Sojade & Sojasun and the bacteria problem

No recipe and pictures today, but the results from a "is it really vegan?" inquiry.

In France, you can find the soy yoghurt from Sojasun in basically every supermarket, the ones from Sojade in the organic stores. Soy yoghurt is made in the same way as milk-based yoghurt: Take (soy) milk and add some special bacteria (lactobacillales). They will transform your milk into yoghurt. These bacteria need to feed, and they obviously like milk. The original source of those bacteria will usually always come from colonies that have grown on milk-based culture medium. The question is now if the companies producing soy yoghurt are still cultivating their bacteria on milk-based media (or use other animal ingredients), or if they use plant-based culture media. If they use culture media with non-vegan ingredients, their product is, by definition, also not vegan. They can still claim that their product is vegetable, so this problem is not solved by reading the list of ingredients.

The two lovely vegans at a german blog named Laubfresser posted lately that they tried to get an answer from Sojade (which is also sold in german organic stores) if Sojade is really vegan, e.g. if the bacteria are cultured on a plant-based medium or not. Here is the entry (german). The result was that there was no result. Sojade says that this information is confidential. Which is sad, because we have to consider Sojade non-vegan now. As Sojade is french, I thought that this might be a communication problem and wrote an email to Sojade in french.

Using french did not help. I received the exact same "standard" answer from Sojade as the german one, only in french, explaining what bacteria are, how they make soy yoghurt have a nice texture, and that they were good for your digestion. I answered that email, explaining that this was all very nice, but that I wanted to know about what the bacteria eat, similar to what I explained above. At this stage, I also wrote an email to Sojasun. Now I received an answer, and learned at least one useful thing: Sojade and Sojasun belong together. Sojasun is the brand sold in the supermarket, and Sojade in the organic stores. The information about the culture media, however, remains confidential.

I hope that Sojade/Sojasun will think about this again. Luckily, there are companies that have no problem to declare that they grow their bacteria on vegetable media, for example Alpro Soja/Provamel and Le Sojami.

EDIT (September 2012): Finally, finally! They are declaring now that they cultivate their bacteria on vegetable medium. So Sojasun/Sojade is vegan, hurray! Read on here at the website of Tübingen Vegan.

Raw love

The way to a vegan's heart is definitely through her stomach. When we met at a food-and-games evening for the second time, the most wonderful man in the world made a cake - a raw blueberry tart. Suddenly, he seemed to be a very interesting man... and cakes never lie <3

Preparation time: depends on your blender... less than 1 hour, plus 1-2 hours chilling time

Suggested music: Weena Morloch - Girl, for some crazy love ;-)

In general, raw cakes are foolproof. If your dough is too dry, add more dates. If your dough is too wet, add more nuts. It will still taste perfectly good. Don't be afraid to experiment a bit. You will need a good food processor or (hand-held) blender for this tart!

For the dough:

• 2 cups pecans or walnuts, or, if you are lazy, about 200 g ground almonds
• 1 cup dates (about 200 g)
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla powder

For the filling:

• 2 cups cashews (for easier blending, let them soak in water for 1-2 hours)
• 1 3/4 cups blueberries (about 250 g; frozen ones are perfectly ok, but let them thaw a bit)
• 1 1/2 cups dates
• 3 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla powder

Decoration:

• finely grated coconut

What to do:

1. Make the dough: Blend the dates with the nuts and the vanilla. This is tricky, as the dates are very sticky, and a hand-held blender might become pretty hot. Be patient, do it in several batches, free the blender from the sticky dates from time to time. I usually use ground almonds, because I don't have a very good blender for nuts.
2. Press the dough into a round cake pan (you can line the pan with baking paper before). If you have enough dough, form not only the cake bottom, but also the sides, at least a bit.
3. Make the filling: Process all the other ingredients in the blender. This should be easier than the dough, as it is more liquid.
4. Add the filling to the cake pan and decorate the cake with grated coconut. Chill for 1-2 hours in the fridge before serving; the filling will harden during that time due to the coconut oil. Keep in the fridge for storage.

Korean tea

A colleague recently gave me a little plastic bag, assuring me that the contents were vegan. It was an instant drink from Korea that was surprisingly delicious when stirred into hot water.

He also told me where to find a korean supermarket in Paris. I am not totally happy with buying things that have been shipped half around the world, but if they are too good, it happens sometimes.

Luckily, there is a sticker with the ingredients in english on the box:

• Pinenuts
• Walunt (Walnut I guess)
• Almond
• Jobs tears (Job's tears, some kind of grain)
• Soybean powder
• wheat flour
• Sugar
• Rice flour
• Sunflower kernel
• salt

It is called "tea" on the box, but it is more like a nuts-and-beans milk. Partly powder, partly little nut pieces. I wonder if it would be possible to make the mixture from scratch, without the job's tears maybe? Hmmm... 

For the time being, there are some of the small bags left in the box and I don't need to worry...

Conquer your arch-nemesis...ses...es...ies!

For a long time, my arch-nemesis in the world of greenish things was: CELERY! Especially the part that grows underground.

