Food Swap #2

This is my second month of participating in the UK Vegan Food Swap organized by To Happy Vegans.

Today my Parcel arrived from Els who writes the blog Cookie Von Stir. In the box was a lovely big bright orange flower, pink paper shreds and a card with flowers on, so pretty! Besides the decorations were lots of really tempting vegan snacks.

The item I'm most excited about is the packet of Parve Cheese Curls. Now, I know I'm supposed to be into cooking good quality food and all that, but before I became vegan I had a guilty pleasure....Wotsits. I loved those cheesy puffs! Not only did I eat them out of the bag but I liked to make sandwiches out of them, with really soft bread.

Hold on.....(stops to eat packet). Yeah, that was good.

Other highlights in my parcel to look forward to are; apple and cinnamon crisps, chocolate cookies and a really good selection of herbal teas, which are great to have because I just ran out.

I'm also really intrigued by the veggie jerkies. I've never eaten a beef jerky so I'm interested to try them.

I love doing the food swap because I get to find out about vegan food I never knew existed and it's so great to get a parcel full of surprises. If you want to join in just go to the To Happy Vegans blog to register.

If anyone reading this ever spots vegan cheese flavoured popcorn then please let me know....if vegan cheese puffs are possible then maybe the popcorn is out there too!

Mofo Post #13 Vegusto Cheese

I've been a bad MoFO! (Maybe I'll get a wallet that says so like in Pulp Fiction) This is my first post in ages. Lots of catching up to do....

Having been lucky enough to win a box of Vegusto products I thought I'd tell you about their cheese.

When I anticipated the arrival of my Vegusto parcel I was imagining some big kind of cheese fest, including cheese sandwiches, cheese on toast, cheese on cheese - you get the picture.

As soon as I tried the vegusto cheese I knew it was different to all the other vegan cheeses I'd tried, I haven't tried lots, maybe about 3 different brands. The first two didn't taste or smell like cheese at all and in my humble opinion weren't even fit for human consumption. The third brand I tried was very buttery tasting and melted a treat but didn't taste of cheese and the more I ate it the more I didn't like it and eventually I threw my dinner away.

The fact that I made a whole meal out of Vegusto sauce and cheese and ate all of it, already means that it is a hundred times better than any vegan cheese I have tasted so far.

However, when you compare it directly to cheese it doesn't really cut it. Before becoming vegan I was massively into cheese. Stinky, blue, goat, ewe whatever I'd eat it. The only cheese I didn't like was processed cheeses like that weird stuff on hamburgers and cheese strings and the kind of cheese you get in American supermarkets made by craft that are pale orange and a bit waxy. I guess the Vegusto cheese reminds me a bit of that kind of cheese. I was happy to buy it when I was stranded on a summer camp, but wouldn't buy it in real life.

The other thing about the Vegusto cheese I tried were that they didn't melt. So my plans for cheese on everything were blighted by this fact. You can see how my cheese on toast turned out. Unfortunately it doesn't even look like it went under the grill. I covered it in Henderson's Relish (a lovely sauce that tastes just like Worcester sauce but with out the anchovies) and weirdly the cheese soaked up the sauce.

I'll finish my saying that Vegusto definitely make vegan cheese that is far superior to other leading brands, but it doesn't fill the cheese shaped hole in my stomach!

Mofo Post #12 Macaroni Cheat

The red stuff is Chipotle Tobasco - can't get enough!

Last week I was the lucky winner in a Vegusto giveaway on the Vegan Month Of Food site.

Vegusto sent me one of their starter kits which contained a variety of vegan cheeses and meat substitutes.

All this for free!

Having just arrived home after a long journey on the Megabus from Leeds I was in no mood to cook so I was delighted to find a sachet of No-Muh Sauce in the parcel and set about making macaroni cheese.

I had been wanting to try Vegusto products for a long time. I'd heard about them in Twitter and in Blogs but never found their stuff in the shops. Even though all the other vegan cheeses I'd tried weren't even worth writing about (who wants to read about my theory that certain vegan cheeses are made from the scrapings of human feet?) I had a feeling that a dozen vegan bloggers couldn't be wrong about Vegusto, especially the ones who said their Omnivore partners ate it too.

The sauce was very creamy and cheesy tasting. Admittedly it had that kind of sauce-out-of-a packet feel to it, but I'm not complaining. My dinner was ready in minutes and I was hungry!

