Armenia is a small landlocked country located in the Caucasus that used to be a part of the Soviet Union. It is usually considered to be a part of Asia, but sometimes counted in Europe as well (e.g. Wikipedia lists it as a “bicontinental country” and it is also a member of the Council of Europe). The pride of Armenians is Mount Ararat, even though it is nowadays located in Turkey.

Armenian food is somewhat similar to Middle Eastern, using both fresh and dried fruit and nuts (especially walnuts), some herbs and spices, tahini, rose water and orange blossom water. Armenians eat a lot of lamb, but there are also several interesting dishes, especially soups, that are vegan or could be easily adapted to be. Yoghurt, tomato sauce, pickles, greens, eggplant, bulgur wheat, chickpeas and lentils are also popular. Armenians like soups, skewers and hearty salads. They have a particular fondness for stuffing food, from fish to onions.

This unusual lentil soup recipe instantly got me interested, being a big fan of eggplant and dried apricots. Sadly, neither is really that discernible in the final soup – the eggplant kind of dissolves and it seems like most of the flavour from the dried apricots leeches into the broth (but they aren’t enough to really flavour it that much). It’s a good, hearty soup, but nothing really special. Perhaps upping the amount of herbs would make it more flavourful.

Armjanskij sup chechevicy

350 g/0.75 lbs eggplant, peeled and cubed
150 g/0.3 lbs green bell pepper, diced
150 g/0.3 lbs onions, chopped
75 g/2.5 oz carrots, sliced
75 g/2.5 oz celery, sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbsp oil
1.5 l/6 cups vegetable stock
210 g /7.5 oz lentils
210 g/7.5 oz tomatoes, chopped
120 g/4 oz dried apricots, sliced
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp paprika
1.5 tsp salt
3 tbsp fresh parsley, chopped
1 tbsp fresh mint, chopped

Fry the vegetables in the oil until soft and slightly browned, about 8 minutes. Add all the other ingredients except for the fresh herbs. Bring to boil and lower the heat. Simmer for 35-45 minutes, until the lentils are done to your liking. Stir in the fresh herbs and serve hot. Makes 6-8 portions.

Sorry again for the delay between postings. It’s been crazy in this household – we got married last week (there are photos and videos in case you’re interested and I will probably write an article about holding a vegan wedding later) and we are moving to the Netherlands in two weeks. So, not much time and the focus on cooking is getting rid of the stuff we have in the fridge and our two (yes, two) freezers. Luckily I have some dishes I haven’t yet posted.

Anyway, this time Vegventures travels to Argentina, the second-largest country in South America and eighth-largest country in the whole world, which reaches all the way to the south of the continent. The name of this country comes from the Latin word argentum meaning silver. Most of the people are of European descent and speak Spanish, though there are also significant mestizo, East Asian, Arab and even Jewish minorities.

As for the cuisine Argentina is probably best known for its beef and steaks. Red meat is indeed very common, but the Argentineans also enjoy a wide variety of Italian food like pizza, pasta and polenta as wel as classic South American dishes like empanadas. Salads are common and popular vegetables include sweet corn, tomatoes, onions, lettuce, eggplant, squash and zucchini. Many pastries and other sweet baked goods (some with German origins) are also eaten. Yerba mate tea is a popular drink, and many of you have probably tried Argentinean red wines.

This recipe comes from Robin Robertson’s excellent 1,000 Vegan Recipes by Robin Robertson, and by googling I found some similar recipes (using oranges), so I assume it is reasonably authentic. The orange slices really add an interesting element to the dish. I do think you could up the spices a bit. Using a whole orange wouldn’t be a bad idea, either. If you omit the sugar, it should be fairly low carb.

The title in the boook is Argentinean bean and vegetable stew, but it says you can also use seitan to replace the beef in the original recipe. I have halved the recipe. I did not have butternut squash so I used normal squash (yes, I know it’s not the same, but it’s ridiculously expensive in Finland and only sold in one store).

