Flageolet Bean Casserole

Made this last night for the first time and it was fab. Thought I’d share.

It’s based around a recipe in a Good Food 101 Veggie Recipes (or something like that). Anyway that’s how it started out.

So, you’ll need:

Onion
Garlic
Courgettes (3)
Carrot
Olives
Oil
Large Jar tomato pasta sauce (Sainsbury’s in UK appear to have a new range of pasta sauces, suitable for vegan and labelled as such. I grabbed a tomato and herb one)
Some white wine
Two Tins flageolet beans
Fresh Rosemary
Smoked paprika
Salt and pepper
Baguette
Vegan marg

I made this in a large shallow pan as it looked good and worked with garlic bread on top.

Chop and sauté onion in oil. Cut courgettes and carrots into chunks and add to pan. Keep turning and cooking until courgettes are browned a bit. Add wine and reduce by half.

Add beans, sauce, rosemary, paprika, olives and bring to boil. Allow to cook for ten minutes. Season as required.

Meanwhile, prepare garlic bread. Mush up garlic and mix into margarine. Slice baguette diagonally about an inch thick. Spread garlic butter on one side (quite thickly).

Arrange garlic bread on top of pan and put under hot grill for ten mins until bread is toasted. Buttered side up of course!

Serve and enjoy. Here’s what mine looked like.

 

Vegan Yorkshire Puddings

I have a never ending experiment going on to produce a superb Vegan Yorkshire Pudding. Generally mine turn out as Yorkshire biscuits. But then again even before I saw the light and became vegan I could never make a decent Yorkshire pud. I have no idea why.

Anyway, this Sunday they seemed to work rather well, they rose and stayed rose (is that real English?). I was actually rather delighted with them, so much so I don’t mind sharing it with you.

So how did I make them? As you know, I’m not one for weights and measures so this will be a little off the cuff but bear with it.

First of all, put your oven on. Hot. Very hot. The hottest it can go. Put a little oil in some pudding tins. I use a tin that makes four medium sized (about 4 inches (100mm) diameter). This quantity makes eight puddings. This size. Of course you can also use bun tins to make smaller puds. When I was younger we used to have them made in bun tins and sometimes my mum used to make extra and we’d have them for pudding. She called them pop-tops and we had them hot, served with golden syrup . A bit like Chinese pineapple or banana fritters without the fruit.

Anyway, about a tsp of oil in each tin. Try to use an oil that can take high temp. I use sunflower. Put these in the oven to get hot.

Put about four rounded tablespoons of self-raising flour in a bowl or jug. Add half a tablespoon of either soya flour or chickpea flour (also called gram flour). A sprinkle of salt. Even in our salt reduced days they need a bit of salt to taste right. Then add about a quarter of a pint of soy milk and whisk it all together. I also added a tablespoon of plain soya yoghurt this week to see if that helped. Whisk as much air into the mixture as you can. It should resemble the texture of thick cream. Add more flour or milk if required.

Once the oil in the tins is hot and probably starting to smoke, take them out and fill tins about 75% full of mixture and get them back in the oven quickly. The quicker this is done the better, keep them hot.

DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN AGAIN UNTIL THEY ARE COOKED!

If you’re lucky enough to have a glass front on your oven, you can watch them rise. After about ten mins, turn the oven down to about 70% (180C ish) and cook on for another 20-30 mins.

They should come out dark brown, crispy and puffed up.

Here’s a photo of a couple with my lunch from Sunday.

Sometimes I don’t add the soya or gram flour, sometimes I add an egg replacement product, sometimes I don’t. The outcome is always different but even if they don’t rise they’re generally crispy and taste OK anyway.

Enjoy and let me know how you get on if you decide to try them.

 

Vegan Shepherd’s Pie

Another wonderful winter warmer.

Boil up some spuds and mash them with some marg and soy milk. I add some nice freshly ground black pepper.

While the potatoes are cooking, soften some onions and garlic in some olive oil. Add some chopped carrots, butternut squash, mushrooms, 2 tins of aduki beans, half a bottle of passata, some rosemary, a handful of porridge oats, pepper, Worcester sauce, smoked paprika.

Let this simmer for about 15 mins until veg has softened. Place in a dish, top with potato. This time I added a crunchy topping made from a mixture of breadcrumbs, yeast flakes, pepper, rosemary and a little oil all mixed together.

Put under the grill until brown and crispy.

Enjoy!