While the pasta was cooking I had a little nibble on the two vegan cheeses they sent me. The first thing I noticed was that they were a little greasy which is good because it's cheese, it should have some fat in it! Next I snipped open the vacuum-pack to find that it actually smelled like cheese! It definitely tasted decidedly cheesy too, I can't say it tasted particularly like a specific type of cheese, but Vegusto don't brand it that way. The texture was comparable to Double Gloucester.

Now as for melting on the top of my macaroni cheese, no. That didn't happen. I think with vegan cheeses you get ones that melt and ones that you can eat uncooked, but you don't tend to get both qualities in one vegan cheese product.

The macaroni cheese dish I cooked using the Vegusto products was pretty good. I'd probably recommend it to people who like quick and easy food and who don't want to spend hours in the kitchen, but for me personally, I'm still going to be soaking the cashews when I want a cheese sauce for my meal.

Mofo Post #11 Easy Vegan Pizza

Since I've been vegan I've had to do a bit more planning when I go away. I don't expect everyone to cook vegan food for me the whole time I stay with them so I tend to ask them what they're planning on eating and try to fit in as best as I can.

When my sister said she was planning on buying in some pre-prepared pizzas I was slightly stumped. I've never seen a vegan pizza for sale in the supermarket and I definitely didn't have time to make one. If you've seen my previous vegan pizza post you'll know why, everything is from scratch, even the cheese!

Before I left I decided to see if Miyoko Schinner could help me out. I've had her book Artisan Vegan Cheese in my possession for a few weeks and haven't done anything with it yet because the aged vegan cheeses are a long process and I've been a bit busy, but I knew there were some 'Almost Instant Cheeses' in the book which I could make. Based on quickness and readily available ingredients I chose her Almond Ricotta recipe. All you have to do is soak 2 cups of almonds in water overnight and then in the morning whizz them in the food processor with a cup of water and some salt.

The result is something which has a very authentic ricotta texture. It's a little bland but so is ricotta, so it makes for a very versatile ingredient.

I mixed my ricotta with spinach so I could put it on my pizza. I managed to find a pizza base from Morrisson's, bought a jar of pizza sauce (I know I'm such a rebel!) and I added a veggie sausage and jalapeños to add a bit of flavour....it was a rushed job, kind of a mash-up between a Fiorentina and an American Hot but for the sake of not fussing and trying to be a fairly low maintenance house guest - it worked!

The pizza was pretty good, obviously not as good as a fully homemade one. The best thing about it was the discovery of vegan ricotta which, mixed with spinach will be perfect for cannelloni!  

Mofo Post #10 Jam Tarts

This post is dedicated to my mum. Every time I see my mum she gives me at LEAST two jars of jam or chutney. I'm currently still working my way through her plum jam from 2010 and still haven't sampled summer 2011's strawberry or raspberry for which I helped pick the fruit and make.

In less than 3 weeks I'm moving to a tiny flat with the world's smallest kitchen. There are literally 2 cupboards in the kitchen which aren't appliances in disguise. So at the moment, it's sort of like, one for plates and one for jam.

Tomorrow I'm heading up to Leeds to hang out with my family so I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone (don't worry they were tofurkies) and bake something to take with me at the same time as as de-cluttering my jam shelf....I bet no one else has a whole shelf just for jam!


For the pastry:

8oz of Plain flour
5oz Solid vegetable fat or Trex
3.5 oz Caster sugar

• Cut the vegetable fat into cubes and crumble into the flour, rubbing it in until it resembles fine bread crumbs. Stir in sugar.

• Add a few teaspoons of water and mix in with your hands until you have a lump of dough.

• Chill the dough in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

• Grease and line a cup cake tray.

• Roll out the dough and cut out circles with a cookie cutter, press circles into pan.

• Fill the pastry with jam.

• Put in oven at about 150 C for 20 minutes.

• When you take the tarts out, leave them in the tray to cool. The jam is like molten lava so leave it well alone and don't eat until they are at room temperature....you can do it, I did!

I'd love to hear anymore ideas for jam or chutney. I've still got about 5 more jars.

Mofo Post #9 Breakfast Oats

We're moving house in a few weeks so I'm trying to eat and cook up what we have left and not buy too much more. For the last few days I have been skipping breakfast and going straight for lunch because we're out of cereal and porridge oats. I mentioned this to Paul to try to get him to bake bread last night and he reminded me that we had a huge jar of jumbo oats in the cupboard. I wasn't too sure about this but as I needed a good breakfast this morning I thought I ought to give it a try.

