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Experimental Braised Cabbage

Inspired by the Fallow Chefs’ confit caramelized cabbage, I made a vegan braised caramelized cabbage for dinner tonight, with pearl barley and split peas then finished in the stock. The recipe was improvised and not recorded exactly but the results were amazing.

The cabbage came out very sweet and caramelized, like the confit method appears but less buttery. Texture was nice, soft enough that the inner layers could be cut with a fork but not mushy.

I’ve written up the process below as best I can remember it.

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Microwave Baked Onions in Tomato & Basil Sauce

This is an easy recipe that can be a side dish as half an onion, or the main meal with more halves and the addition of some extra grains/pasta/etc to soak up the sauce. No animal products or gluten required.

Serves 3-6 (half or a whole onion) and costs about AU$2 (as of November 2025).

Based on the “Baked Onions” recipe in an old Family Circle Kids Microwave Cooking book I had as a kid.

Microwave Baked Onions in Tomato & Basil Sauce

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Little Note re Vegan Egg Substitutes

Most “egg substitutes” only work well for a specific use case of eggs, and not for others. E.g:

  • Aquafaba (chick pea water) whips up like egg whites and can be used to make sponge cakes, merengues or similar fluffy sweets.

  • Chia or flaxseed/linseed are a good replacement binder for muffins and denser cakes (and good for fibre and protein too).

  • Tapioca starch and baking powder can also work to give a bit of leavening for muffins (McKensie brand vegan baking egg subtitute is this).

  • Ground cashews and/or avocado can be used for some richer desserts like mousses.

  • Kala Namak, a dark sulphurous salt which adds the smell and flavour of egg yolk, but doesn’t add texture like the above stuff.

  • Tumeric is often used to add a bit of yellow colour to make vegan omelettes and scrambles look like eggs.

I haven’t yet seen any subsitutes that are a straight drop in for all purposes of eggs, usually you have to use several depending on the recipe.

The Delightful Diversity of “Cup” Sizes in UK/US/AU/NZ Cooking

Volumetric measurements (using the volume of a container) are inferior to Gravimetric measurements (i.e. weight) in most ways. Weighing is faster (for a given pareto-optimal degree of accuracy), can achieve greater accuracy, and most importantly there will be less dishes to clean up afterwards.

Most irritatingly, “cups” and “spoons” mean different amounts in different countries. Even worse, sometimes three “thirds” of a cup are less than one cup…

[Updated 2020-03-22: Added cup densities for wheat bran and oat bran]

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10 Minute “Meaty” Vegan Moroccan Pilaf

10 minutes cooking time, that is, so to be honest it’s about 12-15 minutes total.

This is my usual standby meal because it meats (heh) all my requirements:

  • High in fibre (wholegrain burgul and veg)

  • High in protein (soya mince and wholegrains)

  • Relatively low in calories

  • Filling meaty taste, but no animal products

  • Each serve contains two 75g Australian “serves” of vegetables

  • Only uses non-perishable ingredients, so no need to plan ahead

  • Faster to make from scratch than to get takeaway

  • Only uses one pan/pot

Cooked Soya Pilaf

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Cooking Reference Tables and New Blog

At the start of the year I started assembling some cooking reference tables - reference lists of cooking times, types of fillings, sauces, doughs, herbs and spices used in different cuisines, etc. I never got around to finishing the doughs and sauces, and I was going to wait until they were all done before “announcing” it. But it looks like it’s not going to get done anytime soon, so this post is the belated and incomplete announcement.

Due to my tardiness in making updates here, I’m considering creating a new blog-type site where I can have a fresh start and post little snippets every now and then.

Introducing the Price And Nutrition Tracking System

In early 2017 I had just gone onto disability pension. Desperate to improve my health despite being broke, I was looking for a way to get the maximum fibre and protein from my food for the minimal cost and calories. I started entering in all the nutritional data from food I bought into a spreadsheet, calculating and plotting those protein:fibre:cost:calories ratios.

Later that year I started to create and analyse recipes which combined different ingredients. This quickly became cumbersome in a spreadsheet, so I started a Django project initially called the Price And Nutrition Tabulation System (P.A.N.T.S) for storing and visualising the data for both recipes and ingredients.

Soon I also realised since I was entering in all my recipes here it would also be easier if I used it as my daily calorie counter and added a “food diary” to the system, renaming it the Price And Nutrition Tracking System.

Example screenshot of the diary view:

/galleries/software-screenshots/pants-diary-screenshot.thumbnail.png

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