Vegan Chinese Soup

I've been trying to eat more vegetarian and vegan food for a few reasons; health, sustainability and cost. Plus it's a challenge to create something new and I'd just bought some black fungus. The problem I have is that I often struggle to feel full if I don't have any meat. I assume this is because of a lack of protein so I attempted to put together something filling, healthy and of course tasty! This is my first attempt and I'm making it up as I go along so I'm open to suggestions and this post is subject to improvement.

Recipe: Vegan Chinese Soup
Special Needs Categories: vegan with GF & FF options
Special Needs Translated: no meat or animal products

Ingredients:

• Onions (obviously avoid for fructose free - celery substitute)
• Firm tofu (check ingredients, particularly if flavoured)
• Dried shittake mushrooms
• Black Fungus
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower
• Carrot
• Zucchini (some fructose intolerant people avoid this)
• Stock (obviously choose fit for purpose, 7's for FF GF & vegan)
• Soy sauce (pick a GF one if needed)
• Chinese five spice (check ingredients)
• rice wine
• ginger
• garlic
• chilli
• sesame oil
• noodles (again choose fit for purpose, check particularly for wheat, milk or egg content)
• fried onions & kecap manis (sweet soy) for seasoning (if you can eat them, GF & FF warning)

Method

Start by re-hydrating and marinating. Put black fungus and shittake's into separate bowls and cover with boiling water (not the black fungus expands a lot), they need to soak for 20-30 min.

For the marinade combine; soy sauce, ginger, tamarind paste, rice wine, Chinese 5 spice, few drops of sesame oil, some olive oil, chilli in a bowl with a little water to fill it out. Add a little crushed stock cube if you need more flavour. Cut the tofu into bite sized pieces and put in a bowl to marinade. I only marinaded for about 30 min which didn't impart a lot of flavour but I had also intended to fry the tofu before starting the soup till I decided I couldn't be bothered, will see if it adds more flavour next time.

Next fry up the onion (or celery) in a wok or saucepan, when it softens a little then add garlic. Fry a little longer and add stock.

Next slice the black fungus and add them, the shittake's and a little of their water to the wok/saucepan. I like to cook these a little longer than the rest of the of the veggies.

After a few minutes add your veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, carrot, zucchini) and the tofu (make sure you save the marinade).

Now all the main ingredients are in it's time to work on the flavour. First added some of the tofu marinade to get things started as it has most of the flavours you want. Then adjust with; rice wine (sharpness & tang), soy sauce (salt & flavour boost), Chinese 5 spice (complex spices), ginger (sharpness & base spice), chilli (heat & flavour), stock cubes (overall flavour), garlic (flavour boost). Then cook till veggies are ready.

While all this is going on prepare your noodles in another saucepan. Cook them for the amount to time recommended on the packet then drain and add them to your serving bowl. When the soup is ready you pour it over the time. Season with fried onions and kecap manis if like them.

Further thoughts:

• Maybe fry the tofu with the onion to see if it helps hold the flavour and add texture.

Fructose Friendly Gado-gado

This one is always popular, healthy and works well for large groups since everything is cooked separately and combined at the end.  Having the sauce over the top of steamed potatos and a salad was shown to me by a Tasmanian friend's dutch mother who lived in Indonesia for many years, she didn't give up her sauce secrets but I reckon this one is pretty good!

Recipe: Fructose Friendly Gado-gado (peanut sauce)
Special Needs Categories: gluten free, fructose free, (vegan variation possible)
Special Needs Translated: no gluten, no onion, (no fish or egg)

Sauce ingredients:

• peanut butter (I like crunchy) (check if gluten free)
• gluten free soy sauce
• chili
• garlic
• fish sauce (don't use for vegetarian/vegan)
• chinese five spice (Check if gluten free)
• coriander (dried)
• water

Method:
Really simple, combine all ingredients together in a saucepan over low heat.  I usually microwave the peanut butter to soften it a little and help get it out of the jar, then heat it a little on it's own before adding other ingredients.  When you add the water it usually doesn't look like it will mix in but just keep stirring.  Add the water till you get your desired consistency.  Make sure there's plenty of flavour in there as this is what really makes the dish.  (If I wasn't making this fructose friendly I'd have onion in the sauce too, semi-fine chopped and fried a little before you add the other ingredients.)

now the rest of the dish...

Ingredients:

• steamed rice
• steamed potato (& sweet potato if you like)
• chinese cabbage
• cucumber
• bean sprouts
• snow peas
• other assorted salad ingredients
• hard boiled egg (not for vegan dish)
• fresh coriander

 simply combine on a plate (rice then potato then salad with eggs on the side) and pour over the gado-gado sauce!  You can make a salad with the fresh ingredients or just allow people to pick and choose.

