Saturday 29 September 2012

Thai Curry Noodle Soup

This is a new recipe which I have made as a lunch item for my Housebites lunch menu which will be available to order from Monday 1st October.

We had this for supper tonight. I don't usually say supper as I'm an un-posh northerner but it felt supper-like as it was a refreshing light but filling dish, perfect for lunch. In fact, today I was uber-posh because I ate brunch instead of breakfast or lunch and then supper at 8pm, how elegant.
2 bundles of rice noodles
1 tbsp Sesame oil
1 clove garlic crushed
2 tbsps lemon grass (I use the purree in the jars)
1 tbsp of grated ginger
2 tbsp fresh green curry paste (in a hurry you could use shop bought) 
800ml vegetable stock
2 tbsps soy sauce
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 can coconut milk
A bag of stir fry veg
2 handfuls of fresh spinach leaves (baby)
2 tbsps fresh lime juice
1 small bundle chopped coriander



  1.  Cook the noodles according to the instructions on the packet and as soon as they are ready drain and rinse with cold water until they are cold. Leave to one side.
  2.  Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Stir in garlic, lemon grass, and ginger; cook for 30 to 60 seconds. Add the curry paste, and cook 30 seconds more.
  3. Add the stock, soy sauce and sugar to the pan. Bring to the boil and simmer with the the pan lid almost all the way on but leaving a little gap, for 20 minutes. 
  4. Add all of the veg and spinach and stir in until the soup is almost boiling.
  5. Remove from heat. Place cold noodles in bowls and ladle the soup on top. If you like your soup really spicy add some chopped green chillies for extra heat.









Saturday 22 September 2012

Goodbye Summer



As it's the first official day of Autumn today I thought I would upload one last summer holiday food picture.

This salad was based on my favourite salad recipe which I cut out of Cosmo of all places, years ago.

All you need is

  • A bag of fresh baby spinach.
  • Half a large or one small red onion, chopped.
  •  A small punnet of rasperries.
  • A cup of cooked brown lentils or a can drained and washed.
  • Balsamic vinegar
  • Extra virgin olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
Simply toss the ingredients together in a bowl and drizzle on oil and vinegar. Trust me, raspberries in balsamic are lush!

I had some toast and Granovita Shitake Mushroom Pate on the side of mine. I had been given a tin of it in the vegan food swap. I find the pate tubes and tins are perfect for travelling because they are so tasty on bread, toast and crackers, they travel well out of the fridge and they keep for ages! I've taken them camping, on hikes, cycle tours and now to Spain.








Sunday 16 September 2012

Vegan Breakfast in Spain

Back home we have pretty lame tomatoes. They are orangey-red at best and the flesh is pale pink. If I make a fresh tomato sauce in the UK I have to blanch the tomatoes in order to remove the skin and soften the flesh otherwise it ends up being pale lumps in a pan. I often have to add a bit of purree to my salsa to make it red and rich. To be honest, I'm quite embarrassed by the patheticness of our tomatoes.

In the past I have lived in flat shares with a number of people from different european countries and often I've listened to them, complain bitterly about the quality of our bread and the blandness of our tomatoes. Unfortunately, even though I like to stick up for many things British (you can get out of my house if you're going to slag off Marmite, Yorkshire Tea or Chip Butties) I tend to agree on the bread and tomato front. In my opinion, Germany has the best bread and Spain has the best tomatoes. So it's no surprise then, that all I want to do when I leave this country is to eat bread and tomatoes.

My Spanish flat mate at Essex university first introduced me to Tostada Tomate, a traditional Catalan breakfast.

Here's how she made it:

Take a slice of toast, it has to be oval shaped white toast (apparently).

Rub the toast with a peeled clove of garlic.

Grate a tomato and spread the pulp onto the toast like you would with jam.

Drizzle on extra virgin olive oil and sprinkle with rock salt.

In the top picture I'm having mine with scrambled tofu (based on the PPK recipe) and I've garnished it with some amazing sweet chilli peppers in brine that I found in the supermarket.

The colour fresh salsa should be!

Thursday 13 September 2012

Soy Inglesa, voy al España comer Fish and Chips.

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Sometimes people say our national dish is roast beef, I've even heard people say it's chicken tikka masala, I say that's all rubbish it's blatantly Fish 'n' Chips and the only thing that should ever come with that is mushy peas. I've never had gravy or curry sauce on chips in my life. When I lay my hands on that rare eastern delicacy - chip spice, I have been known to go a little crazy, but that's on chips strictly bound for butties and it goes no further.

