soy sauce
1 1/2 tsp white sesame seeds
1 1/2 tsp black sesame seeds

To Make
1. Cook the quinoa soba according to the directions on the packet, then drain and rinse with cold water.
2. While the noodles are cooking, slice the cucumber into strips and finely chop up the bunch of bok choy.
3. Combine the cold rinsed noodles in a big bowl with the cucumber, bok choy and pickled ginger. 
4. Combine the plum vinegar, sesame oil and soy sauce in a jar and shake to combine. Toss the salad with the dressing and sprinkle generously with black and white sesame seeds.

Serves 4.

These products were sent to me by Spiral Foods.

I've submitted this recipe to the Vegan Virtual Linky Potluck - click here to see the other entries.

Avocado, Rocket and Almond Salad

I made this salad as an accompaniment to some fried tofu a while back and I couldn't believe how special it was with so simple a set of ingredients. The key is, of course, beautiful fresh ingredients. It's a very quick and easy to make and it's texture is fantastic, chewy & bitter rocket with fresh crisp cucumber, creamy avocado and crunchy flavourful almonds and pepitas. Use fresh lime juice for the dressing, bottled stuff just really doesn't cut it!

Avocado, Rocket & Almond Salad

Ingredients
2-3 cups fresh rocket (you can sub baby spinach, if you prefer)
1 large lebanese cucumber
2 ripe avocados
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/3 cup dry roasted almonds
2-3 tbsp pepitas
Cracked pepper, to taste

To Make
1. Arrange the rocket in a wide serving bowl. Roughly chop the cucumber and spread over the rocket. Dice the avocados and arrange on top of the cucumber.
2. Combine the lime juice, soy sauce and olive oil and then shake or whisk to combine well. Sprinkle over the top of the chopped avocado.
3. If the almonds are already dry roasted, simply sprinkle them on top. If they're not, dry roast them in a pan for a minute or two until just golden, shaking the pan often to ensure they don't get burn't spots. Sprinkle on the salad.
4. Dry roast the pepitas over a medium to low heat until they start to pop, shaking the pan regularly to prevent burning. Once they start to pop you can remove from the heat and sprinkle on the salad.
5. Garnish with cracked pepper if you like.

Serves 2 to 4, depending on what you're serving it with.

Peri Peri Hummus Cucumber Bites (Easy Healthy & Vegan Appetiser)

Sometimes you just need appetisers to be quick, easy, delicious and healthy. Because who wants to fiddle around with tiny things when you're in a rush (or just not in the mood). This is the perfect healthy appetiser to whip up quickly - you can even use store bought hummus! Use home made if you feel like it of course. It has a bit of a kick with the addition of some Peri Peri Spice blend from my spice rack. You can substitute peri peri sauce or even just a pinch of dried chilli flakes if you don't have access to either. Start with just a little peri peri and then gradually add  more until you get to the level you like it. If you or your guests don't like it hot at all, just substitute a little cumin or garam masala instead.

Peri Peri
Peri Peri is just chilli really, but it's a chilli blend which is used extensively in South Africa. The term Peri Peri (or Piri Piri) is used loosely to describe chillies in India and South Africa. Both peri peri spice powder and peri peri sauce are simply made from a blend of chillis, generally being quite hot. If you want some interesting facts about chilli that you probably didn't know jump over to my Spicy Chickpea Salad with Olive Hummus Dressing where I've written up some info about chilli :)

Reference: Hemphill, 2006

For my month of spices I'm using Spice Notes and Recipes by Ian Hemphill as my reference tool to learn about spices and for all the information above. Thanks Ian for writing such a great and informative book! 

Peri Peri Hummus Cucumber Bites

Ingredients
1 tub store bought hummus
1/2 tsp peri peri spice blend (or 1 tsp peri peri sauce), add more or less to taste
2 cucumbers
1/2 cup black olives, sliced in half and pitted.

To Make
1. Stir the peri peri through the hummus.
2. Slice the cucumbers about 1 cm thick and arrange on a plate.
3. Top each cucumber slice with 1 tsp of hummus and half a black olive. Serve as soon as they are made (preferably).

Vegan Mizeria (Polish Cucumber Salad)

This is my first scheduled post while I'm away overseas, I hope you'll be enjoying the things I have lined up for you while I'm travelling around! As you read this I'll be in Stockholm spending time with a near and dear friend who I haven't seen for more than three years. It'll be wonderful!

