Naked Vegan Cooking

One unfortunate aspect of living in Manchester is its famous dismal, rainy weather . Since the end of August is still technically summer, we decided to defy the gloomy weather by helping ourselves to homemade lemonade.

Homemade lemonade

Jess and Luke enjoy lemonade in the garden

Ingredients: 3 lemons, 2 limes, 1 cup of sugar, 7 cups of water, lemon slices and ice for decoration, cold Mancunion weather (optional)

Take one cup of sugar and 1 cup of water and heat gently on the stove until the all the sugar is dissolved. Add the sugar syrup to the juice of the lemons and limes in a jug, and add the remaining cups of water. You might want to add more water if its too strong for you. Chill and serve.

To make it extra citrusy, you can juice the lemons as normal and boil the spent lemons in the water and leave to cool. You might want to make sure that the lemons are wax-free first.

Luke clambers out of the garden post-photoshoot

Follow us on twitter and facebook, check out our other recipes and come to our Clothing Optional Tea Party

Naked Vegan Cooking is planning an art exhibition exploring themes of body image, naturism and issues associated with veganism, and we are looking for submissions. The exhibition will contain both static and performance art pieces, and will take place around the end of September in Manchester, UK. Please email nakedvegancooking@gmail.com to contribute to this project, and look out for further announcements!

We usually try to make sure that none of our recipes use any fancy ingredients that you can’t get at a normal supermarket, these cakes are a bit of an exception but if you can get hold of soya yoghurt and vegan cream cheese it’s well worth it because they taste AMAZING. If you can’t get the cream cheese they also taste great with regular icing. Greta, Jess and Luke cooked these at our friend Alex’s house and we ate them naked outside which was scary but fun!

Ingredients:

1+1/3 cups self raising flour, teaspoon of cinnamon, 1+ 1/3 sugar, 2/3 cup vegetable oil, 2/3 cup soya yoghurt, 2 teaspoons vanilla essence, 2 cups grated carrots, ½ cup walnuts, ½ cup raisins, a pinch of salt.

For icing:

¼ cup margarine, ¼ cup vegan cream cheese, 2 cups icing sugar, a few walnuts to decorate.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Mix together the oil and yoghurt and then sieve in the dry ingredients. Fold in all the other ingredients for the cakes. Divide the mixture into about 24 cupcake cases and bake for about half an hour, until a knife inserted into a cake comes out clean. Blend together the ingredients for the icing and ice once cool.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and check our other recipes.

This recipe has come from the lovely Steve : ) He cooked this for a housing co-op meeting the other week and it was delicious! Thanks Steve!

Patra is awesome stuff – it comes in a tin and basically consists of leaves curried and coated in gram flour, forming a sort of cylindrical loaf. Although I don’t think it is particularly “meat-like” in taste or texture, I’ve had several meat-eaters tell me after trying it that it was the best vegan “meat substitute” that they had ever tasted. It’s usually available from Indian grocery shops, and Unicorn in Manchester also sells it.

Steve with Patra

Ingredients 1 tin patra (sliced and chopped into ~2x2cm chunks), 1-2 onions, 3 garlic cloves, a chunk of ginger about the size of a thumb,vegetables – I used a courgette and a red pepper, but others that you could use include mushrooms, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, etc, 1 tin chopped tomatoes

Chop the onion (preferably not too small, say 2cm pieces) and put it in a wok or large pan with a fairly generous amount of vegetable oil (i prefer to use sunflower oil over olive oil for this sort of recipe, but your tastes may vary). Finely chop or grate the garlic and ginger, add to the onion and start frying over a fairly high heat, stirring frequently. While the onion is frying, chop the other vegetables to a similar size as the onion, and add to the pan when the onion has been frying for a few minutes. Fry for another few minutes and then add the chopped patra (if you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to resist munching a few pieces of the patra before you add it to the pan). Stir fry for another 5-10 minutes or so (until all the vegetables look fairly cooked, but don’t let anything burn or caramelise).

Steves Simple Patra Stir-fry

Add the tinned tomatoes, stir thoroughly, and turn down the heat so that it’s just staying hot rather than further cooking. Simmer for about 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally (you can simmer for longer without harming it, as long as you don’t let it burn, although depending on your taste if you let it cook too long the vegetables might become overly soggy. I don’t usually time it too precisely, but if i’m serving it with rice simmer it until the rice is cooked, or if i’m serving it with something else while i wash up or some other non-cooking task). At the tomato stage you can add a splash of soy sauce, or chilli/hot pepper sauce if you like things really spicy, but as the patra itself contains a lot of spices, which the simmering allows to “soak” through the rest of the dish, i don’t usually add any other spices (which some people who hadn’t eaten patra before found hard to believe!) – with no other spices, it will be about as spicy as a mild to medium curry.

This amount serves about 4 fairly hungry people if you have some sort of carbohydrate thing with it. I think it goes best with rice, but can also be eaten with noodles or couscous.