I was worried it might be a bit....bitty, I normally go for proper porridge oats, the dusty kind. But, in actual fact it was a nice texture. So I shall now proceed to eat the whole jar now until they're all gone!

This is how I like to have my porridge (my dad despairs, he's a salt and water hard case):

Half a cup of jumbo oats
1 cup of soy milk
As many raisins or sultanas as you like
A pinch of nutmeg
A Pinch of Cinnamon
1 small grated apple
Sweeten with agave or maple syrup to taste

I put all the ingredients in the saucepan except for the apple and syrup. That way the sultanas get really juicy. Stir on a medium/high heat until you get the consistency you like, I like mine quite thick. Afterwards just stir through the apple and drizzle on the syrup.

MoFo Post #8 222 Veggie Vegan

This dish was the winner!

This will probably be my last post about restaurants for a while. I have been eating out a lot in the last week! I had my real birthday dinner with my family at the weekend but a few people kept asking what I was doing in London for my birthday so I decided to have a kind of un-birthday meal mid-week with a few friends.

 222 Veggie Vegan had been highly recommended by my friend Dee. When we arrived we were surprised by how small the place is and it was very busy for a Wednesday night.
Only one waitress was serving the whole place which meant that it was quite a long wait for us to order drinks.
We were sitting on a long table, taking up about half of the table. There were five of us with one more to come mid way through the meal.

We ordered our starters. I had the Tofu and bean pancake which was really, really good. I always share my starters with Paul so that we can try two things so I also tried the artichoke hearts. They were cooked in a way that I hadn't tried artichokes before, it tasted like they were roasted in sun dried tomato puree, delicious.

Just after we finished our starters Dee arrived, thinking she was too late to order a main, she ordered a starter instead. We caught up with what Dee had been up to. The poor girl had just moved house after real nightmare with her flat share. The ordeal involved rodents, an untrained dog and a flea infestation. She didn't linger over the story and no one at our table or the adjoining table had food in front of them but the woman sitting next to us turned to her boyfriend in disgust and started talking about us behind her hand...subtle. This resulted in Dee reacting with even less subtlety. I suppose this is the kind of intimacy you get when you sit shoulder to shoulder with strangers in London restaurants. I didn't even notice them move tables as I was distracted by Dee's starter arriving so quickly.

Lindsay was embarrassed, not by the couple moving, but by the fact that Hanif's food had been sitting on the table all alone for 10 minutes and he was refusing to start until everyone's food was brought.

Along with everyone else, I urged him to start before it got cold but with hindsight, if he had eaten it he would have finished it way before anyone else got their food, which is never fun. It was quite a long wait. As we were waiting so long, Dee decided that she may as well order a main. I asked them to take Hanif's risotto away and bring it back warm with the rest of the food.

The best things come to those who wait?

A few minutes later everyone's food arrived, with Hanif and Dee's arriving shortly after.

I ordered an Oyster Mushroom Raclette with tofu cottage cheese. I found the term Raclette intriguing as I'd always seen the Raclette in Borough Market, which was a large piece of cheese near an electric grill, the cheese is scraped off while it's melting onto the potatoes. I think the word Raclette pertains to both the type of cheese and the method used, so I did wonder how this would work with a tofu cheese. Obviously they didn't use Raclette cheese and I'm not sure the tofu had been melted by an electric grill but it was very tasty, it did taste somewhat cheesy and the texture of the tofu cottage cheese was very authentic. Sometimes I'm just such a pedant (Always)!

Raclette

When it came to ordering dessert I shared a pancake with ice cream and unfortunately I was pretty disappointed. The pancake was overdone so it was difficult to cut and very dry and chewy. The custard on it was quite thin and not very chocolatey.

I'm sure I'd eat at Veggie Vegan again having really enjoyed my starters and main but the shortage of serving staff spoiled it a bit for us....saying that it was probably a good thing that we never got the waitress' attention to order that third bottle of wine or we may not be allowed back!

