1/2 tablespoon dried chilli flakes (szechuan pepper works best apparently!)
1/2 tablespoon freshly-ground black pepper
1/2 tablespoon himalayan sea salt
1/3 cup tapioca or rice flour
1/3 cup canola oil
1 block (500gm) extra-firm tofu
Ingredients List – Dressing
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
1/2 teaspoon mustard (dry)
1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 medium fresh red chilli, finely sliced
2 medium pickled onions, sliced
Method
1. You’ll need to remove the excess moisture from the tofu before you can coat it in your dry ingredients. Line a side plate with several paper towels. Place tofu on paper towels and cover with another four paper towels. Place another plate on top of the paper lined tofu, and find something heavy or weighted to sit atop this pile. I used a half empty container of oats! Drain for around 20 minutes.
2. Remove tofu from paper towels. Place on cutting board and cut tofu into bite sized pieces.
3. Pour the canola oil into a small pan, over medium-high heat.
4. In a resealable bag, mix your dry ingredients – Add the flour, Himalayan sea salt, black pepper & dried chilli flakes. Reseal the bag and shake to combine.
5. Add diced tofu to the bag, reseal and shake to coat evenly. Remove individual pieces from the bag and drop carefully into the heated pan.
6. Cook over a medium-high heat for approx. 10-15mins, turning your tofu pieces to ensure they are sufficiently browned on all sides. Remove from pan from the heat and place tofu in a paper-lined dish and blot if necessary to remove the excess oil.
7. In a small dish, add all of the dry ingredients from your dressing list. Add cider vinegar, slowly stirring to combine. Once the sugar and mustard has evaporated completely, add sliced fresh chilli and pickled onion.
8. In a separate bowl, combine spinach, tomato & avocado. Toss.
9. Sprinkle sesame, sunflower & pumpkin seeds and raw almonds on top of your salad. Arrange tofu pieces on top. Drizzle with sweet & sour chilli dressing.
10. The most important part of this method? EAT LIKE A KING!
Serves 1 very hungry vegan & an equally hungry vegetarian.
2. Dice kumara into pieces slightly larger than bite size, placing pieces into oven proof dish. In a separate bowl, combine approx. 1 tsp. each of paprika, cinnamon, salt, pepper, turmeric. Sprinkle spice mix over the diced kumara. Drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat and set inside the oven to bake for approximately 40mins, or until soft and golden.
3. Roughly chop the onion, garlic, capsicum & mushrooms. Pick the coriander leaves and put aside, then finely chop the stalks. Finely chop the chillies. Deseed if you prefer less intense heat – I don’t deseed the chillies we get here in New Zealand at the supermarket because they’re not very hot.
4. Place a large pan over a medium-high heat and add a couple lugs of olive oil. Add the onion, capsicum and garlic and cook for 5 minutes, or until the onion is glassy. Set aside mushrooms.
5. Add the coriander stalks, chilli and cumin seeds (approx. 1 tbsp.) and cook for another 5-10 minutes, or until softened, stirring every couple of minutes.
6. Drain the beans & chickpeas, then add to the pan, along with the tinned tomatoes & passata. Stir well and bring to the boil, then reduce to a medium-low heat and leave for 25mins, or until thickened.
7. Stir in the roasted kumara, chopped mushroom and most of the coriander leaves. You may at this point also want to further season with salt & pepper.
Before serving, scatter the remaining coriander leaves over the top. Octo-lacto vegetarians might want to top with cheese and sour cream and serve with tortilla chips. I ate mine with some crusty bread and a bit of dairy-free margarine. It’s delicious!
These days, I don’t go out much.
I have a small group of friends who understand that about me, so know that if they ask me what I’m doing on a Friday night and I’m free, an invitation to hang out will usually constitute sitting out on my porch listening to music from my Blaupunkt, chain smoking and listening to anecdotal stories about life in general.
When I got home on Friday night, the sun will still very much high in the sky and the weather was nothing short of stellar.
Whether it was dumb luck or sheer foresight, I’d picked up a bottle of Matavino Dolcetto earlier in the week, which the vegan society confirm is an appropriate option for me.
In some instances, although wine is made from grapes, may have been made using animal-derived products. During the winemaking process, the liquid is filtered through substances called “fining agents.” This process is used to remove protein, yeast, cloudiness, “off” flavors and colorings, and other organic particles. Popular animal-derived fining agents used in the production of wine include blood and bone marrow, casein (milk protein), chitin (fiber from crustacean shells), egg albumen (derived from egg whites), fish oil, gelatin (protein from boiling animal parts), and isinglass (gelatin from fish bladder membranes).
I figured I would take full advantage of the weather and positioned myself on our front stoop, drinking in the summer sun with a glass of this gorgeous wine.
