smoky refried bean stuffed peppers

 

 

 

 

 

For my second post today I want to bring you the recipe for one of the most popular dishes in my house – smoky refried bean stuffed peppers. We have this at least every two weeks. Stuffed peppers can be a bit of a cliche as far as vegetarian food is concerned, but these peppers actually have something interesting inside them rather than your run-of-the-mill savoury rice or cous cous, those favourites of unimaginative restaurants (not that I’ve got anything against these lovely grains, but they are accompaniments, not main dishes).

We serve these with potato wedges, plain soya yoghurt, and a salad or salsa of some kind. When we have corn on the cob handy (such as when we grew it – all our home grown stuff’s eaten now though, sob!) we have that with it, too.

Last night, we had a tomatillo salsa with them – using tomatilloes that we grew ourselves. I was inspired to grow them myself as they were featured in a lot of the recipes in my American vegan cookbooks, whereas they’re pretty much impossible to find in UK shops, even tinned ones. I’ll do a proper post about them, including tips on how to grow them, at a later date (let’s face it, no-one is going to be planting any seeds for a few months!).

Onto the stuffed pepper recipe… be sure to join me after the jump!

all these breakfast are belong to us

...and this is just some of what you can eat for your most important meal of the day.

I didn’t post yesterday – bad MoFo’er. So I’m going to attempt two today although I might need a little rest between them.

My first is about breakfast. My first attempt at being vegan (sadly unsuccessful but that’s for another post) was when I was at university; and I remember someone incredulously asking me ‘But… but what do you have for breakfast?!’ as though a vegan breakfast must involve nothing more tantalising than dry bread and water. Tch. There is loads more to have than that. So here is my guide to vegan breakfasting.

Sweet breakfasts are a piece of [insert preferred proverbial term here]. Any cereal or muesli that can be had with milk can also be had with soya (rice, oat, almond, hemp etc) milk. Just check the label before you buy, as some can sneak in non-vegan ingredients like whey powder or honey. Many vegan recipe books can show you how to make your own muesli, if you are so inclined. Porridge is an excellent breakfast, and easy to make with non-dairy milk, especially if you have a microwave. Simply mix oats and your preferred milk (or use water) in a bowl and ‘zap’ for 90 seconds – 2 minutes. It’s especially nice topped with things like fresh or dried fruit, fruit puree, soya yoghurt, nuts and seeds, you get the picture. I like to put dessicated coconut into my porridge at the pre-cooking stage, it provides lovely extra creaminess.

Toast can be sweet, too… most jams and marmalades are vegan but check them just in case they contain gelatine. Use vegan margarine of course, and check the label of the bread before you buy because some sneaky bread companies can squirrel animal products in there, and some traditional bakeries use lard (yuck) in their bread.

Savoury breakfasts are more my domain, though. I need a salty snack in the morning, and here is where as a vegan you need to exercise only a tiny bit more creativity. Toast, the ever versatile breakfast staple, is what I have most mornings, with vegan margarine and a savoury spread like Tartex, peanut butter or Marmite. Tartex is one of those foodstuffs that only vegetarians and vegans know about, because it’s only sold in health food shops – it’s a savoury pate made of yeast (think the idea of eating yeast is icky? Better give up bread, beer and wine then) in a container a bit like a toothpaste tube, and which comes in various flavours like mushroom, tomato, etc. It’s very, very nice.

For a more substantial start to the day, the following fillings make excellent savoury sandwiches with black coffee, or your preferred wake-up drink: vegan sausage, vegan ‘bacon’, fried mushrooms, fried smoked tofu, fried tomatoes. Combinations I’m particularly fond of are Redwood vegan sausages, mustard and ketchup (with a little marmite on the toast), or fried mushrooms and tomatoes with peanut butter. A tip when frying mushrooms for your breakfast feast is to splash a teaspoon or so of soy sauce on them when they’re cooking. This also works well when frying tomatoes, or smoked tofu.

Full English? No problem. Vegans can also stuff themselves so full they have no choice but to lie bloated on the sofa and watch T4. How about this? Vegan sausage, scrambled tofu (recipe below), baked beans, fried mushrooms and tomatoes, hash browns (check the label before you buy) and toast – or, why not indeed, fried bread. You could even have it for dinner as well – you’ll get no judgement from me.