Follow us on twitter and facebook and check out the other recipes here

The lovely Alex sent in these absolutely delicious Brazilian dishes – we will spread them across a couple of posts. She recommends eating these dishes with a bottomless supply of Caipirinhas*

Alex with Feijoada

Feijoada (Seasoned Black Beans)

Ingredients: 450 grammes black beans, 1 large onion, 2 cloves garlic, 2 bay leaves, Salt and Black pepper (to taste), Small bunch of coriander, 1 Green chilli (seeded)

Optional (but recommended): Farinha de mandioca (manioc flour) (gari is similar, which you should be able to get from Indian or African grocers), Optional: 2 vegan chorizo sausages, 2 packs tempeh, Optional: 1 orange

1. Put the black beans to soak for 24 hours with plenty of water (at least 5 cm above the top of the beans). Add a soup spoon of olive oil when you put the beans to soak.
2. After the 24-hour soaking period, drain the beans, add plenty of fresh water and a bay leaf, and cook the beans (add water, if necessary, to keep the beans just covered). Stir from time to time. Simmer until the beans are soft.
3.  While the beans are cooking (almost ready), heat some olive oil in a frying pan and fry the chopped garlic until it starts to brown. Then add the chopped onion and fry until golden. Add the seeded, chopped chilli and the finely chopped coriander leaves and stalks and fry. If using the chorizo, chop into chunks and fry with the rest. Add salt, black pepper and a bay leaf and stir in.

4. Take some tablespoons of the cooked beans and mash them in the frying pan together with the other ingredients you fried. Then add the contents of the frying pan to the simmering beans and stir in, and simmer for a little longer. If using the tempeh, chop into pieces and add while simmering.
5. Toast some farinha in a small frying pan, being careful not to burn it.
6. Peel and slice the orange into discs and arrange on top of the beans.
7. Serve the beans with Brazilian rice and the farofa (toasted farinha).

Alex served these with Couve a Mineira, collard greens, Minas Gerais style.

Wash, trim and shred 500 grammes of kale/collard greens and blanch in salted, boiling water for 5 minutes.
Drain thoroughly and fry in 25 grammes of Cookeen (or vegetable oil) for 5 minutes, stirring continuously.
Season to taste and serve in warmed serving dish.

Feijoada

Cooking

Brazilian rice

Ingredients: 1 onion, 450 grammes long-grain rice, 1 tin of tomatoes, small bunch of fresh coriander

Heat 2 tablespoons of sunflower oil in a saucepan. Add 1 peeled and finely chopped onion and fry until just golden.
Stir in 450 grammes of long-grain rice and fry briefly, stirring all the time to stop the rice burning.
Add a tin of canned tomatoes, 1 teaspoon of salt and 1 litre of water.
Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for about 15 minutes until the rice is tender and the liquid absorbed.
Pull the leaves off the coriander stalks.
Serve garnished with coriander leaves in a warmed bowl.

*Watch out for vegan happy hour – coming soon!

Follow us on twitter and facebook, and check out our other recipes.

The third and final recipe from when Aylam came to visit. He suggests wearing an apron as naked deep frying can be dangerous! Falafel is a staple vegan meal (at least, it is for us!) serve with her baba ganoush , tabbouleh , pitta and salads.

Aylam mashing chickpeas

Aylams feast

Ingredients for 20 Falafel balls: 1 can of chickpeas, or two cups of dried chickpeas (which were pre-soaked and boiled soft), 3 cloves of garlic, 1 cup of flour (soy/chickpea/wheat), a fistful of parsley (chopped fine), 3/4 cup Tahini, vegetable oil for deep frying.

Mash the soft chickpeas in a bowl with the tahini to make a paste.
Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Wet your hands and create smallish balls which you may than shallow or deep fry. The balls are ready when they float to the serface and are brown and crispy.

Aylams falafel

Aylam and Jess

Follow us on twitter and facebook, and check out our other recipes.

The lovely Sandra submitted this recipe, she said “This is a pretty light recipe, it doesn’t look like much but it’s pretty moreish. This makes a great sauce for pasta too, maybe add a teaspoon of parsley or oregano.”  We gave the recipe a go and it was scrumptious, using some posh bread that Luke had skipped for the toast. We also added a little bit of nutritional yeast on top, which went well. Thanks Sandra for submitting this recipe, we hope to see more of your delicious offerings!

Sandra with Creamy Mushrooms

Ingredients: 300g mushrooms, 2 cloves of garlic, 1 small onion, 2 tablespoons soy milk, Potato starch or instant mash to thicken,
Salt and pepper to taste, Oil for frying, Bread for toast

Heat the oil on medium heat in a frying pan; while it’s heating, slice your onion (into semicircles, they cook faster when sliced against the grain) garlic (smaller pieces = bigger flavour) and mushrooms (whichever way you feel like chopping them), then add to the oil.
Fry for approx. 5 minutes, until the onions are translucent, then season with salt and pepper. Put your bread in the toaster or under the grill at this point. Add one tablespoon of soy milk to your mushroom mixture, and allow to simmer (preferably covered) for 2 minutes. Add remaining soy milk, and sprinkle in some potato starch or instant mash, stirring constantly. This gives your sauce a nice, thick texture, so if you prefer really runny sauce, skip this step.

