Category Archives: Vegetarian

Parsnip & Tomato Bake

29 Sunday Dec 2024

Posted by in Main Courses, Starters, Vegetable Dishes, Vegetarian

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Creamy, warming and savoury and a little sweet, this bake is a meal on its own which I used to cook regularly in the British winter before moving to Spain. Here you didn’t see them as they clearly don’t do well in this hot dryness, the odd time you would find them they would be woody and small, great for adding flavour to a dish but not much more.

So I was surprised to spot some plump ones in the supermarket and decided to revisit this recipe from my dim and distant past. Thin sliced of parsnips layered with slices of fresh tomatoes and ricotta style cheese and seasoned with the usual salt and pepper and a touch touch of sweetness, a sprinkling of brown sugar, or for me today some quince jelly as a have jars of it in my store. I know it might sound too much putting sugar with parsnips and tomatoes that are both sweet, but trust me it really adds to the richness of the dish.

For 2 portions

2 large parsnips

3 large tomatoes

ricotta or similar cheese

salt and freshly ground black pepper

brown sugar

olive oil

Grated pecorino or Parmesan

Slice the parsnips and tomatoes into fairly thin rounds.

Using an ovenproof dish start with a layer of parsnips, then scatter over the ricotta cheese, then season with the salt, pepper and sugar, then add a layer of the sliced tomatoes.

Continue layering in this order until the dish is full ending with a layer of parsnips and seasonings.

Brush over with olive oil and cover with tin foil. Bake at 150C for 1 hour 30 minutes. Remove the foil, sprinkle generously with grated pecorino or Parmesan and put back in the oven for another 10 minutes or so until the cheese is a bubbling golden brown.

Enjoy!

Endives & Butter Beans

25 Wednesday Dec 2024

Posted by in Vegan, Vegetable Dishes, Vegetarian

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I see that it’s been far too long since I’ve posted anything, it’s not that I haven’t cooked and it’s not that I haven’t photographed some good recipes and scribbled down how I made them, I’ve just not got to the final typing and posting bit. I’m about to make amends.

The Italians have a way of taking a few, usually seasonal, ingredients and preparing them in a quite simple way to make dishes that are so tasty. This is one of those dishes.
The type of endive it uses is the large frilly one also known as frizze, in Spanish Escarole Rizada. The blanched inner parts are fabulous in salads, while the outer greener leaves can be cooked. They have a slight bitterness so need to be balanced with something soft in flavour like butter beans.

For 2 portions

1 small onion – cut in half and sliced thinly

3 garlic cloves – finely chopped

fresh red chilli – finely chopped

1 tablespoon olive oil

outer leaves of a large endive – washed well and drained

300 grams cooked butter beans – they can be tinned or from a jar.

salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large frying pan heat the olive oil over a low heat.

Add the onions, garlic and chilli. I haven’t given an amount for the chilli as they vary so much in strength, for this you just want to know it’s there without it being strong, so add the chilli slowly if you are unsure.

Cover and cook slowly until the onions are soft.

Cut the endive into bite sized pieces and add to the pan. You might have to do this in two lots and let the first half of the endive cook down before adding the rest.

Cover and braise for five minutes. Stir and continue braising for another five minutes.

Season well and add the beans, mixing them in to the endive. Let cook a couple of minutes for the flavours to infuse.

Serve and enjoy

Tofu & Mushroom Cakes

25 Sunday Feb 2024

Posted by in Food for One, Main Courses, Snacks and Tapas, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes, Vegetarian

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Creamy on the inside and crispy on the outside, with the mushroom enhanced by the addition of seaweed and oriental flavours, you will love these little cakes as much as I do.

Per portion

130 grams firm tofu

50 grams oyster, or other well flavoured, mushrooms

1 sheet dried nori seaweed

1 cm cube, more or less, fresh ginger

1 clove garlic

fresh chilli

2 teaspoons miso soup base

1 heaped teaspoon cornflour plus extra for coating the cakes

oil for shallow frying

To a mini food processor add the roughly chopped ginger, garlic and chilli, then whizz for a few seconds.

Add the roughly chopped mushrooms and break the nori into the mix. Process to combine. Stop the processor and scrape down the mix from the sides if needed.

Break the tofu into the processor and add the cornflour and miso paste. Process until you have an even smooth paste that sticks together.

