The Vegan Challenge

...to be continued, pending dietitian assessment....

Two highly experienced chef failed to come up with a vegan meal during the boot camp in "My Restaurant Rules". The Greedy Goose had its turn of restaurant drama when a vegan showed up with strict dietary requirements.

The vegan generally requires that the meal be free from animal products, including eggs and milk. Quite often, the request for a vegan meal is to avoid allergens such as gluten in flours used in sauces, batters and prepared products. At My Little Restaurant, the preference for sauce thickening is tapioca starch.

Two vegan dishes are especially created for the menu.

Seasonal vegetable noodles, black fungus, and crisp toasted bean curd served cold, with zesty red wine vinegar and szechwan dressing, or warm, with an equivalent braising sauce. Although intended for a side dish, adding bean thread noodles creates a more substantial meal. The dish is easily adapted for a Mediterranean meal by substituting the vegetables for tomatoes, capsicum, and mushroom, and using balsamic vinegar.



Potato galette, eaten on its own as a light meal or as a base for vegan pizza topping.



In addition there is oriental mushroom risotto made with red rice. To be considered gluten free, the vegemite is substituted for fermented salted black olives pesto.

For a more European style vegan dish there is
savoury sweet potato perogies with chunky apple sauce and caramelized onions drizzled with balsamic vinegar which contains wheat gluten in the pastry.

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Sneak Preview of the Restaurant

Unlike "My Restaurant Rules" reality TV programme, Noodle Cook gets a chance to select location, at least using electronic reality. The dream location would be next to the river or the ocean with views and where the locals dine out frequently, like in the more influential suburbs. Such locations are very expensive to lease and are often heritage listed. So using a building design software like "Chief Architect" or equivalent, an ideal location, with no council restrictions and heritage issues, is created.



It is envisage the building and interior take on a modern theme, with sitting for 50 people, and extra room for alfresco dining in summer. Instead of renovating all hours and work till you drop like the reality contestants, the interior is rendered using software left to run by itself overnight. Although the floor plan is not finalised yet, the picture below is the "look and feel" of the dining room. The ultra modern red Barelona chairs are in fact invented in the 1930's.



Some elements of the building and interior designs resemble that of an ocean liner, with a holiday feel. The reason is that a large number of the target customers are expected to be baby boomers who may have travelled by ships before air travel became common place.

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Catering the Baby Boomers

The senior judges for this electronic restaurant belong to the baby boomers' genre and include a professional dietician. The baby boomers, that is, the population born in the boom years period 1946 to 1964 after World War II, are according to statistics coming to retiring years, with an increased demand on goods and services suiting their needs. The youngest baby boomer turned 40 years old in 2004.

Catering their meal requirements in a restaurant become increasingly challenging for a few reasons:

- expectation of a high of level service to match the financial status
- surfacing health challenges like diabetes, heart and kidney diseases, and possibly decreased mobility to name a few
- likely to be overseas-born

The approach taken by My Little Restaurant is to keep meals simple with side dishes and sauces adjusted to suit. For example, this baked salmon dinner, equivalent of "fish and chips", is cooked with next to no oil or salt. Although all photographs in this website are real and taken in natural lighting with minimal staging, the pictures below are digitally compiled from several dishes.



There is a choice of potatoes or rice, togther with the classic touch of 2 or 3 vegetables.



The flavouring comes from coriander, ginger and garlic acting as a garnishes. The cabbage salad is presented with a side dressing of ginger, coriander and soy sauce. The meal can easily be changed to Mediterranean, Mexican, Indian or whatever by changing the sauces/dressing and the garnishes.

Changing the eating habits acquired over a lifetime is never going to be easy, especially that palate for the flavours derived from oil and cooking in it. Where possible, oil is reduced and/or substituted with a non-saturated fat, and cooking methods altered to suit the reduced oil. Of course nothing is ever the same, so sometimes eating a little of the real thing is OK.

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Cabbage Galette

Cabbage galette is introduced to the sides menu in two forms, "summer" or "winter", interchangeably as entree, main meal, snack or side dish. The intention is to get away from the boring coleslaw. Savoy cabbage is blanched in a big pot of boiling water and cooled quickly to retain crispness and colour.

In the summer cabbage galette, the cabbage is served, warm or cold, with seasonal salsa, and dressed with complementing sauces.



Depending on the meals eaten, sauces include vinegars, oil infusions, pestos, and tomato based sauces in addition to salad dressings like mayonnaise.



The winter cabbage galette comprises blanched savoy cabbage layered over a bacon and onion pancake, and topped with more pancake batter before baking in the oven. Bacon can be omitted for a vegetarian version.



Unlike the common cabbage, the savoy cabbage retains its attractive green colour during cooking.



The baked cabbage galette is garnished with herb and served with complementing sauces.

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The Morning After Woes

Despite all the coaxing of "eat your vegies or else no pizza for this month", the dinner didn't go down well, and there are leftovers. Think pizza, Italy, and then it's buon appetito to the Italian omelette, potato frittata!



To every cup of chopped leftover cooked vegetables or meat, add 1-2 cups cooked potatoes (mashed or cubed), and one large (67 g) raw egg.



Pour the mixture into a heated, oiled (or baking paper lined) oven-proof frying pan.



When the mixture sets, transfer to the grill to brown the top.


To serve, garnish with a sprig of herb.

