Tasty snack

Today has been a fairly non-eventful day in terms of cooking. Doing the early morning dash to work, packed-lunch thing means that from 6am-6pm Monday-Friday I'm nowhere near the kitchen. Breakfast was, however, a delicious mix of fruit (blueberries) with barley and yoghurt along with some pistachios. Lunch was a grab-from-the-freezer homemade soup (in this case, spicy parsnip) and some crackers n fruit. Soup is my favourite lunch and yes, I even indulge in the summer despite the strange looks that I get from colleagues when I'm enjoying this traditionally cold weather treat!


I wasn't in the mood for much when I got home from work as I was running late and planning to do some yoga - this plan got scuppered when I was reminded of the David Hockney documentary being shown on BBC2! I did manage to defrost one of the sweet potato burgers I'd made last week and served it up with some shallow-friend halloumi shavings, sun dried tomatoes and a side-dish of rocket. Fairly simple and low-brow but utterly delish!

No cooking at all for me tomorrow as I'll be out - going straight to the cinema to see "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" after work. Looking forward to some light-hearted comedy and a brilliantly talented cast (just hope the film is as good as the trailer!)

Cook-fest Sunday

This week saw the annual feast-ival that is Shrove Tuesday. Even people without any religious belief go crazy at this time of year because they simply MUST have pancakes! As I had a dinner date I missed out on the celebrations but made up for it today. This pancake (laced with vanilla) was served with blueberries and syrup - delicious!

My parents came to lunch and Sundays with them equals a traditional British roast dinner with potatoes, veg and gravy. Mum and I are both veggies and I always try to make something that she wouldn't make herself or expect. The inspiration for today came from here. I used half of the basic recipe minus the egg, half the breadcrumbs, and instead of using a loaf tin I pressed the mix into greased muffin moulds to make 'puddings'. The lentils created a nice crisp shell with a lovely gooey inside, the overall feel was surprisingly light and, well, puddingy. I'll be sure to make this again but I'll probably experiment a bit with herbs and spices to see how much this can be changed-up. With sides of roasted potato and roasted cauliflower, carrot and sauteed leek this dinner really was a hit.

Tagines

Today I was lucky enough to have a friend visit for lunch, I love cooking for her because she is so open-minded and happy to eat vegetarian food. I took this as the perfect opportunity to make a tagine - one of my favourite dishes as it's so healthy, easy to make and full of flavour.

The great thing about tagines is that most of the effort is made simply preparing the vegetables and then you can pretty much leave them to do their thing. This one, like the majority of dishes, has sauteed onions as the starter ingredient to which is added spices (turmeric, cumin, paprika, cinnamon stick and bay leaf) and chopped garlic. After that the recipes are fairly flexible, I like this one which has sweet potato, butternut squash and carrot. Covered with stock this is left on the hob until the vegetables are tender, the key is to make the pieces fairly small - (preferably bite-sized) so they don't take too long to cook. Softer vegetables (aubergine and courgette) and fruits (dates, apricots or raisins) can be added towards the end of the cooking time as they will only take a few minutes. For a bit of extra heat a deseeded, halved chilli can be added to the cooking water but removed before serving. Authentic ingredients that can be added are preserved lemon (halved and with the insides removed) and pomegranate molasses - these can be bought in some supermarkets or speciality stores.

To accompany this I cooked up some giant couscous grains but fluffy regular couscous is just perfect to accompany any tagine.

Wholesome and tasty

Then first accomplishment of the day was to finish what I'd started on Monday night. In the end the planned sausages became burger patties as the mix was definitely more of a burger consistency. I was surprised by how well these turned out I must admit. Here is the recipe:

400g sweet potato, diced
1 medium carrot, diced
50g halloumi, grated
1/2 leek, finely sliced
1 egg
1/2 tbsp dried parsley
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
seasoning
flour to coat
olive oil

Method: boil, drain and mash both the sweet potato and carrot. Fry the leek until golden. Mix all ingredients together except the flour (although if the mix looks wet flour can be added to thicken it). Chill for 30mins. Shape into patties and coat with flour, shallow fry in olive oil.


