Get Stuffed!

Stuffed vegetables are awesome. Especially when you stuff the vegetables with more vegetables! The weather is getting colder so warm, yummy food with lots of vegatables (and vitamins), like the pictured dish, is more than welcome.

My general rule with stuffed vegetables goes a little something like: use whatever is in your fridge. I've posted about a stuffed field mushroom recipe before. However, zucchinis/courgettes stuffed with a delicious vegan pate is just as yummy. How do you make this delicious vegan pate? Well! I'm glad you asked.

Vegan Pate

adapted from vegan

1 cup red lentils

1/2 brown onion, chopped

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 cup of vegetable stock

1/4 cup walnuts, chopped

1 tsp cider vinegar

1 tsp vegemite/marmite*

2 tbsp chopped dates

1 tbsp canola/rapeseed oil

1 tsp soya milk

1 tsp chopped thyme

Put lentils in a saucepan and cover with cold water (water should be about 2-3 inches above the lentils). Bring lentils to the boil then drain and rinse.

Return lentils to the saucepan with the onion, garlic and vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Lower heat and simmer for 20 minutes.

Drain the lentils again. Stir in remaining ingredients. 

Blend the lentil mix in the pot using a hand held stick blender or transfer the mix into a food processor/blender/liquidiser and blend until smooth.

Eat hot or cold.

If you want to stuff courgettes with the pate just cut about 1/4 of each courgette away along the length and scoop out the inside with a teaspoon. Brush with oil and bake for 15 minutes. Then add the pate and bake for another 10 minutes. If you are having trouble getting the courgette to sit flat then slice a sliver off the bottom edge, along the length.

The pate is also great on toast or crusty bread. I used it for a couple of days on sandwiches on fresh, grain bread with some vegan luncheon meat. It was very yummy!

* Or some sort of yeast extract paste.

Absence

I'm not dead nor have I given up on cooking. I'm just super, super busy! But I have many new recipes to share and lots of reviews of restaurants from all over Europe so hang in there a little longer and I promise to update very soon!

Mildreds (Soho, London, UK)

A friend of ours has been long recommendingng the decadent vegan chocolate & raspberry truffle cake at Mrs Marengo's in Soho. Unfortunately, they aren't open on weekends (and are only open for breakfast and lunch on week days) which is the only time we can make it down to London. 

Luckily for us Mrs Marengo's is actually the sister cafe of Mildreds Vegetarian Restaurant which is only two doors up on the same street in Soho. And they also have the chocolate & raspberry truffle cake!















Mildreds is small, like all London restaurants, but very airy and light. The service is very good and the servers seem to know most of their customers quite well which is nice although it can get a little hard to get their attention when they are chatting.

The food was really yummy, very well presented and came out quite quickly. We really enjoyed our meal, especially since we'd run into the restaurant sheltering from a storm, but the bill was a bit on the high end. It was even more insult to injury when we looked at the menu from Mrs Marengo's and realised that much of the menu was the same but about half the price. Sure, the service in a cafe is very different to the service in a restaurant and it was the weekend, but it did make us feel a little cheated.

sri lankan sweet potato and cashew nut curry served with yellow basmati rice with peas and tomato sambal

mixed mushroom, porcini and ale pie served with fries and mushy peas

My recommendation would be to go on a weekday and go to the cafe instead but if you are looking for a nice vegetarian dinner or somewhere on the weekends it's worth a visit to Mildreds. Just be prepared for about £6+£10+£6 for starter, main and dessert.

Corn Fritters

It's May Week here in Cambridge and for a whole week the town gets stuck in some sort of high society time warp. The entire student population pretty much stays in black tie attire for the week as they ball hop with the only exception to this rule being when they don their blazers and hat and gloves for the garden parties. It's an experience so out of touch with the rest of the world it's almost embarrassing. It's also a lot of fun.

