Here’s what I used (enough for about 8 dl of ice cream):

• 4 dl coconut milk
• 2 dl whippable oat cream
• 1/2 dl sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar or more
• 200g frozen raspberries or more
• fresh raspberries for decoration

I began by melting the frozen raspberries and then putting them in a sieve on top of a bowl. I took a glass, and mashed the raspberries in the sieve with the bottom of the glass, until only the seeds and the skins of raspberries remained. In the bowl was some nice, fine raspberry purée. Obviously, if you have some kind of raspberry-crushing pestle that suits the task better, feel free to use one.

I put the oat cream and sugar in a bowl, and whipped them for a couple of minutes. Then I added the coconut milk, vanilla sugar and the raspberry purée in the bowl, and whipped some more.

I put the mixture in the freezer for an hour. Then I used our immersion blender to break the texture of the not-quite-yet ice cream, and put it back in the freezer again. I repeated this for 5 hours and 5 mixes, and then I put it back in the freezer for two hours more.

It was ready to eat now! We decorated the portions with some fresh raspberries we had picked ourselves. The texture was great, very much like store-bought ice cream. The taste was delicious too! It was very coconutty and could’ve been more raspberrish, so next time I think I’ll add a bit more vanilla sugar and use more berries.

I think that chopped cilantro leaves would be a nice compliment to this curry as well, we just didn’t have any on hand at the time of making.

Here’s what I used (serves 4):

• 1 medium head cauliflower, cut into smaller florets
• 2 onions, finely cubed
• 6 small potatoes, cubed
• 3 dl cooked chick peas
• 1 dl green peas
• 4 dl coconut milk (one can)
• 1 tomato, finely cubed
• 1-2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons salt (or to taste)
• 1 teaspoon (muscovado) sugar
• a 3 cm long piece of a ginger root
• 6 cloves garlic
• 3 tablespoons peanut oil

The Spices:

• 2 teaspoons mustard seeds
• 2 teaspoons fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• a pinch of asafoetida powder
• 2 teaspoons dried red chili, crushed
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons turmeric
• 2 teaspoons coriander powder
• 1 teaspoon Garam Masala powder
• (1/2-1 teaspoon hot chili powder)

First I chopped up all the veggies and pulsed the garlic and the ginger in our mini food processor into a coarse paste. My ingredients made about 3 tablespoons of ginger-garlic paste.

Then I fried the cumin, mustard, and fennel seeds in the peanut oil on high heat until they started to pop, and added a pinch of asafoetida, lowering the heat to medium. Right after asafoetida I stirred in the ginger-garlic paste, the crushed chili, the coriander, and the turmeric powder, and fried for a few seconds more. Now, I added the onions to the pan, and fried them until they were a little soft, for a few minutes.

I poured the potatoes and the cauliflower florets in the frying pan, and stirred to coat with the spice mixture. Then I added the green peas and the chick peas in the pan, stirred again, poured in the coconut milk, and added the salt and the sugar. Now I let the curry simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the potatoes had softened.

Before serving, I stirred in the lemon juice, chili powder, and Garam Masala, and then served the curry over basmati rice, sprinkled with the cubed tomato.

We made Nasi Lemak one Sunday afternoon – here’s what we used:

Nasi Lemak (two portions)

• 2 and 1/2 dl (1 cup) rice
• 2 and 1/2 dl coconut milk
• 2 and 1/2 dl water
• 1-2 tablespoons crushed ginger
• 1 bay leaf
• salt to taste
• sambal oelek to taste (or some other salty chili paste)

We made this in a rice cooker, which is super easy: We just put all the ingredients in our rice cooker except the sambal oelek, turned it on, and about half an hour later it was ready. We removed the bay leaf, and garnished it with sambal.

In case you don’t have a rice cooker, here are the instructions on how to make it in a regular cooking pot:

Put all the ingredients in a kettle except the sambal oelek. Don’t go overboard with the salt since you’re going to eat it with sambal, which is super salty! Bring to boil, and let it simmer until the rice has absorbed almost all the liquid – maybe 20 minutes or so. Turn the heat low, or with an electric stove, off, and let the rice steam for an additional 10 or 15 minutes. Keep the lid on the kettle all the time, except when checking if the liquid’s all absorbed, of course. Remove the bay leaf from the kettle, and serve. Garnish the rice with sambal oelek.

Possible variations:

• Use two cups of coconut milk instead of one cup water and one cup of coconut milk
• Instead of ginger, use one pandan leaf.

We had our Nasi Lemak (clockwise from bottom right) with stir-fried morning glory, vegan ikan bilis, cucumber, and soy strips marinated in dill and chili. The first three are traditional dishes to have with Nasi Lemak, the fourth isn’t, but all of them tasted great with it, we thought.

