the cooked and the raw

I like to consider the pasta I’m proposing today as a very sophisticated but at the same time extremely simple, quick, cheap and delicious main course. This is definitely the sort of recipe that turns out to be useful when there are pastivore guests to satisfy, or when a last-minute meal has to be thrown together. If you’re going to test this recipe and can’t find sedani rigati, just go for another kind of wholemeal short pasta, like penne or rigatoni. I do hope you’re going to enjoy these sedani as much as I (and everyone else who had them!) did. I think the delicate nuttiness of the almonds and the sharp lemon flavour both pair exquisitely with the sweetness of the leek and shoyu… For my sedani I used organic lemons, an organic leek, organic shoyu and organic pasta. As you’re going to eat the zest of the lemons, these should indeed be organic.

Ingredients (makes 4 servings):

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon shoyu

1 leek, trimmed and finely sliced

½ cup ground almonds

zest of 3 to 4 lemons, finely grated

whole sea salt (to taste)

freshly ground black pepper

300 g wholemeal sedani pasta

Heat the oil and shoyu in a large non-stick pan over medium heat then gently stir fry the leek until golden, stirring in a little bit of water at a time to moisten the consistency. Add a pinch of sea salt if necessary. In the meantime cook the sedani in plenty of boiling and salted water until al dente. Drain the pasta and throw it into the pan, add the lemon zest and almonds and sauté for a couple of minutes, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat and season with black pepper to taste.

Source of inspiration: ‘Gingerbread Cupcakes with Lemony Frosting,’ in ‘Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule’ by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero.

Food blogging at last!!! This is the first recipe of this new born blog… I want to thank Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, authors of ‘Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World.’ This is the first cupcake book I ever bought and I love it. I am so impressed with the results of my first attempts at baking vegan cupcakes! I really wanted to try the gingerbread cupcakes but did not have all the ingredients listed in the original recipe so I ended up using what my pantry offered and I reinterpreted the recipe a bit…or maybe a lot…!? The cupcakes turned out great. They were so light, airy and slightly spongy…nobody could believe they were actually eggless and dairy-free. I opted for the lemon and ginger combination because I think they just match perfectly in almost any kind of culinary experiment. For these Ginger and Lemon Cupcakes I used organic ingredients (which doesn’t mean you cannot go for non-organic ingredients, although for this recipe I think it’s better to choose organic lemons, organic cornstarch, organic baking powder and organic icing sugar).

Ingredients (makes 12 cupcakes):

For the cupcakes

½ cup wholemeal flour, ½ cup cornstarch, ¼ cup kamut flour

¼ cup muscovado sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder (I used cream of tartar)

½ teaspoon baking soda

1½ teaspoons finely grated lemon zest

1½ teaspoons dried, powdered ginger

3 teaspoons fresh ginger, minced

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon sea salt

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

½ cup maple syrup

½ cup unsweetened soy milk

For the icing

zest of 3 lemons, finely grated

1 teaspoon vanilla powder

1 cup lemon juice

2 tablespoons icing sugar

2 tablespoons almond butter

Cupcakes

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Combine all the dry ingredients (except baking powder), including cinnamon, lemon zest, powdered and fresh ginger in a bowl, then stir in the olive oil, maple syrup and soy milk. Keep stirring until you have reached a nice, smooth, creamy texture. The batter should not be too thick, so feel free to add some more soy milk if necessary. When you achieve the desired thickness, add the baking powder and stir. Spoon the mixture into 12 greaseproof cupcake cases (or paper cases) placed inside a muffin tray. 2 to 4 tablespoons of dough should be enough to fill two-thirds of each cupcake case, if you use more you will have muffins instead of cupcakes! Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until the cupcakes look golden brown. Set aside and leave to cool before decorating with the icing.

Lemon icing

Whisk the icing sugar with the lemon juice, vanilla, lemon zest, almond butter until smooth. The more sugar you use, the thicker the icing (…it shouldn’t be too thin). Pour a little icing over the top of each cupcake and let it drizzle nicely down the sides. You can serve right away or later when the frosting will have set a bit more. This lemon icing can be kept in the fridge for a while (up to two-three days) and used whenever you fancy a cupcake. If it gets too thick sitting in the fridge, all you have to do is take it out and give it a good stir to warm it up before dressing up your cupcake.

Variations (for even more natural cupcakes)

You can use the same quantity of brown rice syrup instead of muscovado (muscovado and rice malt will give your cupcakes different flavours); icing sugar can be substituted with 1 tablespoon cornstarch and 1 ½ tablespoons brown rice syrup (the colour of the icing will be slightly different); arrowroot can replace cornstarch.