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.