I think the result was excellent, but maybe it tasted a little milder than the rendang I’ve had in Indonesia. So, the next time we’ll cook this I’m gonna use more chili powder or maybe fresh chillies instead. The recipe is based on a Beef Rendang recipe from Sri Owen‘s excellent Indonesian Food and Cookery, but we modified it a bit: upped the amounts of spices, and replaced the meat with seitan. This recipe serves four persons.

This is what we used:

For the gluten dough:

• 2 ½ dl gluten flour
• 2 ½ dl water
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon chili powder

For the seitan broth:

• 1 ½ liters water
• 2 vegetable stock cubes
• a 3 cm slice of ginger, cut into pieces
• 2 bay leaves

For cooking the rendang:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 tablespoon galingale, crushed
• 2 tablespoons ginger, crushed
• 2 cans of coconut milk (4 dl each)
• ½ teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 ½ teaspoons salt

We prepared the seitan one day before cooking rendang. We mixed the water, gluten flour, soy sauce and chili powder, and kneaded the resulting dough, until it turned all firm and spongy, which took maybe some three to five minutes. Next, we split the dough in three equal sized balls. Now it was time to make the broth, which was really simple. We just put the water, stock cubes, pieces of ginger, the bay leaves and the gluten balls in a pot, and brought it to boil on high heat.

Once the broth was boiling, we lowered the heat and let the gluten balls simmer for some two hours. After the gluten-cum-seitan balls were done, we put the cooking pan outdoors for the night. Had we been in the city, we would have utilized the fridge, of course.

The next day it was time to cook the actual dish. If you’re in a hurry – although that might not be the word to use when it comes to preparing this dish – you don’t need to wait overnight, but can continue preparing the dish right when the seitan balls are ready.

We began by cutting up and crushing all the ingredients, according to the list above. The balls of seitan were cut up into cubes, roughly 2,5 cm in diameter.

Now, we put an iron cauldron on the wood stove, and poured one can of coconut milk in it. In more urban settings, a wok over medium-high heat would do the trick. Then we added the onion, garlic, galingale, ginger, chili and turmeric, and stirred them all in. Once the mix was bubbling merrily, we added the seitan chunks and the bay leaf, and let it simmer on medium heat, stirring it every now and then.

Since the seitan absorbed the coconut milk so readily, we added another can of coconut milk after 45 minutes or so. After about 1 hour and 45 minutes since adding the seitan chunks, the sauce finally started to thicken. According to Sri Owen’s instructions, this should happen between 1 ½ and two hours after starting to cook the rendang. At this point we tasted the rendang, and adjusted the saltiness to our liking.

Now, the cooking didn’t stop here. After the sauce starts to thicken, it has to be stirred continuously, until the seitan chunks have absorbed all of the sauce. This took about one hour. The magic that happens here is that the coconut milk clears and turns into this oily, spicy paste that covers the seitan chunks. So, once the coconut milk was absorbed almost completely, it was time to eat!

We served the rendang with jasmine rice. It tasted heavenly, and was completely worth the effort! But I think that it’s best done in a big communal kitchen, where you can chat with your friends or family while stirring it, so it was a perfect dish to cook at the cottage.

Obviously, coconut milk is not the most healthy ingredient, and it pretty much is the only source of saturated fats for vegans. On the other hand, non-vegans eat saturated fats all the time, and one batch of these delicious cookies won’t change that. What it could change is the attitude toward vegan baking as difficult and dubious, we hope. And, most importantly, home-made gifts are the best even without any health-related or ideological motivations!

Cookie mix ingredients:

• 2 dl wheat flour
• 1 and 1/2 dl spelt flour
• 1 dl granulated sugar
• 1/2 dl raw cane sugar
• 1 tablespoon & 1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 teaspoons egg replacer powder (we have NoEgg brand)
• 1 dl nuts (we had cashews and walnuts), chopped
• 100 g dark vegan chocolate, chopped

Also needed:

• 2 dl coconut cream (1 small can)

First, we chopped the nuts and chocolate. Then we combined the cookie mix ingredients in a small bowl, and then poured them in zip lock bags. We mixed just one batch at a time to make sure that the proportions would be right. Then we stapled a label with instructions on how to make the cookies on the cookie mix bag, and gift-wrapped it with a can of coconut cream.

