Category Archives: Vegan

Banana, Coconut & Cardamom Buns

01 Wednesday Jul 2020

Posted by in breakfast, Sweet Things, Vegan

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These slightly sweet breakfast buns were inspired by an article on what to do with bananas that had got too soft. In the piece one of the cooks suggested making banana and cardamom puris. I just love anything flavoured with cardamoms and the idea of mixing the spice with bananas was very appealing.
Puris are made from a rich yeast dough, which of course can be baked as well as fried. I replaced the butter and milk in the puri recipe with coconut cream, some slivers of fresh coconut would add to this flavour, but I thought of that after I had made the buns. I was forgetting that I have some coconut flesh in the freezer, so next time…

250 grams whole meal spelt flour

7 grams fresh yeast / 3.5 grams powdered yeast

6 green cardamom pods

2 medium sized ripe bananas

120 ml coconut cream

2 teaspoons soft brown sugar

Egg white and more sugar for a topping

 

Put the flour into a large mixing bowl.

Add the seeds from the cardamom pods, the sugar and the yeast. Mix well.

Peel and either mash or pulse the bananas in a food processor. You don’t want a purée but some texture remaining.

Add the coconut cream to the bananas and mix.

Make a well in the centre of the flour mix and pour in the banana and coconut cream. Mix in to form a sticky dough.

Cover the bowl with a clean tea cloth and leave in a warm drought free place for a couple of hours until it has doubled in size.

Flour your work surface and tip the dough onto it. Knead the dough for a few minutes then divide into 8 equal balls.

Place on a baking tray and again in a warm drought free place leave to prove for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 175 C and bake the buns for 10 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 150 C and bake for another 5 minutes.

Take the tray out of the oven and brush each bun with egg white then sprinkle on a little brown sugar. Put the buns back in the oven for 7-10 minutes until the tops are nicely browned.

Maccheroni al Piselli

13 Saturday Jun 2020

Posted by in Main Courses, Starters, Vegan

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Or pasta with peas…….and tomato sauce.

I’ve had a tray of peas sprouting on the kitchen windowsill for the last few days, and now the shoots are ready for cutting. The flavour of them is stronger than I expected, and stronger than that of the sweet peas I have, so I thought the two together would make a well flavoured sauce for the swirly maccheroni I have. And it did…….

For 2 portions

200 grams maccheroni

1/2 onion – finely chopped

2 cloves garlic – finely chopped

3 tablespoons olive oil

250 grams tomatoes -either fresh or tinned – peeled and chopped small

120 grams tomato Frito or passata

400 grams sweet garden peas – either fresh or frozen

bunch of pea sprouts – cut in half if long

4 large sprigs of fresh basil – roughly chopped

salt and freshly ground black pepper

olive oil for drizzling

Heat plenty of water seasoned with salt and olive oil, and when boiling add the pasta.

Once back boiling, turn the heat down to a brisk simmer and leave the pasta to cook to al dente. For this pasta it was about 12-15 minutes.

Heat the oil in a deep frying pan and add the onion and garlic. Fry gently until translucent.

Add the chopped tomato, Frito and peas. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes stirring from time to time. You want the sauce to have reduced, thickened and the flavour to have intensified, so if you are using fresh tomatoes that are watery, the sauce may need longer cooking.

Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Drain the pasta once it is cooked.

Add the pea shoots and basil to the tomato sauce and stir in, then stir in the pasta making sure that it is nicely covered with the sauce.

Serve with an extra drizzle of olive oil over the pasta, and enjoy!

Salad Days

20 Wednesday May 2020

Posted by in Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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Today the first of the tender summer beetroot were ready to pick……..and its hot! So a trio of salads for lunch…….

Warm potato salad dressed With olive oil and white wine vinegar. The sweet salad onions and dried dill I soaked in the dressing for half an hour before adding the warm potatoes.

A mixed salad of tomatoes, straight from the garden lettuce and radishes, cubes of bread and left over grilled vegetables.

And the lovely beetroot and it’s tender leaves in a lightly marinated raw salad.

2 small beetroot, peeled and cut into fine julienne.

1 tablespoon/ 15 ml green pumpkin seeds

1 tablespoon / 15 ml balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon / 15 ml balsamic syrup

1 tablespoon / 15 ml extra virgin olive oil

1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

plenty of freshly ground black pepper

Mix all the ingredients together and leave to marinate for an hour or so.

Sajur Lemeng

16 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in Fish, Main Courses, Vegan

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This Indonesian vegetable curry is adapted from one of my old cookery books, South East Asian Food, written by the Australian academic Rosemary Brissenden who fell in love with Indonesia and its cuisine as a student in the 1960’s.

I made this as a vegan curry which was delicious, the original recipe was with prawns and prawn paste so I will give amounts of those for making the non vegan version.