Mini asian meatballs

These were a little hors d'oeuvre I came up with for a wine night, really easy and really popular, and now here's a gluten and fructose free version.  No more onion or ketchup manis  :(

Dish: Mini asian meatballs
Special need categories: gluten free, fructose free
Special needs explained: only use gluten & fructose free sauces, no onion

Meatball ingredients:

• mince meat. I typically use pork, chicken or turkey mince, whatever is on special.
• gluten free soy sauce
• brown sugar
• chilli
• coriander
• tamarind paste
• chineese five spice (check the packet, some spices contain gluten or onion)
• garlic

Dipping sauce ingredients:

• gluten free soy sauce
• sweet chili sauce (check it's gluten & fructose free)
• coriander
• tamarind paste
• brown sugar
• lime juice
• corn flour (make sure it is made from corn or maize)
• chineese five spice (check the packet, some spices contain gluten or onion)
• garlic

Method

Nice and easy, mix the meat ball mixture together and put little balls of it on a greased baking tray.  Bake in the oven at about 180 deg C till they look ready (maybe 20 min).  Mix the sauce in ingredients together and serve in a bowl along side the meat balls and don't forget the toothpicks.  See easy.

The meatballs and sauce could be made up ahead of time and simply cooked when they are needed as well.

If you are not making it GF then you could use ketchup manis instead of the brown sugar and some of the soy sauce.  If you are not making it fructose free then you could also put some finely chopped onion or onion powder in the meatballs.

Stir-fry sauce

One of the big problems with gluten free asian cooking is that almost all sauces have wheat based soy sauce and/or onion powder for those fructose free. I have found a gluten free oyster sauce, but that doesn't work if you are vegetarian or allergic to seafood, there are also vegetarian 'oyster' sauces, but I haven't found a gluten free version. So anyway, I've come up with a bit of a stir-fry sauce the I reckon tastes pretty good, it's only had a few iterations so I will continue to play with it a little.

Dish: Stir-Fry sauce
Special need categories: Gluten free, fructose free, vegetarian, shellfish allergy
Special needs translated: no gluten, no onion, no animal products, no shellfish

Ingredients:

• gluten free soy sauce
• little olive oil
• brown sugar (this is a substitute for palm sugar which looks to be high in fructose)
• corn flour (check it is gluten free, i.e. made from corn/maize)
• garlic (contain fructose but usually safe in small quantities)
• ginger
• chili
• tamarind paste (I don't think this is a high fructose fruit)
• chinese five spice (check the packet, some spices contain gluten or onion)
• rice vinegar, just a little
• a little water to make it less rich and go a bit further

Method

Basically it is just a matter of combining everything in a bowl and tasting it to see what you think. I use the brown sugar because I can't use ketchup manis like I normally would and the corn flour is a thickening agent. The tamarind paste is just a fruit paste that give a bit of a 'tang' to the dish, the vinegar does a little of the same. Chinese five spice is a great spice for just about any asian dish, the actual mix of spices varies but typically it is something like fennel, cloves, cinnamon, star anise, cassia, ginger and/or peppercorns. The rest is about as expected I would think. You could also add some onion powder to fill out the flavour a little if it didn't have to be fructose free.

I usually mix this up in a bowl before I start cooking, make it easier to get the flavours right (I used to put my individual ingredients straight ontop of the stir-frys before). When I'm cooking with unflavoured tofu I marinade it in the sauce for a while and just tip it all in together.

Otherwise I think that's about it, mix, match, add/subtract ingredients and flavours till you find something that works. Asian cooking has lots of gluten free options however it often means you have to go back to base ingredients because in many cases, you can't use pre-prepared sauce. Have fun with it!

'What's in the fridge' eggy rice

I've been experimenting with some different ways to cooking rice recently after my girlfriend cooked a tasty risotto in the oven in a casserole dish, I'd only every used a saucepan or frypan and had to stir the whole time. Anyway been trying out doing some hybrid steamed rice risotto which have worked pretty well but I had an egg left in the fridge so I thought I'd try and asian inspired variation.

Dish: Eggy rice dish
Special need categories: Gluten free
Special needs translated: No gluten, check all packageing, have included notes for the important ingredients.

• long grain rice (I used basmati)
• an egg
• stock, vegetable or chicken (check it is gluten free, use Massel 7's for fructose free)
• onion (don't use or substitute for celery for fructose free)
• chinese five spice (check it's gluten free)
• sweet potato finely chopped
• potato finely chopped
• carrot finely chopped
• soy sauce (check it's gluten free)
• tinned tuna (mine was flavoured with lemongrass and wasabi)

Method

Ok so the basic theory is, fry the onion, steam the rice, steam the potato and add the egg at the end.

So, start by frying the onions in a bit of oil, add some garlic if you like.  Once softened add the rice and water till it's twice the depth of the rice, put in some stock (was using powdered), give a quick stir and bring to the boil (adding boiling water will make this happen faster).  Then put a tight lid on, set the stove to lowest heat and set a timer for about 8 min.  The rice will take 20 min to cook, I guessed the potato would take just over 10.

After 8 min throw in the potato and sweet potato, put the lid back on and set the timer for another 12 min.
Once cooked lightly mix the egg, soy and some chinese five spice in a bowl, add the rice and stir through till the rice if fully coated, the hot rice will cook the egg.  The add the carrot and tuna and serve (mix through if you like).

As the title suggest, this is what was in my fridge/pantry, any other veggies could be added or subtracted, for the cooked veggies it's a matter of guess work as to how long they will take to steam.  Some other ingredients to try could be snow peas, beans, chicken, capsicum.