Mofo Post #7 El Piano Guest Review - Alan Wilkinson

I thought I would let one of my family write about their experience of eating at a vegan restaurant (probably for the first time). It's always a little bit nerve racking when you book a table at a place you have never been to before for a family gathering. My Dad is a writer by profession so I thought I'd let him loose on my blog. Here is what he had to say:

I may as well admit it: there were knowing grins and raised eyebrows when I told the lads I was going to celebrate my daughter’s birthday at a vegan restaurant. We were standing behind the Shipton Street goal watching York City play Rotherham, and it doesn’t get more fish chips and beer than that does it? ‘Yeah, right… enjoy your - uh, tomatoes and carrots, mate.’

I was more hopeful, because I do know my lass - and she ain’t stupid. Like her old man, she demands a decent plate-full of grub. None of those daft micro-pyramids of risotto, with streaks of sauce splashed across an oblong slab of roofing felt.

We met at El Piano, down Grape Lane - just around the corner from William Hill’s if that’s a help. I’ll do my best to talk about the food in a moment, but first… the accommodation. I’ve endured some very disappointing family get-togethers over the years: twelve people spread out down a great long table, and some poor sod (usually me) stuck at the end with nobody to talk to; and of course there have been numerous parties where you couldn’t hear what anyone was saying because of the bloody ‘ambience’ (other buggers having a good time, damn `em!)

However, no such difficulties at El Piano. They had us in an upstairs room, on our own with the doors closed. It did occur to me that if we wanted to murder one of our number, cosa nostra style, this was our big chance. But it wasn’t that kind of party.

They’d clearly put some thought into the arrangement, having set up a table for five at either end of a central table loaded with food. This was a buffet meal at a set price. I think it was £17 a head - plus drinks and coffee, naturally. We started with platters of hummus, falafel, corn chips and… um, a few other things.

Yes, I know, I ought to remember, but (a) we never saw a menu, it being a buffet, and (b) I’d arrived there pretty well starving and just wolfed everything in sight, indiscriminately. Beer at lunchtime? Ninety minutes hurling abuse at South Yorkshire’s finest? It gives a fellow an appetite.

If I say that the mains were tasty, substantial, and beautifully presented, and the salads were exquisite, I hope you get the picture. Alongside various bean and rice dishes I must mention the corn fritters. I couldn’t resist ordering a second plate - and that was my one mistake: for the first time in my life I found myself offering to share a dessert. Un-be-lievable.

So... a novel experience, and a very satisfying one. I should add that the service was just they way I like it: attentive, responsive, unobtrusive. (If I want ‘personality’ I’ll head for the theatre, thanks.) Yes, I would recommend this place to my friends - even the lads at the Shippo End.
And thanks, Chef Eva, for finding the place.

Eva:

I just want to add that the dessert was carrot cake, it was incredible and huge for 1/2 a tray and I still have some left in my fridge. The icing on it is out of this world!

My dad, Alan's own blog can be found at: http://walkinonnails.blogspot.co.uk/

Mofo Post #6 Jealous Much?

Look at this giant box of vegan sweets! I got it for my birthday from my flat mate. It's mine. mine, mine I tell you!

Appropriately its name is Jealous. It's full of yummy jelly sweets; gummy bears, sour worms, fruit cocktails and sugared bears. These sweets don't contain any gelatine so are 100% suitable for vegans.

The sweets are much tastier than the normal kind (if memory serves) and they taste much more fruity.

I believe Emma got them from Selfridges in London but you can also get them online. Perfect for the sweet toothed vegan in your life!

MoFo Post #5 Goji, York

Goji, York

This weekend was my birthday, the big 3-0. To celebrate I headed up to York for the weekend, a perfect meeting point for me, from London and my family who are based in The North East, Leeds and North Yorkshire.

I stayed in a lovely hotel called The Coach House and they were very accommodating of my vegan needs. They let me bring my own homemade vegan sausages and cooked them for me! They did say they would normally get some in, but I prefer mine to the ones in shops.

On the night we arrived we weren't sure what we were going to eat and we were cautious of spending too much money as we're buying a new home at the end of the month and things are a little tight.

As we were unpacking our things in the hotel room Paul pulled a cosmetics bag out and asked me why the hell had I packed that, it was full of foreign currency. I think his plan was to keep it for another 4 years in case he ever takes me to Turkey. He'd had the currency since a holiday with his last serious girlfriend! After changing the money we had about £45. In London that would be about enough for 1 person to have a 3 course meal (why exactly are we staying in London?).