To keep you satiated in world food while I'm away, though, I thought you'd like this. It's Mizeria - a Polish cucumber salad with a creamy sour cream and dill dressing. Very simple but quite special (as simple things often are!). Fresh, creamy, crunchy and full of flavour - this vegan version uses my home made sour cream and it came up a treat.

Ingredients
3-4 cucumbers
1/2 cup vegan sour cream
1 tsp finely chopped dill
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp sugar

To Make
1. Slice cucumbers and place in a bowl.
2. Combine sour cream, dill, salt and sugar in a bowl and stir well to combine.
3. Mix the sour cream dressing through the cucumber. Chill in the fridge until ready to serve. Best served less than an hour after it has been made. Garnish with dill sprigs for prettiness just before serving.

Serves 6-8. Perfect to bring to a potluck or family gathering.

This month I'm featuring lots of delicious food from Poland.

Check out my other Polish recipe posts:

Home Made Vegan Sour Cream

Pyzy (Polish Potato Dumplings)

Golabki (Stuffed Cabbage Rolls)

Surówka Z Marchewki

Kluski Z Makiem (Poppyseed Pasta Dessert)

Makowiec (Poppyseed Strudel)

Cambodian Cucumber & Vermicelli Salad

I've been looking forward to sharing this salad with you since June last year! I made it originally for Cambodian Food Month, but I was so anxious to eat it's deliciousness that I quickly snapped a quick photo without bothering with good light or good styling and then I gobbled it all up. Sooooo good!

But then - I had a look back at the photo and it was pretty dreadful. The bad light made the salad look very soggy and yellow, which is a far cry from the bright fresh and crunchy salad that it is! So when I got together with friends at the end of last year to celebrate by eating some of the dishes that we had enjoyed the most from the world food challenge, I wanted to make this salad because then I could get some better pictures and because honestly it was one of my favourites. Guess what I did the exact same thing again! Anxious to eat quickly = terrible photos! See what I mean?

Attempt 1 - June 2012

Attempt 2 - December 2012

So - I had to make it again (not so much of a chore - I was happy to eat this salad three times!). What do you think? A big improvement? Either way this is such a wonderful salad that I'll be making it again and again and again. So there will be plenty of other opportunities to get more photos - if I can hold myself back from eating it for long enough!

Cambodian Cucumber and Vermicelli Salad
1 x 250g packet rice vermicelli
3 lebanese cucumbers
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 tbsp soy sauce
1 red chilli, finely chopped (you can remove some of the placenta if you want it less hot)
1 tsp sugar
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp sesame oil
1/2 cup chopped peanuts
2 shallots, chopped

To Make
1. Soak the rice vermicelli in cold water for 20 minutes. Drain and then soak in hot water (just tap hot water - not boiling water) for 10 minutes. Drain again and rinse in cold water. Set aside.
2. Thinly slice the lebanese cucumbers. To get these nice and thin and ribbon like I like to use a potato peeler  to do this, peeling strips off the cucumber on all four sides until you are just left with the squishy middle bit which it too soft to cut with the peeler, then I just finely slice the middle bits. If you prefer, you can just cut the cucumber as thinly as you can using a knife.
3. Combine the chopped garlic, soy sauce, chopped chilli, sugar, vinegar and sesame oil in a bowl.
4. Place the vermicelli in a big bowl and toss the shallots, peanuts, dressing and cucumber through it.
5. Top with more chopped peanuts and drizzle with extra sesame oil to taste. Eat immediately!

Serves 4 as a meal or 6-8 as a side dish.

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)

Balsamic Strawberry and Cucumber Sushi Rolls

Wow, this is my fourth post for today! I think I'll have to take a few days off after today, I've had to post a lot more than usual because all of my blogging events unfortunately fell on the same day.

Firstly, at 8am this morning entries opened for the infamous Chopped/Vegan challenge hosted by vegan cooking guru Isa Chandra Moskowitz. The challenge was to create brunch dishes using butternut pumpkin, fresh rosemary, popcorn and apricot jam - quite a challenge but I really did enjoy it! Here are my two entries: Pumpkin Rosemary Popcorn Crumble and Lemon Rosemary Popcorn Cupcakes with Pumpkin Apricot Glaze. It was so much fun cooking with this unusual combination of ingredients and I have to say the results were actually quite delicious!