May Week begins with Suicide Sunday. It's the Sunday after exams have finished for everyone and, apparently more importantly, the Sunday after Bumps have concluded (Bumps is a rowing thing that I'm not entirely sure I understand). There are many garden parties on from about 9am to 10pm and lots of people end up drinking all day and feeling very sorry for themselves the day after.

We decided to start our Suicide Sunday with a vegan champagne brunch at our house and I made lots of yummy vegan goodies. One of the biggest successes was some very easy to make corn fritters.

Corn Fritters

1 tbsp olive oil

4 tbsp frozen corn/sweetcorn

4 tbsp self-raising flour (wholemeal, if you have it)

2 tsp dried vegan veggie stock or bouillon powder

4 tbsp soya milk

2 tsp cider vinegar

3 tbsp chopped chives (about half a bunch)

pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 180 C.

Heat 1 tsp of oil in a pan and fry corn for a few minutes until it is hot.

Combine flour, bouillon powder, milk, vinegar, chives and pepper in a bowl. Add sweetcorn and stir thoroughly.

Heat the remaining oil in the pan again and add tablespoons of the mixture to the pan. Fry on the first side for 30 seconds (do not flatten yet) then flip. Then with the back of the spatula press the fritter down until it is under 1cm thick. Cook on the second side until golden brown. Flip again and cook on the first side until also golden brown.

Transfer the fritters to a lined baking tin and bake for 5-10 minutes until they rise a little.

Garlic Bread

You will have to forgive my lack of posting recently. I've had exams. And if any of you are ever wondering if you should do Part III maths exams at Cambridge the answer is: no. No, don't do it. It's horrid.

While I was studying Geoff was kind enough to go away so that I could have the house to myself. However, this did mean that I had no one to cook me dinner at my command so I had to come up with a few quick, easy and tasty meals.

Pasta, of course, is very easy to make especially if you cheated and bought some vegan pesto from your local vegetarian store (which Cambridge has). Sometimes, however, you feel like you need something else to make your meal a little more interesting. And this is how I discovered how to make a very easy garlic bread.

Garlic Bread

2-4 slices of bread

2 tbsp of vegan butter

1 clove of garlic, crushed and chopped very finely

1 tsp Italian herbs* (dried is fine)

 Put the grill on.

Put the bread slices in the toaster on the lowest setting. This is to ensure that when you put the butter on the toast and put it under the grill it is firm enough to not go soggy but not toasted enough to burn.

While the toast is toasting mix the butter, garlic and herbs in a small bowl. Once the toast is up let it cool for about a minute and then spread the garlic butter over the slices. 

Put the slices under the grill, butter side up, until the edges and garlic start to go golden brown.

This recipe could also easily be adapted to go on a warm baguette (put in the oven for 10 minutes or so) or some other, more traditional breads.

* Supermarkets do tend to carry a "Italian herbs" bottle of spices that we buy. If you aren't a fan of this, or you can't get any, you basically just need basil, parsely and small amount of oregano and thyme.

Iodine & Sushi

I'll be the first to admit that a vegan diet takes a lot of consideration in order to get all the right vitamins. However, this certainly does not justify a non-vegan diet. The world is (scarily) full of people who don't get enough of the right things whether they eat meat or not. If anything being vegan has made me more aware of how to eat better and I think that's a great thing.

In the UK, New Zealand and Australia there have been increasing numbers of people with iodine deficiencies (see this). There are lots of reasons for this including a move away from salt and dairy but it's a bit scary because a lack of iodine is linked with horrid things like breast and stomach cancer, mental retardation and thyroid problems (although too much iodine can also cause thyroid problems and harm your baby if you are pregnant so be careful!).

In our little household we do use salt quite a bit in cooking but we use sea salt so it does not have the added bonus of iodine (where as table salt, at least in Australia, does). A good source of iodine is seafood but as we are a vegan household (except for the cheese Geoff sneaks in the shopping trolley, to my horror) that fact is not of much use. Luckily, seaweed is also a good source of iodine so bring on the sushi!