Argentinean seitan and vegetable stew

1 tbsp oil
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/2 butternut squash or 1 small squash
1/2 of a 450 g/14.5 oz can diced tomatoes
some mild green chiles, chopped
1.8 dl/3/4 cups vegetable broth
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
3.5 dl/1.5 cups seitan chunks or cooked or canned kidney beans, rinsed.
1/2 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
1 tsp salt
1/2 seedless orange, peeled and chopped

Fry the onion, garlic, bell pepper and squash n the oil for about 10 minutes. Add all other ingredients except for orange and bring to boil. Simmer uncovered for about 20 minutes. Add the orange and stir to heat through. Serve hot, garnished with parsley or cilantro if you want. Makes about 3-4 portions.

Sorry for the lack of posts recently. I have some major life changes happening in the next weeks, so unfortunately posts will still be sparse until mid September or so, possibly even longer.

Writing this blog has made me realize how little I remember of the geography lessons I had in school. Not only are there two countries that can be referred to with the adjective “Dominican” and three Guineas in Africa, there are two Congos, both located next to each other in the Southern Central Africa.

The much larger Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly known as Zaire) is completely landlocked, while the smaller Republic of the Congo also has a tiny bit of shoreline on the Atlantic coast. However, the latter has a GDP per capita over a decade larger than the former, which has the second lowest nominal GDP per capita in the world (the lowest is in Burundi).

Enough of the geography lesson and onto the food. Congolese cuisine is similar to many other African cuisines: a starch like fufu is eaten with a stew. Other popular starches include taro, yam, corn, rice and kwanga, a fermented bread made of cassava. The Congolese also eat a lot of cassava leaves and other greens, okra, mushrooms, corn, rice, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, tomatoes, chili and peanuts. They do eat goat, fish, insects and other meats, but not that much because of cost issues.

This particular dish is featured on many recipe sites and must be the one of the simplest to ever appear on Vegventures. Most versions only contain three ingredients, but I added salt, because I felt it was needed. Since African people use wild mushrooms I used some parasol mushrooms from my freezer, though I think that in the end white/button mushrooms might have worked better, after all.

The original recipe calls for frying the mushrooms in oil, as most mushroom recipes do. In reality you get better results if you first fry the mushrooms until they have exuded their juices and dried out (you can initially add a few splashes of water if needed) and only then add the oil. For more mushroom tips see my article How to Cook with Mushrooms.

Sauce aux champignons et citron

1 lbs/450 g mushrooms
1 tbsp oil
juice of 1 lemon
salt

Fry the mushrooms until they have shrunken down and are juicy. Add the oil and continue frying for a bit. Add the lemon juice and salt and simmer as needed.

When thinking about the cuisine of Norway, at least here in Finland people will think fish, especially cod. It’s kind of a running joke that Norwegians only eat cod. They also eat a lot of other meats (especially reindeer and other kinds of game), bread, dairy products and wild berries and are the heaviest coffee drinkers in the world. As usual in Northern Europe potatoes, carrots and cabbage are among the most popular vegetables.

This recipe from IVU is apparently a Norwegian Christmas dish. Potato pancakes are a popular dish in many other countries, including here in Finland, but usually they aren’t rolled out thin. These vegan lefse, perhaps more appropriately called potato crepes, taste like a comforting combination of pancakes and mashed potatoes (well, duh).

The recipe did not specify how they should be served, but we settled on lingonberry jam, which is a popular condiment in Norwegian countries and worked very nicely with the pancakes.

Since the pancakes are supposed to be thin and flat, not fluffy, you should be able to use a gluten-free flour for gluten-free lefse. Probably something mild-tasting like rice, quinoa or millet flour, perhaps oat flour.

Lefse

2 cups/5 dl plain mashed potatoes, cold
2 tbsp soy milk or another non-dairy milk
1 tbsp margarine
0.5-1 tsp salt
3/4-1 1/4 cup/1.8-3 dl flour
oil for frying

Mix all the ingredients together, adding flour as needed to make a dough and knead it briefly to mix well. Divide dough into 12 balls of equal size. Roll out into very thin pancakes (you will need to keep the surface and the rolling pin well floured to avoid sticking).

Fry in oil in a frying pan or skillet on medium to medium high heat, 1-2 minutes per side. Stack on a plate with a paper towel between each pancake. Can be served hot or cold. Also stores well in the fridge or the freezer. Serve 2-3 pancakes per person (making 4-6 portions out of this recipe).

