Indian cookbook reviews: Miss Masala and The Three Sisters

I may not be the world’s greatest cook, but that doesn’t stop me being insanely keen on cookery books. Gosh, I love them and I buy a couple every single month. It’s a bit embarrassing actually as I very rarely actually COOK anything from them – no, I just like to read them and look at the lovely pictures and daydream about the amazing meals, nay BANQUETS,  that I would produce if I only had more space/more time/a Kitchen Aid mixer/a better kitchen/children who eat everything that I cook.

I’m pretty keen on vegan cookery books at the moment, which is understandable but rest assured that this won’t stop me buying other sorts of cookery books and then reviewing them here! I have a bit of a backlog to work through as I look at all my recipe books with a renewed interest…

Just look at those pristine un-cracked spines and spotless covers. As you can see, I’m also a bit keen on Emma Bridgewater pottery…

Today we’ll be having a look at a couple of Indian cookery books that I bought last month. I’m madly keen on curry so was pretty excited about getting these two!

Miss Masala: Real Indian cooking for busy living – Malika Basu.

I had mixed feelings about this book to be honest. I loved the recipes, the layout, the vibrant illustrations and the chatty, informal tone but I think the frequent asides about the author’s career, general amazingness and er Cambridge educated brother in law, which I found merely peculiar (No one really cares where other people went to university do they? I say this as the graduate of a Russell Group university so no chips on my shoulder!) may cause some irritated eye rolling in other people so brace yourself if a bit of healthy (and it IS healthy, it’s just that here in the UK people tend to get a bit weird about it if you aren’t going about the place complaining about how ugly, stupid and awful you are) self congratulation makes you want to kick yourself repeatedly in the face.

The recipes look lovely though – they are very well explained and seem simple to prepare although, as already explained, I am a READER not a COOK. They may well entice me into giving them a go though, especially as there seems to be some lovely vegan suitable recipes and plenty more that could easily be adapted by the substitution of milk yoghurt for the soya variety or ghee for vegan margarine (I know, sorry) and so on.

Recipes that struck me as particularly good for vegan cooks include: Hariyali Tikkis (baked spinach, pea and ginger croquettes); Bharwan Shimla Mirch (baked peppers stuffed with masala lentils); Beguni (crispy aubergine fritters); Dal Tikkis (grilled lentil bites spiced with ginger and cinnamon); Khichdi (rice cooked with sizzling spices and split red lentils); Cholar Dal (sweet and spicy coconut and raisin lentils); Bhoger Khichuri (traditional Durga Puja rice and lentils) and Aloo Channa Chat (spicy tangy potato and chickpea platter). You get the idea!

There’s loads here for everyone so I’d recommend this one. I also think people like me who buy cookery books to actually read them will really get a kick out of this one…

The Three Sisters Indian Cookbook – Sereena, Alexa and Priya Kaul.

Another one with a lovely cover that really entices you to buy it! Gone are the hideous beige cookery tomes of the 70s (my grandmother used to collect the Robert Carrier cookery magazine series so I know what I am talking about) and in their place we are being treated to zingy bright fuchsias, lavish purples and gold embossing. It’s almost as if they KNOW that I am not actually going to be doing any cooking from this book…

The Three Sisters book has a much less chatty tone than the Miss Masala one – whereas in her book you would get a lengthy and amusing anecdote that probably involves a pair of Louboutins, a hangover and a lost Blackberry, The Three Sisters are much more discreet and content themselves with the merest ‘This recipe reminds Alexa of a holiday we once went on’ type reminisces.

Where they do excel is in the illustrations. Now, my pay off for not actually cooking food myself from these books is being able to look at the lovely dishes that other people have made and in this book, you get plenty of nice photos (one for every recipe I do believe) to feast your eyes upon.

There’s rather less here for vegan cooks but recipes that caught my eye include: Pakora (vegetable fritters); Mung Ankur Salad (sprouted bean salad); Bundh Gobhi (Indian stir fried cabbage); Simsim Aloo (roasted new potatoes with sesame seeds); Tamatar Baigan (aubergines in tomato sauce); Aloo Matar (potatoes with peas); Aloo Gobhi (potatoes and cauliflower); Aloo Zeera (cumin potatoes); Phoolgobhi Rogan Josh (dry and spicy cauliflower) and Cholay (hot and spicy chickpeas). Again, you get the idea.