My good friends Amy & Fraser stopped by, with beers in tow to join in the merriment.
Eventually the conversation turned to my pre-married role of being Amy’s wingman in gay clubs – she said I was never good at it, and if I’m honest, well? She’s right. I’m a terrible wingman. I would usually end up dancing the night away with gay men instead of helping my friend meet a potential significant other.
We’ve laughed about this throughout the years, as we’ve shared many hilarious stories of our nights out with friends, that began with so much hope and promise, and ended with us all at home, alone, talking about all the people we could’ve gone home with…but obviously, chose not to. Realistically, hindsight tells us that the reason we went home alone so regularly was because we were and are a special breed of super awkward humans, but it was easier on our egos and better for our self esteem to pretend otherwise.
As the drinks flowed, Amy tried to convince me that as I hadn’t been out in a while, it was my duty to take her out dancing that evening. You know, as repayment for all those years as an absolute rubbish wingman. After drinking an entire bottle of red, I started to think it was a good idea too. I heralded the alarm by way of facebook and recruited another couple of girls to join our party.
My trusty friend Dave arrived and we piled into his car, thanking him for assuming the role of sober driving dad. He dropped our gaggle of giddy, intoxicated girls on K’Road and we headed into Family Downunder to cut some serious rugs.
Family Bar is a longstanding institution on K’Rd, outliving most of the LGBTQIA venues that used to litter the strip.
The upstairs bar boasts a mezzanine floor and stage area which is often crammed with gyrating, half naked men, women and drag queens strutting their stuff to EDM. In the downstairs bar, the DJ’s musical repertoire borrows more from pop & hip hop genres with, to my dismay, a preference for Taylor Swift. Ugh.
It’s a strange thing, being awake and out socially at 4am especially when you’re struggling to remain coherent and awake after consuming what seems like your weight in wine and vodka. Usually, I would say nothing good happens at this time, but you know what? That’s not true on K’Rd. Falafel & Shisha are available in abundance!
The Little Turkish Cafe has been a part of the K’Rd scene since I was a teen. I haven’t eaten here by choice since the ERA determined in favour of former employee Zahra Barzegari, after her claims of unfair dismissal, withholding pay and holidays were found to be with merit. She was awarded $10, 000 in back pay in the employment courts; the company challenged the Employment Relations Authority’s findings in 2011 and the two parties settled out of court, an undisclosed sum which is not a matter for public record.
In any case, I’m ashamed to say that my ethics got the better of me at this time in the morning and I hastily ordered a falafel kebab before jumping in a cab and heading home to Mt Albert.
Falafel is made from ground chickpeas, fava beans, or both. Falafel is a traditional Middle Eastern food, commonly served in a pita, which acts as a pocket, or wrapped in a flatbread known as lafa; The Turkish Cafe is one of the few places in Auckland that serves their kebabs that way.
And it’s good!
Word to the wise though? Maybe don’t drink wine like it’s going out of fashion as a vegan. The hangover is brutal.
How on earth more people don’t know about this place is beyond me.
This innocuous little eatery is located halfway down Auckland’s infamous K(arangahape) Rd, a stones throw away from the sex shops and titty-bars that the strip is synonymous for.
Owned and operated by Luckrecya Craw, Peach Pit‘s menu much like its nearby neighbour Coco’s Cantina is sustainable, meaning that the dishes are ever changing based on available ingredients.
It was Tuesday night when my friend Carl and I visited for dinner.
A bevy of young, alt types sat outside in the dying sunlight sampling craft beers, paying us no mind as we reviewed the most current menu displayed in the restaurant’s window. After agreeing that there were items on the menu that piqued both our interest, we strolled on in.
I was warmly greeted by Luckrecya & the chef as we entered, taking the opportunity to grab a booth in the virtually empty dining room. Like lightning, iced lemon water was brought to our table by the owner herself, along with a pair of handwritten, photocopied menus. I’ve eaten at the Peach Pit before, and found this to be a charming touch – almost like wandering into a friend’s home who’d decided to host a dinner party and as a cute gesture, provide their guests with an insight into what they would or could choose to experience that evening.
Considering the humidity in the city at the moment, the large jug was sorely appreciated. Too often I eat in restaurants where bottles of water aren’t presented to the table for guests to self pour, owners opting instead to have their wait staff dutifully refill glasses during busy service. Personally I find this style intrusive, so appreciated that we were being given an opportunity to sit & review our options, whilst catching up on each others’ work, family and home lives – not being interrupted by a stranger hovering during a potentially private discussion about embarrassing bodily functions brought on by a diet high in fibre. I digress.
Carl noted that the jug & matching tumblers were reminiscent of some similar glassware that his grandmother owned once upon a time when he was a child, and we talked some on how design has evolved since the fifties, sixties & seventies, amber glass rarely being used in more recent offerings. The glassware appeared to be replica (not amber like Carls g’mas), emulating a vintage style that has become so hugely popular in modern day decor.
