Felicity

Buddha bowls with spicy satay sauce

Nov 302010

Another day, another stir-fry. Well, what can I say? We love our veggies.

I like trying new stir-fry sauces, and this one is a winner. Creamy and spicy and very more-ish. It’s more or less this recipe from Ken Hom.

I used half tahini and half peanut butter; one tablespoon of rice vinegar instead of two; and more water to make a thinner sauce. I actually thinned it a bit too much, so added some cornflour (cornstarch) dissolved in cold water, to thicken it back up. I also started by sauteing the garlic in the chilli oil for one minute, then adding the chilli bean sauce and sauteing for another minute, before adding water and the other ingredients, and simmering for a few minutes.

For the veggies I used a couple packages of marked-down stir-fry veg from Waitrose, plus a package of enoki mushrooms. Plus homemade pan-fried tofu for the protein bit.

MEGA NOM!

Slow cooker chili with a Mexican twist

Nov 292010

It is freakin’ cold here, the temperature has not above freezing for days, which is very unusual for these parts. We’re very frugal with the heating (I blame my Scottish highland ancestors) and it’s difficult to get enthused about spending a couple of hours creating something spectacular in the kitchen when it’s only 11C (52F) inside.

So today we had a meal that required spending minimal time in the frigid kitchen: slow cooker chili. It’s similar (but simpler) than the chili I made a couple of weeks ago in the slow cooker. I gave it a Mexican twist by using passata (tomato sauce) and salsa instead of tinned tomatoes, and leftover taco seasoning mix instead of the individual spices. It tasted great, with a slight sweetness from the salsa.

We served it with garlic toast and a Caesar salad.

A week of vegan meals! (plus cats)

Nov 282010

Well, it appears I’ve fallen off the daily-vegan-MoFo-blogging wagon. But never mind, today I bring you — all together in one post — a week of vegan meals!

It’s difficult to get excited enough to blog about the same meals over and over. But I did take pictures of most of our week’s meals, and even went into the vault to share a couple of cat pics.

Monday: homemade veggie hotdogs with Greek salad and potato wedges. That weird-looking stuff on the hotdogs is in fact caramelised onion chutney from Costco, and even though it doesn’t look appetising in the photo, it tastes really yummy.

Tuesday: another Buddha bowl stir-fry. Apparently, we eat stir-fries a lot. Since one looks pretty much the same as another, I didn’t take a photo, but I did take one of Mr Thrifty holding this giant Chinese radish. One of our allotment neighbours, Yan, gave it to us. I’m definitely going to grow these next year if I can get some seed from Yan. Chinese radish is great to eat raw, and awesome in a stir-fry.

Wednesday: veggie weiners & beans on toast, wedges (again) and rocket with sun-dried tomatoes.

Thursday: homemade veggie burgers, oven chips and a salad made from shredded carrots and yacon. We grew yacon for the first time this year, and we are going to keep growing it. It produces big, crisp, juicy tubers that are great in stir-fries or raw in salad.

Friday we had pita pizzas again, with Cheezly, mushrooms, onions and veggie bacon bits. Evidently I didn’t take a photo, however, here is one of The King instead.

Saturday: Buddha bowls yet again. And a photo of Princess Caraboo.

Sunday: roast dinner with veggie haggis version 2.0, roasted potatoes & Jerusalem artichokes, mushroom gravy, peas, braised leeks and sweetcorn from the freezer (grown at our allotment this summer). The haggis turned out more like commercial veggie haggis, but I think I prefer the one I made last week. Next time I’ll aim for a result in between the two.

There you have it. A week of delectable vegan meals!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Nov 252010

Happy Thanksgiving to my American friends!

Weekend eats!

Nov 212010

A typical weekend of eats here in Thriftyville.

Friday night being (of course) pizza night.

Saturday, a mezze meal… little bit of this & that, a great way to use up leftovers.

And that great British Sunday tradition, the roast dinner!

Friday’s pizza was made with Sainsbury’s onion & balsamic vinegar pitta breads, topped with pasta sauce, mozza Cheezly, mushrooms, spinach and sweetcorn. Scrummy! If you’ve never had sweetcorn on pizza (it’s popular here in the UK, but not on the other side of the pond), then you really must try it.

Saturday’s mezze consisted of panfried Spanish Padron peppers, Linda McCartney veggie sausage rolls, mixed bean salad (a markdown from the deli), Israeli couscous salad (ditto), and a big Caesar salad. A delightful mix of flavours and textures.

