Muhallabia

This is the lovely dessert from my Meatless Monday Menu.

It is a milk pudding made with rice flour and almonds and scented with rose water. I knew it first at the wonderful Turkish restaurant that flourished in Bendigo when I lived there in the 80's and 90's. We went there often and this was always my dessert.

I found a recipe some years ago, (Tess Mallos, Middle Eastern Home cooking, she found it in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan) but I have only now managed to make it.
I changed her recipe to strain out the almond meal, which gives the smooth beautiful texture of the dessert I remember.

Traditionally served with pomegranate seeds sprinkled on top, I found it goes beautifully with raspberries and would work with many other fruits.

MUHALLABIA
3 cups milk
3/4 cup ground almonds
Mix and bring gently to the boil. Leave to cool a little and squeeze out as much liquid as you can through muslin.
Bring the milk back to heat and add:
1/4 cup of rice flour blended with 1/4 cup of milk
a pinch of salt
1/4 cup castor sugar
Stir over a medium heat until bubbling gently. Let it cook for a few minutes. Keep stirring so it doesn't stick.
Remove from heat.
Stir in 1 tbsp of rosewater.

Pour into a bowl or bowls. I wet the little bowls so that it could tip out, (that is how it was served in my Turkish Restaurant) but it works fine to serve it set in bowls or spooned out from a large one. Let it get cold in the fridge before you serve it though! It is so delicate and delicious! Enjoy!

Egg Noodles with Cabbage, Mushroom, and fried Tempeh

Here is the next dish of my Meatless Monday Menu (finally!).
I love this quick dish and am pleased too because for many years most of my attempts at a quick wok meal tuned into sog ~ and I was doing SO many things wrong that it took a long time to sort it out and a miracle that I didn't give up in disgust part way through! Well, to tell the truth I did give up: but then I would gradually come around to another try.

I got this right thanks to a little Vegetarian Chinese Recipe Book I found in a supermarket many years ago, and I follow the same basic process of soaking then draining the egg noodles and giving them a fry, setting them aside and frying the vegetables and then adding the noodles and the dressing. Now I have got it, within that formula I vary just about everything!

This meal includes tempeh which I dice and then fry until crisp. So easy and such a lovely savoury taste and crisp texture to add to the mix.

Here is everything ready to go:

I kept most of the flavour in the sauce (soy sauce, Chinese cooking wine, chili paste, cornflour, sugar, orange juice) so the rest was extremely simple. I fried garlic, ginger and spring onion, and then the cabbage, adding the mushrooms and noodles when it was cooked and then poured over the dressing and stirred so it was hot and a little thick and shiny, served with the tempeh on top.

This is a life saver of a recipe because it has comfort and zing all in one plate!