Creamy Curried Lentil and Pumpkin/Squash Soup

Winter finally made it to Cambridge. It's been very mild and then suddenly we had ridiculously cold weather last week and then snow last night. I had never really seen snow fall properly so it was quite a treat. We spent the day frollicking in town. I even managed my first snow ball fight!

Selwyn College Old Court

But after a long day of walking around in snow it is nice to come home to a warm house and some yummy food. We had a butternut pumpkin/squash in the cupboard so I decided to make a yummy soup but with lots of lentils and chickpeas for protein (but with almost no fat)!

Creamy Curried Lentil and Pumpkin/Squash Soup

1 brown onion, chopped

1 leek (white and green bits), cut in half and then sliced

2 carrots, sliced

2 small gold sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped

1 butternut pumpkin/squash, peeled, deseeded and chopped

1 cup of red lentils, prewashed

1 cup chickpeas, presoaked* but not cooked**

1 tbsp soya sauce

1/2 tbsp hot curry powder

1/2 tbsp ground cumin

1/2 tbsp garam masala

1/2 tbsp hot chili powder

1/2 tbsp salt

black pepper to taste

Put the vegies, lentils and chickpeas in a large soup pan/pot and cover with water. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 40 min-1 hour (or whenever the chickpeas cook). Blend the hot soup in the pot with a stick blender or transfer to a food processor/blender/liquidiser and then transfer back to the pot.

Keep the blended soup on a low heat and add the spice. Note that you are putting 1/2 tablespoon of each in. Simmer for another couple of minutes and then serve.

*a couple of hours soaking in some water should be fine

** if you only have cooked/canned chickpeas then just add them at the end instead of at the start

Gazpacho

This recipe is super easy (as long as you have a blender/food processor), doesn't actually involve any cooking, uses up stale bread and tastes surprisingly delicious! It is based on a recipe I saw on River Cottage during their vegetarian season (on Channel4 for all you UK people). I made it much simpler by not caring about skinning and deseeding the tomatoes. If you want to do this I would suggest visiting the River Cottage website to see how Hugh does it. I also make my own croutons. He cheats.

 Gazpacho

3 thick slices stale white bread (around 100g), crusts removed*

200ml cold water

1 garlic clove, crushed

1.5 kg large ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 cucumber, peeled and sliced

1 red capsicum/pepper, deseeded and chopped

½ small red onion, chopped

2 tbsp olive oil for soup + 1 tbsp olive oil for toasting croutons

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp sugar

salt and pepper

shredded basil or chopped flat-leaf parsley

Take 2 of the bread slices and tear into pieces. Put the bread into a bowl with the crushed garlic and water. Leave to soak for 10 minutes.

Put the soaked bread and garlic, tomatoes, half the cucumber, red pepper, onion, olive oil, vinegar and sugar in a food processor (it should just fit). Process to a coarse purée and season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover and chill for 2–3 hours, then taste and adjust the seasoning.

Cut the final slice of bread into small squares. Brush the front and back with the oil and grill for a couple of minutes on each side to make croutons.

Serve the gazpacho topped with the croutons, shredded basil/parsley and the other half of the cucumber, chopped.

*I kept the crusts on for one of them (for my croutons) because they gave extra crunch.

Roasted Parsnip and Garlic Soup

Soups are awesome. They may take a while to eventuate but on cold winter days they make you warm and fill you up and if you are careful you can essentially make them fat free.

Here's one from the Fat Free Vegan Kitchen that we cooked up. It was yummy and very filling. Here's my version of the recipe.

Roasted Parsnip and Garlic Soup

500g parsnips, chopped into chunks

1 head garlic
1 small onion, thinly sliced
1 rib celery (including leaves), chopped
4 cups vegetable stock
 1 can beans (something white like cannellini beans)

200g mushrooms, sliced
1 spring onion, sliced thin
salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 200C. Put parsnip chunks on baking tray lined with baking paper with the head of garlic with its stalk bit chopped off and wrapped up in foil. Bake for 30 minutes (until parsnips tinged with brown), turning the parsnips once. Remove from oven and allow the garlic to cool in its wrapper.

Heat a non-stick saucepan and cook the onion until it’s translucent. Add the celery and cook for a couple minutes more. Add 3 cups of vege stock and the parsnips. Squeeze the garlic out of the cloves into the pan and cook for a few minutes until parsnips have softened. Add the beans.

Blend the soup either in the pot or in a blender (be careful not to put boiling liquids in a glass blender). Add the extra cup of vegetable stock to thin the soup out and season to taste.

Potage Parmentier

I really didn't like Julie & Julia. The movie was fantastic (and was the inspiration for this blog!) but the book paled in comparison. I enjoyed the book but often cringed at the amoral, apathetic yet sometimes psychotic view of the author.

Yes, she made fun of vegans.