For 2

about 250 grams in total of various vegetables. You can choose between red and green peppers, green beans, aubergine, bean sprouts and the following that I used on this occasion –

asparagus

leeks – cut into thin strips

courgette – Cut into bite sized chunks

mange toute peas

small green peppers

mizuna and Pak Choi

1 red fresh chilli – chopped

2 cm square, more or less, fresh ginger or better still galangal – chopped

2 garlic cloves – cut in half

1 small sweet onion – roughly chopped

5 macadamia nuts / 10 hazelnuts

1 teaspoon / 5 ml ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon shrimp paste – if making a vegan curry omit this

1 tablespoon / 15 ml coconut oil

400 coconut milk

First make a curry paste. In a small food processor whizz together the chilli, ginger, garlic, onion, nuts, shrimp paste and coriander together with the coconut oil.

Gently fry the curry paste in a large wok for 5 – 10 minutes until it is cooked.

Add the coconut milk and heat to a simmer.

Add the vegetables that need the longest cooking first, then after a few minutes the more tender vegetables and the prawns if using. Simmer until the vegetables are just done with some bite remaining and the prawns cooked through.

Serve with jasmine rice or sesame sprinkled rice noodles.


Spicy Aubergine Salad

02 Saturday May 2020

Posted by in Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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Do you ever read a recipe and think how interesting it sounds, and then when you go back to make it the recipe some days later, what you have in your head and how you desire it to taste only bears a faint resemblance to the original recipe? This is what happened with this recipe, but I went ahead and made the recipe that I had imagined which turned out super tasty and delicious.

1 large aubergine

1 clove garlic

4 tablespoons / 60 ml of olive oil

1/4 teaspoon / 1.25 ml sea salt

2 cm cube tamarind paste

1 tablespoon / 15ml sugar/ honey / agave syrup

1 tablespoon / 15 ml cider vinegar

1/4 teaspoon / 1.25 ml picante smoked pimenton or paprika

fresh coriander leaves, chopped

Break the tamarind paste into as small pieces as you can and put in a small container with about a tablespoon of boiling water. Leave to macerate.

In a pestle and mortar or a small bowl crush the garlic with the salt until you have a paste.

Add the olive oil and mix well.

Cut the aubergine into thickish slices and then brush with the garlicky oil. You can either grill them or bake them in the oven. As you can see I baked mine this time with a sweet potato at 190 C

While the aubergines are cooking and cooling, prepare the dressing.

To the leftover garlicky oil add the rest of the ingredients. The tamarind will need to be mashed into its water and any seeds removed.

Put your aubergine slices into a shallow salad dish, pour over the dressing and gently toss. Leave the salad for half an hour for the aubergine to absorb the dressing, sprinkle over the fresh coriander and enjoy.

Rosti

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Food for One, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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Potato Rosti are so simple to make that this hardly counts as a recipe.

Peel your potatoes and grate them. Put in a bowl with a pinch of salt and mix well.

Heat a couple of tablespoons of olive oil in a large thick based frying pan.

Take a handful of the grated potato and form it into a small round rissole shape, squeezing out some of the moisture as you go. Put into the hot oil.

Continue making cakes with all the grated potato.

Cook on a medium heat, adding more oil if needed, until a good golden brown on the first side.

Carefully turn the cakes over and cook on the other side.

Oven Chips with Mushrooms & Garlic

23 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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After the somewhat complicated Sarma recipe, here are a couple of super simple potato dishes.
Oven chips are so easy to make if you have a good powerful oven, a fan oven is best to get chips that are crispy round the edges.

Put a large baking sheet in the oven and set it to warm up at 200 C

Peel your potatoes and cut them into whatever chip shape is your preference.

Put them in a bowl with a pinch of salt and just enough olive oil the coat the chips.

Spread your chips out on the preheated tray, they do better if they are not too crowded and put in the oven for 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, peel and slice a clove of garlic, and slice up some mushrooms. It’s more tasty if you have more than one type of mushroom, I used shiitake and oyster.

After the chips have had their 20 minutes of cooking, take the tray out of the oven and with a spatula turn them over. Strew over them the mushrooms and garlic, then put the tray back in the oven for another 20 minutes by which time everything should be brown and crispy and gorgeous.

Serving this with a poached egg on top is lovely.

Moroccan Spiced Vegetables & Cous Cous with Almonds & Sultanas

12 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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All amounts are for one portion
Firstly get your spices roasting – in a thick based frying pan on a low heat roast the following –

1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 teaspoon coriander seeds

1/2 cinnamon stick – broken into pieces

1/2 teaspoon allspice seeds

1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns

3 cloves

Roast the spices, shaking the pan from time to move the spices around, until they start to release their aroma. Grind with 1/2 teaspoon of salt with either a pestle and mortar or in a small coffee grinder.