And there was plenty left over for lunches.

 

Vegetable Stew and Dumplings

This weather makes me want to eat delicious warming stews, so I thought I’d better make myself one!

I took a selection of vegetables, see photo. I’ve got onion, leeks, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, swede, butternut squash, garlic, mushrooms, some nice fresh thyme and, bizarrely, a punnet of cherry tomatoes that were sat in the fridge doing nothing.

Put a nice big pan on the heat with some oil and start adding the vegetables as you chop them up. Start with the onions and garlic so they soften before adding the others. Make sure they’re cut up into similar sized pieces.

When you’ve added them all, add some flavourings. I had the fresh thyme. Rosemary is always good, fresh or dry. I also add some freshly ground black pepper and a sprinkling of a good vegan Worcester sauce.

Add liquid to almost cover the vegetables and bring to the boil. Cover and let it simmer while you prepare the dumplings. For the liquid, this time I used some bouillon powder and water. Sometimes a little white wine is good too.

Now onto the important part of the meal. The dumplings! Mix about 4oz self raising flour with 2oz vegetable suet and some flavouring. Today I added smoked paprika and pepper. Herbs are always a good bet of course.

Add enough cold water to bind together so it isn’t too wet. Divide this amount into 8 and roll into balls. Place them on top of the simmering stew and cover with the lid and cook for another 20 mins. It is imperative that the lid is a good tight fit and you do not lift it until dumplings are cooked. If you do, they will not cook properly.

Serve and enjoy.

I had lots left over for lunches, see if you can spot them over the next few weeks!

 

Lasagne

We like lasagna.

Actually I’m a sucker for any sort of pasta meal. One of my particular favourites is penne with a rich tomato based sauce with meditteranean vegetables like courgette and aubergine and artichoke hearts. Hmmm I digress.

Onto my lasagne.

I make up a tomato based sauce, this one went something like this… Sauté an onion and add garlic once softened. Add some carrot, aubergine, courgette, red, green and yellow peppers, mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes all chopped into small pieces. Cook down for a while then add some passata. I had some left over red wine so added a bit of this as well. Season with pepper, oregano, basil and a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar. I also add a few coriander seeds which work beautifully with tomato sauce. Cover and allow to simmer while you make the white sauce.

This white sauce is based on one from the uncheese cookbook (which I cannot recommend enough by the way, even if it is just for the sprinkles, which I think I’ve covered before?)

So, in a blender or processor mix some yeast flakes (a coupe of handfulls), a tablespoon of white miso, a tablespoon of tahini, a tablespoon of cornflour, two tbsp porridge oats, quarter pint of liquid (water, soy milk, white wine blend this time) and juice of one lemon. Blend until smooth.

Time to build lasagne. Put a layer of tomato sauce, a layer of lasagne sheets (I use easy cook) and repeat, finishing with pasta. Then pour on the white sauce to cover everything. Top with some Parmesan type sprinkles (try the ones in the aforementioned uncheese book!) and cook in hot oven (180-200c) for about 40 mins until top is browned.

Delicious with rocket salad and some crusty bread.

Some pictures.

Just going in oven and leftover ready for lunch pots

 

Chinese takeaway

I absolutely love Chinese food. The tastes and textures are amazing. I’m also very lucky to have a great takeaway nearby and they deliver too.

We always over order deliberately. This mean I can bring leftovers to work and smell out the office.

The usual order consists of:

Vegetable spring rolls
Salt and pepper beancurd
Beancurd in Szechuan sauce
Beancurd in black bean sauce
Mixed vegetable curry
Mushroom fried rice (no egg)
Chilli fried rice (no egg)

Pineapple fritters
Banana fritters

All from The Royal Dragon, Coronation Avenue, Bath.

Yum

 

Fajita Friday

I went to the dentist this morning to have a filling. Wasn’t too bad as it was just a little bit of drillng and not half a face of numbness!

I digress. Today is Fajita Friday. Pretty straight forward really. I use a wok as it allows you to cook quickly.

Cut an onion into wedges and cook in oil until translucent. Add some sliced peppers; green, yellow and red. Also add some sliced mushrooms and cook down. I use the Old El Paso traditional fajita mix. So open a sachet and add that. Mix well.

I also add Fry’s Beef style wok strips, about half a box. Cook up until everything is hot. I also add a little liquid, maybe some wine or water and then thicken it with a bit of flour.