But that's not why I didn't like it.

One of the scences I particularly did not like was where she had to get marrow out of the bone of a cow leg. I have no problem with that if she's made the decision to eat meat. However, she goes on to explain how her and her husband have a discussion about buying a country house and a cow and lovingly taking care of it as penance for the marrow extraction. Oh, you feel guilty? Now?

It really highlighted to me that it's not until people are elbow deep in a splintered shin bone that they actually realise that meat comes from an animal. So she felt bad about that cow. But the hundreds of other cows she slaughtered that year don't deserve a single thought. And the lobsters she boiled alive were fine. And the veal comes from the butcher... not the calf.

And the amoral, contradicting opinions about her married life and her friends' love lives drove me nuts.

Her second book is about how she becomes a butcher and cheats on her husband. It honestly made me wonder if she cheated on her husband just so she could write her second book. At any rate I won't be reading it.

However, I did enjoy the bits where she talks about food (the bits without her pathetic attempt at moralising). The opening shopping sequence, as she buys potatoes and leeks for Potage Parmentier without realising it, was lovely. And it made me want to make Potage Parmentier!

So, after all that anger vented toward Julie Powell here is my vegan version of her first blog entry.

Potage Parmentier

500g potatoes, diced

3 cups sliced leeks

2 litres (8 cups) water

1 tbs salt

3 tbs vegan butter

Add the potatoes, leeks, salt and water to a soup pot and bring to the boil. Simmer for 45 minutes.

Blend the soup in a blender (or in the pot if you have an awesome stick blender like mine!). The blending is important. It has to be smooth. Use a sieve if you have to. 

Stir in butter before serving. 

Yummo!

Vegan Halloween

Yesterday was my first Halloween. We were supposed to go to a party but the party ended up being cancelled. It was also the first day since daylight savings ended and we were not at all prepared for the lack of sun at 4pm. So we got comfy at home, watched some Skins and I made a nice simple Halloween dinner with some inspiration from Morrisons (the original link to their Halloween treats seems to have died overnight).

Spicy Blood & Guts Soup*

2 tbsp olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp chili powder

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp paprika

1 sweet potato, peeled and diced

1 potato, peeled and diced**

2 leeks, thinly sliced

 500ml tomato juice

1 can of crushed tomatoes

salt & pepper

Heat the oil in a large soup pot on a medium high heat. Add the onion and stir for a couple of minutes until translucent. Add the sweet potato, potato and spices and fry for a few minutes. Then add the other ingredients and bring to the boil. Then simmer for 35 minutes.

To make the soup smooth you'll need to either put it in a food processor or blender or get one of the amazing stick blenders that I got for my birthday and you can blend it right in the pot!

Once it's smooth add salt and pepper to taste and serve with the spooky witch finger bread below!

 

* I had intended this to just be Blood Soup but it didn't quite have the colour (it was the missing beetroot I forgot to get... it needed beetroot for the colour).

** If you have beetroot and want to get the blood colour use a 300g can of chopped beetroot, drained, here instead.

Cheesey Witches' Fingers Bread

300g flour***

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

50 g vegan butter

75g finely grated vegan cheese

1 tbsp flaxseed + 3 tbsp of water (or equivalent)

8 tbsp milk

1/4 capsicum/pepper (yellow or red)

Preheat the oven to 200C and line some trays with baking paper.

Rub the flour (+ baking soda & powder) and butter together with your fingertips until you have something that looks like breadcrumbs. Add the cheese and stir. In a separate bowl beat together the flaxseed mixture and the milk and add it to the dry ingredients to form a dough. Knead the dough a little and then roll it into a ball.

One at a time, pull off pieces of the dough (about the size of a ping pong ball). Roll into a round ball and then roll out into a long finger-length stick. Place on the baking tray and repeat. Once you have rolled them all out pinch two knuckles in each one and then get a sharp knife and make some cuts across each knuckle (take a look at the picture of the cookies below to get the idea).

The final step is to cut the capsicum/pepper up into little triangles for the nails. Then just place them on and stick the fingers in the oven for 15-20 minutes. When they are done, let them cool and serve with the Spicy Blood and Guts Soup!

*** I used wholemeal/wholewheat flour for both the bread and the cookies simply because I ran out of plain flour. I don't think it makes much of a difference except that wholemeal is a bit better for you!

Almond Witches' Fingers Cookies

 3/4 cup vegan butter

1 cup icing/confectioner's sugar

1 tbs flaxseed + 3 tbsp hot water

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 cups flour

2/3 cup almond meal (ground almonds)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

2 dozen blanched almonds

Beat together the sugar and butter. Then add the liquid ingredients. Finally add the dry ingredients to form a dough. Then follow the same instructions for the bread above only this time put a blanched almond for a fingernail. 

These cookies taste great with coffee!