Fun. Moreish. Leisurely. Fingerfood.

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on canvas. Heavily influenced by kawaii (super-cute) Japanese cartoon animals. If you look closely you may see the giant gyoza in the background.

Nowhere as difficult to make as you might first imagine, but gyoza are a little bit of work (well worth it I say).

Gyoza are a type of dumpling also known as pot-stickers. They are partly steamed and partly fried and very delicious. Especially with an evening of beer, chatting and friends around to help. Usually they are served as an appetiser or snack, but seriously, if you're going to go to the effort of making them, it's worthwhile to make an entire meal of them. No one will complain.

Remember to get a packet or two of wrappers. Wonton, jiaozi or gyoza.

The filling:

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tablespoon sherry or sake or mirin

1 teaspoon sesame oil

2 teaspoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon grated ginger

1 cup or 50g of finely shredded and chopped chinese cabbage

6 spring onions, white and green parts chopped fine

3/4 cup or 50g finely chopped tempeh

3/4 cup finely chopped shitake mushrooms - equivalent to 20g dried shitake mushrooms that need to be rehydrated for 30mins and squeezed mostly dry or 80g of already rehydrated shitake mushrooms that have been squeezed mostly dry.

If you are feeling lazy, the ingredients can be put in a blender together. This is much quicker than chopping everything up fine, but the final texture is not as good and you end up with less gyoza (about 30 instead of 38).

Mix all the ingredients together very well. You don't want any clumps of ginger or salt! It's easiest if the ingredients are put in a bowl one by one in the order given and mixed thoroughly after every addition.

Now for some photos. This part is quite simple, just tricky to explain in words only.

It's quickest to work in batches. I can fit about a dozen into my pan, so that's how many I prepare at once.

Take your plain gyoza wrapper...

and take a rounded teaspoon of filling...

and place the filling on one half of the wrapper, leaving a border around the edge. Do not overfill!

Dip your fingers in water...

and wet all around the edges of the wrapper. This is so it will stick together when folded in half.

Now fold the empty half over the filling...

and press down in the middle...

and all around the edges. Done! Then repeat for all of them.

Now for the cooking. It will need to be done in batches according to how many you can fit in your frypan.

So, put enough sesame or peanut oil in the bottom of your frypan to prevent the gyoza from sticking.

When the pan is HOT place the gyoza in the pan and wriggle them about to help stop them sticking.

Fry until golden on one side.

Then throw 1/3 cup or 80ml water into the pan to steam them. Immediately put a lid on the pan.

Leave them for 3 minutes - time it.

Remove lid and remove tasty gyoza to a plate to be scoffed.

Serve with dipping sauce. Hoisin or sweet chilli or soy sauce or chilli sauce all work well. So does this one:

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon mirin

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1/2 spring onion, white part only finely chopped

1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon chilli paste to taste

Mix all the ingredients in the dipping bowl.

This recipe makes 38 gyoza. Which is a light meal for 2 or a decent meal for 1.

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More vegetarian cookbook goodies

Need help with conversions? Download this handy dandy pdf of cooking conversion charts for every cooking measuring system I could find. It should make your life easier.

Want to check out more vegetarian dinner recipes? They're all in the Table of Contents.

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Easy. Satisfying. Filling. Homely.

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on canvas. Gleefully inspired by the musical abstract paintings of the later years of the Russian master Kandinsky.

The best thing about this recipe is the way my carnivorous friends get to the very last mouthful and then say in a shocked voice with eyes aghast, 'does this have lentils in it?'. Priceless.

The next thing they say is, 'wow, that was delicious!'.

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced or chopped fine

2 carrots, grated (secret ingredient)

1/2 teaspoon salt

800g tomato, chopped small or puree in a blender

50g sundried tomato, chopped roughly or added to the blender mix

2 tablespoons of oil from the sundried tomato

125g mushroom, chopped or sliced or diced

1 zucchini, grated

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 bay leaf

20g or about 2 cups fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped

400g cooked lentils

Cook the garlic, salt, onion and carrot in the olive oil until they are very soft.

Add all the other ingredients and simmer with the lid off for at least 25 minutes until you are happy with the consistency.

Adjust salt and pepper to taste.

Serve on spaghetti or your favourite pasta shape after removing the bay leaf.

Feeds 6.

Filling. Quick. Easy. Creamy.

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm acrylic and oil pastel on canvas. Inspired by ancient Neolithic stone carved symbols courtesy of Marija Gimbutas and a painting I saw recently full of sculptured, ripped paint (artist unknown unfortunately). And the wonderful curls and spirals of spaghetti.
 

Allegedly, carbonara is a recently invented dish which dates from the second world war. The tale goes that foreign (ie American and English) soldiers stationed in Italy were seen eating bacon and eggs for breakfast. This new dish made an impression on the Italians who developed their own regional variation, carbonara, which is basically bacon and eggs on spaghetti, in the years after the war. I don't know if this is true or not, but the story sure stuck in my head!

spaghetti for two

1 teaspoon salt

250g mushrooms, sliced

1-2 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup white wine

150-200g smoked tofu or fake bacon, cut into strips

2 eggs

3 tablespoons grated parmesan cheese

generous amount of cracked pepper

Cook the spaghetti in boiling water along with the salt. Yes, it is a lot of saly, but it really does work.

