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Bread

Bread, Breakfast, Salads & Suppers, Sides, Vegan &/or Raw

Cauli Toasts

“Does the smell of bacon make you want it?”

“Don’t plants feel too?”

“Wasn’t Hitler a vegan?”

… just some of the delightfully irritating questions vegans shake off on a daily basis. “What can you eat?” carnivores ask, pupils morphing into one of those tiny kaleidoscopic wheels on a Mac before it crashes.

Food, dudes. Real food. Hundreds of plant-powered ingredients are at a herbivore’s fingertips everyday; they are Mother Nature’s heavyweight champions of fibre. I envy a vegan’s commitment. Their bowel movements must be like Christmas presents.

Given I am happily institutionalised into marital bliss with all its obligations and sacred rituals, I like to flirt with everything that crosses our front door. This week, it was vegan. The guest. Not the husband.

I wanted to thrill my guest, in the only way available to me (through my pantry). I quickly learned that with just a bit of mental parkour, you can turn any vegetable into a thundering drama queen and steal the show.

So here’s the recipe.

Cauli & Caper Toast

Cauliflower toasts are scorching their hipster mark across NYC restaurants. With the right flavours, cauli toast is pretty fantastical. This dish has quickly become the litmus test of trendiness across cafes. Who knew a bleedin’ cauliflower could cause such a stir?

1 large head of cauliflower
Splash of olive oil
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon capers, rinsed

Fire up your oven to 210 Celsius, gas mark 7.

Cut 2 or 3 large slices from your head of cauli. Aim for about 2cm thick so it won’t collapse on you. I slice down the centre, using the core to hold it all together. Rub all over with olive oil and cumin. Then roast flat for 20-30 minutes or until slightly charred and golden. Throw the capers on top, halfway through cooking.

To plate up, crown with a poached duck egg like in the picture, or and some hummus for a vegan supper. The capers will give fabulous pops of ‘salty lemon’ to the finished dish. Fried chorizo is achingly good too. Hakuna matata.

Here’s an interview of me, and my potty mouth talking to a journalist in NYC, on the release of the US edition of The Virtuous Tart cookbook………..

Don’t forget to hit “BOOM” at the top left corner, with your email address my friend, to receive a new weekly recipe direct to your inbox. Until then!

X SJ

January 28, 2017

Bread, Breakfast, Lunchbox, Treats & Snacks, Vegan &/or Raw, x For Freezer x

Vegan Banana Bread

Coconut blossom sugar is a great sub for anyone looking to keep blood sugars a little more subdued. We’re not looking at a health food here – just a less evil variety of sweetener than that bad white bitch. This new exotic sugar is tastier than white sugar, and sufficiently pretentious to earn bragging rights with that annoying athletic dude in your office.

True disciples carry little dinky pouches of coconut sugar around in their hemp-woven tote bags, to sprinkle into beverages and conversations during the day. Let’s all blame Gwynnie (a favourite hobby of my husband’s).

Coconut sugar’s unique minerally taste comes from its modest stash of, erm, minerals. There’s a snifter of potassium, iron and zinc in there, causing great pandemonium among the glitterati in LA.

Aside from its titillating nutritional profile, this is one very tasty sugar with an equally spectacular price tag. So the fantastical fairy tale ends there I’m afraid. Gram for gram, it’s more expensive than quinoa hand-harvested-by-Justin-Bieber.

2016 Banana Bread (egg-free, vegan, gluten-free)

When my nippers hound me for something trashy, I like to make this banana bread and drizzle dark chocolate over the top. The result is comically hypnotic. That’s because bananas and buckwheat go magically well together. They are the Amy and Brian of the breakfast table. One is naturally sweet, the other robust and burly. Add to this, coconut sugar’s spell, and you’ve got yourself a new BF.

And look, if the coconut sugar is a step too far, you can use fine rapadura sugar or muscovado. I won’t mind. Much.

100g extra virgin coconut oil (for vegans) or ghee, room temperature
160g coconut sugar
350g or 4 bananas, mashed
Pinch sea salt
1 tablespoon psyllium husks, soaked with 3 tablespoons plant milk (an egg replacer)
4 tablespoons natural soya yoghurt or any plant-based milk
1 teaspoon good vanilla extract
200g buckwheat flour or brown rice flour (220g sprouted spelt flour is spanking delicious. Regular spelt flour will require only 180grams. Wholegrain flours can have very different levels of absorbency)
1 teaspoon baking powder
Dusting of oats, to top (optional)

Fire up your oven to 180C.