Before I give you my recipe for simple scrambled tofu, I will just say that one British breakfast institution is as vegan as it gets – beans on toast. It’s simple, quick, very nutritious (especially if you use wholemeal or granary bread) and tastes even better with a little Marmite on the toast.

Simple scrambled tofu recipe – without spices, chopped veg, bells or whistles – after the jump! The white pepper is what really makes it in my opinion, so try and get hold of some if you can. A pinch of turmeric can be added for colour but I don’t usually bother.

creamy spaghetti with peas, mushrooms and dill

 

 

 

 

 

When I was a kid, me and my parents regularly used to go to a small family-run Italian restaurant near Wigan, where I’m from. My mum often had a pasta dish with mushrooms and peas, and you know what? She was onto something. Mushrooms + peas + pasta = tasty. Inspired by that dish from days of yore, I created a vegan version with a light creamy sauce similar to the one I used for the fennel and butterbean gratin, laced with lovely fresh dill (one of my favourite herbs). It was a great success.

This is a really good ‘store cupboard’ type recipe – the only fresh ingredients necessary are mushrooms, onions, garlic and the optional fresh dill (you can always use dried). Plus anything you may want to have as a salad on the side – we used the last dregs of our home-grown tomatoes, dressed with some of our pauper’s pesto that we’d made and frozen earlier in year! It’s also quick to make, a bonus for busy vegans (who don’t want to miss University Challenge!).

Again, use unsweetened soya milk – tips for where to buy it are in this post.

Recipe for the lovely mushroomy goodness after the jump!

a recipe for world vegan day: aubergine and chickpea tagine with minted couscous

 

 

 

 

 

I’m going to celebrate World Vegan Day and start off Vegan MoFo as I mean to go on – with a lovely, spicy, warming recipe full of rich interesting flavours. This Moroccan tagine is so tasty that I always have seconds. It’s savoury and aromatic with a hint of sweetness from the dates.

There are a lot of spices in it, which leads me to a thrifty tip: if you can avoid buying spices in those teeny-tiny thimble-sized jars they have in the supermarket, do. I can’t help thinking that those minuscule quantities were decided upon by spice companies in ye olden days when most British people tended to eat meat and two veg every night and were a little bit frightened of the concept of curry, so anything more than seven grams of a herb or spice would inevitably turn to flavourless dust in their cupboards.

However, such teeny quantities are an insult to the modern-day thrifty cook wanting to whip up tasty feasts. So for the newbie spice user, what’s do be done? Well, some larger supermarkets have ‘ethnic’ sections where there are alternative brands of spices to be bought, in much larger packets, at much better value for money. Alternatively, if you live in a city, there will undoubtedly be a multicultural food shop on a street near you, selling similarly large packets of many kinds of spices (some of which aren’t even available in supermarkets), for similarly cheap prices. Markets are also a good place for getting spices, especially if there is a weigh-and-save type stall where you only pay for what you need. And if all that fails, a quick internet search reveals many online spice shops, such as this one, where you can buy 100g of cinnamon for less than a pound.

Talking of cinnamon, back to the tagine. Did I mention that I love this dish? It has cinnamon in it. I once saw a video on YouTube of someone attempt to eat a teaspoon of cinnamon ‘raw’ as it were – it was very funny. I could explain why the nature of cinnamon means that eating it ground straight from the jar is almost impossible, but that would just waste everyone’s time. On to the food!

Recipe after the jump.

happy world vegan day!

Cripes, it’s been a while since I last posted. However, today is World Vegan Day so how could I not get back in the saddle so to speak?

There is also a new Vegan MoFo (Vegan Month of Food) imminent, to which I have signed up – it’ll be just the motivation I need to get creating in the kitchen, and get blogging about it! There’s already over 500 vegan blogs signed up, which in itself makes me feel quite excited and optimistic about veganism – there is clearly a wealth of information out there about vegan food, free information at that, and the more information and great recipes there are available, the more we chip (ha!) away at the preconception of veganism as a strange, extreme diet.

I’ve dipped into some of the blogs on the 2010 MoFo list already, and the thing that strikes me perhaps the most is the bloggers’ sheer enthusiasm for food. One of the biggest myths about veganism is that we vegans are weird ascetics who just don’t care about food that much, who either don’t find it pleasurable or who wish to deny ourselves pleasure. The assumption is that the only truly tasty, enjoyable food out there is that which contains animal products, and therefore those people enthusiastic about food (‘foodies’, to coin a phrase) must have to be omnivores.