Remove the mix and divide into four equal amounts. Put some cornflour onto a plate and form each quarter of the mix into a little flat cake, coating it in cornflour as you do so.

Heat oil in a frying pan and add cakes. Cook on a low heat. The cakes are quite delicate so you only want to turn them once, so let the first side get nicely golden brown and crispy before gently turning them over.

I served them with chilli vinegar and some steamed green vegetable dressed with a little sesame oil and seeds.

Enjoy!

A Trio of Roast Vegetables

21 Sunday Jan 2024

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

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This is another one of my not really a recipe recipes. Plain roast carrots, beetroot roasted with orange slices and Pedro Jimenez glaze and roast tomatoes with spring garlic and a crunchy oatmeal topping.

The carrots bought from the local market were so sweet and full of flavour that I had the idea of roasting them to keep all that flavour in and concentrate it a little. I simply coated them with olive oil before roasting.
To accompany the carrots beetroot baked in tin foil. It was cut into chunks, I added chopped garlic and thin orange slices then drizzled with olive oil and Pedro Jimenez glaze which is a concentrated sherry glaze and similar to balsamic glaze, which can be used instead. They were seasoned with sea salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.
Currently I’m in love with roasted tomatoes, so a small tray of them had to be the third dish. I cut plum tomatoes into chunks, added chopped garlic, drizzled with olive oil and seasoned well with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Then I crushed up one of my oat crackers, this batch had been made with the addition of Panch Poran, a mix of whole spices, cumin, fennel, black mustard, nigella and fenugreek seeds, and sprinkled this on the tomatoes. This worked really well as some of the oats soaked up the juice from the tomatoes and some stayed crispy while the spices added interesting flavours.

The three vegetable dishes went into the oven at the same time at 140C fan/ 165C/325F/ gas mark 3 for 40 minutes.
As is quite often the case, I had about a third of each dish left over, so the following day it made a not so pretty but super tasty tortilla.

Tagliatelle & Cauliflower Sauce

19 Friday Jan 2024

Posted by in Main Courses, Starters, Techniques, Vegan, Vegetable Dishes, Vegetarian

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Some dishes that I eat regularly are so simple that I almost don’t think of them as recipes worth sharing, but these are most likely the easy dishes that you would want to hear about.

I made my own pasta for this dish, which is much easier than you think, have a look at my post, the beginners guide to making fresh pasta. If you are mostly vegan like me you can choose flour that has a high protein content. I used wholemeal Khorasan flour which has 14.5% protein and holds together very well for pasta, spelt flour is very good too. I’ll put at the end of this post the address of a website for buying organic flours and pulses.

Of course using readymade pasta is perfectly fine. This recipe came from friends Gianni and Cinzia who I visited in Matera in the south of Italy and they use dried pasta.

For the sauce this time I used cauliflower as I have beautiful ones ready to eat in my veg patch,

but you can use quite a few other vegetables, broccoli, aubergines, peppers, courgettes all cut into small pieces, fresh peas or broad beans, the basic idea of the recipe remains the same. The vegetable is braised in olive oil with garlic until just cooked but still with a bit of bite, about a third of it is removed and put to one side, the rest has a little stock added and is braised until soft. This is then puréed with a hand blender or mashed to make a sauce, adding seasoning as you go. The removed vegetables are put back in the sauce to warm through and then the sauce is mixed into the pasta.

I love that this sauce is so light and full of flavour. It’s so versatile too as pretty well any vegetable that is in season can be used, herbs and seasoning can be varied. This has got me thinking about the recipe on this blog for Apicius inspired onions, with their flavouring of lovage, honey and herbs, which if two thirds of the onions were puréed would make a great sauce for pasta. I’ll try that next. it’s great that ancient Rome is inspiring today’s cooking!

Almost forgot the address for organic flour, grains and pulses

https://www.rincondelsegura.es/

Spicy Besan Cake

16 Thursday Nov 2023

Posted by in breakfast, Main Courses, Starters, Vegan, Vegetarian

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Continuing with recipes made with chickpea flour or besan, this super tasty cake is not complicated to make. You fry onions, garlic and ginger and then spices to make an intensely flavoured mix, then add chickpea flour and water to make a thick sauce, the cake is then spooned into an oiled dish and left to cool and set. That’s it! It can be eaten cold as pictured below or rolled in desiccated coconut and toasted in the oven.