Luckrecya returned to the table to let us know that the sweet & sour tofu salad I had spied in the window display on the way in was unavailable, however had been replaced on the menu with a salt & pepper tofu option. This made the selection easy for me and I opted to accompany my main with a cabbage side salad.
Carl ordered a bulgogi beef burger, accompanied by barbecued corn & miso.
Luckrecya mentioned that the burger came with both a large, homemade pattie & sliced beef, and recommended that the beef be cooked medium rare as the chef intended, however did indicate that she would be happy enough to let the kitchen know the beef could be cooked to Carl’s liking, if he chose a different temperature.
As anyone who eats out frequently knows (or has had a friend or spouse who was/is a chef), if the chef recommends an item be cooked a certain way, this is how you should order it – as the overall flavour of the dish will taste as it was designed and intended by someone who knows food well. Carl agreed that the burger should be served as recommended.
Whilst we waited for our meals to arrive, James Blake’s ‘Overgrown‘ played in the background, followed by Wale’s ‘Bad‘, which made for an interesting but appreciated dinner soundtrack. Carl & I work for the same group of companies however he recently took a position in an office closer to home, meaning that we don’t often see one another – when we do, there’s the usual chatter you would expect from two people who previously worked in the same building catching up on office gossip. As the conversationalist (read, ‘blabbermouth’) of this duo, I spent the majority of the time excitedly talking over my own new job and my experiences documenting my new life as a vegan.
He listened intently, as he always does when I’m on a tangent or rant (of which I am famous for), and interspersed the conversation with a terrible joke, of which he is famous for.
Carl’s burger arrived first and it was…well, impressive.
My tofu was delivered soon after and it appeared to be firm, the coating crispy (not sitting in a pool of grease), and was served with a thin sauce which tasted of chilli, coriander seeds, malt vinegar & sugar. I dipped the first piece of tofu gingerly into the sauce and took a mouthful, making sure it was sufficiently coated.
Salt & Pepper Tofu – Peach Pit, Auckland Central, NZ.
Holy shit. This is vegan’s ambrosia. I don’t think the English language has enough adjectives in it to describe how incredible my first salt & pepper tofu experience was. Carl asked me how it was, but it was so good, I couldn’t speak. I fumbled in my knapsack for my mobile phone and called my Octo-Lacto buddy, Kenny.
It took a while for him to answer and as I found out later, was because he was halfway up One Tree Hill on his road bike. I told him I was out for dinner and had just had the most amazing animal-free protein experience of my entire life. He laughed because it was that good, I had to call somebody and tell them, even though Carl was sitting less than a half a metre away across the table.
Carl didn’t say much during dinner, aside from asking me whether I was going to offer to share (which I eventually did, begrudgingly) but did struggle to finish his burger. Luckrecya cleared the table and was genuinely impressed he’d managed to finish it in it’s entirety, claiming to only be able to palate about a third of the meal herself before being stuffed.
The long and short of my second Peach Pit experience, but my first as a vegan, is that everyone must eat here.
Just like Wu Tang, Peach Pit is for the children.
The service is friendly & efficient, the dining room clean and orderly without being sterile or clinical and the meals on offer are ridiculously cheap, especially for a central city based restaurant. I freaked out when she handed me the bill, totalling a mere $47 (including taxes) for 2 mains, 2 sides & 2 soft drinks.
Overall, the best part of this restaurant is that all of the staff know about the food they are serving. They know what flavours will compliment one another and will let you in on these secrets without being condescending, pushy or making you feel uncomfortable about choosing an alternative, should their opinions on flavour differ from yours. A meal at the Peach Pit is an experience, not just ‘food’ haphazardly served on a stark, white plate. They give a shit about their menu, they’re clearly passionate about the food they serve and hip hop is on the restaurant’s playlist.
Today I visited the The Cruelty Free Shop, conveniently located in St Kevin’s Arcade with my gorgeous friend Courtney, and got chatting to the wonderful woman behind the shop counter. In my excitement in the hunt for vegan goodies, I didn’t catch her name but did explain the purpose of my visit. I suppose I expected some kind of negative reaction, being that in a sense I’ve jumped on a bandwagon – the ‘vegan’ lifestyle becoming like the new wave of gluten free obsessives – but she was so charming and helpful, even offering to post about my blog on their social media pages…they’re on twitter if you didn’t know already!
After my friend Kenny, who is also traversing this journey with me as an octo-lacto vegetarian explained to me the previous evening that Il Buco offer a vegan pizza topped with vegan chorizo (main ingredient being wheat protein), and that this chorizo was available for retail purchase at The Cruelty Free Shop, I had to check it out.