This book is set out in orderly sections for vegetables, chicken, lamb etc so if you are okay with using meat substitutes there’s even more scope for making curried treats! If you’re vegetarian rather than vegan then there’s even more scope here to get stuck in…

Yo! Sushi

We ate all of this sushi one happy afternoon last May – and best of all, it was FREE, courtesy of Yo! Sushi at Cabot’s Circus in Bristol.

I’m a huge fan of sushi (of the vegetarian variety of course) and love Yo! Sushi because their sushi is lovely and I really adore the way the little bowls go round on the conveyer belt past diners. It’s unnerving though because while I’m eating, I’m watching the bowls go past at the same time, ready to pounce on the next vegetarian goodie that goes past. It’s a bit weird.

Anyway, we went there for my birthday the previous October, only to have to completely abandon our meal because every single vegetarian sushi that I picked up was covered in fish eggs, which made it all exceedingly vegetarian unfriendly. It was so sad as I’d been really looking forward to going there and I felt very let down as they do claim to be vegetarian.

I don’t usually write complaining emails but made an exception in this case as I wanted them to know that they were doing something that could potentially turn off vegetarian customers like myself. I don’t want to be one of those annoying preachy vegetarians (indeed, many meat eaters have told me that I am the least preachy vegetarian they have ever met) but if a company says that they are veggie friendly but then fails to deliver, then I tell them so.

Unfortunately, for some unknown reason no one replied to my email and I proceeded to unwillingly avoid Yo! Sushi as a result, thinking that their customer services was a bit pants and also that they didn’t really want vegetarian customers. However, a couple of weeks ago I decided that Enough Was Enough and emailed them again to ask why they hadn’t replied to my email and gently reproach them for this.

I was astounded by the response – they apologised loads for not replying (it looks like it went missing in the system), assured me that the fish eggs would no longer go anywhere near the vegetarian sushi (good news for vegetarian customers!) and then offered me a free meal for myself and my husband!

We hastened to take them up on this of course and had the most brilliant time. I tried out some new vegetarian things on the menu – lovely pumpkin fritters (ironically, I had to have them twice as my first one had chicken stuck to it!) and crispy vegetable gyoza plus lots and lots of avocado maki sushi, which is my absolute favourite. Dave isn’t vegetarian so had some very exciting sushi rolls, while Oscar had fruit and custard pancakes after repudiating an offering of cucumber maki sushi. We finished off with weird chocolate and rice balls, which had a very odd texture but were satisfyingly chocolatey.

I dread to think how much our meal came to (the bowls are colour coded by price so it would be easy to work out) but the staff were very lovely and generous and showed us the menu while encouraging us to order as much as we liked. I felt very un-British and greedy eating so much free sushi, but after seven months of boycotting them, I’m afraid that we fell upon it all in a ravenous manner.

It was thoroughly delicious and a really lovely gesture on the part of the team at Yo! Sushi in Bristol. If any of you ever come across this then I would like to say thank you SO much and I will definitely be back!

Anyway, let’s all gawp in horrified amazement at that immense pile of bowls again shall we?

Since becoming vegan, I have had a look at the Yo! Sushi website with NEW eyes and they actually have a pretty good range of choices for vegans, including: cucumber maki, kaiso, miso soup, vegetable gyoza, vegetable firecracker rice, vegetable yaki soba, vegetable tempura and the mochi. I’m also wondering if they would make the vegetable hand roll without egg? Will report back after the next time I go there!

Curry night!

People seem really intrigued by the food that we have been eating since becoming vegan, with some even expressing doubt that we are eating anything nice! That’s fair enough though – vegan food is missing plenty of things like milk chocolate and cheese that most people think of as delicious treats.

We’ve been eating vegan food for a week and a half now and in that time we have had spaghetti and sauce (a huge hit with our youngest son, who ate more than I have ever seen him eat before); chilli; curries; sausages and mash and some very peculiar sandwiches. It’s been a learning curve really (thus this blog to chart our progress) but I can honestly say that we have yet to eat anything horrible or even bland.