Instructions on how to make the cookies:

1. Preheat the oven in 190 degrees Celsius and cover two baking sheets with baking parchment.
2. Pour the cookie mix ingredients in a bowl.
3. Open the coconut cream can and stir with a teaspoon until smooth.
4. Pour the coconut cream in the bowl with the cookie mix and mix with a wooden fork. Only mix just enough to incorporate everything, don’t overmix.
5. Use a little more than a tablespoon of the dough per cookie. You can round the cookies at the edges, but there’s no need to flatten them before baking. There should be about 9 cookies on each cookie sheet.
6. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time, in 190 degrees Celsius, for about 12 minutes. These cookies shouldn’t get browned on top, only slightly on edges and in the bottom – this way they’ll be more yummy.
7. Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and place the cookies to cool on baking parchment or a cooling rack, with the help of a cheese-cutter, a cake server, or a thin spatula. The cookies will be soft straight out of the oven, but their surface gets crispy when cooled.
8. Enjoy!
9. If you have leftover cookies, store them in an air tight plastic bag (in the cookie mix bag, for example).

One of our unsuspecting testers enjoys her tea with cookies.

Here’s what we had:

• 8-9 medium potatoes
• 1 carrot
• 1 dl coconut milk
• 1 tablespoon vegetable margarine
• 1 teaspoon salt
• pinch of white pepper

The process was as usual; peeled and sliced the potatoes and the carrot, cooked until soft, mashed with a potato masher, added coconut milk, margarine, and seasonings, and beat with a whisk until fluffy.

Marinating the tofu would be a good idea, since now it only had a mild curry flavor, contrary to the delectable vegetables. Next time I’m thinking I could just slice it really thinly, and place the tofu slices on a separate baking sheet. The milder tofu did balance the spiciness of the vegetables pretty nicely though. I snatched the idea of oven roasting vegetables in curried coconut milk from Urban Vegan’s list of 101 simple vegan meals.

Here’s what I used:

• 500 g firm tofu
• 8 potatoes
• 1 carrot
• 200 g rutabaga (Swedish turnip)
• 1 big onion

For the coating:

• 1/2 can (200 ml) coconut milk
• 2 tablespoons mild Indian curry paste (we have Rajah brand)
• 3 cloves garlic, pressed
• 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger
• 1 teaspoon dried chili
• 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1 or 2 tablespoons lime juice
• pinch of cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoons dried lemon grass powder

First, I preheated the oven to 250 degrees Celsius and lined a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Then I cut the tofu cake in 4 slices lengthwise, and pressed it while I was preparing the vegetables.

I brushed the root veggies, cut them in small pieces, and sliced the onion in wedges. Now, I mixed all the coating ingredients in a big bowl, and set aside a few tablespoons of the mixture to spoon over tofu while it was baking.

Then I plunged the tofu slices in the coconut milk mixture, and placed them on the baking sheet. I poured the vegetables in the coconut milk bowl, and stirred to cover each piece.

Now, I just poured the vegetables on the baking sheet. After 20 minutes, I spooned the coconut milk mixture I had saved over the tofu pieces, and tossed the vegetables around a little bit. I also lowered the temperature to 225 degrees at this point. Then I roasted everything for about 20 minutes more, until all the coconut milk had evaporated, and the tofu was nicely browned.

Here’s what we put in the soup:

• 4 large potatoes (almost the size of my fist), cubed

• 1 red bell pepper

• 400 g cabbage

• 1 onion

• 1 stalk lemon grass (I added a pinch of dried lemon grass powder, since the stalk was a bit old)

• 1 can coconut milk

• 1 can chick peas

• 1 dl cilantro leaves

• half a lemon

• fresh ginger, 3 cm piece of a medium root

• 3 big garlic cloves

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1/2 teaspoon hot dried chili

• 3/4 l water (and 1/2 cube of vegetable stock)

First, I cubed the onion, and sauteéd it in canola oil, in the cooking pan, until translucent. Then I added finely cut ginger and cooked it for a minute or so, then added roughly cut garlic and chili powder and cooked for another minute.

I washed the potatoes, cut them in cubes, peels on. Then I added them in the cooking pan along with the water, lemon grass, and stock cube. The potatoes were now left to boil until they were soft.

While the potatoes were boiling, I cut the bell pepper in cubes and cabbage in strips, like this:

I drained the chick peas, and chopped the cilantro finely. When the potatoes were completely soft, it was time to take the lemon grass stalk away from the soup, and add red bell pepper, cabbage, coconut milk, salt, and chick peas. There wasn’t quite enough liquid, so I added some water. After adding all the ingredients, I watched the soup carefully until it started to bubble, and when it did, immediately removed the pan from heat. This way the cabbage remained fresh and crispy.

Before serving, I squeezed the lemon juice in the soup, added the cilantro, mixed everything up, and adjusted the taste by adding a little bit of salt. The taste is a balance of the bitterness of lemon and lemon grass, sweetness of bell peppers and coconut milk, spiciness of chili and ginger, and saltiness of salt. Crispy cabbage and smooth potatoes give this soup a nice variety of textures.

As clear from this picture, the bell peppers started to peel even with minimal cooking time. I think next time I might throw them in at the same time with lemon juice and cilantro, after the pot has been removed from heat, for a firmer texture.