Vegan meals for the new year

One of my new year resolutions this year is to eat many more vegan meals.  I've been vegetarian since I was 13, but switching to eat no dairy or eggs feels like an obvious, but also challenging step. Challenging mainly because I am cooking for 5 other people who don't always like some of the less 'traditional' meals I cook. That said, as I am in charge in the kitchen I can pretty much do as I want, so the aim of 50% of meals being vegan can be met. 
I'm having to do a lot of reading up about being vegan and have bought a range of new cooking ingredients to try out too - thank goodness for a great local healthfood shop Swindon Pulse  and getting my veggies from a local veg-box scheme  

For tonight's meal I wanted spices - and having loads of potatoes and beets from the veg box recently led me in a particular direction. (recipes below served 4 kids and 2 adults)


Spiced indian potato cakes

~400g peeled and diced potatoes
1 medium leek, sliced thinly
100g finely diced onion
80g frozen peas

1/2 tsp garam masals
1/2 tsp tikka spice
1 tsp nigella seeds
salt to taste
oil to fry

Start by boiling the potatoes in salted water until soft enough for mashing add the thinly sliced leeks in the last two minutes of cooking time
While the potato is cooking gently heat the onion until softened in a little oil with the garam masala,  tikka spice and nigella seeds.

Roughly mash the potato and leek mix, add the onions and the peas. Mix in gram flour to stiffen the whole mix.

Drop spoonfuls of the mix into a frying pan with hot oil and fry until golden

(the recipe I have adapted this from had a final step of mixing gram flour with water to make a soft batter and dipping the potato cakes into that prior to frying them - I did this and it took much longer to cook the cakes and frankly wasn't as nice in my opinion)

Beet and bean stew

300g peeled diced beets

2 sticks celery chopped

1 small chopped onion
vegetable oil
1-2 tsp ras el hanout
chipotle chillis (to your taste)
can of butter beans
can of chopped tomatoes
salt (to your taste)

Heat the beets, celery and onion in a heavy bottomed pan until all are coated in oil. Add the ras el hanout and chipotle chillis. Add water to cover and simmer until the beets are softened (~40 mins).

Add the tomatoes and butter beans and heat through.

Wierd jelly thing (that is meant to be a bit like Cranachan....)

Raspberry jelly mix
300ml Soyatoo! soy topping cream
100g porridge oats
50g spelt flakes
40g mixed seeds (linseed, sunflower. pumpkin)
1 desert spoon golden syrup

Make 'Just Wholefoods' raspberry jelly mix to 1/4 litre total volume with boiling water (this is much thicker than it normally is) allow to cool then add soy topping cream and mix.
Mix porridge oats, spelt flakes and mixed seeds with golden syrup  and the put in a baking tray in the oven, gas 5 for 10 mins until crunchy. Remove and allow to cool.

Layer up the oat mix and jelly mix in ramekins and serve.

Note: the soy topping is meant to be whippable, but I didn't read that instruction on the packet in time - it tasted surprisingly nice, not at all what I expected so I'll be making this again and trying it whipped next time.

Christmas pudding making

I'm on my own in the house this weekend, just the animals to keep me company, but lots of tidying and cleaning to be done. One of the cupboards in the kitchen was fit to burst so I decided to clean it out; its the one where dried fruit and pudding-y things go. There was a load of dried fruit in there with expiry dates that are either passed, or very soon - so rather than waste it, or wait until 'stir-up Sunday' I've made some Xmas puddings.

Rather than write out a long boring list of ingredients, you can see what has been added to the bowl at each step of the recipe. After adding the ingredients I mixed them in before adding the next lot of ingredients. Explanations and instructions in the caption below the picture

Soak the dried mixed fruit in the alcohol overnight

Mix everything together....

and mix again....

And again!

Spoon the mixture into pudding bowls

Cover each bowl with 2-3 pieces of greaseproof paper/baking parchment, then cover with foil and place into a pan with water coming two-thirds of the way up the side of the bowl. Bring to the boil then simmer for 3-4 hours.. Once cooled put the bowls into a cool dry place until Christmas (the best pudding I ever had was one that had been made 2 years previously and forgotten about - fabulous flavour!) To eat at Christmas, we just re-heat briefly in the microwave (though you can just re-boil for a couple of hours) - and ALWAYS pour over some heated brandy and set light to it for the theatrics and added flavour!

Preserving the summer

With all the gluts happening at this time of year, I love to transform them into a bulging cuboard of jams, jellies and preserves. Apples feature heavily because of the tree in the garden, and has been added to from some lovely beets int he veg box, and from the wild plum tree in the garden.

Beetroot, onion and apple chutney on the left, Wild plum, apple and chilli chutney on the right

Beetroot, onion and apple chutney
1lb apples - peeled, cored and a half chopped, half grated
1lb red onions - diced
1lb beetroots chopped (~5mm cubes)
1/2 pint cider vinegar
1/4 pint red wine vinegar
10-15g fresh chopped ginger
40g raisins
1tsp pickling spice
12oz brown sugar

Heat all the ingredients together until the beetroots are softened and the overall consistency is thick and syrupy. Spoon into sterilised jars and seal.