We headed to Goji, a vegetarian restaurant which I had overlooked previously as I thought it was just a cafe. On their website it said they closed at 16:00. Further down it also said that it reopens at 18:00 but I hadn't read that far the first time. Doh!

We were the only couple in there to begin with but the place soon filled up. We ordered two vegan starters: a Saffron Kedgeree and Chicory Boats with flageolet bean puree and sauteed mushrooms. They were both very nice I particularly liked the pistachios in the Kedgeree.

Chicory Boats

For our mains we both really fancied burgers. That's quite unusual for me in a vegetarian restaurant, I'll most likely go for something I wouldn't be able to get in a regular restaurant.

The burger was advertised as a mushroom burger, Paul got his with Halloumi and my vegan option was with smoked tofu.

Now, I have a little bee in my bonnet about what I think constitutes as a burger. In my humble opinion a burger should be mashed up things in a patty. A mushroom burger would therefore contain mushrooms but also other ingredients. This burger was a mushroom between bread and therefore I think it would more appropriately be named a mushroom sandwich. However, the mushroom was cooked very well, it was flavorsome and juicy and the smoked tofu was absolutely delicious, it had a nice strong, deep flavour to it, almost 'meaty' you might say. Whether it was a mushroom sandwich or a burger - who cares! It was really, good. I had vegan mayonnaise to dip my chips in, which was flavoured with lemongrass - I was a happy girl.

Mushroom Burger

Because the prices were so reasonable and we were still basking in the glory of finding free money (sort of) we got the dessert menu.

It took me about 0.5 seconds to decide on a vegan ice cream sundae, which we shared as it was pretty huge. It had what I think was strawberry, vanilla and chocolate ice cream. The quality of the ice cream was superb and even the dutch waffle biscuit it came with was vegan.

Vegan Sundae

We were both really impressed with Goji. The staff were friendly and helpful and they played consistently good music the whole time we were there. I even found their hand soap was by my favourite cruelty free toiletries company - Faith In Nature.

I would definitely recommend Goji to anyone visiting York and was so glad that I never had to resort to my list of chain restaurants for the whole visit!

Mofo Post #4 Vegan On The High Street

It's hard being the only veggie at the table!

Today I am planning for my birthday celebrations in York for this weekend.

So far I have called the hotel, made sure I can bring my own soy milk, Vitalite and vegan sausages. I've booked a restaurant for my family to have dinner at (El Piano) and I've found a couple of other lunch places. Only problem is I'm staying two nights and need to find somewhere for dinner on Friday night. So far I haven't found anything.

When I'm in another city in the UK outside of London I do struggle to find places to eat. Another problem I have is that all my friends and family don't necessarily want to eat in a vegan restaurant. It's not always about me and my diet so I try to suggest places where there is meat, dairy and a vegan option for me.

To make things easier on myself I've decided to make a list of all the popular chain places in the UK and whether there is something I can eat there. That way if I don't find a nice looking restaurant with vegan options I have a last resort. There's nothing worse than wandering around in the rain looking for somewhere on an empty stomach arguing with your other half about the fact that if you had joined the 2 hour queue in Wahacca  you'd be eating right now, or in my case if I hadn't stormed out of an Indian restaurant because they wouldn't give me tap water and wanted to charge me £5 for a 2L bottle of Evian water to swallow a pill then we would have finished eating already! (I think I was justified please comment below to tell Paul I was right).

ANYWAY....I'll update this as I go and if anyone finds anything useful please comment and I'll add it to my list.

Pizza Express - Lots of starters on their menu, dough balls can be ordered with oil instead of butter and there is a vegan raspberry sorbet. You can download the allergen list off their website. The pizza base is vegan so you can order pizza without cheese. I've heard the Dulwich Vegan Society are campaigning for them to advertise it as vegan.

Giraffe - They tend to be quite good, a few mains and sides and a sorbet sundae! You can download all their allergen info as well.

Wagamamas - They have a great feature on their website where they filter the menu by dietary restrictions. They have lots of veggie sushi and a raw salad but only one hot main course.

Maoz Falafel - There are two in Soho and also some in Europe and the USA they are exclusively vegetarian and mostly vegan apart from some condiments like tzatiki and mayonnaise.

Hare and Tortoise - Now I love this place but the menu is far from comprehensive. There are good vegan options but the spring greens with OYSTER sauce are marked veggie so I need to research this place better.

