Pancake day! March 3, 2009

Pancakes are another of those food things which separate English and US cooks and eaters. And alongside biscuits, muffins (and probably others I can’t remember), we’re right! Pancakes are thin, usually come with lemon juice and sugar, and are eaten for pudding on Pancake Day, usually accompanied by discussions about how nice they are, and shouldn’t we eat them more often and not wait until next pancake day…!!

I cobbled together our Pancake Day meal with stuff I had in the fridge. I used the crepe recipe from Vegan with a Vengeance, as I normally do. It’s a great recipe which usually needs thinning out a touch – could be slightly different flour here. I stuffed them with a mix of spinach and Redwoods feta cheese and baked them, then served them with Veganomicom lemony roasted potatoes and a garlicky yoghurt sauce (finally used up that pot of yoghurt!). And yes, I will be having pancakes again before next pancake day!

What does a vegan eat for Christmas? December 28, 2008

We have our main Christmas meal on Christmas Eve as we like to go out on Christmas Day and eat Indian food. It’s become our tradition – it’s our favourite food and if we can’t eat our favourite food on Christmas Day when can we?

I don’t really care for roast type dinners so Christmas Eve is the only time of year when we have one. We usually have a light starter and this year I picked the Greek style courgette fritters from Veganomicon. I thought they were the highlight of the meal – light, fresh and tasty.

For the main course I decided to make the meatloaf that was featured in the free digital edition of VegNews (it doesn’t link properly but if you google VegNews then go to Subscribe you will find it). It was a very meaty loaf made with rice, lentils, mushrooms and lots of herbs and veg. It’s basted with a smoky tomato sauce which actually I thought was a bit overpowering and next time I’d halve the sauce. Still, it held together well, was easy to slice and tasted fantastic in a sandwich later on! I served it with roast potatoes, leeks, green beans, roast potatoes, stuffing, yorkshire pudding, bread sauce and gravy. My Yorkshire puds were a bit cakey, despite following the exact same recipe which worked perfectly last year. I made the stuffing up as I went along but I used a couple of Realeat veggie sausages with lots of celery, onion, garlic, sage, thyme and breadcrumbs. It was delicious. This is a picture before I attacked it with gravy:

On Christmas Day I made US style biscuits with gravy. I use the VWAV biscuit recipe, and served them with smoked almond gravy which is a really tasty gravy from the new brunch book. I’ve said it before but I really can’t understand why we haven’t embraced biscuits and gravy over here. They’re a wonderful start to the day!

We went to a local South Indian restaurant, Hanging Mangoes, for our main meal. It’s only a small place but it was quite busy with local Indian families spending Christmas there. I’ve only got a decent picture of the masala dosa, but we also ate chilli fried idli, cauliflower 65, dhal, spinach masala, vegetable noodles and coconut rice. Delicious as it always is!

So Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were filled with delicious food and wine with more to come over new year. Yes, we vegans really suffer at Christmas time!

VeganMoFo: Gnocchi with broccoli pesto October 21, 2008

There have been a lot of VeganMoFo posts about quick dinners. Tonight was one such in this house. I’d been at work all day and had to go straight to a governors meeting which lasted a few hours. Normally on governor nights my husband cooks something (under orders from me), but today he was in London so I couldn’t rely on that.

I’d bought a bag of ready made gnocchi from the fridge when I was in France a few weeks. They were just about to come to their sell by date so rather than bung them in the freezer I decided to use them. I have made my own gnocchi, and I can buy vegan versions here but not regularly – they often have egg in them.

Anyway, they cook really quickly so I did a very quick pesto to go with them. I LOVE the pesto from Vegan With a Vengeance – I honestly swear I prefer it to non vegan versions. I often have it with gnocchi as it’s nice and light and gnocchi can get a bit claggy if it’s overwhelmed. But today I felt as if I needed some extra greens so I made the pesto as usual but threw in some steamed broccoli and also a small spoonful of Toffuti cream cheese. It made for a delicious sauce but would certainly have been better with dried pasta as the gnocchi really needed something less chunky. Still, It took hardly any longer to make than it does to boil water so I’m really pleased with it for an emergency meal.