The unexpected upside of this diet is that I managed to lose half a stone in the first week thanks to a combination of vegan food, several daily pints of water and a total avoidance of crisps, biscuits and cakes. I didn’t actually expect to lose any weight doing this so this was a really nice bonus!

Anyway, I thought I’d share tonight’s dinner with you – or at least share a photo and the vague semblance of a recipe. I can’t share the actual dinner with you because we scoffed the lot.

Sweet potato, tofu and pea korma.

First of all I behaved with rare organisation and chopped up two large sweet potatoes before roasting (baking?)  them with a drizzle of olive oil in the oven.

When they were ready (soft but not browned) I fried a chopped onion with the squished remains of three large cloves of garlic then added a pack of marinated tofu, the sweet potatoes, some frozen peas and a few cubes of frozen spinach (this is seriously a life saver and I now add some of these to pretty much everything that I cook for a quick and easy hit of Iron). I then cooked them all up until the sweet potato began to fall apart and go lovely and mushy before adding two tablespoons of Patak’s korma paste (a quick vegan option – usually I’d make the korma spices myself, OBVIOUSLY) and three generous tablespoons of vegan plain yoghurt. Stir it all in then simmer for ten minutes before serving with rice.

Ta-daa! My husband LOVED this. He’s been writing about our vegan experiences on his blog too…

Pieminister, a Bristol institution…

If you’ve been to a festival in the last couple of years then there’s a fair chance that you have encountered the awesome majesty that is Pieminister, who spend the summer months sending their mobile stall up and down the country to cheer up thousands of famished and hungover festival goers with wholesome, delicious pie, mash and gravy.

It was funny though that at Camp Bestival we mostly ate at Pieminister or the Thali Cafe, both of which are stalwarts in the Bristol food scene. We might as well have stayed at home! I feel no shame though as I think that outside London, Bristol has one of the best and most thriving foodie scenes in the country with a rightly famous farmer’s market in the centre of the city and a great array of cafes and restaurants that cater to pretty much every taste.

I always think that we are especially fortunate to have Pieminister here though – people elsewhere in the country have the option of ordering a box of twelve pies from their website but that’s a bit of a pricey way to get a hit of pie goodness, although still considerably less than a ticket to Glastonbury. Here though we have two very fine Pieminister shops as well as spots in local markets where we can give in to our need for pastry cased goodness.

I was lucky enough to visit Pieminister HQ yesterday to meet one of the co-founders, the very charming Jon Simon who was happy to talk about his company, of which he is rightly extremely proud but also food culture in general. It was a fascinating chat.

Pieminister itself was founded in Bristol in 2003 but quickly found a spot in London’s Borough Market before working on spreading the word via their now well known festival spots. At the time that they started out, Jon and his co-founder Tristan were disappointed about the fate of the Great British pie and I think that it is definitely partially down to them that pies have had quite a bit of a resurgence in recent years to become much more interesting and wholesome than the vile sloppy items that can still be found in the bewildering synthetic light of service stations.

As a vegetarian, I thanked Jon for Pieminister’s clear interest in catering in an interesting way for non meat eating fans and for their attention to detail. He admitted that at the outset they weren’t sure that vegetarians would actually be interested in their wares but were clearly swiftly disabused of that notion as if there is one thing we vegetarians like, it is pie. Unless it is made with lard of course.

The luscious goats cheese and sweet potato Heidi pie is a permanent feature on the menu and I can’t, to be honest, imagine the meat pies being nicer. However, yesterday I sampled the vegetarian special pie, a Mexican bean one, telling myself that it was in honour of the Chilean Miners (hurray!). I know, I know that Chile and Mexico aren’t the same thing at all and I’m betraying an almost imperialistic ignorance about foreign countries here, but it was the best I could do.

But oh that Mexican pie. Demolished, it was. So delicious and scrummy with just the right amount of give in the pastry, a perfect hit of chilli and a careful balance of chunky butternut squash and coriander. If you ever get a chance to go to a Pieminister shop and eat on the premises then you really must as the mashed potato is perfection and they are justifiably proud of their (vegetarian!) gravy. Also recommended is going for the extras of a scoop of dried onion and some grated cheese on top. Delicious.

