Pressing Issues

When it comes to our food we like to keep things as simple as possible.  We prefer to cook from scratch as often as we can.  If we do buy ready made items, the less ingredients the better and we certainly scoff at any ingredients not easily identifiable as natural (and obviously non animal).  This is one of the reasons we have tended to steer away from shop bought tortillas or wraps.  Even most of the supposedly more natural ones have a complicated and long list of ingredients.  For something so simple it is a wonder they manage to fit that many ingredients in them. 

For this reason and for a while now we have been talking about buying a press so that we can easily make our own tortillas and wraps.  Recently we finally got around to it and have to say there is no going back.  You could argue that a rolling pin would do the job just as well but no, this really is the 'kiddy' when it comes to quickly and easily producing a stream of freshly made tortillas.  At the end of a frustrating day at work it is also very therapeutic to press the hell out of something!

For tortillas the key ingredient is masa harina, which is made from corn kernels that are soaked in lime before being ground into a flour.  The wonder of home made tortillas with masa harina is that the only other ingredient you need is water.  Mixed into a dough, it is then pressed into your desired thickness and then dry fried (or cooked in various other ways for differing Mexican dishes).  It really is that simple, and definitely much tastier than the shop brought varieties. 

There are plenty of suppliers of tortilla presses.  Preferring to avoid the aluminium and plastic ones, we recommend the cast iron varieties, but the top of the range ones are big bucks.  However, we managed to find an iron one for around £30.  Masa harina is available for around £4 for 1kg or less from various suppliers online.  

The Cool Chile Company brand can often be found in local health food stores.  Indeed the Cool Chile Company also sell packs of tortillas (found in the chiller or freezer departments of some health food stores) which are the purest on the market.

So if, like us, you prefer making simple, tasty, honest food it could be time for you to invest in a tortilla press and some masa harina.  If you do I'm sure it will soon become a pressing issue with you too!

A Night for Vegan Secret Supper Recipes

Boy it's wild out there tonight.  That Cornish wind is thrashing the rain against the window in quite a temper.  The dark nights already have us turning to comfort food with glee but a night like this makes us want to push the boat out even more.

With this in mind we grabbed one of my many cookbooks off the shelf; one that we really hadn't explored as much as we should have done.  Vegan Secret Supper is a plethora of fancy dishes which belie the simplicity of the preparation of many of the recipes.  Even the titles of the recipes don't pretend to be what they aren't but mostly list the main contents of the dish in a mouthwatering and  simplistic manner. Take our first dish of the evening; Blue Corn Empanadas with Pecans, Black Beans, Mole Pipian, Red Cabbage and Avocado.  Okay granted, Mole Pipian sounds a bit fancy but it's really just a Mexican sauce that uses pumpkin seeds or squash seeds instead of chocolate.  Well okay, I have just realised that Empanadas probably sounds fancy but not to us down here in Cornwall (so by default surely it can't be fancy).  Empanadas are just basically Mexican pasties and we know all about pasties down in this neck of the woods.  

Admittedly we did go a bit 'off piste' with the actual recipe and it had nothing to do with the wine (that would be a slightly different spelling of 'off piste').  We didn't have blue cornmeal for the empanadas for a start so they weren't of the blue variety.  However, the results were pretty much totally inspired by the recipe and very nice too. Bizarrely yes we did have tomatillos in the freezer left over from a stock that my lovely and dear departed dad had grown for us.  

Next up was the Peanut Butter Brownie Cheesecake.  It didn't look anything like the photo in the book but really it tasted too good to worry about that.  Artistic licence was used again anyway as we really hadn't had the fore planning to soak our nuts beforehand.  You have to live in the moment after all surely?  Regardless, our store cupboard was sufficiently stocked to get through the list of ingredients with either the exact ingredient or a likely candidate and the results didn't suffer taste wise.  

Obviously we are not going to actually share these recipes as they are not ours to share. Should you however feel like cosying up with some slightly fancy but relatively easy to make food on a wild winters night, we recommend this tantalising tome of recipes.  It has a habit of making you feel all fancy but cosy at the same time!