Serve with warm wraps and salsa, plain soy yoghurt and guacamole. I often add some jalapenos if I fancy a big hit.

Enjoy!

 

Mushroom Pie

After the disaster of conference food (see tweet from yesterday), today I am back in the office and have a nice box of stuff

Mushroom Pie with boiled spuds and green beans.

The pie is based loosely on the Portabello Pot Pie from that mad woman’s book La Dolce Vegan. A fab book by the way.

So what do we do? Firstly we need some pastry, either buy some if you’re feeling lazy, I do sometimes, it doesn’t matter. However this pie has homemade pastry. I like to make what I learnt at school as Rough Puff. Really easy and light but doesn’t rise quite as much as puff or flaky.

So you’ll need some flour. Plain. I sometimes use white, sometimes wholemeal, sometimes a mixture, sometimes spelt etc etc. You cook, you know the deal. This one was plain white flour. About four ounces, then you need to add some fat. Seeing as we’re making rough puff, here’s the clever part. Make your fat as cold as possible, at a consistency where it will grate and keep it’s shape.

Grate about 2 oz fat into the flour and mix gently. Add enough icy cold water to mix it onto a dough. Roll it out once and fold it like you would for puff. Put it back in the fridge while you do the rest

Oven to about 180 C.

Cook up an onion and some garlic until soft. Add chopped portobello mushrooms (2), cut into bite size chunks. Also add a handfull of other mushrooms, ordinary buttons or shitake or cep etc. Cook for a few mins until mushrooms start to exude liquid.

Add sage, thyme, black pepper a couple of spuds and carrots cut into bite size. A couple of tbsp of dark soy sauce and stock to come halfway and then set to simmer until spuds are almost soft. Add some strong dark miso and stir in. Add enough flour for liquid to start to thicken.

Put all this in a pie dish and top with your cold pastry. Put in oven for about 20 mins.

Delicious with boiled new potatoes (especially Jersey Royals!) and some green veg like cabbage or green beans. You might need some more gravy if you like your meal wet.

And here a picture of what I looks like two days later for my lunch!

 

Back to work. Monday special

Well, I do like lunchtime on a Monday. Invariably it’s leftover Sunday lunch and today is no exception.

This week we had one of those Granose nut loaves with added bits: toasted pine nuts and sunflower seeds. My special roast potatoes. I make these by heating some oil in a hot oven and parboiling the spuds. Then I coat the drained potatoes in a mixture of turmeric, smoked paprika and cumin seeds. Put in the oil and roast until crispy.

This week’s parsnips were cooked in ginger. Coat parsnips in a little oil and ground ginger before roasting in oven.

Carrots, cut into little wedges by turning carrot by 90 degrees and then cutting diagonally (needs pictures I think) gives nicer chunks than slices or other shapes. These and broccoli steamed until just tender.

Vegan Yorkshire puddings always go down a treat. My current recipe involves about 4 tablespoons of flour (I used self raising yesterday), a pinch of salt and enough soy milk to make a smooth thick cream consistent batter. Whisk like crazy to get as much air in the mixture as possible. Pour into smoking oiled tins and put back in hot oven and do not open the oven door for about 20 mins. They don’t rise quite as much as egg ones, but they taste delicious (then again I could never get yorkshire pud to rise pre vegan days)

Plate up and smother in bisto gravy.

It’s what Sundays were invented for.

 

Croissant 2: The Making

So I got up this morning and made them! Here’s a little photo story of The Making.

1. Turn the oven on!

2. Take the tube and pull the little tab to unwrap the outer blue wrapper

3. Press here and twist to open the inner tube.

4. It’s now open – looks like a rolled up carpet of dough.

5. Unrolling the dough

6. Cut each triangle out and roll these up

7. Form into crescent shapes and put on baking parchment on baking sheet. Put them in the oven

8. I’ve got one of these  (I won it in a competition – I wouldn’t buy one!) which means I can make my own coffee straight from the beans with wonderfully frothed soya milk. I get my coffee from www.alotofcoffee.co.uk where they do some sublime Fairtrade Organic Decaf Espresso roast beans – check them out!

9. So while the croissants are baking, make yourself some cappuccino or latte to go with them.

10. Hoorah.  Delicious croissant! They’re a little smaller than you’d expect, so a tube of six doesn’t quite go round three for breakfast – make sure you do two tubes! They’re on a small side plate here, not a dinner plate, hence the reason they look big.