Mushroom and sun dried tomato risotto October 6, 2008

I’d made this before but I got called away to the telephone and the rice was way overcooked. For some reason I haven’t revisited it since and I’ve no idea why.

My friends brought me back some really scary looking dried mushrooms from France called Trompettes du mort. Once I’d realised that they weren’t trying to poison me, I decided to put them to use in this risotto, from Vegan with a Vengeance.

It ended up the most beautiful and tasty risotto I’ve probably ever made and is the first one to convince me that you really don’t need cheese for a tasty risotto. The mushrooms gave me a really good dark soaking liquid which I used once I’d got rid of the grit.

I made it just as the nights are getting dark and cold and it was absolutely perfect comfort food made from pretty much store cupboard ingredients. I did use some of my favourite truffle oil on the top too. It’s expensive but really worth it for a treat.

Jerk seitan, coconut rice and greens September 23, 2008

It’s a long time since I’ve made anything new from Vegan with a Vengeance. I still had the last bits of my seitan left, but I’d picked out the best steaks and the stuff I was left with was quite small chunks, almost like a mince. I had a few green peppers lying around so I decided to have a go at the jerk seitan, and serve it, as suggested, with coconut rice and greens. Just as I was blending the marinade my wonderful trusty hand blender died, so the marinade was a bit chunky. Even so, this was a really tasty dish, far more so than I’d expected. I also loved the coconut rice, which is cooked in coconut milk, water and cinnamon stick, with lime zest and toasted coconut added in.

I can’t live without my blender, so I’m off to study e-bay…..

Vegan work lunches July 16, 2008

I don’t very often mention what I have for lunch on here. But often people will ask me questions like “What on earth do you take on sandwiches?”, so I thought I’d do a quick post about my work lunches.

Usually, they’re leftovers. I tend to make more of a dish than I’m going to eat on purpose so that I can bung the rest into tupperware and reheat it at work the following day. This can cause great interest in the staff room and great wonderment about the strange food I’m eating and how difficult it must be to be vegan (they’re normally on their 4th ham and tomato sandwich of the week).

Sometimes I do make things specially for lunch – usually if I’ve got a bit of a glut of vegetables, or I know that for whatever reason I won’t have leftovers. Today’s lunch was an example of this. I had fresh pineapple leftover from the taco shells, andquite by chance I had all the ingredients necessary for the Veganomicon cashew-pineapple quinoa stir fry. I know that I ought to eat more quinoa. If by any chance you aren’t vegan (or are a vegan but have just landed from Mars) you might not know that quinoa is A VERY GOOD thing, because it’s a complete protein. I also think that it has more calcium than milk but I may just have made that up. Or read it on Wikipedia. So it must be true.

Anyway, this was a pretty tasty mixture of quinoa, pinapples, cashews, red peppers, peas (or in my case courgette) and some nice flavourings like chilli and soy sauce. It was a nice light lunch, serve it hot or cold.

Other things I make myself especially to have at lunchtime are Veganomicon quinoa, black bean and mango salad, VWAV chickpea hijiki sandwich, pate and crackers, vegetables with hummus, soba noodles with edamame – the list goes on. If you really want some vegan lunchbox inspiration try either of these sites:
Vegan Lunchbox
Vegan Homemade (find some of the laptop lunches posts – truly an inspiration!)

Just forget about the ham sandwich…

Buttermilk biscuits with almond milk gravy June 22, 2008

We went Texan for breakfast this morning. I first came across biscuits and gravy when I went to Virginia for a wedding a few years ago. To British ears, biscuits and gravy just sounds plain odd but it’s a very typical American dish. As soon as you start to realise that biscuits are a totally different thing to what we know as biscuits, and likewise the gravy, it starts to make a bit more sense. I have heard people describe biscuits as being a bit like scones but I don’t think that’s right – biscuits are lighter and fluffier and I’m amazed that we haven’t embraced them in this country.

I’ve made biscuits and gravy several times before, usually the biscuits from Vegan With a Vengeance. However, I realised recently that although I’ve liked everything I’ve made from Yellow Rose Recipes, I’d hit a dead end and stopped making things from it. So I asked people on PPK what their favourite dishes were from it, and someone suggested these biscuits and gravy. That person is from Nashville, and Joanna (book author) is from Texas, so I thought that this would be a good Southern US breakfast.