Nandos - Yep a chicken joint. I'll earn brownie points with a few mates if I go with them and the veggie burger and bean burger is vegan (ask for no mayo), they also have a few sides. I actually buy their sauces from the supermarket so they are all good too.

West Cornwall Pasty - They do a vegetable pasty that's vegan. I'm a former cheese and onion or mushroom and cheese pasty lover and I ate the vegan one about a week after becoming vegan, I wasn't over the moon about it but I massively appreciated their effort and it was good to get something hot and filling in a train station on my way back to London from York. I can feel some vegan pasty experiments coming on soon...

Pret A Manger - I'm so sick of their hummus salad and tortilla thing. Get something else please!

Eat - Not good at pointing out what's vegan on their website, if anything. I always get their Gyoza Dumpling Soup though, it's lush.

Prezzo - Bruschetta, soup, and some pastas are vegan. Look at their site, they have a good list of vegan food, I think some of it you have to ask for it to be vegan like Ceaser Salad.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen - They have a falafel burger that can be vegan if you omit the raita but they chips are cooked in the same fryer as the breaded Goats Cheese. I don't think I'd be too bothered about that although once I ordered a veggie platter NOT IN GBK and one of my onion rings was calamari -vile.

Busaba Eathai - I wrote to them and they replied: "The dishes we recommend to vegans dining with us are the Grilled Aubergine and Pad Thai Jay, Chinese Broccoli and Phad Pak."

OK that's it for now but I hope that helps someone out in a bind!

Mofo Post #3 Rhubarb Crumble

Being vegan I get asked a lot if I do desserts. People tend to assume that desserts don't exist with out butter and cream. Can you imagine if that were true? No desserts for the rest of your life? That would be dedication!

Today I cooked my first crumble of the year.  With the BF away on business I didn't trust myself to make a big one so instead I made two small ones and froze one of them, which also gave me a chance to use my lovely Falcon enamel pie dishes.

I took 500g of fresh rhubarb and chopped it into small pieces.

Then along with 100g sugar and 75ml water I let it simmer on the lowest temperature with the lid on for 15 minutes.

To make the crumble topping I mixed white sugar and flour with a sprinkle of ground cinnamon and a pinch of nutmeg. I rubbed this with some Vitalite dairy-free margarine until it looked like bread crumbs.

Tip the rhubarb into the pie dishes and cover with the topping, then bake in the oven on 150 C for about 20 minutes.

I served mine with oat cream, but only because I'm out of custard powder. Bird's custard is egg free so tomorrow I'll try making up some of that with some soy milk.

Does anyone have any recipes for vegan custard from scratch? I haven't seen one yet so would love to know.

Mofo Post # 2 - Mezze Lunch

I got the shock of my life (slight exaggeration) this lunch time when I checked my blog stats. One minute I had about 9 people from the UK looking at my blog and then when I refreshed the page at 1pm which I believe is 8am in parts of the USA I had 201 American readers on my blog.

Hello Vegan Mofo'ers!

I've already been trying to work my way through the blog roll although it'll take me the whole month to check out all of the blogs. I decided to work my backwards alphabetically because my last name begins with W so I was at the end of every list from primary school to university. I even found a blog in Spanish which I'm trying to read - I understand the ingredients but don't know whether she's talking about today, yesterday or doing something right now...oh well.

This month is a busy month for me. Not only have I signed up for Vegan Month of Food I'm also launching Housebites Lunches this week. I already work as a vegan takeaway chef in my own home in the evenings and this week I've started doing lunches.

The lunches are a mixture of hot meals, salad boxes and sandwiches. One of my salad boxes is a Mezze box although I've pictured it on a plate here, because this is my lunch! In the box you get homemade falafel, hummus, tabouleh, salad, grilled vegetables, pitta bread and olives. I tried to base my menu on the kind of thing I would like for lunch. When I worked in an office my options were quite limited as the amazing veggie canteen across the road was closed all summer.

I'd love to get more lunch ideas. Tell me what you would have for lunch if you could get vegan lunches delivered to your desk at work!

Bangers and Mash Mofo!

Today is the first day of Vegan Mofo aka Vegan Month of Food. Along with hundreds of other bloggers I have signed up to write 20 blog posts this October all about vegan food.

