Vegan Southern Feast: Sausage Okra Gumbo, Bacon Cornbread, Maple Bourbon Sweet Potatoes, Perfect Brussels Sprouts

August 14, 2015

Vegan Michelin Series: Il Gallo d’Oro in Funchal, Madeira

November 13, 2018

During our stay in Funchal, Madeira, the beautiful Portuguese island, we had a fancy dinner one night at the island’s most celebrated restaurant – Il Gallo d’Oro. It has been awarded two Michelin stars and they told me they could arrange for a vegan tasting menu, so we went for it. Located in The Cliff Bay resort hotel (one of the three PortoBay properties), Il Gallo d’Oro is not only considered the best restaurant on Madeira but it’s also awarded that title for all of Portugal sometimes. So while I knew the food would be great, my vegan expectations were still tempered because these fancy restaurants sometimes just don’t have the experience or knowledge for creating vegan menus that are at the same level as the regular ones. As usual I was right. The food was super lovely and delicious, and I’ll probably be describing each component as ‘lovely’ because that’s really all there was to it. But it was missing that expertise that a veg chef could provide. And while dining here is a nice event for a special occasion, it’s way too expensive for what you get.

The Cliff Bay hotel was decorated for Christmas (it was almost that time) and it felt cozy, even though it’s super weird for me still to reconcile that Christmas can happen in warm or even tropical locales. But I was glad we had chosen to stay at the Porto Mare as this hotel seemed a little less…fun than ours. The crowd was all older and we were clearly the youngest people dining at the Golden Cock (what it means) that night.

After we were seated in the dim, modern-chic dining room, a waiter asked if we would like champagne. He was already holding it, so husbo said sure why not. I asked for a non-alcoholic option and they brought me a tall pink drink that wasn’t too sweet, so that’s nice. It was topped like the makers had just watched ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ and didn’t realize that Jason Segel was making fun of how much unnecessary garnish bartenders put in drinks and instead they were like ‘this seems smart.’ Mine had a wedge of pineapple, cucumbers, a cherry, and twirly herbs dangling from the whole shibang. I would have eaten all of it too but I was trying to behave properly.

We found out at the end that they charged 18 euro for the champagne, which was presented as if it were a gift or already included with the extravagant price tag, so that’s kind of/super shirty. You don’t want to go to a supes fance place like this and feel like they’re overcharging you and nickel and diming you, and 18 euros is more than a dime.

It is super pretty though right?

As usual, when they asked for our water preferences I said still and husbo said sparkling because that’s how we roll. They brought us fun bourbon-bottle-looking-mufas of our waters. We found out later that they charged 5 euro for water. I mean. Guys. Include water in your ticket price! This is an unacceptable charge in my book at any restaurant or cafe or place in the universe, let alone a two-michey.

Those are my big complaints, though, and the rest of it is pretty positive. Like I said, the food, while not as innovative as I’d like, was elegant and delicious. And they brought me olive oil in a dish shaped like the island.

A dish of olive oil means I get bread!

what a motley crew

My first course was a little salad of fennel, baby corn, super super thinly sliced tomato, and cherries. I know, literally the most random assortment of ingredients you could throw together, but they somehow complemented each other. It was simple and refined.

How pretty is this! Doesn’t it look like little egg tarts or something? It’s little seed cuplings with a piece of yellow tomato. At least I think so. I’m having trouble remembering but I remember liking it and more importantly IT’S SO PRETTY.

Now this bitch I know! Ugh this was so good. One of the best things about Micheliny restaurant tasting menus is that they ALWAYS throw black truffles at me. For regular diners, these fancy restaurants try to make it worth the price tag by serving expensive meats and rare cheeses and I don’t know hand-churned butter? Shit like that, to make you feel better about the cost. But they can’t give me expensive meats and there are just not expensive vegetables they can throw at me, so they try to make my menu fancy by throwing truffles at me. It was weird to have a slice of raw truffle instead of using it in an oil, a cream, or a paste, as I’ve had in the past, but mushed into this cozy and comforting little stew, it was quite delightful. It was exactly the kind of bean, grain, and veg stew I’d make at home for a winter time dinner, but elevated with that truffle. And the little flower. I never eat flowers at home.

and so we meet again

So, as you can see, the next dish was kind of similar to the last. And by similar I mean the same. It seems the restaurant figured out a few good vegan dishes, but since the tasting menu requires a certain amount of dishes, they just repeated some? I mean it was good, and heartier than the usual tasting menu offerings, so I wasn’t complaining. But it showed a lack of planning for me, or a lack of care.

edible silver

And then we were already onto dessert! Here was a little bowlful of jelly (not in a Cosby voice! We don’t do that anymore!) with hazelnuts, and one hazelnut was coated in edible silver because of the aforementioned attempt to make my costs seem higher. My absolute favorite part of the entire experience was that one of our waitresses, my favorite one, pronounced it ‘wizelnuts’ in her little accent and it was THE BEST. Hazelnuts played a big role in several of my dishes and she kept talking about it and saying ‘wizelnuts’ and I forking loved it. Always say wizelnuts.

My second dessert was great. I had a beautiful little vanilla pudding, or more like a flan I guess because it stands as a solid structure. Is that what separates pudding from flan? I have no idea. Anyway it was delicious, and it was a very special treat to not get sorbet or plain fruit. As you can say, they went a little overboard with the gold leaf, trying to up my costs again I guess but like, for no reason at all! It makes me laugh. Like plain bits of gold leaf do not taste good, and having so much of it doesn’t magically make me think ‘oh this was a well priced meal after all’! Nonetheless, it was a better than average dessert.