Seaweed is a good source of iodine for vegans who don't eat iodised salt.

Until today I was quite concerned about my iodine intake. The UK doesn't have very good soil so vegetables etc are quite iodine poor. In Brisbane I used to eat sushi at least once a week but here it is not the same quick, cheap, fresh snack it is in Australia. Our last (and first) trip to a sushi train here in Cambridge cost us £25! But then Geoff came home with a sushi mat, nori, Japanese rice, tofu and avocado. And for the very first time I made my own sushi.

Rolling the sushi requires a knack that I am yet to obtain. But it was still yummy!

I cooked 2 cups of the rice according to the packet instructions but then I added 2 tbsp mirin and stirred. I then spread all of the rice out onto a tray. Then I mixed 1/4 cup rice vinegar with a little salt and 1 tsp sugar and spread this evenly over the cooling rice. Then I stirred the rice, spread it out again and let it cool a little more.

For each roll I used 1 sheet of nori (shiny smooth side down) and 1 cup of rice (spread over 2/3 of the nori). I then made an indent half way on the rice (so 1/3 the way up the entire thing), placed the fillings in and then rolled. I have no idea how to roll properly but am hoping I will learn soon enough.

The fillings I used were avocado, fried tofu marinated in kecap manis (sweet, thick soy sauce) and vegetables (sundried tomatoes, spring onions, carrot).

I readily admit my rolls weren't as neat as the ones you get in a restaurant or stall but making them yourself means that they are much fresher so are really delicious! And it's a lot cheaper too!

If you want to know more about a vegan diet and iodine check out this link. It does suggest a supplement is the best way to get the right amount of iodine but eating some sushi now and then will help out as well!

Comfort Food

Skillet Gardener's Pie

 I'm studying at the moment which is why I have been a little absent. Geoff has been doing all the cooking and I've been breaking my procrastination up between episodes of the L-word (which I'm about as fond of as Gossip Girl (which, if you did not already know, is a very very bad show) but that ain't stopping me from watching it), posting on Facebook about how angry I am about various things (voting referendum, human rights violations, Geoff breaking my Tupperware can opener etc etc) and pilates.

Right now I'm posting this as a break from climate change study. I smelled Geoff cooking in the kitchen and it reminded me of something I've been wanting to say on my blog for quite a while. It goes something like this: FatFree Vegan Kitchen's Skillet Gardener's Pie is one of the most delicious, comforting foods I've eaten for quite a while and it's super easy to make!

Now, I know it's very lazy of me to just steal someone else's recipe and post about it. Normally, I find a recipe and tweak it to my liking (and convert from those horrid imperial units to nice metric ones) but this recipe was so tasty as it was that there's not much point pretending to change it.

The only variation we did try was to use sweet potato on top instead of normal potato and it worked just as well. The sweet potato, however, is a little thinner so add the milk slowly as you may not need as much.

With sweet potato topping instead of potato.

While we are on the topic of comfort food (and FatFree Vegan Kitchen) I thought I'd also mention Susan V's Herbed Polenta with Beans and Bok Choi recipe. This was the first time I had ever cooked with polenta and was curiously surprised by the way it thickens up in the saucepan (I don't have a pressure cooker so couldn't cook it the way she suggests). It was quite easy to cook although all the stirring certainly gave me a work out. However, I was a little disappointed with its lack of flavour and how heavy it was in the dish. Most of the casual cooks I know love polenta but it just didn't float my boat. The vegetables in the dish too were a little bit of a disappointment (I used balsamic vinegar, since white vinegar seems impossible to get here, and I'm not sure if it was that that caused the unusual, biting taste the vegetables had or if the dish just wasn't to my taste).

Herbed Polenta with Beans and Bok Choi

I still like the idea of the dish, though, and I like that polenta is filling and easy to make so I might try to build on the recipe in the future. Any ideas or other similar recipe suggestion would be most welcomed!