A Week In The Belly of NYC: Sacred Chow.

L-R:
Hot pumpkin wine with ginger, double chocolate stout floater with vanilla ice cream, hard cider.

That is how you start dinner at Sacred Chow, 227 Sullivan Street, NY.

These way-more-interesting-than-usual drinks were followed by the best raw kale we've ever consumed ('massaged' with salt and covered in Dijon mustard - a crispy, salty, oily mystery), and a black olive seitan sandwich with low-key crusty bread. And juicy, strangely fleshy meatballs; Korean tofu cutlets with garlic, ginger and chilli; tofu with dill; root vegetable latkes made of dates with date butter; and barbeque seitan.

Puds were ridiculous with lavender and chocolate cheesecake (like 'eating soap with a bar of chocolate, in a good way') which came with a cumulonimbus of coconut creme fraiche lounging on the top (unfinished but escorted home through St Patrick's Day staggerers in doggy bag).

Sarah stuffed in only two thirds of a peanut butter and chocolate torte, bit delicious, and Jating's heroic consumption of a Dutch apple pie with vanilla ice cream and that slightly salty bake-sale crust embarrassed us both.

We got all this at http://sacredchow.com/
227 Sullivan Street, NY.

...oh and the waiter deserves props for barely being able to conceal his excitement about the food, but holding it down till he got to the lavender cheesecake.

A Week In The Belly of NYC

We come to New York pretending it's for work, but let's be frank, it's really all about the fact that we can eat whatever we like whenever we like - vegans are overwhelmed with choice here, and we take full, robust advantage.

First night, just what we wanted: after an eight hour flight and nearly two hours getting through 'homeland security': Vietnamese noodles at Lan Cafe, 342 East 6th.

Under $30 for two dinners, Pad Thai and Yellow Noodles, roasted brown rice tea and coconut water with decent tip! Both were seriously delicious and very fresh. The mock ham was a little too meat-like for our liking, but still tasted good.

"Higham on the Hill, Stoke in the dale; Wykin for buttermilk, Hinckley for ALE." - Shakespeare.

Inkymole and Factoryroad sponsored an ale apiece at this year's CAMRA Real Ale Festival. We've never done it before, but what an adventure. You see, you don't know what ale or cider you're going to be allocated…till you get there, dry throated, with tokens and £2 beer glass in hand.

Mole's beer could not have been more perfect. Holden's Old Ale is brewed 'by a woman' (to the handlebar-moustachio'd barman's shock and awe!), and it was dark, slightly rough and chocolatey - and a whopping 7.2%. Had I been that woman who'd brewed it, I couldn't have designed a more perfect spec. Not a good one to start off with though - had to have a volumetric climb-down with a 6% and 4% to follow. Either that or roll home uphill, blind. Check the cheesy pun on the cask - (my own literary skilz) and the fact that they left off my logo!

The Factoryroad beer was disappointing and weak, with a funny after taste. Its rubbish taste though was slightly offset by the magnificent punuendo in the name of the beer, so all wasn't lost. Check Factoryroad's label. Again the creators had clearly been on the sauce while they got the labels printed out, sat no doubt at a creaking PC with one eye on their glasses, mis-spelling, as they did, the word 'how' and casually inverting the logo so it sat in a weird black box.

Still, we're not (for once) here to crit the visuals. Who cared once the first couple were sunk?

If you want to find a real ale event where you live, you'd do no worse than to look here: http://www.camra.org.uk/

Holden's Brewery: http://www.holdensbrewery.co.uk
An alphabetical list of real ales and independent brewers in the UK: http://www.quaffale.org.uk

Booze for free.

I've just got a copy of this book I did the cover for earlier this year, by Andy Hamilton.

We're a long way from self-sufficiency, but we're working on it - we've had the gas disconnected and we heat the house and water with wood instead. We've been buying our vegetables from a farm half an hour down the road for the last ten years or so, always organic, always amusingly miss-shapen,  always delicious, we did the biodiesel thing for years, and I make my own skin cream…well, like I said, we're not there, but we try to make the right moves in that direction!