The Mexican Mean Bean pie is a seasonal offering, but luckily for me Pieminister have just introduced a range of mini pies, which were destined for children but work just as well for bigger appetites too! Anyway, they come in three varieties, including Mini Amigo, which is the same as the Mean Bean, only smaller. Excellent!

Now, I am quite a big fan of mushrooms but often feel like I am very much in the minority. They are one of the banes of the average vegetarian’s life though as funnily enough a lot of us don’t like them either! It was interesting to hear that at Pieminister’s pie tastings, mushroom pies tend to be amongst the most umpopular so I asked what other ingredients haven’t worked out as well as planned.

Peanuts, was the reply. Apparently they tried them in a Thai curry type pie and they were really quite horrible so if any of you are thinking of making a Thai Pie (I’m a poet and etc), the Pieminister advice is to leave peanuts out of the equation.

Fish pies are also awkward to work with, which Jon, who is a fan of seafood, seemed really regretful about. I don’t eat fish but think that a one off Pieminister reinterpretation of that Cornish classic, the Star Gazey would be pretty awesome. From an aesthetic point of view, of course.

We had quite a long chat about the changing face of food culture, for want of a better term, in England over the last few decades and where Pieminister and its ilk fit into that. There is a tendency to mock the rather pretentious food of the eighties and the fads for foreign delicacies like ciabatta, quesadillas, goats cheese and gastro pubs but I think it’s rather ace that we as a nation are so adventurous and not adverse from borrowing from other culinary traditions.

Of course, nowadays there seems to be a decided and welcome move in the opposite direction with the slow food movement and so on and a heightened interest in getting back to basics and appreciating a rougher, more traditional and artisan sort of food, which I think that the success of Pieminister fits into perfectly. There is a definite preference for the home made these days and the more lop sided and misshapen our food is, the better we seem to like it.

Pieminister really pride themselves on using local produce in their pies, including cider, as befits a company based in Bristol! Dave tried their Mr Porky Pie yesterday, which has West Country pork, smoked bacon, shallots, apples, leeks, sage and Somerset cider and pronounced it ‘very good’ in a reverent manner.

Jon and I also chatted about a few news articles that I have read recently about food bartering, which has started to become more common in some places. Basically, some pub and restaurant owners are encouraging customers to bring in produce from their gardens and allotments in exchange for either a pint or something from the menu. It works out really nicely for both parties with the owners being able to work with very fresh, organic produce and the growers getting something delicious for their labours! What an excellent idea!

Although Pieminister buy their ingredients in from local growers, they actually do maintain a large allotment for the benefit of the people who work for them, which is really cool, I thought. Jon told me that they had a big summer barbecue a few weeks ago where they cooked their own produce and it sounded wonderful.

So is there a Pieminister near you? Check out their website for a list of restaurants and stockists. My vote is for the vegeterian pies obviously but their meat offerings are very special too. The restaurants are really great, if you can get to one. The Stokes Croft one is their flagship and has a lovely welcoming feel, with an array of wonderful foods on display (not just pies, but also sausage rolls and slabs of caramel slices and flapjacks NOT cupcakes), tile topped tables and food served on lovely enamelled metal plates. I don’t know about you, but I seriously LOVE enamel plates and swear that everything tastes better on them!

While we were there, tucking into our pies and mash, the restaurant started to fill up with customers, all cheerfully queuing up and bantering and chatting to each other about which pie they were planning to have that day while the air filled with the happy clatter of fork against enamel. It was really lovely.

Many thanks to Jon and Romany of Pieminister for meeting up with me and for being so lovely and helpful and, of course, for the pies!

I think I have written ‘pie’ so often in this post that the word has now ceased to have any meaning.

(originally posted to my other blog - Pieminister don’t make pies for vegans alas)

Swinky’s Sweets, Bristol

I wholeheartedly embraced the whole cupcake thing when it erupted a few years ago, entranced by the old fashioned cuteness of miniature cakes. Things have moved on quite a bit since then, mainly thanks to the arrival of amazing US style cupcakes in the UK. Until the more exotic flavours arrived we were restricted to vanilla, chocolate and maybe a carrot cake if you were feeling a bit risqué but nowadays there is a whole plethora of flavours to choose from like the heavenly red velvet, oreo, lemon and strawberry. In fact it seems like anything goes and as a result, the appeal of cupcakes just keeps on growing.