I have to confess that only after I had cooked this dish I found out that besides Dominican Republic, there is also a country called Dominica. The adjective “Dominican” can refer to both (though according to Wikipedia it is pronounced in a different way!) so I’m not sure whether this dish is supposedly from Dominica or Dominican Republic (however, it seems like quite a generic Latin American dish).

Both Dominica and Dominican Republic are fairly indigent countries on the Caribbean. Dominican Republic is located on the same island as Haiti, on its eastern side. One major difference between them culturally is that on Dominica the majority of people are black and most speak English and Creole, while the people in Dominican Republic are mostly mixed race and speak Spanish.

Cuisine of Dominican Republic has been influenced by Spanish and Africa. They eat a lot of meat and starches. Rice and beans are popular as in most of South America and Caribbean, perhaps surprisingly also bulgur wheat. The cuisine of Dominica is “similar to that of other Caribbean countries”. Chicken and other meats are popular, especially in spicy or fruity sauces.

This recipe originates from International Vegetarian Union. I have no idea how much “2 sprigs of cilantro” is, is it really just two cilantro stems, because that is very little. I added a bunch of cilantro stems, which the recipe tells you to fish out before serving, but that turned out impossible, as they had mostly dissolved in it.

I could not find cubanelle peppers so I used a little chili and half of a red bell pepper. The recipe also didn’t specify how much water to add (and in general was very vague). The dish, was tasty, but nothing special. It looked nice in the beginning of cooking with the vibrant colors of red onion and the bell pepper, but red onions lose their color when cooked for a while, so sadly the end result was a boring looking mush.

I’m on holiday now so I may be posting a little less frequently than usual.

Dominican beans

2 cups/5 dl cooked (or canned) red kidney beans
some of the water from boiling the beans
some fresh cilantro (coriander)
2 tbsp oil
1 small red onion, quartered
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cubanelle pepper, chopped
1 vegetarian stock cube
1 tbsp tomato paste
pinch oregano

Fry the onion, garlic, oregano, tomato paste, peppers and salt in the oil for a few minutes. Add the beans, some water, the stock cube and the cilantro. Let simmer for a while, mashing the beans with a fork to partially break them, until the result is thick and creamy. Serve over rice or bulgur.

Lesotho is a small landlocked country which is also an enclave – meaning it is located inside the borders of another country, in this case South Africa. It is hard to find information about its cuisine, but Wikia Recipes Wiki says this:

“Lesotho cuisine resulted from a blend of many cultures such as European, Asian and African with Indian and Malay influences. [...] The basic ingredients of Lesotho cuisine include seafood, meat products and wild game, and also fresh fruits and vegetables. [...] Local dishes are as well heavy on pasta and vegetables like potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, celery and rice. [...] Staple foods in Lesotho include maize, cassava, rice, plantains and millet.”

This dish, originating from Celtnet contains none of the ingredients specifically listed above (except for rice flour), so I can’t vouch for its authenticity, but it sounded very interesting. Compared to the amount of seasonings the result was slightly bland though – I reduced the amount of liquid compared to the original so you can make it tastier. I also found that it needs a longer cooking time.

It turns out that a) even remotely affordable fresh spinach is no longer sold here b) non-pureed frozen spinach is no longer sold here so I had to use stinging nettle instead of spinach. I also used wheat flour instead of rice flour. I didn’t have any of my homemade soy yoghurt so I skipped the yoghurt.

(The Recipes Wiki also says: “The visual attractiveness of the dish is also important, and a balance between colors and proportion differentiates from a region to another. but it is quite hard to make a dish like this look fancy.)

Spinach and tangerine soup

1 l/4 cups vegetable stock
75 g/2.5 oz yellow split peas
1.5 tbsp margarine
100 g/3.5 oz spring onions, chopped
1 tsp ground turmeric
225 g/8 oz fresh spinach, finely chopped
40 g/1.5 oz fresh parsley, chopped
50 g/1.75 oz fresh coriander, chopped
grated zest of 2 tangerines
juice of 3 tangerines
20 g/0.7 oz ground rice or rice flour
150 ml/0.6 cups cold water
salt to taste
(225/8 oz g soy yoghurt)

Soak the split peas overnight. Melt the margarine in a kettle and fry the spring onions for about five minutes. Add the turmeric and fry for one more minute. Add the flour and stir well to combine. Add the cold water and mix. Transfer to a plate.