Makes 2 good portions

1 onion – sliced

2 cloves of garlic – finely chopped

40 grams fresh ginger – cut into tiny batons

2-3 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons panch poran – this is a mix of whole spice seeds in equal amounts – cumin, onion, fenugreek, fennel, and mustard.

seeds from 10 green cardamoms

1/2 teaspoon turmeric

1 fresh green chilli – finely chopped

150 grams chickpea flour

625 ml water

salt and freshly ground black pepper

desiccated coconut and fresh coriander to garnish

Heat the oil in a sauce pan, add the onions, garlic and fresh ginger and cook on a medium heat until soft and slightly golden.

Add the all spices and cook for a further five minutes.

Put in the chickpea flour and slowly mix in the water stirring out any lumps.

Put on a medium heat and stir constantly, the mix will thicken and start to resemble a bechamel.
Keep cooking and stirring until the mixture is very thick and coming away from the sides of the pan.

Let the mixture cool a bit in the pan before turning it out into an oiled square dish. Don’t worry if you haven’t a dish the right size, the mix will be quite solid and can shaped into a bigger dish as below. You want the cake to be about 2 centimetres thick.

Once the cake is cool, it can cut into cubes, garnished with chopped fresh coriander and either enjoyed as it is with a fresh tomato relish, or rolled in desiccated coconut and toasted in the oven.

Farinata

08 Wednesday Nov 2023

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

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or socca, torta di ceci or cecina is a thin savoury cake made from chickpea flour. This recipe originates in Italy, though due to the high nutritional quality and good flavour of chickpeas and their flour there are many recipes from many counties that use chickpea flour as their main ingredient. I’m going to give you a selection of these recipes in the next few posts.

This is a super easy and simple dish to make. A batter is made with chickpea flour and water, seasoned, poured into a shallow baking dish on top of smoking hot oil, topped with whichever flavouring you fancy and baked for ten minutes.
You can have your flavouring as simple as fresh herbs, rosemary is particularly good, or vegetables that are part cooked. In the photo below I sliced and fried fresh artichokes, the version above is spring onions and garlic with cima di rapa, a type of mustard green that has a lovely sweet and slightly bitter taste.

For 4 servings – cooked in a 36 centimetre diameter shallow pan

150 grams chickpea flour

450 ml water

4 tablespoons olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

prepared topping for the farinata

Preheat the oven to 230c / 210c if a fan oven/ 450f /gas 8

Put the water into a bowl and slowly whisk in the sieved flour. Whisk to eliminate any lumps.

Put in a warm place for an hour or two when it should have bubbles on the surface.

Stir in 2 tablespoons of oil and season with salt and pepper

Put the other 2 tablespoons of oil in the pan and warm the pan in the oven until very hot and nearly smoking.

Take the pan out of the oven and quickly pour in the batter, arrange your topping evenly over the cake and put back in the oven for ten minutes until golden and crispy around the edges.

Serve straight away with a salad or two.

Lime Ice Cream

21 Monday Aug 2023

Posted by in Sweet Things, Vegetarian

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Cool and sharp and rich. This ice cream satisfies on all requirements, as well as only having three ingredients and not needing an ice cream making machine. If you plan to make ice cream at home the only equipment I recommend buying if you don’t have them, are a couple of small metal loaf tins. Ice cream will freeze much faster in metal than plastic, and the smoothness of ice creams and sorbets relies on it freezing into very small crystals, which means you either have to freeze your mixture very fast or keep it moving to stop large crystals forming – or both.


My little tins measure 8 x 13 centimetres and are 5 centimetres deep. This recipe will make two tins full. Put the tins in the freezer to be chilling down before you start the recipe.

This amount makes 8 – 12 portions depending on how generous you would like them to be.

Juice and zest of 175 grams unwaxed limes

400 grams condensed milk

350 ml fresh thick cream

Measure the condensed milk into a bowl and then grate in the zest from the limes.

Juice the limes and add this to the condensed milk. Stir thoroughly. This will make the milk thicken.

In another bowl beat the cream until thick.

Fold the cream into the lime mix.
Spoon into chilled containers lined with cling film and freeze in the coolest part of your freezer.

Enjoy with a little lime sherbert sprinkled over. There is a recipe for the sherbert on this blog, just put the name in the search box.