Wild plum and apple chilli chutney
400g apples peeled, cored and chopped
400g wild plums, halved and all the stones removed
100ml cider vinegar
1/4 tsp pickling spice
10g fresh chopped ginger
1/2 chilli - finely diced

Heat all the ingredients together until the apples and plum are softened and broken down and the overall consistency is thick and syrupy. Spoon into sterilised jars and seal.

An experimental chocolate torte

In the search for the perfect home-made chocolate torte, I'm always trying out new recipes. This one worked out well:

200g chocolate (Green and Blacks slightly darker milk chocolate)
80g butter
100g brown sugar
4 eggs (medium sized)
25 g plain flour
1 tsp vanilla essence

Melt the chocolate and butter, mix in the sugar. Add the eggs one by one, then mix in the flour and vanilla essence.
Spoon into a cake tin and cook at gas mark 4 for about half an hour.
The top wasn't quite as crusty, and the inner quite as 'squidgy' as I would like - but it tasted good!

Chocolate torte served with cream and raspberries

Squash soup

The veg box and the veg plot have yielded us a few nice squashes recently, so I decided that  soup was in order. I'm rather suspicious of this soup as my impression of it is a bit watery and insipid; probably inspired by soup made with Halloween-type pumpkins. How wrong I have proved myself to be, and how glad I am I tried with a different variety.

I started with a Hubbard squash from the veg box - about 2lb in weight (but see note at end). I removed the top and scooped out all the seeds. (I wanted to serve the soup from the shell of the squash so didn't remove a lot of flesh, just scraped the inside a bit - leaving a shell about a centimetre and a half thick.)

Hollowed out Hubbard squash on the left, dwarfing the Honey Bear squash, left.

The flesh was added to a pan with some oil and a large diced onion, and the chopped flesh of a 'Honey Bear' squash, courtesy of the garden (about 8 oz).

The hollowed out pumpkin went into the oven and I periodically scraped more of the flesh out of it while I cooked it for the next 40 minutes or so, and added this to the mix cooking on the hob.

I added water, salt, about 10oz butter, a large handful of thyme to the soup and simmered for about half an hour until the  mix was thickening up and the squash was breaking down. I then added a can of tinned sweetcorn, heated the whole lot up and then blitzed with a blended to make it smooth.

Just before serving I added some small cubes of cheese and then poured it all into the hollowed out squash for serving

It was lovely served with a dollop of natural yogurt and some drops of chilli oil. The taste was so much richer, sweeter and better than I expected, and everyone (including the six year old) finished it up.

After serving there was still the shell of the squash left, so I scraped all the soup mix out, and ate it, and sliced up the remains of the shell and put it in the oven to soften a bit more - I'll use that to make another squash soup later in the week to take into work.

Preserving from the garden

Our lovely apple tree has been dropping apples since late July and I'm struggling to keep up with it. Last year we froze peeled,cored and sliced apples by the pound, but I wanted to be a bit more creative this year, so have tried a few apple and chilli jam recipes.
In the two jam recipes I use a mix of brown sugar and jam sugar which helps achieve a nice set, in the jelly recipe in which I wanted a slightly looser consistency, I just used light brown sugar

Apple and chilli jam
800g of peeled, cored and roughly chopped apples
2 de-seeded very finely diced chillis
800g brown sugar/jam sugar mix

Gently heat the apples with the sugar until it has all dissolved. Turn up the heat and continue to heat until the apples start to soften and break down, add the diced chillis. Continue to heat until the jam reaches the 'jam point' and the surface wrinkles when a drop is put onto a cooled saucer. Pot and seal in sterilised jam jars

Apple and chilli jelly
3lb of chopped apples (no need to peel and core_
finely diced chilli (amount required depend how spicy you like it)
Light brown sugar (exact amount depends on the yield of apple 'juice'

Heat the apples with a splash of water to prevent it burning, and continue to simmer and stir so they break down.
Take the mushy apples and strain through a jelly bag. For every pint of apple 'juice', add a pound of sugar. Gently heat and stir the sugar and apple juice mix until the sugar has dissolved, then turn the heat up. As the jelly mix reaches the 'jam point' add the diced chillis. Once the surface wrinkles when placed on a cooled sauced, pot and seal in sterilised jars

Apple, marrow and chilli jam
200g peeled, de-seeded and chopped marrow
300g peeled cored and chopped apples
finely diced chilli (amount depends on how spicy you like it)
500g brown sugar

Gently heat the chopped apple and marrow with the sugar until it has all dissolved. Turn up the heat and continue to heat until the apple and marrow start to soften and break down, add the diced chillis. Continue to heat until the jam reaches the 'jam point' and the surface wrinkles when a drop is put onto a cooled saucer. Pot and seal in sterilised jam jars

Left to right: Apple and chilli jelly, Apple and chilli jam, Apple, marrow and chilli jam

 For a better description of the jam point and how best to sterilise jars go to the ever reliable Delia: http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/preserves/ten-steps-to-jam-making.html

Sweetcorn

My favourite thing about this time of year in terms of food from
the garden:  picking corn on the cob for tea.

This year I have grown a different variety from previous years, normally I grow 'supersweet' but I couldn't find the seeds anywhere this spring), and while the taste is good, most of the plants only have one cob and are pretty small, so I'll go back to supersweet next year.

And this is the very best bit - removing the husk,dropping them in to boiling water for a couple of minutes and eating slathered with butter!