For a while, I had a weekly fruit-and-vegetable box delivered from a local farm. So, one day, a thick round celery root used this box as a trojan horse and landed in my kitchen. While it rolled around my pots, laughing menacingly, I googled and found a possibility to get rid of it that did not sound completely disgusting: celery root cutlets. In fact they were quite tasty, and I buy celery roots now from time to time on my own free will. Or at least I think so...

Preparation time: about 30 minutes
Suggested music: Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Album & Radio Sunnydale (why? If you're not a Buffy fan, don't worry. If you are, you might recognize something in the title of this entry)

Ingredients:

• 1 celery root
• flour
• water
• breadcrumbs (french: chapelure <3)
• oil for frying
• salt
• ketchup or mustard
• something to eat it with (salad, greenthings, whatever you want)

What to do:

Cut the celery root into slices about 1 cm thick and remove the peel (is this a peel? The hard stuff on the outside...). 

Place the slices in a pot and add water until they are covered. Put the pot on the stove and boil the slices for 7-10 minutes. I have heard that it is also possible to make them without boiling, but I know at least one occasion where non-boiled celery root cutlets led to a serious family crisis at the dinner table.

Drain the water and let the slices cool a bit. Prepare the crust: Spread some flour on the bottom of a soup dish or flat bowl. Spread some breadcrumbs on a plate. If you want, add some spices to the latter (salt; or salt later while serving).

Now, mix the flour with a bit of cold water, until all clumps have dissolved. It should be a thick, sticky liquid.

Heat some oil in a pan. Coat the slices first in the flour-water-glop, then in the breadcrumbs. Fry them from both sides in the pan until the crust is golden.

Lemon Cake

Lemon cake recipe from my mother. Easy and quick, makes one baking tray.

Preparation time: about 45 minutes.
Suggested music: Andreas Scholl - Wayfaring Stranger (I think it sounds kind of lemony... well... )

For the dough:

• 200 g softened margarine
• 200 g sugar
• 3 tablespoons soy flour or ground flax seeds + 3 tablespoons plant milk
• 100 g corn starch
• 300 g wheat flour
• 3 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/8 L soy milk
• zest of 1 lemon

For the icing:

• 200 g icing sugar
• juice of about 1 lemon

What to do:

1. Preheat the oven to 175 °C. Place baking sheet on a baking tray.
2. Mix all the ingredients, thereby sifting the starch (it may form clumps otherwise), forming a not-too-solid cake batter.
3. Pour onto the baking tray and help it spread evenly.
4. Bake for 20-30 minutes, until the cake is slightly brown on the top.
5. Remove from the oven and let cool.
6. Sift the icing sugar, and add some lemon juice. Mix. Continue to add lemon juice, until you have a pourable icing. Spread on the cake using a baking brush.
7. Wait until the sugar icing is solid (at least one hour!), cut into pieces and serve.

(This is a smaller baking tray with 2/3 of the ingredients :-) )

Pasta with pumpkin sauce

Autumn, pumpkin time! We are temporarily reunited in a single kitchen, and hungry, as usual.

Today we made a very delicious (and fast!) pumpkin sauce. It's the veganized assimilated version of a recipe from Miss Kochfrosch. As her blog is in german, here's the translation, together with our changes.

Preparation time: about 30 minutes
Suggested music: This is Halloween (ok, not yet, but pumpkin time!)

Ingredients:

• 1 red kuri squash (Hokkaidokürbis) of about 800 g
• 1 onion
• 1 clove of garlic (or more, but ours was a few weeks old and very intense)
• oil for frying
• 250 mL oat cream (Oatly Hafersahne)
• 300 mL vegetable stock
• pepper & salt
• nutmeg
• lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons fresh or frozen chives, minced (Schnittlauch - we had no parsil ;-) )
• 500 g pasta

What to do:

1. Remove the entrails of the squash and grate the squash pieces coarsely. Dice the onion and mince the garlic. Start heating water for the pasta.
2. Heat the oil in a large enough pot. Fry onion and garlic, then add grated squash. When squash becomes a little softer, add vegetable stock and cream. Cook for 10 minutes. 
3. Puree the sauce and season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, lemon juice. Add chives (or parsil) before serving.

We added some vegan almond parmesan from "Käse veganese". It basically contains ground almonds and nutritional yeast. Highly recommended!

Done with taking pictures? Can we finally eat now?? ;-)

The soy of it all

Soy is amazing. Soy is the multifunctional holy grail of veganism. Soy milk, tofu, mockmeat - all easy and great, and wonderful bases for thousands of dishes. As often, however, the simplest things are the best: Edamame!

Edamame are young soy beans in their pod. You buy them frozen in an asia store, toss them in boiling water for only a few minutes, drain them and add some salt. Then you can eat them as an appetizer, plopping the edible beans out of the (uneatable) pods. Incredibly yummy! And, strangely, not very common, at least in Germany. Therefore, we mention it here. You can cook other things as well with edamame, but so far we did not manage not to eat them right away.

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Suggested music: Alcest - Écailles De Lune (which has absolutely nothing to do with edamame, but was recommended to my while I was writing this little text by my best music recommendation source :-) - youtube)