So overall, it was a very nice meal, but it would have been a nice meal for a regular restaurant, not necessarily one with two Michelin stars. Each dish was great, but not worth the money. Unlike most of the Michelin restaurants we’ve been to, they didn’t give us a souvenir menu at the end, but hopefully my memories are correct. If they are, I’m confident in saying that Il Gallo d’Oro can provide a lovely dinner for a special occasion while on holiday, but for the price it’s a better choice for the white-haired folk vacationing on Madeira who aren’t vegetarian.

IL GALLO D’ORO, MADEIRA, PORTUGAL, EUROPE
Water speed: A little slow.
Service: Very fun mostly because of the wizelnuts 🙂
Bathrooms: The bathrooms were outside the restaurant and in the hotel lobby, so since the hotel was super nice, the bathrooms were too. Very like.
Food: So the food was delicious, but I basically had the same main twice so that’s a little magoo. And overall it was overpriced for the vegan menu.
Bonus: Great to have a fancy restaurant on holiday.

Happy Purim! Eat This Rhubarb Caramel Hamantaschen !

March 5, 2015

Hey it’s Purim! Last year it was better than Halloween; this year it’s better than Mardi Gras. (I learned that the latter is a more apt comparison because of the costumes or the food orrrr the time of year.) It feels like just yesterday when I shared the story of Purim on the blog. Since it would be silly to write a different version of the story, and also I’m tired, I’m going to share last year’s before we get to the new recipe.

[Purim is] about when King Ahasuerus got super drunk and ordered all the young ladies to line up so he could pick his favorite to be his wife, and he picked Esther, a Jew who didn’t let on that she was a Jew, who had been raised by her uncle Mordechai, which is a name that you always have to say with the required Yiddy question mark at the end. So the king’s Jafar, named Haman, decides to kill all the Jews, but then Esther tells her hubsking, ‘Hey I’m Jewish! You can’t kill the Jews!’ and the King is all ‘Oh man you are right! Jafar Haman get thee gone! You are evil! We are going to celebrate this holiday by making delicious cookies in the shape of your three-cornered hat! I don’t know why the celebratory traditional food should be in the villain’s honor, but there we are!’ So that is Purim.

It still stands. So, I wanted my hamantaschen this year to have a fruit filling, but fruit in London is too expensive for me to waste by cooking and then putting in cookies so I used jam. In hindsight, my decision to open the fancy jar of rhubarb preserves that we bought in Paris and have been saving seems a little more extravagant than buying fruit that’s 20c more than I want to pay, but eh it’s a holiday and I’m permitted to have some errors in judgment. You can make your own jam if you want to be a baller about it but ain’t nobody got time for that.
This year’s batch capitalized on the coconut caramel I made for a test run of vegan Samoa (Girl Scout) cookies that didn’t get thick enough. So, not good enough for my Samoas, but perfect for this! Last year’s dough was puffier and a little sweeter. I changed up the dough a bit to make it a little denser and a little less sweet. Pick whichever you want, but I highly recommend making both fillings, last year’s rosewater baklava and this year’s rhubarb caramel. Yummm!

RHUBARB CARAMEL HAMANTASCHEN

For the dough
Ingredients:

4 cups white flour
1/2 cup white sugar
3 tablespoons coconut sugar
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup canola oil
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup unsweetened almond milk + 2 tablespoons
lemon zest from just under 1/2 lemon

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, mix all the dry ingredients together.
In a different bowl or large measuring cup (I like the cup because it’s easier to clean) mix all the wet ingredients.
Add the wet to the dry and mix really well. You can use a stand mixer for all this mixing if you are some crazy fancy person who just has everything. Or you can be awesome like me and make do without equipment like a friggin badass.
Divide into 2-3 balls, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate for at least one hour.
Thaw for 30 minutes before use.

For the caramel
Ingredients:

14 oz. coconut milk (I used 3 tablespoons coconut milk powder from the cool Indian shops on Brick Lane mixed into water. This could be why mine is runny. If you use regular coconut milk and it gets thicker let me know.)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 tablespoons vegan margarine
1/2 tablespoon arrowroot powder

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in a saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.
Lower heat and let simmer uncovered for like 30-40 minutes.
Remove from heat and let cool for however long you got.

ASSEMBLY
– 1 batch above dough
– 1 batch above caramel
– 1 1/2 cups jam of choice (pick rhubarb)

Preheat oven to 375F.
Roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thickness. People like to say ‘on a floured surface’ but I like to roll on parchment paper because it’s sooo much easier to clean up. And it’s just easier. Less sticky. Do it my way.
Using a circular thing of about 3-inch diameter (glass, mug, cookie cutter, part from a small blender like I did) to cut out um circles.
Place a heaping teaspoon of jam in the center of each circle.
Place 1/2 teaspoon of caramel over the jam. Fold the dough into the triangle shape immediately after placing the caramel so it doesn’t run as far. Fold by pinching the top of the circle into a point, and then pinching the bottom sides into two points. Like a triangle. Or like Haman’s hat, more accurately.
Bake for 15-20 minutes, until dough is golden brown.
Enjoy as you wonder why the celebratory food for this holiday is in memory of the villain.