Having been vegetarian for the best part of two decades I really missed out on Britain's best loved dish for quite some time. A couple of years before I became vegan I stumbled across vegetarian fish and chips in a pub in Wapping which was battered halloumi, chips and mushy peas. It was good but at the end of the day it was just fried cheese - pure badness and I can't eat it now I'm vegan.

The reason I chose to make fish and chips on holiday, in Spain was not because I wanted to be an obnoxious Brit abroad but more because I knew there would be a night where my friends would want steak or fish and I would want something simple that could be served with potatoes and vegetables also.

I had the idea of breading a piece of tofu and frying it like fish a while ago as I thought the texture would work like white fish (not that I have a lot of fish eating experience). I thought wrapping it in Nori seaweed like sushi would work best and happened to find a small Japanese section in the supermarket in La Manga (weird that they had this and no Hummuss!). My friend Kate suggested marinating the tofu in soy sauce and this worked really well. It was much tastier than I thought it would be and not overly salty. After wrapping in moistened Nori I coated the whole thing in flour, then milk (whatever non-dairy milk you prefer), then breadcrumbs and shallow fried in a pan with vegetable oil on both sides until the crumbs were golden brown and crispy.

I served my tofu with a squeeze of lemon, oven-baked chips covered with salt and vinegar and minted mushy peas. My BF tried them and said it tasted fishy (but in a good way - a bad fishy way would be like a quorn fishless finger I imagine). I doubt it tasted of actual fish, not that I'd really remember but I would like to think that the seaweed gave it a taste of the sea.

These holiday creations have been so successful so far, I'm thinking of adding them to my Housebites menu. If anyone would like to comment on whether they would like to see this on my menu or want to suggest any vegan food that they would like to be able to order - I would love to hear from you.

Monday 10 September 2012

Vegan on Holiday Spaghetti and Spinach Balls


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In the summers of 2001 and 2002 I worked in a summer camp near Philadelphia. They were fantastic summers, I met lots of wonderful people. A few of whom of I still manage to see on a fairly regular basis. We all do different things in life and live in different places but we all try to come together every New Years Eve and now it is also becoming tradition to have a holiday in the summer together. Andy's dad has a family apartment in La Manga, Spain and this was our third summer holiday here.

The first summer we came I was one of three vegetarians so that was pretty easy to organize. Last year I was the only vegetarian. This year I have turned vegan much to everyone's surprise, so it has been a bit more difficult.

Every time I arrive in another country the first thing I want to do is to check out the local supermarket. In Spain that used to mean buying tons and tons of sheep's cheese but this time it was really different. As a vegan in touristy Spain there really isn't much packaged convenience food on offer for vegans. At home I buy things like stuffed vine leaves, samosas, tofu, and hummus on a regular basis but here I can't even find hummus! We are in a very resorty kind of place though, I'm sure I could find some of these things elsewhere.

For our first meal Andy wanted to make meat balls in tomato sauce with spaghetti. For my vegan alternative he suggested spinach balls, only the recipe he normally used usually contained parmasean cheese and was bound together by an egg.

I suggested that we use cashews instead of cheese and oil instead of egg and it turned out to make perfectly shaped balls which also contained plenty of protein and were delicious and filling.



Ingredients:

500g of fresh spinach
100g of raw cashews
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp of paprika
Salt and Pepper
A good glug of olive oil
Half a cup of toasted bread crumbs


Boil a couple of inches of water in your biggest saucepan. Tip the spinach in, bring back to the boil and drain in a seive. Set aside to cool.

(At this point I would start making the tomato sauce and come back to this once your sauce is simmering)

Chop cashews coarsely in a food processor (I brought a min one on holiday but you could always put them in a carrier bag and bash them up with a rolling pin or empty wine bottle).

Mince the garlic and stir into bread crumbs with the herbs and spices.

Push the spinach into the sieve with the back of a spoon to get out as much water as possible then squeeze out even more by balling up the spinach in your hands and squeezing as hard as you can.

Mix the spinach with the rest of the mixture and once it is thoroughly mixed in add the oil, stir it up and use the mixture to make balls about the size of a ping pong ball.

Pan fry the balls on a medium heat while the pasta is cooking for about 7 minutes until golden all over and then serve on a pile of spaghetti covered in your favourite tomato sauce. In Spain the fresh tomatoes are blood red so they make the most amazing tomato sauce.

For me, this was the best meal of the entire holiday. Not only was it the most tasty, but I was almost having the same meal as everyone else without too many adjustments, which makes things so much easier and more enjoyable. I'm pretty sure this meal will become a regular week night habit in my kitchen from now on.