the vegan bbq
there’s nothing better in this land of eternal sunshine than the conjunction of two important astrological events. namely the end of a long-weekend and the beginning of national bbq week. i have to admit, that i had not anticipated having a bbq, which is an event normally associated with the grilling of bloody flesh into delectable chunks of joy, with a large posse of vegans. vegans who, admittedly were all sweet and completely lacking the aggressive millitant approach that so often reflects badly upon their kind. I decided that i would rise, culinarily , to the challenge, and prepare a feast of vegan treats to add to the communal table. i hit upon home made pita bread, hummous, vegan burgers and vegan cupcakes for desert.
so in order:
the pita bread was easy, surprisingly easy in fact. i began by consulting the fresh loaf, an amazing repository of baking advice. i found their recipe so effective, that i didn’t even need to adapt it, so i’ll just reproduce it here:
3 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon sugar or honey
1 packet yeast (or, if from bulk, 2 teaspoons yeast)
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cups water, roughly at room temperature
2 tablespoons olive oil, vegetable oil, butter, or shortening
combine, knead, prove, knock back, rest, rollout, bake for about 3 mins. eat.
i’m learning that you always need to knead, and knead some more to bake the good breads
hummous is easy too, and a real winner. smash up chickpeas, garlic, lemon juice, tahini, salt, pepper, olive oil gradually until it tastes nice.
vegan burgers were a bit harder. without the eggs to bind them up they can go very crumbly, but the addition of rice flour helped it to bind ok, and then a pre baking before their time on bbq meant they worked out really well.
the big disappointment was the vegan cupcakes. completely fucked. i really don’t know what caused their unfortunate failure, again it was the lack of eggs, i fear. apparently there’s many ingredients like soy yoghurt and flaxseed and such like to help replace the binding and leavening effect of the hen’s bounty. so back to the drawing board i go.
as for the actual bbq, a remarkable vegetable kebab courtesy of cyanide cupcake and my vegan burgers filled our pita breads with meat free, cruelty free, ideology free friendship. the pre-mixed mojito alcopops flowed, and so did the rain, at which point we all rushed in to take turns behind the wheel of bekki’s boat shaped bar.
who woud have thought you could have such fun without meat!