To learn more about Vegan Secret Supper and Merida Anderson, the author visit the Vegan Secret Supper website.

Poetry in Action

The National Trust has come under huge fire recently for its controversial vote to allow trail hunting to continue on its land.  As an ex-hunt sab of over 20 years I was appalled by the result (as I know that kills still happen 'accidently' under this guise).  It needs to be stopped, full stop.

However, from our local perspective we are truly grateful for the existence of the National Trust. Call us NIMBY's if you like but in terms of preserving the Cornish coastline, the National Trust are pretty good (in fact we wish they would concentrate on that more, over some of the musty old houses they spend fortunes on).  

Having seen in recent years the continuing and seeming over development of the Cornish landscape, it is becoming increasingly important that the National Trust has the funding and campaigning power to preserve as much of our natural environment as possible; for the wildlife if nothing else. 

With this in mind, a recent National Trust project very local to us caught our eye.  It involved a local school, the most important audience to get on board for future-proofing the preservation of our environment and leading more conscious lives.  The students helped clear overgrown areas and were then asked to reflect on their experiences of the coastal habitat with poetry.  These poems were then displayed in intervals along one of our beautiful coastal footpaths for all to read and reflect on.  

The poem in the top photo was particularly poignant given the recent trail hunting vote.  We hope that the National Trust will take note of the powerful voice of our future when they read "We don't need to hunt or kill the environment".  For us, this gives us hope for the future.  These young people were not only inspired by the environment in a beautiful and creative way, but for many there is also an obvious love and need to protect it.  That should be nurtured.  

We should of course let the National Trust know how we feel and indeed money does talk.  However, rather than completely dismissing the National Trust for the dubious and outdated vote to continue trail hunting, we should also be remembering the good things that come out of such a powerful organisation.  Our local chough population after all might not be in such a good place if it didn't have this wild landscape to thrive in.  

So let's not let them off the hook, and let's continue to campaign against things that are wrong, but let's also recognise what is being done right.  It is human nature to complain about things that are not right but how many of us ever make the effort to share when something is done well?  

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

The Cornish wind and rain have started their true onslaught on our windows now.  Still at least it cleans the salt off the windows briefly and makes us feel less guilty about our shoddy lack of window cleaning ourselves throughout the year. It never seems worth it anyway as immediately after, if the salty wind doesn't dirty them again, the local seagulls seem to manage it with stunning regularity.  

Along with the Cornish weather showing its true autumn colours comes the first lighting of our open fire since last winter.  It is one of the saving graces of facing the long winter ahead.  It was the only form of heating we had when we first moved into our house 13 years ago.  Now though, even with central heating fitted, it is still a more cosy and very much important part of us psychologically surviving the winter.  There is a primordial comfort to just sitting in the orange glow of the roaring fire in your living room cave whilst the wind and rain argue it out with each other outside.  Driving back into the village after work, the smell of woodsmoke in the air and the sight of home fire smoke being sent sideways from chimneys by the onshore winds, has you scuttling inside with a certain amount of glee.

Unfortunately our fireplace isn't the sort that you can make use of for cooking, with the exception of chestnuts that is.  Where we live on the north coast of Cornwall, we don't have a proliferation of chestnut trees but in a recent visit to my mum in Kent, where my childhood village is surrounded in forest, fruit trees and hop farms, chestnuts are just one of the many foraged foods available at this time of year.  Phil took full advantage of that and we came home with a bagful just in time for the lighting of our fire.  

Granted the fire has to be just right; not too hot and not too cool, but with the bottom ashes raked aside the chestnuts can be cooked to perfection.  You also have to make sure you have cross slit the tops so that the chestnuts don't explode out of their shells, and this can be quite time consuming.  However, with just a few here and there roasted on an open fire, there is no doubt that the vegan caveman can definitely and deliciously be bought out in you.

Just remember though that too many and the forecast for wind may not be just for the outside weather!