Bring the vegetable stock to boil. Add the split peas and cook for 30 minutes. Add the cooked spring onions with their liquid and all the other ingredients to the stock. Cook for 5-10 minutes, until the split peas are done. Serve with yoghurt and fresh coriander. Makes about four portions (if I remember correctly).

Bhutan is a tiny landlocked country in Asia located between China and India. The population is less than one million and very few news from the country ever make it to the Western world. Bhutanese cuisine is largely based around red rice, buckwheat and maize, as well as various kinds of meats from yak to mutton, cheese, butter, ferns, lentils and vegetables. They use a lot of chili, other spices associated with India like cardamom and ginger, but also caraway.

Ema datshi or cheese and chili is probably the most famous Bhutanese dish. Another fairly popular one is tshoem, which means “curry”. This one has beef with oyster mushrooms, ginger and chili and the essentially same recipe is on many websites. I pondered for a while on which meat substitute to use, but decided on seitan. However, TVP or something else which a bit softer might have worked better.

I used one very large green chili instead of the two, but it turned out to be very mild, so I added some green chili sauce. I cut down on the fat a bit and I used dried oyster mushrooms, because fresh ones are next to impossible to find in Finland these days.

Nonetheless, it was quite tasty. The ginger and chili blend together into a nice hot flavour/sensation. It’s even better the next day, at least if using seitan, because it takes some time for seitan to absorb flavours.

P.S. Wikipedia says “When offered food, one says meshu meshu, covering one’s mouth with the hands in refusal according to Bhutanese manners, and then gives in on the second or third offer.” so remember to teach this to your family when eating this dish!

Tshoem

1 garlic clove, finely chopped
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cm/0.8 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
2 tbsp margarine
450 g/1 lb seitan (or some other meat substitute) cut into 2 cm/0.8 inch dice
1.2 dl/0.5 cups water
1 tsp salt
2 fresh green chillies, de-seeded and sliced thinly
75 g/2.5 oz fresh oyster mushrooms, sliced

Melt the margarine on a frying pan. Fry the onion and seitan for three minutes. Add the water and salt. Bring to a boil, add all the other ingredients and simmer for about 15 minutes. Serve hot with rice or another grain. Makes about three portions.

Belgian cuisine is not particularly famous save for its chocolates, but one thing you can buy everywhere in Belgium (and the Netherlands) is French fries. Besides ketchup they are eaten with mayo, various mayo-based sauces and a psychedelic variety of other sauces people in most other countries would never think of eating with fries.

There are also two vegetables named after Belgium or its capital: Belgian endive and Brussels sprouts, both of which are fairly popular in the country. While I’m very fond of Brussels sprouts when properly made (preferably roasted!) I decided to focus on the less familiar veggie.

Belgian endive (also known as chicory or witloof, depending on where you live) is a vegetable many of us have never tasted. It is a type of lettuce and can be eaten in salads, but is often made into soups and stews and served roasted and barbecued.

I had previously eaten roasted endive, which bordered on being something I’d make or wouldn’t make again. A Belgian friend said, however, that endive is not typically eaten that way in Belgium and gave me a link to this recipe (I know Dutch fairly decently, but I used Google Translate to verify the specifics).

Belgian endive is always somewhat bitter, but cutting off the stem part and further removing cone-shaped piece from the bottom is supposed to reduce the bitterness. However, I’m not sure if I encountered some particularly bitter endives, as the soup was way too bitter for my tastes, the bitterness being somehow very reminiscent of dandelion greens.

Thus, if you do not fancy this kind of bitterness, I’d recommend you to roast the endives instead (which reduces but does not remove the bitterness) or just have some quality Belgian dark chocolate, which has a more pleasant kind of bitterness to it. ;->

Belgian endive soup

4 small endives
juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp oil
1/2 liter/4 cups water
1/2 vegetarian bouillon cube
1/2 tbsp corn starch
salt and pepper

Clean the endive, remove any wilted leaves and the stem part as instructed above. Cut the endive into slices and add the lemon juice to it.

Fry the endive in the oil for about five minutes, stirring occasionally. Sprinkle the corn starch on it and mix well. Add the water and the bouillon cube. Simmer for 15 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste (if needed). Serve hot. Makes 2-4 portions.