Then beat the fat with the sugar. Add the mashed bananas, salt flakes, gooey pysllium ‘egg’, soya yoghurt or milk, and the vanilla extract. That’s your glue.

Tumble in the remaining ingredients (flour and raising agent). Top with thinly sliced banana if you have any leftover. Scrape into a large 25cm loaf tin, lined with non-stick parchment. Dust with oat flakes if you have some. Bake at 180 degrees for 60-70 minutes, until it doesn’t wobble in the centre. This banana bread doesn’t overcook too quickly, so relax if you left in in 10 minutes overtime.

Remove from the oven and let it settle for 5 minutes before ejecting from its tin and letting it to cool on a wire rack. This bread keeps really well all week in a bread basket, covered with parchment. When it gets old, a scrape of butter helps keep each slice moist.

In other news …

Very psyched that Jamie Oliver tweeted my flapjack recipe as part of his “10 Healthy Snacks to Kickstart 2016”. You can check his list out here:

Breakfast Bars from @SusanJaneHealth | 10 Healthy Snacks to kickstart 2016: https://t.co/JI040DSyiJ ?RT pic.twitter.com/LmglaJE78u

— Jamie’s Food Tube (@JamiesFoodTube) January 5, 2016

January 5, 2016

Bread, Events

Real Bread – what you need to know

Yes. I eat bread.

I think my personality would expire without it. Can’t get enough of rye sourdough toasted with crispy edges, soft warm centre and mmmizzled with spicy olive oil.

There’s so much crap available in the supermarkets, it’s tricky to know what bread to submit to.

You won’t regret finding a good, honest baker and becoming a disciple of their sourdoughs (like Blazing Salads and Riot Rye, pictured below).

The trick to sourdough is in its digestibility – fermenting the bread with cultures helps to break down trickier starches.

The physical distress some people experience with commercial bread is less to do with “grains” or “gluten” than with the way large commercial bakeries operate. Instead of spending 48 hours making traditional bread like sourdough, loaves are belched out on conveyor belts within a few minutes, and designed to last weeks on supermarket shelves. Most commercial white flour in the US is bleached, using chemicals like acetone peroxide, chlorine, and benzoyl peroxide. This is not real bread! Is it any wonder our bodies reject this stuff, manifesting its contempt for such foods through a kaleidoscope of symptoms like constipation, bloating and military-grade gas?

But REAL bread won’t present such problems.

Below are some fabulous Irish bakers who should be wildly applauded, and supported for their dedication to natural bread making (and not the dental putty sold in supermarkets). Lets support them, so they stay in business.

Joe & Julie Portrait

(1) Joe Fitzmaurice, baker extraordinaire in Cloughjordan, Ireland, is the godfather of sourdough in Ireland. Take a sourdough course with Joe and a few of your pals this winter.

It’s the best €95 you’ll spend in 2015.

(2) La Tartine

A suite of organic sourdoughs from multigrain, to brown spelt, to hazelnut and fig. Surely you’ve had Tartine? Surely?! If not, it is imperative you beg your local deli to stock it, wherever you live in Ireland. (Here’s a link). You owe it to your taste buds and your health insurer.

(3) Arun Bakery

100% rye sourdough and other kickass delights. Find them in Stoneybatter, Dublin. Many health food stores such as The Hopsack stock goodies from Arun Bakery.

(4) EDITED IN 2018 … Sceal Bakery

Check these new comers out. They’re doing regular sourdough courses, and have earned themselves cult status across the capital city.

Pssst. So what goes into “Real Bread” ?

Real bread is bread made without the use of processing aids or any other artificial additives, says RealBreadIreland.org. It’s honest bread, made from unbleached flour, water and fermentation (either by adding yeast or using natural fermentation like with sourdough) and salt. No flour-improvers, dough conditioners, preservatives, chemical leavening (baking powder, bi-carbonate of soda), any other artificial additive or the use of pre-mixed ingredients. Nice one.

Taking the hell out of healthy.

Hit “BOOM” at the top left corner, with your email address my friend, to receive a new weekly recipe direct to your inbox.

October 18, 2015

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Bread

Cauli Toasts

Vegan Banana Bread

Real Bread – what you need to know

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