My posts are going to be all about vegan meals. I'm relatively new to veganism having been vegetarian for almost 19 years before going the whole hog. As I cook for a living I'm always trying out new meals to add to my Housebites menu as well as to try to keep my own diet varied.

I'm kicking off with one of my favourite Autumn/Winter meals. Bangers and Mash is one of my favourite week day meals to eat when it's getting cold and dark.
 
My first few attempts at seitan sausages were a total disaster because my local health food/organic shop only had a gluten free, gluten substitute instead of just gluten flour. If someone tries to sell you this don't take it! It turns out all sticky and horrible and is impossible to mould into shape. Having tried a couple of sausage recipes from The PPK (without that website I would never have become vegan!) I have finally come up with my own variation of seitan sausages. Mine have less gluten in so they are a bit softer and juicier. I finally got my gluten from Earth Natural Foods in Kentish Town eventually. Let me know if you find it anywhere else in London...I need a back up just in case.

All you need to do is blitz everything in the ingredients list in a blender.

• Roll into sausage shapes.

• Roll the sausages in foil and twist up the ends.

• And then steam for about 45 minutes. If you don't have your own steamer then check out this tip!

After that they are really good fried in a pan or brushed with oil and grilled or baked in the oven as you would prepare shop bought veggie sausages. I like to cook too many so I can have some cold in a sandwich the next day.

1/2 cup cooked black eyed beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon agave nectar
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon wholegrain mustard
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon vegan worcester sauce
A few dashes of chipotle tabasco
2 cloves garlic, grated (with a microplane, or very finely minced)
1 cup vital wheat gluten
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
2 tablespoons chickpea flour
1 teaspoon dried sage
1 teaspoon rosemary
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch of chilli flakes
Several dashes fresh black pepper
Salt to taste

I serve my sausages with mash and onion gravy and an obligatory green vegetable. Yes, there is mash in the picture, somewhere underneath all that gravy!

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

	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.  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. 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.  Add all of the veg and spinach and stir in until the soup is almost boiling. 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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Vegan Food Swap

This month I signed up to the Vegan Food Swap, organised by To Happy Vegans.

All you have to do is go on their site, fill out your details and they link you up with other swappers. The spend limit is £10 and you get a parcel of vegan treats from one person and send one to another.

When I got the details of my swapper I realised that she actually lived in my Housebites delivery area so I asked if I could deliver my parcel in person, that way I would be able to send some good home cooked food her way as well as some of my favourite shop-bought treats.

For my swapper I made summer pudding, gingernut cookies and cream icecream and tofu peanut satay, all from my housebites menu. I also bought some Popped Chips, which I am completely addicted to and some vegan gummy bears.

Rebecca, my swapping partner was happy for me to drop by so I visited her and met her husband Paul and their very fluffy cat. It was really great to meet a vegan couple. Rebecca recommended that I go to the vegan pot luck hosted by Fat Gay Vegan next month. I explained that all of them seem to have fallen on a day that I am away for the last few months. The next one is 5th September, when I'll be in Spain, so I'm hoping to go in October.

On Tuesday I received my food parcel from Jenny, who runs Cottage Cupcake Co. in Manchester. Jenny sent me box packed with goodies. Of these my favourite item was two vegan croissants from Saker Vegetarian Foods organic bakery. I warmed them in the oven for two minute on a high heat and smothered them in my mum's damson jam. It was so good, I have missed croissants so much! If only I could get them in a London train station at 6am with a black americano!


Another highlight was the Wheaty Salami. Salami is the only meat I have ever missed since giving it up almost 20 years ago. It got to the point where I actually dreamed that someone made vegetarian chilli spiced pepperamis and guess what? Wheaty do (Psychic!), but they call them space bars.
 I had a gorgeous salami sandwich with vegan mayonnaise and Dijon mustard this week while I was working and I'll be taking a lot of the chocolate goodies on holiday with me to Spain in case I don't find anything out there.

Jenny couldn't squeeze one of her cupcakes into the box unfortunately (I can see why, they look like they are piled high with frosting) but she did send me some home baked puppy treats. I don't have a dog and am told I'm never getting one (we'll see) so I'm going to accost a dog in the park and give them to him/her although Jenny said they are fit for human consumption.

I apologise for the picture quality in this post. I lost my camera charger and there was no way I was going to wait for the new one to arrive before I ate the food but I still wanted to share the experience, so people can see how much fun it is and register for next month.

I'm already looking forward to the next one.