Libya is a large country in North Africa. Their cuisine mixes Arabian and Mediterranean influences similar to other North African cuisines, with some Italian twists. Like in some other African (and South American) countries that have been Italy’s colonies pasta dishes are popular. One of the most popular dishes is bazin, some kind of a barley porridge, but it didn’t sound terribly interesting to me.

This recipe was a bit confusing at first. It was titled “orange and cumin biscuits” yet the ingredients say “crushed fennel seeds (kammon kaak or sweet cumin)”. Some googling revealed that “sweet cumin” refers to either fennel or anise. I only had whole fennel seed and powdered anise, so I used the latter.

Also, I had been too lazy to make tahini (ever since the prices suddenly doubled in Finland, I’ve been making my own), so I used almond butter and a few drops of roasted sesame oil. It tastes almost identical. I added 1 tsp of orange zest (though it was frozen and might have lost its flavour) and a little vanilla which were not a part of the original recipe.

The cookie dough seemed very oily and I was worried it would be too greasy, but the final cookies turned just fine texture-wise. However, while the dough had a very interesting orange anise flavour with a hint of sesame, despite my addition of orange zest the final cookies only had very subtle flavour, making them quite ordinary sugar cookies. Not a dessert or treat, but something you have with tea. Using freshly pressed orange juice might have improved the flavour.

I’ve halved the recipe and it still makes plenty of cookies (20-30) as you can guess from the amount of flour. Note that there is more orange juice now that a part of it also stands in for the egg, together with the soy flour.

Kaak lebi hilw

1.5 tbsp soy flour
1.6 dl/2/3 cups orange juice
1 tbsp tahini
100 g/1.2 dl/0.5 cups sugar
1.2 dl/0.5 cups oil
350 g/6 dl/1 2/3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp crushed anise or fennel seed

Preheat the oven to 180C/350 F. Mix the soy flour, tahini and a few tablespoons of the orange juice together to form a paste. Add all the other ingredients and mix into a dough. Roll the dough about 6 mm or 1/4 inch thick and take crescent (or other) shapes with a cookie cutter. Bake for about 15 minutes or until a light golden brown (be careful with crescents, the tips can brown very quickly!). Dust with confectioner’s sugar.

Ecuador is a small country in the North-Eastern part of South America. As you can guess, the name comes from the Equator, which is why I always try to write it with a q Ecuador is probably best known for the Galápagos islands, the home to giant tortoises and other memorable animals. Last year I met someone whose (Finnish) friend had a boyfriend in Galápagos islands(!). I had been under the impression the islands are mostly uninhabited, but they have apparently have a population of about 40,000 people.

After I already made this recipe I noticed that Wikipedia doesn’t think quinoa is that popular in Ecuador, instead it says the people there tend to eat meat (including guinea pigs), yuca (also known as cassava or manioc), potatoes, rice, corn and plantains (cooking bananas). So, I can’t vouch for its authenticity, but it does claim it was made by someone from Ecuador.

If you don’t know quinoa, you should definitely try it. It’s a super nutritious grain and quite tasty too, works great as a replacement for rice (or bulgur), can be cooked into a porridge or pudding and is wonderful in salads. Sure, if you live in Europe, it comes from quite a distance away, but so does rice, which is supposedly by far the least ecological of all grains, and not very nutritious.

At first I had my doubts about this recipe, it seemed like it would probably be bland. But it was actually quite tasty. The trick is to use good broth or a good bouillon cube. If you just used water, the result would probably be bland indeed.

I added quite a lot of both water and soymilk to the amounts in the original recipe, but still by the time the potatoes were done it was much more like a porridgey stew than a soup, as you can see from the picture. The soup looked very boring, so I made a tomato flower to decorate it. It still looks quite lame, but oh well.

Quinoa soup

1/2 cup/1.2 dl raw quinoa
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil
1 tomato, cubed
1 vegetable bouillon cube
3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 cup/2.4 dl water
1 cup/2.4 dl soymilk (or other non-dairy milk)

Rinse quinoa well. Saute the onion in the oil until translucent. Add all the other ingredients, bring to boil and simmer until the potatoes are done. Makes four portions.