I make no apology for calling them ‘cupcakes’ by the way. Pretentious purists may scoff and protest that correct term is ‘fairy cakes’ but I think there is a very clear difference between the smaller fairy cakes of my youth and the muffin sized larger cupcakes that we get nowadays. There’s still a place for fairy cakes, of course but who wants something that can be devoured in one mouthful when you can have a lovely cupcake that can be enjoyed in a leisurely manner along with a coffee or hot chocolate?

London has always been the centre of the UK cupcake world and I’ve longed for a Bristol equivalent to open its doors so imagine my delight when I first heard about the divine Swinky’s Sweets on Park Street! Finally!

The very lovely owner Gareth was kind enough to invite me along for a tasting session of the new breakfast selection and so I hastened there this morning with a friend to try it out. It’s a hard life isn’t it?

We were given a very warm welcome and led to our table, which was brightly painted to match the really lovely, colourful interior. The service was friendly, cheerful and chatty, which is just what you want first thing in the morning when you stop off for a hot drink and something sweet.

On offer that morning was the most delicious buttery croissant, a gorgeously chocolatey pain au chocolat and slices of freshly baked toasted bread, all of which were made on the premises. It was really fabulous and we really loved our accompanying hot chocolate and coffee too! They’re opening from 9am every morning from next Monday so I’ll definitely be calling in for breakfast again!

It was fun to have a look around the shop as they have more than cupcakes on sale! There’s an impressive selection of sweets in old fashioned jars, a selection of sweet toothed American goods (Lucky Charms! This may shock and surprise some of you but I have NEVER in all my life eaten Lucky Charms) and also plenty of gormet chocolates and goodies too. My friend bought her husband a very scary looking lollipop which had ants inside it – I demured however!

The selection of cakes was really fabulous and I genuinely felt unable to choose as I had decided to restrict myself to just four! I was really, really pleased to notice that there was a vegan vanilla cupcake on offer and Gareth told me that there are plans to introduce other vegan cakes at some point soon so will definitely be looking out for them!

In the end, I picked a vanilla cupcake; a bubblegum cupcake; a lemon meringue one and also a chilli orange and chocolate one for Dave. I’ve had a jolly good tasting session this evening and have to report that they are all fabulous! All too often, cupcakes are all style and no substance in that they look fantastic but taste bland and boring as hell but you really can’t say that about the cakes on offer at Swinky’s Sweets! The vanilla cake is yellow and rich and gorgeously custardy in flavour while the frostings are excellent and not too sweet.

I was particularly enamoured with the excellent bubblegum flavour (how they made it taste exactly like Hubba Bubba, I don’t know) and also the deliciously tart lemon meringue and Dave tells me that his chilli and orange cake was pretty special too. I had a bit of the chocolate cake itself and it was great – really rich but not excessively so.

Anyway, it was a big thumbs up all round for Swinky’s Sweets and we’ll definitely be back very soon! Thank you so much Gareth for your hospitality!

If you are in Bristol, they can be found at 20 Park Street, Bristol and are open from 9am to 6pm from next Monday, except for Sundays when they are open from midday to 6pm.

Their website is here.
(originally posted to my other blog back in the days when I wasn’t vegan)

Julie and Julia

Thanks to Sky Movies, I’ve been watching Julie & Julia a LOT lately. I think I try to watch it whenever it is on in fact, I am SO into it. That’s a bit sad isn’t it but I’ve always been one for playing songs on repeat (currently on repeat is Girl I Love You by Massive Attack) and it seems that I am just as sadly obsessive about films too.

It’s a great film though – I’m not madly keen on Books From Blogs to be honest and so haven’t actually read the book that it is based on, but Julie and Julia is just heavenly if you like cooking, writing and a bit of good old fashioned whimsy. There is not a single thing that I don’t like about this film.* It’s such a warm romantic tale with two intertwining stories – of Julie, the modern frustrated writer and lover of food and Julia, the fifties (?) cookery writer who is lucky enough to train in Paris. Oh, I adore it so much.

