Cabbage and Orange Slaw

This is something incredibly basic and yet also incredibly tasty, which rates it pretty highly, in my humble opinion. Finely shredded red cabbage, mixed with little chunks of orange and a light dressing. Really, you can't go wrong. My only recommendations are that a) you use a food processor or mandolin to slice the cabbage, because I found it a little thick when I did it by hand, and b) leave it overnight to marinate. Yes, a marinated salad. I'm serious. The flavour develops and the orange juice seeps into the cabbage, softening it just a touch, without taking away too much crunch. To make simple into pretty, just scatter with a handful of toasted pistachios or cashews before serving.

Cabbage and Orange Slaw
1/4 head small red cabbage, finely shredded
2 large oranges, peeled and cubed*
salt & pepper
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
1/2 Tbsp olive oil
(1 tsp wholegrain mustard, optional)

Mix dressing ingredients together in a jar, and shake until emulsified. Pour over cabbage and orange, and mix well to combine. Sit overnight in the fridge, and serve the next day, as a side dish or on your favourite burger.

*When you peel the oranges, squeeze any extra juice from your peel into the dressing.

Cranberry & Orange Compote.

This is the tub of cranberries that got used in the cake that I've posted about. Of course, I only needed about half the tub (somewhere in the vicinity of 200g, maybe a little more) for the cake. So what did I do with the rest? I took the easy option, of course: a cranberry-orange compote that was absolutely fantastic spooned, warm, over a slice of the aforementioned cake. I already mentioned that I like sweet cake with a bit of sour fruit to punch me in the face, and this compote was the part that provided the punch. The cake, that's just a playful, teasing slap. This showcases cranberries in all their sour glory.

Of course, I couldn't just cook them entirely sour. I'm not that much of a glutton for punishment. To the berries I added two teaspoons of sugar, one teaspoon of finely grated orange zest, and the juice of one orange. That's how easy it is. Then I just left it to simmer over a slow heat for a while; this took maybe twenty minutes at the most. I don't really know, because I was somewhat distracted by the careful unveiling of the cake. ;)

Oh, and while I remember, you should all learn from my mistakes: make sure that you puncture the berries with a knife so that they don't explode. The first explosion sent a small amount of delicious cranberry in a decorative streak across the stovetop. I quickly removed the berries from the heat, cleaned up the offender, and popped the rest with a small paring knife, so as to avoid further waste. I hate wasting food, but I hate it even more when it's this delicious.

Of course, you could just circumnavigate that process completely by cutting the cranberries in half before you cook them. Previously, I'd never know that cranberries are white in the centre. I'd simply bought them frozen and used them whole in a cranberry teacake, or used the dried ones in muesli and biscuits. So it was nice to play with fresh ones, and perhaps I'll do that again one day; whenever I'm next in the USA, maybe! Oh, dreams of travel...

Speaking of dreams, this cake freezes really well. I know that individually wrapping it isn't a good idea because of the environmental complications, but I do use this method occasionally, when I have limited freezer space. The girlfriend of my housemate has moved in for 6 weeks (much longer than I was warned about!) before they move into their own apartment, so I'll just have to accept being an environmental vandal until then. I'm thankful that I'm going travelling with my sister over Christmas, I'll say that much. So, if you're like me and you've frozen half of your cake to take as morning tea to your study or work commitments, then use the rest of this compote over fresh bread, or even mixed into some warm oats. You won't regret it.

Compote bread is coming to eat you... nom nom!

Orange Cake with Cranberries

It's the 19th day of Vegan Mofo now, and we're all slowing down. The days are getting shorter, and so are our posts. There's a lot of soup, of sweets, and of warm and comforting foods to console ourselves about the weather. There might not be the sunshine that I adore, but in consolation, occasionally I splash out on something that brightens my day. Then I mix it with cake. Nom nom nom...

This time, it was cranberries. I know, I know; they're imported and the ecological cost is definitely not included in the cost of the punnet. I'm only human, and I'll try better to control my cravings. I really need to stop going to the supermarket when I'm hungry, because I simply can't be trusted with delicious fruit... mm, cranberries. I love sour fruit in sweet cake, and this time I took it a step further: instead of making a basic vanilla cake, I made orange cake. Can I hear a round of applause? Oh yes, I'm giving myself a standing ovation for that one. Though I halved my standard recipe; I'd recommend you make the full quantity, unless you're like me, and you're liable to eat the whole thing yourself. Then, and only then, do you have permission to make half.

So, after playing cranberry-tetris is the bottom of the baking tin, which was a lot of fun for someone like me, I carefully spooned over the orange-rich batter. The cake itself was dead easy, improved by a generous amount of orange zest in the batter. If you're into the kind of citrus that'll slap you in the face to wake you up, then this is definitely a recipe for you. Not that I much mind if it's not, because this orange batter is definitely a recipe for me, and it'll be getting a workout in future.

In the last sharehouse that I was living in, I was queen of the garden. It wasn't a difficult post to achieve; I lived with two men, neither of whom had any interest in gardening. When we moved in, the entire backyard was a dust bowl, with a few gnarled fruit trees and a few spindly weeds. I could see right away that we had a generously-sized almond tree, what seemed to be apples or pears, and some citrus. I gave myself blood blisters by pruning them with small secateurs and sheer willpower. I don't know how much I can say that my hard work paid off: the two apple trees were seriously diseased, which I never did end up treating. The lemon errupted with fruit, but I didn't utilise it enough. I ate a few green almonds, nibbling on the kernels while they were in the jelly-like stage, but the rainbow lorikeets and that one screaming cockatoo ate the rest before they were anywhere near maturity. But the oranges? Oh, the oranges.

The orange tree was, if I recall correctly, navel oranges grafted onto a lemon rootstock; there were stray fruit from below the graft, but they were never worth using, especially not with a true lemon five metres across the yard. But the oranges were phenomenal. They were quite small compared to the giant supermarket oranges that we see today. Pretty natural, considering that I didn't thin the crop at all. But the tree was thankful for what pruning I had managed; it errupted in fruit, beautiful orange globes that sated my craving for citrus for the entire season. And my parents' cravings, and many of my friends' cravings; those who were able to take home a bag, anyway. My garden had both amazing successes and disappointments in the two years that I lived in Leader Street, but nothing elipses the sheer happiness of gorging every day on oranges.

Orange Cake with Cranberries

2 Cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

2 small oranges, zested and juiced

3/4 cup white sugar

1 tsp vanilla powder

1/4 cup oil

soymilk
200g (ish) cranberries, fresh or frozen (not thawed)

Preheat your oven to 180 degrees C. Line a baking tin - I used a round springform - with baking paper and arrange your cranberries over the bottom, in a single, even layer.
Sift your dry ingredients together into a bowl, so that they mix together. Add the oil, orange zest and orange juice, and throw in enough soymilk to mix it into a fairly stiff batter - about a cup or so.
Spoon the batter carefully over the cranberries, being careful not to dislodge them.
Bake for 40-45 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Remember to insert it into the middle of the cake, and not right down into the berry layer, otherwise it'll always come out sticky.
When the cake is sufficiently cooled, cut yourself a large slice, slather it with the cranberry-orange compote (recipe soon!) that you made with the leftover half-pack of berries, and be careful of the hot berries that will explode in your mouth as you bite in.
If your larder is sufficiently stocked, serve with vanilla soy yoghurt and a sprinkling of almonds.

Back in Australia, I often added a touch of Mandarin Napoleon (brandy) to cakes like this... I recommend it. ;)