I spent a long time discussing my confusion about these pseudo-meat products with the staff, hovering over the refrigerated goods. It’s confusing to me as someone who is both uninitiated and uneducated about veganism that a person who had made the decision not to consume our furry friends, would want to eat proteins designed to simulate the taste and texture of flesh or dairy. She explained to me that she often referred to these types of products as ‘transitional foods’, mainly designed for people who were making the change to a plant based diet. And that totally made sense – in essence, these products were designed for people like me.
With her guidance, I pored over the plethora of vegan, organic, sustainable products on offer, quickly finding the Gran Chorizo that I can come in search of.
This vegan sausage is produced by Wheaty, a company that offers a unique range of products based on wheat gluten, or its more commonly used macrobiotic name, seitan. Seitan is derived from the protein portion of wheat and is an excellent source of protein for vegans, being that gluten has a low sodium and extremely low fat content.
Whilst chatting, I apologised repeatedly and profusely for my ignorance as a carnivore. I asked what I thought were most likely questions frequent visitors to the shop would think were completely stupid about each of the products that piqued my interest, and she more than happily obliged by explaining the origin of each product, whether they were made locally, what particular items would be used for and how they would be best prepared.
I’ve yet to try them myself, but I hear from an excellent source that they taste just like chicken!
As I was checking out, she suggested that I might be interested in attending a Vegan 101 class, held by the Vegan Society of Aotearoa. After reviewing their website, I noted that the last event was held in December, so I plan to keep a dutiful eye out and head along to the next one!
Visiting the Cruelty Free Shop definitely made me a lot more excited about this journey. A lot of the vegans that I have been exposed to in my life have been almost, for want of a better description, elitists; almost as if their dietary choices made them members of a secret society that I could never be a part of – so this experience was uplifting and made me all the more curious and left me feeling inspired about the challenge.
Check out their website or better yet head on into the store on K’Rd and grab a meat analogue or ice cream sandwich!
After making the incredibly limiting decision to forgo my usual decaf latte during a late night visit to a cafe and drink a 20oz Caramel Macchiato from Starbucks instead, I lay listlessly awake at 1am and had a crazy idea.
It’s not a new idea, as a quick Google search will indeed tell you, but friends – it was new to me.
As a prolific and avid user of social media and with friends in various communities throughout the internet, I am constantly being bombarded by horrific images and statistics explaining the detrimental effects that the meat processing industry has on our eco-system, the disgusting practices of mass pork production, the horrors of caged hen farming – usually this information comes in the form of an article shared directly on my Facebook feed, coupled with a video or image of this poor practice – reddit is a huge source for statistical information and BuzzFeed is sure to give you a quickfire education.
I am acquainted with a large number of people who proclaim to be either vegan or octo-lacto vegetarians. Mostly, they’re passionate people who are concerned for the well being of animals. And, that is totally cool.
But sometimes, it gets a bit preachy. I suppose that is why I take a lackadaisical approach to explaining my decisions to consume meat, poultry and animal byproducts. There isn’t a reason as to why I eat meat; I choose to because I think it is delicious. I am a huge fan of beef. I’m the guy cooking an entire eye fillet on the barbecue in the Summertime.
I do try to alleviate my guilt as a meat eater though as an apologist for the mass production of meat for my consumption, by purchasing meat, eggs & poultry from ethical farmers, local businesses to help booster the economy…but, I digress.
This intrusive thought I had a 1am? Well, I thought it would be a great idea to accept the Animal Liberation’s challenge to commit to a vegan diet for a 30 day period.
I know, I know. The general consensus is that I’m crazy. Most people have not been able to understand my motivation or reasoning for deciding to take on this challenge. To be perfectly honest, I’m not even sure why I want to do it, other than to be able to view the world for a short period of time through the eyes of my animal activist friends.
A concern that was highlighted to me over the past week also after socialising the idea with a few colleagues was that I would starve. I will make it implicitly clear that I am for all intents and purposes overweight currently, so there are some significant and positive health benefits that could also be realised through this experiment.
I think that there is this huge misconception about vegans, with people who are not acquainted with this ‘fringe’ of society (if you will), that they’re are this glum group of folks who subsist merely on flavourless tofu, almond milk and lentils. Funnily, during my search for meal plan inspiration I came across some amazing foodie blogs written by vegans, which shows that they are as passionate about dining as we carnivores are about a cut of beef actually being served rested, medium rare – if not more so.
I’m excited to be sharing my experiences through this process with you all. As a meat eater, obviously I am not trying to sway anyone in any direction – however as a curious person, I figured I would do some research on why choosing a vegan diet is a positive change. Check out the infographic below sourced from PETA.org – it makes for some pretty compelling reading!
charliespinoza.com 