The second accomplishment was a large pan of sopa de maize (sweetcorn soup). I attended a Mexican themed supperclub at the Vegetarian Cookery School in the autumn and this was one of my favourite dishes. Low-fat and tasty this recipe has only been published via the VegCS Facebook and Twitter feeds. I served a portion of this piping hot garnished with a small amount of cream and coriander as well as a side portion of homemade corn tortilla chips. Without the cream this is entirely wheat free and vegan.

Research day

Today I've been busy collecting recipes to try and also looking through the hundreds that I've already got stored on my computer to 'try later'. Unfortunately I ran out of time while making dinner so I'll have to finish that dish tomorrow or Wednesday (it needed some chilling time so it will be chilling for a while!) If that works I'll be posting the recipe here on Wednesday evening when I have more time.

Until then - happy eating!

Halva Heaven and Barley revisited

Well a breakfast jazz-up is exactly what's been achieved this weekend.


The second attempt at something new came from Sumayya (aka Pukka Paki). She and Monica had made some semolina halva and compote, again I was fascinated. My first, and last, experience of halva was of it in its cake form back in 2003. At the time I was lodging with a vegan who occasionally binged on chicken and chocolate, yep she really was a "vegan"! I wasn't sure of it at the time so that's where my experimentation ended. Over the years my tastes have developed and when I saw this breakfast-version I decided to give it a go. The recipe can be found on Sumayya's blog (link above) and is incredibly easy and ridiculously delicious. I love cardamom probably more in sweet dishes than savoury ones so this was ideal for me. I upped the cardamom and vanilla a little and went on the lower end of the sugar scale. There is still plenty of last years rhubarb in my freezer so that made a perfect compote with some fresh ginger and star anise. Sprinkled with ground almonds this is an utterly delightful breakfast.

That was yesterday. As I was out for lunch there was no experimentation with my home cooking but I had a bean chilli with rice and tortilla chips. I was glad of the warming spices on such a cold day.


Todays breakfast was a revisit to the delights of barley. If you're going to bother cooking this grain at all it's best to do more than you need - that length of cooking time needs to be worth it! Thankfully it's great for a myriad of uses such as salads, risotto, stuffed vegetables and now breakfast! This mornings delight:

barley
yoghurt
blueberries
chopped walnuts

Roast dinner with my parents followed later (7 vegetables along with roasted potatoes and a butternut squash & nut roast courtesy of mum). I must be full of vitamins!

Exotic extravagance

In total contrast to yesterdays dinner this one became a labour of love and took quite some time to prepare. My boyfriend and I were meant to be going out to a new Indian restaurant but unfortunately he's come down with a bad case of 'man flu'. Naturally I was disappointed but decided to cook myself an Indian-inspired meal anyway.

Intrigued by Monica Shaw's article on savoury pancakes I was particularly interested in the recipe for besan cheela. I didn't have any ground coriander or ajowan but I did pop in some asofateda in its place.

Looking for something to go with these I reached for my 'Green Seasons' cookbook by Rachel Demuth. I'd been meaning to make the !Indian spiced chickpeas for a while so I cooked up a batch, luckily I had all of the ingredients to hand. Knowing that I was going for an Indian theme I'd picked up a mango when I went shopping earlier and made some of Janifer's fresh mango chutney as well as some khadi (spiced yoghurt dip) - recipes for both of these also in 'Green Seasons'.

An awful lot of effort for a dinner for one but everything complimented each other and my initial disappointment at being home alone disappeared. The meal was rounded off with a slice of wheat-free, gluten-free, cake that I made this afternoon along with a very large cup of tea

Barley for breakfast?