Secondly, it's time again for the Sweet Adventures Blog Hop, this month with a High Tea theme. I entered a German creation, in keeping with the country theme of this month. You can see my German Frankfurter Kranz Cake here, it's a layered bundt cake filled with black cherry jam and delicious vanilla rum buttercream.

Lastly, the Eat the Alphabet challenge. I enjoy this event, because it's fun to experiment with different vegetables and fruits each month. This may be my last one however, because the rules have changed around a bit this time and getting my head around the time zones and the submission rules is getting a bit much!

Here are my other entries this year:

September (P, Q & R) - Afghan Pistachio Biscuits
August (M, N & O) - Roast Pumpkin & Chickpea Salad with Nasturtiums
June (I & J) - Jalapeño Chocolate Truffles
April (E & F) - Vegan Fig and Red Wine Ice Cream

Ingredients:

1 quantity sushi rice

6 sheets nori seaweed

1 punnet fresh strawberries (200-250g)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
Cracked pepper
1 cucumber, sliced
Mint leaves, fresh

You will also need:

A sushi rolling mat

Plastic wrap

A bowl of water with a splash of rice vinegar

To Assemble:

1. Slice the strawberries and combine with the balsamic vinegar and cracked pepper. Set aside to macerate while you prepare all your other tools/ingredients.

2.  Lay a sheet of nori seaweed on your sushi rolling mat. Wet your hands in the bowl of water (this stops the rice sticking all over your hands) and grab a handful of rice (about 2/3 cup worth, but you don’t need to measure it out). Spread it over the nori sheet evenly, making sure you spread it out to all the edges as well but leaving about an inch or so at one end.

3. Lay a generous amount of strawberries (use more than I did in the picture above), a few slices of cucumber and some fresh mint leaves along the lower edge of the rice (about 1 inch from the bottom).

4. Pick up the edge of the mat and roll it gently over the ingredients, pressing gently on the filling with your fingers as you go to keep them in the centre. Press gently on the roll to mould it together. Be careful not to let the mat get rolled up in the sushi.

6. Once the sushi is rolled into a neat log press gently around it with the matt to make it firm.

7. Repeat steps 2-6 until all the ingredients are used up (approx. 6 thick rolls).

8. Use a very sharp knife to cut each log into eight equal pieces. Serve immediately with soy sauce and wasabi to taste.

Tip: dip the knife in the bowl of water between cuts to prevent the rice from sticking to the knife.

Makes 6 large sushi rolls.

Salad-e Shirazi

It's classic of Middle Eastern feasts to have a beautiful fresh tomato and  herb salad and Iran is no exception. Iranian food is generally packed full of chopped herbs (sabzi) which make for incredible fresh and tangy salads. This recipe isn't the most unusual or remarkable salad you've ever come across, but it's one that you'll go back to and make again and again and again!

On another note - I've been nominated for the Best Australian Blogs 2012 People's Choice Award - you can vote for me by hitting up this link: http://www.sydneywriterscentre.com.au/bloggingcomp/peopleschoice.html

Ingredients

4 tomatoes

1 small onion

2 Lebanese cucumbers

Juice of 2 limes

1/2 bunch fresh mint

1/2 bunch fresh parsley

2 tbsp olive oil

1 tsp cracked black pepper

Salt to taste

To Make
1. Finely dice the tomatoes and then put in a strainer to strain out some of the juice while you prepare the rest of the ingredients (seems a shame to waste I know, but if you don't your salad will be very mushy!).
2. Peel the onion and dice very finely. Dice the cucumber.
3. Finely chop all the herbs.
4. Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and allow to sit for about 20 minutes in the fridge. Serve.

Serves 2 (or 4 as a side salad).

This month I'm featuring lots of amazing Iranian recipes!

Check out my other Iranian recipe posts:

Persian Carrot and Rose Jam

Artichoke and Pine Nut Dolma

Vegan Yakh Dar Behesht (Ice in Heaven)

Iranian Sugar-pickled Garlic

Sholeh Zard (Rice & Rosewater Pudding)

Naaz Khatoon (Eggplant with Pomegranate Molasses)

Torshi-havij (Pickled Baby Carrots)

Mokhalafat (Traditional Accompaniments)