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Going Bananas with Dessert

One of the favourite is the dessert menu where a little bit of imagination goes a long way. The following is a simple banana and berries fruit salad dressed with buttermilk banana custard (pureed banana).

In summer, a frozen whip of the banana custard makes a great alternative to ice-cream. Pureed berries, fruit juice and cocoa give the banana custard flavour and colour.



The use of a tuile, a sprinkle of cinnamon and a spiral banana custard trail with liquer add a more formal touch.

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Macadamia Tuile

Perfecting the very short texture of tuiles without resorting to large amounts of unhealthy saturated fats such as butter or lard becomes a challenge which leads to these macadamia tuiles.



The secret is a high starch flour, such as tapioca starch, used in conjuction with a non-saturated fat.



The combination of tapioca starch, egg white and macadamia oil results in a very crisp, nutty tuile suitable for both sweet and savoury dishes. No sugar is used to enable the dual usage. Without the sugar, shaping cannot be done at the end of cooking when the tuiles are still hot like for most traditional recipes. Instead shaping is incorporated by draping in or over moulds before cooking.

The mixture for the tuiles comprises 1 egg white, 2-2.5 tablespoon macadamia oil and about 4 tablespoon of tapioca starch mixed to a paste which forms soft peaks, just like "Royal Icing" for filigree pipe work.



An electrical waffle maker with removable plates makes the shaping task easy, as can be seen in the photographs below. Cooking in a hot oven or in a waffle maker takes 3-5 minutes.



For lace-like tuile, use a No. 0 or 1 "Icemaster" writing tube and doodle, keeping spaces under 0.5 cm. For a more masculine tuile, keep the trails straighter. If using a piping bag and writing tube look difficult, than don't despair, as you can easily use a plastic bag with a hole, a medicine syringe, greaseproof paper folded into a cone or even a spatula to dispense the tuile paste into the tessellations of a waffle iron. Which ever way, try keeping the trails as thin, and as even a thickness as possible to enable even browning during cooking. Left over paste makes perfect "nuts" when dotted.

Uses: Decorations for sweet or savoury dishes. Add a crunchy texture to soft foods. Sprinkle tuiles with cocoa or icing sugar for use in sweets.

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Surviving the Boot Camp

Setting up an electronic restaurant would be boring without the drama like that of reality show. Just like the contestants in "My Restaurant Rules",  Noodle went on a "Boot Camp" to get some experience on what it is like to work in the "back of house".

Instead of trying to cook 2-course meals for 60 people in an imaginery restaurant function, Noodle Cook went through the rigors on how to work equipment like the waffle maker,  how to separate egg white from yolk, and applying basic knowledge of effects of fats and flour type to pastries making.

Supplied with just egg, tapioca starch, and buttermilk, Noodle has nothing more than imagination to produce something edible. Over 2 intense days, Noodle experienced first hand the sheer physical work and what it is like to think on the feet, and to come out with innovative solutions with very little skills.

Amongst the disasters were undercooked crackling, burnt waffles, and tough mille feuilles, which fortunately can all be fixed by digital remastering, as unlike real life contestants, Noodle has the benefit of a computer.

Taking into account the requirements of the judging panel, at the end of the "boot camp" Noodle produced fat free crackling to perfection, and made healthier versions of dessert pastries, like low fat crispy buttermilk tuile, mille feuilles, and macadamia tuile without saturated fat. The result of this "boot camp" are now incorporated into menu items.

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Buttermilk Spatzle

Spatzle or German egg noodles are made from a stiff batter forced through holes of a colander or a specially made spatzle maker over boiling water. A piping bag comes handy for small batches. Some people prefer to make a dough, which is rolled out out for cutting.

Recipes for buttermilk spatzle abound on the internet and can be easily found using a search engine like Google. The amount of eggs varies depending on the preferred texture, and of course the budget. A good ratio is equal volume of egg to that of flour. Add enough buttermilk to make a stiff batter which retains indentations. For a better colour, add egg yolks. The key to successful spatzle is to rest the batter (or dough) for at least half an hour to soften and thus make shaping easier.

To serve buttermilk spatzle,  try serving with Noodle Cook's Slow Cooked Rolled Rib Beef.

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Crispy Tapioca Buttermilk Tuile

If a picture says a thousand words, then the following pictures are self explanatory. As with grandma's type recipes, technique is more important than proportions. Here are a few tips.

A crispy tuile usually relies on a high saturated fat content such as butter or lard. To produce a crispy low fat tuile, a high starch, glutten-free flour, namely tapioca starch, is used. Egg white is added to bind the starch in place of gluten found in wheat flour.



The batter for the tuile is a simple slurry of buttermilk, egg white and tapioca starch, mixed together with a fork.



Buttermilk commonly comes in a thickened cultured form, in which case, add water or milk to create a pouring consistency. There is no need to whisk the egg white, as clever control of steam bubbles can make a puffy or less puffy, crispy tuile.



Pour about 3 teaspoon of the slurry into an unheated waffle iron. As the waffle iron heats up, wait for the slurry to go translucent jelly-like and then opaque white before closing the lid. By doing so, the tuile retains its shape better without the steam bubbles puffing it out of shape. If required, remove the tuile half way through cooking for shaping, in which case complete cooking in an oven. For mille feuille, make the sheets with a crepe maker or a press.



For a serving suggestion, try Noodle Cook's honey glazed baked apple and poached date Paper Chef #7 creation.

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