Sunday’s roast dinner featured homemade vegetarian haggis. I know what you are wondering. Why would a vegan want to recreate a Scottish speciality traditionally made with sheep innards and oatmeal? The answer is, well, because commercial vegetarian haggis — made with oatmeal, onion, lentils, mushrooms & kidney beans — tastes pretty darn good, and it’s a very budget meal. Besides, as Nac Mac Vegan points out, there is evidence that the original haggis was vegetarian.

The recipe I made was adapted from the 1904 book Reform cookery book: Up-to-date health cookery for the twentieth century by Mrs. Jean Oliver Mill. I added too much water to the mixture before steaming, making it too moist, so I ended up frying the slices after to firm them up. But we both really liked the haggis, and I’ll be making it again. It tasted different to — and much better than — commercial vegetarian haggis.

Alongside were roasted potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, carrots, peppers and mushrooms; as well as Brussels sprouts done in the slow cooker. The sprouts were pretty good, but I have to say that I do like roasted sprouts better.

Happy weekend MoFo!

Black bean soup and roasted Jerusalem artichokes

Nov 182010

Another chilly day, another soup meal!

The black bean & sweetcorn soup is a favourite in the Thrifty household. It’s simple and cheap to make, very healthy and — of course — delicious.

We served the soup with a few slices of baguette, as well as a small plate of roasted Jerusalem artichokes and potatoes.

If you’ve never had Jerusalem artichokes, I suppose the best way of describing the taste is like a sunflower-flavoured potato. The texture — when roasted at least — is very creamy. Although I only tried them for the first time last year, they are now one of my favourite vegetables.

Jerusalem artichokes are not commonly found in shops, though I have seen them in the past at Sainsburys. We grew them this year at our allotment, and I can say with absolute certainty that we will be growing them from now on. Ours grew to an impressive 12 feet high! In case you’re wondering about the name, Jerusalem artichokes have nothing to do with Jerusalem, and are not related to globe artichokes; they are in the same family as sunflowers.

But back to the kitchen. The Jerusalem artichokes were peeled, then halved and roasted in coconut oil. They cook more quickly than potatoes, so if you are cooking them with potatoes, be sure to parboil the spuds first.

Vegan lemon curd

Nov 172010

Question: What do you do with a couple of overgrown courgettes [zucchini] that have been languishing in the cupboard for the past, well, several weeks?

Answer: why you make vegan lemon curd, of course!

I’d seen recipes for lemon curd using marrows (just to be clear: I’m talking the marrow vegetable here, NOT the stuff that’s inside of bones), and most reviews of said recipes came to the same conclusion: nice, but really, really sweet.

Then I came across this recipe from nipitinthebud, who made three batches of marrow cream, reducing the sugar each time. When I made it, I reduced the sugar by one quarter yet again. Most of the recipes you see for marrow cream use almost as much sugar by weight as marrow (3-1/2 pounds sugar to 4 pounds marrow), but I used about 84% less sugar than this, and find it plenty sweet enough.

Other than reducing the sugar, I followed the recipe pretty closely, substituting vegan margarine for butter and using more lemon zest. And of course using overgrown courgettes instead of a monster marrow. I steamed the marrow flesh instead of boiling it, as I was making only about 1/5 of the recipe and this amount fit into my steamer. After I cooked the mixture for 45 minutes, it didn’t look thick enough, but I didn’t want to accidentally burn it, and thought it might thicken more as it cooled. It did, but not enough. So after a couple of days of eating it over Swedish Glace, I reheated it and added some cornflour [cornstarch] mixed with a bit of cold water, to thicken it up. (In restrospect, I probably added a bit too much cornflour.)

Okay, so how does it taste? Well — both to me and Mr Thrifty — it tastes exactly like lemon curd. Or at least, what we remember lemon curd tastes like.

I am psyched now to make orange curd, lime curd and grapefruit curd. Nom!

Chana daal with fresh spinach and more!

Nov 152010

Tonight felt like curry night, and I was really in the mood for daal.

Our local takeaway does a delicious tarka daal, but none of my homemade ones have ever come close.

Until tonight, that is.

This is a recipe I clipped from a newspaper awhile back: Chana daal with fresh spinach. It is courtesy of Sam Hackett, co-owner of the Thali Cafe restaurants in Bristol.