Add us on twitter and facebook, and check out our other recipes.

This is a super easy meal to make if you have almost no prep time. Greta and Jess cooked it in a messy kitchen after a long day to cheer them up. This might also be a good place to put a disclaimer about garlic. We love garlic. We have an obsession with roasting whole cloves of it (still in skins) and serving it with almost every meal we make (sometimes including desserts). If you are less of a garlic fan you could use less garlic and chop it instead of using whole cloves. We don’t recommend this though, because garlic is awesome.

Greta chopping

Ingredients:500g polenta (the type you buy in  a block), 6 portabello mushrooms, 1 red onion, 1 bulbs worth of garlic cloves, 4 tomatoes, a few generous glugs of olive oil, 2 teaspoons mixed herbs, a glug of soy sauce, 1 stock cube, salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 180. Chop polenta into generous slices. Chop mushrooms, onion and tomato into largish chunks. Put all ingredients into a casserole dish and roast for about 40 minuets, stirring occasionally. Enjoy.

Polenta Dinner

This past couple of days have been interesting for us at NakedVeganCooking. After someone posted our site to the WTF!? section on Reddit, we have experienced a spike in traffic sending our readership from about 200 hits a day to 20,000. NakedVeganCooking then got passed onto a few other websites. Below is a list of our more interesting comments.

Jess and Greta checking out the Reddit comments

As you might expect when we put our naked bodies on the internet, a lot of the comments focussed on our body image. It seems the internet is a fickle place, with some commenters expressing “confusion at the fat vegans” whilst others expressing contempt by saying “if you were so high up about body image you’d have at least one overweight person on there“. Seemingly this commentor would have us actively seek out an oveweight person in order to objectify them as our naked vegan posterchild.

Having read some of the comments about our bodies, a friend of ours made this image in solidarity.

Another commenter stuck up for us by posting:

<butthurt>

1. These people are not fat.
2. I’m absolutely positive that each and every single one of them are getting laid with a frequency that would make the average Redditor weep. Armpit hair or no armpit hair.

</butthurt>

Indeed, quite a lot of comments focussed on our hair, both of the pubic and the armpit variety. Comments from Reddit wondered whether pubic hair “was vegan” and commentors from the vegan PostPunkKitchen forums expressed concern that “they make sure the food doesn’t get tainted. By that I mean, getting it too close to someone’s taint”.

A good few comments looked at our “armpit hair pride” picture, one in particular stated  that “they aren’t very attractive because chicks with armpit hair make most guys throw up“. . Fortunately for us we don’t grow our body hair for the pleasure of guys…except for maybe Jess… : )

A good few more comments were about about the fact that we appear to be hippies.

Nothing says MMM like fresh food mixed in with hippie body funk and patchouli.

Others wondered about about our living arrangements:

First Poster: Also, why is there so much nudity in this house when it seems no one is related? Are they some kind of hippie vegan commune?

Second Poster: How do I join?

Third Poster:

By the looks of it:

• Grow all your body hair
• become vegan.

Apparently naked dinners would be less unconventional if we were all closely related…

Also it just so happens we are looking for people to invest so we can buy a commune. Get in touch if you want to invest!

Other posters defended our unconventionality, saying

Reddit is extremely judgmental towards non-sexual nudity and people that you could call hippies… on average they also have high expectations of human bodies (due to much porn, little normal contact with girls maybe?) and little respect for people that choose to look different (see the term hipster). I’m just guessing of course.

Others posted, saying:

Even naked they manage to look like hipsters.

Admittedly Luke has turned his bike into a fixie, which seems to have had the effect of making it a bit shit.

One keen poster even made up this image for us, which probably descrbes us quite well:

Thanks for an interesting ride so far. If you are interested, please check out more of our recipes here, add us on twitter, and subscribe. Thanks!

Parslied Greta

Ingredients: 2 heads of Parsley (chopped extra fine), Handful of mint leaves (chopped fine), 1 tomato (chopped fine), 1 cucumber (chopped fine), half an onion (chopped fine), juice from 1-2 lemons (depending on how sour you want it), half a cup of Bulgar wheat, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 tsp of salt

 Jenn takes the two heads of Parsley and bravely chopped them as fine as she could. The finer they would be the better the salad (a food processor is also possible to use, but we didn’t). Afterwards she chopped half a cucumber and one tomato (again, the finer the better), while Aylam heat the kettle and put the half cup of bulgar wheat in a small bowl. She adds one table spoon of olive oil and half a teaspoon of salt to the Burgul and pours the hot water over it. He then mixes the ingredients up a bit and covers the bowl with a plate to let the bulgar wheat soften. There is now only the mint leaves to chop and mix all the ingredients together, including the lemon juice. She makes sure that the bulgar wheat is relatively dry and cool before adding it into the rest. The Tabbouleh salad is prepared and should be served cold. It is an amazing addition to any springy meal!

Check out our other recipes here, and subscribe for email updates on the right and add us on twitter @nakedvegancooks

Tabouleh