The bit that always gets me though is when Julie (the modern day blogger) gets a call from a journalist who tells her that her ‘perfect’ heroine Julia Child ‘hates’ her. That scene just never fails to really make me feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach – I feel so deflated, sad and, weirdly, ANGRY for her. I mean, imagine if Marie Antoinette or Madame Vigée Lebrun manifested in my sitting room right now and told me that they hated my blog? Wow. I’d be devastated.

I really admire the way that, upset though she undoubtedly is, Julie dusts herself off and carries on not just writing her blog about following Julia Child’s cookery book but also continues to speak of her with admiration and love. That’s so cool. Or maybe it is just me who would react to a blow like that by deleting the whole blog and swearing an undying enmity for my former muse. There’s a lesson to be learned there, I think…

I also love the scene when Julia gets the letter from a publisher who wants to take on her now famous book, and she goes outside and just holds the envelope to her bosom in the most ecstatic fashion. Surely one of the most magical moments in any writer’s life, beautifully rendered.

Don’t do it, Julie!

There should be a special mention also for the long suffering and immensely supportive husbands of both heroines – they really are stars in their own right and seriously, it makes me so grateful for my own husband who is like my own little (okay 6’4″) cheerleader. It would be impossible to be more encouraging than he is about both my blogging and my writing, even though he isn’t exactly thrilled by history.

In summary, it’s a great film and if you’re writer and the scene when Julie’s answer machine goes CRAZY doesn’t make your heart skip a little hopeful beat, then frankly you must be made of GRANITE.

*Okay, there’s one thing I don’t like – as a vegan I tend to wince through the scenes involving lobstercide and also the wanton waving around of a calf leg.

(Originally posted to my other blog…)

Obligatory first post

This is me. The reason for the shark teeth may (or may not) become clear later on…

I’ve started this new blog on something of a whim, so have no idea how this will turn out or even if it will continue to exist past this first tentative week. Basically though, I just wanted somewhere new to chart the progress of my change to a vegan lifestyle as my main blog, Madame Guillotine is all about the art and history.

I’ve been a vegetarian ever since the age of seven thanks to a dislike for the taste, smell and texture of meat and then, a bit later, a genuine distress at the thought of eating animals. This is partially down to the vile and inedible gristle that the Scottish primary school I went to served up (hey Oldmeldrum School – I haven’t forgotten you and have the years of counselling to prove it!) and which proved too much of a challenge for my hyperdentic teeth. I don’t know what the correct term for ‘extra teeth’ is and can’t google it as I have a phobia of sharks…

Moving swiftly on! Veganism followed as a natural progression when I was at university and I really did love it – I was thinner, more energetic and also a lot more grumpy. My love of soured cream with Mexican food did for my blossoming veganism back then but I’ve remained wistful ever since, to the point that my hatred for dairy and longing to become a vegan became impossible to ignore and even my husband suggested that I just give in and do it as after all, there’s vegan soured cream these days so what’s stopping me?

How times have changed though! When I first attempted veganism as an undergraduate back in the 1990s, there were only a few dedicated ingredients available to me and I could only find one cookbook, which was full of unappealing recipes involving a lot of grains, nuts and pulses. Now though, we are spoiled for choice and a whole new and exciting vegan cuisine appears to have burst onto the scene. Back in the 1990s, vegans were considered to be a dour, smelly, preachy and miserable lot with dreads, army surplus combats and more than their fair share of facial hair – nowadays though they are likely to be tattooed, rainbow haired, sassy and in love with cupcakes.

It’s amazing and I think that there is no better time to embrace the dairy free lifestyle. In fact, it’s clearly so amazing that my meat loving husband (but not the boys – they are remaining vegetarian until they make their own minds up) has decided to join in! This is great for me as it means I have some moral support and also the benefit of his own rather more methodical approach to these matters – I’ve been obsessing about mayonnaise, sandals and cool American vegan cookbooks while he’s been busy emailing all the major UK supermarkets and cross examining them about their attitudes towards food labelling…

So what’s this blog all about then? Well, I’m not sure to be honest – DON’T expect any preaching, politics, ranting or smugness! Instead, expect recipes, photos of my finest vegan creations (if there are any!), reviews of STUFF and chatter about being vegan or vegetarian in Bristol, Paris, London and wherever I go.