Pan-fried couscous cake of red onion and pinenuts with green olive tapenade and spiced roast peppers with spinach March 30, 2009

I’ve talked before about how much I love Denis Cotter’s books, even if an awful lot of the recipes are full of dairy produce. But since I’ve got better at cooking I decided it was time to veganise another of his recipes. It was a bright sunny day and I was looking for something light and summery. I still had some Redwood’s Greek Style cheese substitute (aka feta), and decided to try it in a vegan version of the dish above.

I didn’t even realise until I was halfway through making it, that this was the last meal I cooked before I became vegan. I didn’t especially choose it to be that way – it just happened. And I’m pleased to report that this dish is every bit as good as the non vegan one was.

The green olive tapenade and spiced peppers and spinach are vegan anyway, so no problems there (I also threw half a tin of chickpeas in with the spinach as I had them knocking around).  They’re both delicious anyway and would be worth making on their own to use in other dishes. The issue was the couscous cakes and how I was going to make them stay together without eggs, and using the vegan feta. I probably could have found a way to do that but I decided instead to take a slightly safer route and play with the millet recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance instead, as I know that sticks together well and can be panfried. So all I did was leave out the spinach but add in the red onion, pinenets and feta instead. The texture is similar to the couscous cake I remembered but I bet you could use couscous if you’re braver than me.

I had forgotten that you need to let the millet sit for ages before you can really be sure it’ll hold together well enough to fry, so I rushed mine a bit and it worked but was a touch delicate. The taste was great though, and the 3 parts of the dish worked just as well together as I remembered.

I’ve earmarked some other dishes I want to veganize now too!

Veganomicon – Chickpeas Romesco with saffron rice and more November 21, 2007

My Father-in-Law was visiting at the weekend. He’s really laid back about most things and in theory he’s not at all difficult to feed. He’s not quite vegetarian but is very supportive, and extremely knowledgeable about nutrition. He’s been very helpful to me in my transition to veganism. Like everyone though, there are certain things he dislikes, including pasta, soya in any form, and several vegetables. Now several times a week I cook without spinach, or tofu, or pasta… but blow me if I could think of anything which didn’t involve those ingredients.

So I did something I’d never think of doing – tried new recipes with guests – non vegan guests at that! It’s a measure of the respect I have for Isa that I just knew that something from Veganomicon would be safe. I made the Romesco chickpeas with saffron rice, and served it with some fresh bread and sprouting broccoli. It went down really well with us and with my Father-in-law. He not only asked for the recipe, but when I showed him the book, he asked for it for Christmas!!

I also made two other Veganomicon dishes while he was here, but didn’t photograph them. Broccoli and potato soup was lunch on Sunday. It was tasty but certainly needed the fresh herbs (dill and mint). It was very like the asparagus potato soup from VWAV.

Then on Sunday evening I’d planned to do a fennel, aubergine and potato stew from Denis Cotter, but was thwarted by not being able to find any fennel anywhere. The weather was so bad I didn’t want to go out so I used what I had in and created quite a feast. The Veganomicon dish was lemon roasted Greek potatoes, which were very good. (I did a roast aubergine sort of Imam Bayaldi, a cumin and olive white bean dish, bread and salad as the rest of the meal.

Pancakes! August 20, 2007

Denis Cotter is one of my most respected chefs. He’s written 2 marvellous cookbooks and owns a lovely vegetarian restaurant in Cork. I’ve been to the restaurant 4 times and have met him. He’s so nice! The books are a bit dairy heavy but I’m trying vegan versions of some of the things in it.

Yesterday was our anniversary but I was travelling back from Reading so couldn’t cook anything too elaborate. I decided to do a vegan version of a recipe from Paradiso Seasons, “Purple sprouting broccoli with dried tomatoes and garlic on a corn pancake of leeks and puy lentils, with a rosemary cream”

I made the crepes from VWAV. I always add a bit more water than the recipe; maybe it’s the difference between US and English flour? Anyway, they worked.

The stuffing for the pancakes is a mixture of puy lentils, leeks, garlic, dijon mustard and thyme, with a little cream (soya cream in my case).

The cream is heavily reduced stock, rosemary oil, (soya) cream, and in my version, a bit of nutritional yeast.

The purple sprouting broccoli is quickly fried with garlic and sun dried tomatoes.

My picture isn’t very good but there is a very nice one in the book if you want to look at it! We really enjoyed it with a nice bottle of Lirac.