The book tells you how to make intriguing-sounding brews such as Broad Bean Wine, Pine Needle Cordial and Nocino, an Italian green walnut cordial. None of them are complicated, or fussy; you just need to focus, keep your kit clean (most of which you'll have at home) and most importantly have some space at home to store the fermenting oceans of potential goodness. Our friend Simon' does this already, and his recent birthday cider was impressively cloudy and delicious, needing maybe a little longer in hibernation, but certainly a shouder-softening testament to what can be done with some foraged apples, water and patience.

Here's the artwork for the book, along with an alternative version which didn't make the cut, and a place to buy it!

http://www.guardianbookshop.co.uk/BerteShopWeb/viewProduct.do?ISBN=9781905811700

October.

Autumn is finally here!

We know this because of three things:

1) I'm wearing a jumper and boots.

2) There's horseradish coming next week.

3) We carried two enormous pumpkins (a Tom Fox and an Atlantic Giant - we think) out of Rickards' farm gate today and dropped them into the back of the car. These are for pumpkin soup for the upcoming show, but we'll be back next Sunday with a few quid to invest in some big beasts for Hallowe'en (we always eat those too!)

We also got a pocketful of their home-grown chillis too, for the soup which always has to have a little bite to it.

In addition, check these carrots, who've been hiding in the ground ready for All Hallow's Eve...

Just thought we'd share the love.

Nature guffaws at us.

Went strawberry picking with Dad recently.

How nature knew I needed my spirits lifting, I'll never know, but she did, like when she sends bonkers frogs one centimetre in length to our pond where they do irrational things way too risky for something that's only just lost its tail.

Yep, on this day Nature outwitted me with a display of accidental vulgarity that would rival the most energetic Facebook photo collection. How did they get like this? I'm not sure I want to know - I didn't SEE a Monsanto lorry anywhere - but they had a sweetness that belied their robust and manly appendages.

Enjoy.

Mole's Dirty Tofu.

We've been asked twice in the last few days what to do with tofu, so I am sharing my recipe for super-easy but filthy-tasting baked tofu here.

Now I can eat tofu straight from the packet, but the key to making it appealing to omnivores as well as giving it Sunday-dinner levels of satisfaction is to bake it. Stir-frying is OK, but you need to get the timing and heat just right in order to get that crispy outer/soft inner and it can too easily go wrong.

Neither an apologist substitute for those rectally-infused eyelid tubes known as sausages nor a fake-meat cross-dresser of a vegan stand-in, this is full-on juicy, oily protein with plenty of B vits, herbs, salt and crackly edges.

We do this - but feel free to adlib, maybe with a little black pepper or chillies for some extra excitement!

Take one pack of tofu, smoked or plain, your choice (don't do this with the flavoured ones).
Good olive oil, tomatoes, Engevita, Marigold vegan bouillon - Holland and Barrett (or your local health food store should) sell both of these - smoked paprika, black pepper. You won't need salt.

Wash the tofu well and pat it dry. Leave it, preferably, to dry off for a bit wrapped in a towel (makes edges crispier when cooked).

Take a shallow metal dish - not silicone, but glass is OK - and swill plenty of olive oil into the bottom.

Cut the tofu into thickish slices (half an inch) and lay the first layer of slices - we have two here, but that depends on your dish and tofu size. Keep it one-layer-deep only.
Gently score the top so the juices can get in.
Rub a teaspoon of bouillon over the surface, then sprinkle a heaped teaspoon of Engevita over that. Sprinkle with a little smoked paprika.
Drizzle with olive oil.

Lay the next layer, and repeat what you just did.

Do it again for any further layers till all the slices are used.
Make sure the top is nicely oiled.
Lay sliced tomatoes around the edges, sitting in the olive oil.
It should look something like this!

Bake for 30 minutes at 180C; it should come out bubbling around the edges with melted, brown-edged tomatoes and sizzling tofu corners. Like this:

http://www.inkymole.com/recipes/sizzlingtofu.MOV

We ate ours with a giant turnip boiled whole in salted water, then sliced and baked in the oven and served with salad and raw courgettes. Meaty eh? If you cook this and anyone fails to see what a juicy filthy treat this is, either they're blind with no sense of smell, oh and no tastebuds, and possibly no tongue, or you haven't done it right. Man up, take whatever punishment is due to you, then go back and cook it again.

Download the recipe as a PDF here:
http://www.inkymole.com/recipes/dirtytofu.pdf