For the Cous Cous –

40 grams Cous Cous

small amount of flaked almonds

10 sultanas

pinch of salt

Put all the ingredients in a small container that has a lid, stir to mix and then pour over boiling water to come about nearly a centimetre above the level of the Cous Cous. Cover and leave for 20 minutes.

For the vegetables –

1/2 an onion – finely chopped

1 clove garlic – finely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon chopped red pepper

1 tablespoon chopped green pepper

1 medium sized carrot – chopped into small cubes

piece courgette – chopped into small cubes

piece butternut squash – chopped into small cubes

4 tablespoons cooked chickpeas

200 grams chopped peeled tomatoes

1/2 teaspoon harissa

2 strips lemon peel / lemon chutney

2 bay leaves

fresh mint leaves

Fry the onions and garlic in the oil until translucent.

Add the green and red peppers and fry briskly for five minutes.

Now add the carrots, butternut squash and courgettes, and again fry briskly for five minutes.

Add the tomatoes, the roasted spices, harissa, lemon peel, bay leaves and chickpeas to the pan and stir to mix.

Heat to a simmer, turn down the heat to low, cover and leave to cook until the vegetables are done, 10 – 15 minutes.

The Cous Cous should be done, it just needs a stir to break up the grains a bit. If it is not hot enough, put it into the microwave for a couple of minutes to reheat it.

Serve strewn with fresh mint leaves.

Rice & Peas

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by in Main Courses, Vegan

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This again is adapted from Caribbean Food by Levi Roots to go with the sweet potato cakes from yesterday’s post. I haven’t had to change the recipe much to fit with ingredients that I can get here, I had to swap his fresh coconut water for a tin of coconut milk. Also I thought 450 grams of rice an outrageous amount for 6 portions, so I cooked 100 grams which did two of us for two meals.

For 2

100 grams long grain rice

100 grams cooked black beans

400 ml tin coconut milk

7 allspice berries

2 sprigs of thyme

1 clove garlic

1 spring onion / 1/2 small sweet onion

1 red chilli

salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the black beans you can use ready cooked beans from a tin or jar, but the texture is better if you start with dry beans. You will need 50 grams dried beans to get 100 grams cooked.
Soak the beans overnight in cold water, drain them and put them into a pan of boiling vegetable stock, turn down the heat and simmer until the beans are tender.

Heat the coconut milk in a saucepan. Add all the ingredients except the rice and beans. On a very low heat simmer for 10 minutes for the flavours of the seasonings to infuse the milk.

Add the rice and beans, and stir to mix in.

Bring back to a simmer, cover and let cook in a low heat for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the rice steam for another five minutes. Do not open the lid while the rice is cooking and resting.

Sweet Potato Cakes & Avocado Salsa

08 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Main Courses, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes

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Levi Roots’s Caribbean Cooking is one of the books that I am revisiting since spring cleaning. The original recipe for these potato cakes has cooked prawns added to the mix but the cakes taste equally good with or without them. I made half the cakes with prawns for my sister, while I had my half without.

THE SWEET POTATO CAKES

makes 6 cakes

400 grams sweet potato

200 grams waxy potatoes

1/2 onion -finely chopped

2 cloves garlic – finely chopped

1 red chilli – finely chopped

1 teaspoon ground cumin

2 tablespoons plain flour – plus extra for coating the cakes

salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander

oil for frying

50 grams cooked prawns per portion – Optional – cut into pieces if they are large

Scrub the sweet potato and bake it whole in its skin at 190 C for 30 – 40 minutes until it is soft and tender. Leave to cool.

Peel the white potatoes and cut into smallish chunks. Boil in salted water until tender. Drain and leave to cool.

Heat 2 tablespoons of the oil in a frying pan and add the onion, garlic and chilli. Cook gently until translucent.

In a bowl mash the sweet and white potatoes. Add the onion mix and mash to mix in.

Add the seasonings and flour, then mix in with a spoon.

If one half of your mix is, like mine, having prawns, divide the mix into two and make one half into three cakes, forming them on a flour covered plate and turning them so that they are evenly covered in flour.
Add the prawns to the other half of the potatoes and mix well. Make three cakes as before.

Heat oil in a frying pan and cook the cakes on a medium heat until nicely browned on one side. Turn over and cook on the other side.

Serve with this spicy avocado salsa.

AVOCADO SALSA

1 small avocado – finely chopped

1 large tomato – finely chopped

1 clove garlic – crushed with a pinch of salt

1 spring onion – finely chopped

1 red chilli – finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

juice of a 1 small or 1/2 large lime

2 tablespoons olive oil

hot chilli sauce – if needed

Mix all the ingredients together well, mashing them slightly as you mix.

Taste for seasonings adding chilli sauce if needed.

To go with the cakes, I made Rice and Peas, cooked in coconut milk, from the same book. I’ll give you that recipe tomorrow. Hasta mañana!