I had a minor hangover this morning and my husband had a major one, so this was a potentially good hangover cure. Under normal circumstances I’d like to make my own sausage for the gravy but today I decided to rely on Realeat frozen sausages. Almond milk is quite new to me and is very expensive but I love it and plan to try making my own soon.

The biscuits look a bit burnt but they’re not – they’re made with wholewheat pastry flour. This again is new to me and I thought I couldn’t get it in this country but someone very helpfully on the BBC boards told me that Doves Farm fine wholemeal flour is the same thing. That’s really good to know because quite a lot of US recipes have it in now.

The gravy was very strange to our tastes because it was savoury and sweet at the same time. I think that’s a traditional southern US thing and it was really nice but did take a bit of getting used to. It certainly cured our hangovers and I’ll do the biscuits again definitely but I think I’ll stick with a more savoury gravy in future. If you’ve never tried this US breakast treat I urge you to give it a go!

Millet and spinach polenta with sun dried tomato pesto and asparagus April 28, 2008

Oh how I love it when the asparagus season starts! This seemed early to me but I picked it up in M+S and decided on this old favourite of mine from Vegan With a Vengeance. It uses millet instead of the more traditional polenta which gives it a lovely nutty flavour. I find I need a little more stock than VWAV suggests. The sun dried tomato pesto is another winner and goes well with a variety of dishes but works particularly well with the polenta. I’ll be looking for lots more ways with asparagus in the next few weeks too!

Julie Hasson sausage on pizza March 17, 2008

A really bad picture of what was a great meal. I was on my own on Saturday and although I didn’t have a clear plan of what I was going to eat I knew I was going to try Julie Hasson’s sausage. The internet, well, the vegan part of it, has been buzzing with how good and easy it is for a while now. Even reading how easy it was I didn’t really trust myself to do it as it sounded a bit similar to making seitan, which i’ve always avoided.

Lots of people have been adapting it so i decided to try Isa from Vegan With a Vengeance’s adaption. It really was very quick and easy to make. I had a bit of a disaster when I left them on their own to steam without noticing that the pan had boiled dry. Luckily the stench of burning pan alerted me before the house burnt down.

When I unwrapped the foil I was expecting a mess but to amazement they looked just like sausages! I decided they’d be perfect on pizza and remembered I had some pizza dough in the freezer from another time when I’d made too much. I took that out and let it defrost naturally. On the pizza I put:
Some plain tofutti cream cheese mixed with a spoonful or 2 of Meridian pesto. That was the base.
Some cooked spinach, sliced tomato, and the sausage.
When it was done I poured chilli oil and a sprinkle of nutritional yeast on it. It was heavenly!!!!

The following day I used more of the sausage with potatoes, spinach, onions, mushrooms and hot sauce in a sort of breakfast hash. It was divine. I will definitely definitely mbe making these sausages again and trying different combinations of beans, herbs and spices too. A result!

Thai meal February 17, 2008

Most of my photos of this meal didn’t turn out but I still wanted to write about it because it was so nice. A friend of ours was staying and was off to Thailand the following day so I decided to cook some vaguely Thai style dishes.

The picture shown is the mango summer rolls from VWAV. I make life easy for myself and buy a packet of beansprout stir fry from the supermarket so I don’t have to do much chopping. I make a nice spicy dipping sauce to go with them.

I also did some jasmine rice, potato mussaman curry, mapo tofu and sesame fried pak choi. The curry recipe is from Nancy McDermott “Real Vegetarian Thai”. I made a big batch of the curry paste a while ago and froze it in tablespoon sizes so that was quite easy. Mussaman curry was our favourite dish in Thailand and this was a very nice version of it.

For the mapo tofu I found loads of recipes on-line using firm tofu but when we’d had it in Thailand it was made with silken and I’d got some specially to try it. This recipe was one of the more simple ones I found but it was very tasty. I just stir fried the pak choi with some green chilli, a splash of tamari and some sesame seeds.

Altogether it was a very nice meal and I’ll be doing more experimenting with Thai food from now on!