It’s just not true. It’s simply, utterly, rubbish in fact. One of the best things about veganism is that you don’t have to give up deliciousness. You don’t have to give up your love of food, or your creativity in the kitchen. You don’t have to give up any more time, energy or cash feeding yourself than you did as an omni. The only thing you give up is harming animals. There are so many recipes out there, both in books and online, that you could do a new recipe a day for the rest of your life and never eat the same thing twice. And that’s not counting your own inventions. That’s why Vegan MoFo is such a great idea – it brings this message home by neatly showcasing the huge variety of vegan food and the multitude of people who love being vegan. I’m very proud to be a part of it.

creamy fennel and butterbean gratin

Some people may think that becoming vegan = giving up creamy sauces. Not true. There are many vegan foodstuffs with creamy textures and flavours, which can be used to make sumptuous meals such as the one pictured above! I invented this recipe the other day to much approval from mine and the feminist physicist’s bellies – it uses the simple ingredients of margarine, flour and soya milk as a base for a satisfyingly silky sauce. The whole thing tastes luxurious despite being cheap to make.

Fennel has a lovely, subtle taste which goes extremely well with creamy sauces, and hearty butterbeans are a great partner for it, as is the gratin (i.e. breadcrumb) topping (this recipe contains pumpkin seeds to make the gratin even more tasty and nutritious). Fennel also has a somewhat undeserved reputation as a middle class snobby vegetable, when, y’know, it isn’t. It grows nicely here in the UK (I didn’t grow it this year, but plan to next year), and you can get it easily from the supermarket or from markets or grocers’ (which are often the cheaper option).

All the ingredients for this meal are available in supermarkets, with the exception of Engevita (nutritional yeast), which is stocked in health food shops.You can omit this, if you can’t get hold of it, but I find it adds an extra something to the sauce.

By the way, I can’t stress enough the need to get unsweetened soya milk for this recipe. If you use the sweetened stuff, it will taste appalling, not just because of the sugar but because of the vanilla flavouring that seems to be present in some supposedly ‘plain’ soya milks. In a supermarket, unsweetened soya milk is usually to be found with the UHT milks (i.e. the ones not in the fridge). The soya milk in the chilled cabinet alongside the fresh cows’ milks will more than likely be the sweetened kind. The cheapest soya milk I’ve seen available is from Sainsbury’s, it’s the ‘basics’ kind and is 69p/litre (or was, when I last checked!). It’s also fortified, which is a bonus.

Recipe after the jump!

fajitas, fajitas, fajitas

Fajitas are probably my favourite food, and vegan fajitas absolutely rock. They’ve got savoury refried beans, crunchy spicy veggies, cool guacamole… what’s not to like? Here is my (quite exhaustive) guide to making a gorgeous vegan fajita meal that will leave you stuffed and satisfied. The whole caboodle will serve four people, or two for two days, and is pictured above (yes, that’s my own home grown corn in the photo!). I used my recently harvested achochas in this meal, too, and they went very well, but they’re by no means a necessary ingredient!

Element 1: tortillas. I buy corn tortillas (pack of eight) from the supermarket. Easy peasy.

Element 2: refried beans. Refried beans in a tin, while convenient, are expensive. Here’s my recipe for smoky refried beans which is a fraction of the price. All the ingredients are available from supermarkets:

Ingredients
1 tin (400g) of pinto or borlotti beans, drained but liquid reserved
1 tin (400g) of aduki beans, drained but liquid reserved
1 smallish onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped or crushed
1 hot chilli, finely chopped (optional)
2 teaspoons smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon salt

Method
1. Either: fry the onion, garlic, chilli and spices in a little oil under a medium heat until they start to soften, then add the tins of beans and a little bean liquid. Or: place all the ingredients in a pan straight away (with a little bean liquid) under a medium heat. The second method is fat-free, and slightly less faff.
2. Bring to the boil, turn the heat right down, and simmer the mixture for around 10 minutes until the onion and beans are soft. If the mixture gets dry, add more bean liquid.
3. Mash the mixture with a potato masher until it forms a thick paste. Don’t go mad, you just need to squish most of the beans, not form a perfect puree. Some texture is fine (and nice, in my opinion). If it’s too thick, add some more bean liquid. Add the salt and stir.
4. That’s it! Either serve up, or turn the heat off to reheat later when the rest of the stuff’s done.

The rest of the fajita elements after the jump… (I’m getting hungry)