I've been following Monica Shaw's Twitter feed for the last few days and was pleasantly surprised when she Tweeted a breakfast which included barley. I must admit that my week day breakfasts are pretty dull affairs as they're generally grabbed on the way out of the door or eaten at the office so this gave me a queue to jazz things up.

Here it is, the barley breakfast platter:

pearl barley (cooked and cooled)
yoghurt (in this case Yeo Valley organic limited edition passionfruit flavour)
chopped banana
cashews
prunes

So many textures on one little plate! The flavours go really well together and the basic components of barley, fruit and nuts are infinitely interchangeable. I've also seen an idea of wild rice for breakfast which I may give a go another time.

Pretty simple

I couldn't be bothered making much of an effort this evening because I was heading out to my yoga class and got sidetracked making soup to freeze-down for lunches. In the end I made this simple tomato sauce which I served over spelt penne. The sauce was, basically:

olive oil
finely chopped shallots
chopped garlic
1 chopped sundried tomato
passata
oregano
seasoning

This, served over pasta and topped with a little grated cheddar.

Tomorrows crunchy lunch

It's very rare that I make a meal this close to 'rabbit food'. I really fancied making some houmous for tomorrow so I took some chickpeas and whizzed up a job lot:

1 tin chickpeas (garbanzo) - drained and rinsed
1tsp tahini paste
1tsp lemon juice
1 clove garlic - crushed
1/2tbsp extra virgin olive oil

All of the above in a food processor, just add water til it gets to the right consistency. Served with raw red pepper and carrot sticks. Delish!

Roasted veg with lentils and halloumi

Pretty much what is says on the tin:

Carrots and parsnip cut into chunky strips - slow roasted without oil
Puy lentils - boiled in stock for 25mins
2 slices of halloumi cheese - fried in olive oil

Stacked on a place and served with love

Celeriac velouté - sexy soup for the soul

I'd never considered making celeriac soup before this winter. I'd grown up with boiled celeriac and that was it. A trip to Demuths vegetarian restaurant in Bath was all it took for me to class this is as the best thing to do with celeriac. Not having made a velouté before I've adapted this recipe from another one online, I don't think it's a bad attempt at what the wonderful people at Demuths have made.

It tastes and sounds like a rich and sinful dish but the celeriac velouté is only (roughly) 180 calories per portion! Unbelievable ! Surprisingly simple to make too, definitely top of my favourites list. Sure it won't be winning any prizes for being low fat - far from it - but as an occasional winter treat no harm can come to you with a dish of warming velouté.

Here's the recipe:

Serves 4
400grams celeriac, diced into small cubes
50g shallots (or one medium onion), finely chopped
750ml vegetable stock (if using a cube ensure it doesn't have small pieces of veg in it)
30grams butter
1tbsp olive oil
3tbsp double cream (if liked)

Put the butter, oil and onion into a pan over a low heat and sauté the onions until translucent. Add the celeriac and cook until soft. This can take some time - so worth it! When the celeriac is soft add the boiling hot stock and cook for a further 10minutes. At this point it looks like greasy water but it's about to improve drastically!

Turn off the heat and put all of the contents of the pan into a blender. Ensure there are no bits left in the pan - wipe it clean if you need to. Whizz the mixture to within an inch of its life - you don't want any lumpy bits! Pour the mixture back into the pan (preferably through a sieve to ensure the lump-free texture we want here). Reheat the mixture. Stir in the cream now if you feel the need and serving up the whole lot or, if freezing, stir a spoon of cream into each bowlful when served.

I decided to do away with the cream today and topped the dish with rosemary and chopped cashews.

What vegetarians eat

I previously had a blog called 'The Healthy Vegetarian' but I was struggling a bit and didn't know which angle to take. Having just joined Pinterest I stumbled upon a thread where people were discussing vegetarianism. As an off-shoot from this I thought I'd create a new blog with some ideas and examples of what vegetarians do actually eat!

Perhaps some people will find this inspirational and I'd love to hear from anyone who tries my ideas or has any ideas for things to try!