It was creamy and delicious, and very more-ish. The kind of dish that makes you want to lick the plate after.

It was served with potato cutlets stuffed with peas from Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cookery; a simple carrot salad from the same book; Mr Thrifty’s onion salad; basmati rice; papadums and chutneys.

A most delicious Indian meal!

Chana daal with fresh spinach

British		American
90g	chana daal, soaked for two hours	1/2 cup
840ml	water (approximately)	3-1/2 cups
1/2 teaspoon	salt	1/2 teaspoon
1/8 teaspoon	cayenne pepper	1/8 teaspoon
1/8 teaspoon	turmeric powder	1/8 teaspoon
1/8 teaspoon	cumin powder	1/8 teaspoon
1/8 teaspoon	coriander powder	1/8 teaspoon
1-1/2 teaspoons	tamarind paste*	1-1/2 teaspoons
1/2 teaspoon	sugar	1/2 teaspoon
1-1/2 teaspoons	vegetable oil	1-1/2 teaspoons
1/8 teaspoon	black mustard seeds	1/8 teaspoon
1 clove	garlic, finely chopped	1 clove
1 handful	fresh spinach leaves, finely sliced	1 handful

1. Boil 1-1/2 cups water and salt in a pan.

2. Add the soaked (and drained) chana daal, cover the pan and cook over a medium flame for 30 minutes.

3. Add cayenne, turmeric, cumin, coriander, sugar and tamarind paste. Stir well and allow to simmer, uncovered, for another hour or more. Stir regularly and add boiling water as needed as the daal cooks and thickens. It will be thicker on the bottom than it looks on top, so don’t neglect stirring! The longer it cooks, the more creamy it will get.

4. When daal has finished cooking, heat vegetable oil over low heat and add mustard seeds and garlic.

5. When hot, add the oil mixture to the simmering pot of daal and mix.

6. Add spinach and keep covered for two minutes while the daal continues to simmer. Cook uncovered for five more minutes.

Makes two servings.

* I bought tamarind paste from Waitrose

Vegan okara “meat”loaf

Nov 142010

One of the great British traditions is the Sunday Roast. Never mind that a Sunday Roast usually consists of carved up pieces of animals, vegan roast dinners are just so much better!

Today I decided to make a “meat”loaf, and chose this recipe from Hardcore Herbivore, made with TVP, oats and seasonings.

I took the suggestion in one of the comments to substitute half the TVP with okara. I wasn’t sure whether to use “wet” okara (straight out of the soymilk maker), or okara that had been squeezed dry. I ended up using squeezed-dry okara, but with enough water added to make it about the consistency of okara straight from the soymilk machine.

I used leftover pasta sauce instead of ketchup. (There is somewhat of a ketchup emergency here at the moment.)

I made half a recipe, and instead of baking it in a loaf pan, used three ramekins instead.

The “meat”loaf turned out really well, though it was still a bit soft on the inside after baking, so I’ll tweak the recipe slightly next time.

We also had roast potatoes (obviously), brussels sprouts, maple roasted squash & parsnips and braised leeks. And gravy, of course.

Which just proves that a delicious, satisfying roast dinner can easily be made without any animal products whatsoever. Yay!

Mezze meal and a Methuselah squash

Nov 132010

Tonight’s meal was what we call a mezze meal. Basically it’s bits of this and that, not related by cuisine or theme.

One of our mezzes may include: fried snacks, eg. samosas or spring rolls; hot nibbles like veggie sausage rolls or chips; storecupboard stuff eg. dolmades; assorted salads and pickles; and so on.

Tonight’s mezze included maple-roasted squash, chips, Greek giant beans, broccoli salad with sesame dressing, pickled beetroot [not shown in photo] and some crusty rolls from Waitrose.

The squash was one that we grew last year… yes that’s right, grown and harvested over one year ago and residing in our garage ever since. (Okay, so not quite Methuselah). I’d grown quite attached to it, but it was time for it to finally go under the knife.

I cut the squash into chunks, removed what little dried-out innards remained (along with some very fat seeds, destined for planting next year), trimmed off the rind and roasted the flesh with coconut oil and maple syrup. Yum!

This got me wondering if squash usually keeps this long, or if this was a freak of nature. Anyone who can enlighten me, feel free. For the record, it was a blue banana squash, with seed purchased from Real Seeds.

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