Melt the butter in a frypan. Then throw in the wine. Add the mushrooms and fry until all the liquid has gone.

Add the smoked tofu to the mushrooms and warm through.

In a mixing bowl, combine the (yes raw!) eggs, cheese and pepper.

Drain the spaghetti well and mix the pasta and egg & cheese mix thoroughly while the pasta is still very hot.

Serve the spaghetti mix into bowls and top with mushrooms and tofu.

Just right for 2.

Photo courtesy of ehoyer

I found this poem years ago in a book on vegetarianism when I was first reading up all about it.

It struck me as both amusing and rather to the point, as well as being well written.

Teach kids all about the cute animals but miss the bit on killing them for food. Hmm, it is rather a dichotomy, isn't it? Just for the record, I don't have a major problem with eating animals, but I do have a problem with the inherently abusive factory farming of them and the inability most carnivores have of dealing with the idea of killing an animal themselves and eating it.

LEARNING TO BE A DUTIFUL CARNIVORE

By Jane Legge


Dogs and cats and goats and cows,
Ducks and chickens, sheeps and sows
Woven into tales for tots,
Pictured on their walls and pots.
Time for dinner! Come and eat
All your lovely juicy meat.

One day ham from Percy Porker
(In the comics he's a corker):
Then the breast from Mrs. Cluck
Or the wing from Donald Duck.
Liver next from Clara Cow
(No, it doesn't hurt her now).

Yes, that leg's from Peter Rabbit
Chew it well; make that a habit.
Eat the creatures killed for sale,
But never pull the kitty's tail.
Eat the flesh from "filthy hogs"
But never be unkind to dogs.

Grow into double-think-
Kiss the hamster; skin the mink.
Never think of slaughter, dear,
That's why animals are here.
They only come on earth to die,
So eat your meat, and don't ask why.

Homely. Filling. Versatile. Cheesy.

Food painting artwork

30 x 30cm oil on canvas. Inspired by the wonderful modernist Australian artist Margaret Preston. She is best known for her woodcuts but I also really like her stencilled paintings of 1953. Such rich and Australian colours. Such patterned linework. Such enjoyable brush texture.

One weekend we had some friends come up to stay. The plan was to go for a long hike during the day and have dinner together afterwards. So Simon cooked his favourite meal, which is this vege lasagne, ahead of the weekend as we knew we'd be too tired to cook after a day of walking through the bush. It was only after our friends arrived that we remembered that one is both a genuine Italian and a raving carnivore who loathes vegetables. But there was no time to prepare a new meal once they'd arrived. We were terrified to present such a signature Italian dish to an Italian. And a bastardised vegetarian version at that! 

So what happened? Our raving carnivore Italian friend loved this lasagne and went back for seconds and wanted the recipe and proclaimed it was even better than the one his mother makes! Not bad...

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

1 carrot, finely diced

1 medium onion, finely diced

1 medium zucchini, finely diced

250g mushrooms, finely diced

8 cloves garlic, peeled

700g tomato

1 small onion

30g fresh basil leaves, roughly torn

1 cup dry sherry or white wine

2 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella

40g grated parmesan

35g butter

1/4 cup flour

2 cups or 500ml milk

dry lasagne sheets

baking dish 18x28cm or 7x11 inches

Preheat your oven to 190 C

Put the medium onion, carrot, zucchini and mushroom in a fry pan with the olive oil and cook until soft. Make sure it doesn't get crisped.

While the above is cooking, put the garlic, tomato and small onion into a blender and puree.

When the veges are thoroughly cooked, add the puree to the pan and the fresh basil leaves and half the sherry or wine too.

Simmer until reduced to a medium thickness. You don't want it to be too thick as some liquid is needed to cook the dry lasagne sheets. Better to be too thin than too thick.

Put the liquid from the sauce into the bottom of the baking dish. Try and avoid putting veg in this layer as they only burn.

Then add the first layer of lasagne sheets.

Divide the sauce into three and spread a third on the lasagne. Follow this with half a cup of mozzarella and a light sprinkling of parmesan.

Add another layer of lasagne sheets.

Repeat the sauce, cheese, sheets step twice more so that you have three layers of sauce and cheese. At the end of this step you should have bare lasagne sheets ready for the final topping which is a thick and cheesy white sauce:

Melt the butter in a pot and add the flour. 

Mix into a dough and take off the heat.

Add a little milk and stir until the milk is fully absorbed. 

Repeat until the first cup of milk is used.

Return to the heat. Stir continuously and slowly add the remaining milk. A whisk instead of a spoon is handy here.

Then slowly add the remaining sherry or wine. 

Keep stirring. The sauce will thicken gradually.

When the sauce is nicely thick, add the remaining cup of mozzarella.

Pour all this cheese sauce on top of the lasagne. Mmmm. Lots of cheesy goodness.

Put the completed lasagne in the oven for about an hour. It is done when the pasta is cooked and the top is golden.

Remove from the oven when done and let it stand for 10 minutes. This makes it much easier to cut and serve.

Feeds 6-8 people.

When you've made this a few times, try experimenting with using other vegetables or adding chilli etc as it's a very versatile recipe.