Mom's tomato, tofu and almond burgers

Here's a recipe from my mom for some yummy vegan burger patties!

Easy on the bread stuffing

I adore a good bread stuffing. The butter, the herbs, the soft crunch of the sweated onions and just the fluffy softness of the butter soaked bread crumbs which have just sucked up all of the flavours. That to me is when it is at it's most perfect and delicious, when it's fresh out of the pot. Since I've tried to limit my wheat intake to only occasional indulgences, bread stuffing had fallen to the back of my mind. It's a forgotten pleasure for me which has only recently seen a reintroduction to my diet. 


You can make this with whatever type of bread you like; normal wheat, wholewheat, brown, batch, soda, rye or gluten/wheat free. Whatever you like and can eat. 


*Also for the time being you'll have to forgive my lack of a photo I've been having some problems with my SD card and my camera lately.

Spelt pastry recipe

Yesterday I went to my friend Rioghnach's Christmas party. She's been so encouraging about my blog and we have a shared love of cooking and all things retro. So I tried to channel my inner Betty Crocker and planned to bring some tasty baked treats to her party.

My list of tasty treats included chocolate macaroons and my alternatives to the traditional mince pie, so mini jam pies, chocolate pecan pies and roast cranberry, apple and Cointreau pies. Sadly the macaroons as we speak are sitting in the bin. They looked perfectly cooked when they came out of the oven, so not suspecting a problem and feeling slightly stressed about how many things I had to do, I left them to cool and thought nothing more of it. Until I attempted to remove them from the greaseproof paper and they fell apart. They hadn't cooked in the centre and returning them to the oven did little to salvage the situation. Sigh. Baking failures make me very sad. 

Vegetarian black pudding

The smell of black and white pudding cooking reminds me of being a little kid. It's a smell that triggers memories of visiting my grandparents in the West of Ireland. The other sure fire smell that reminds me of them is the smell of a turf fire. 


Before I went vegetarian I really enjoyed meat. I liked rare steaks, sausages, good bacon, chicken skin, smoked mackerel, tinned tuna...to name a few things. I also loved good pudding. To me, really good pudding isn't just mush in a skin. It's well seasoned and full of grains so there's something special about the texture too. 


So far I don't think I've seen vegetarian pudding for sale anywhere. I've heard of veggie hagiss, so there's bound to be someone out there making and selling black and white pudding. But nevermind, if you don't mind putting in the time, this recipe will make a yummy black pudding that you would swear was a proper blood pudding. 


I based the recipe around Darina Allen's recipe for traditional black pudding in her Forgotten Skills of Cooking book but put my own twist on it by using green lentils, pearly barley and red wine gravy. I am really really happy this recipe has worked out so well. Not only do they smell and taste like the real thing but the texture is pretty bang on too. 

Baked aubergines with soya cream and thyme

Original recipe by Nick Slater in Tender (pg 61). 

I LOVE aubergines. When they are properly cooked (not just cooked until they go rubbery) they go so soft and gooey and have such a gentle flavour. To me this is a beautifully simple recipe that really celebrates how wonderful aubergines really are. 

Corn pasta with feta and spinach and tomato sauce

This is something myself and my mother thought up on a particularly bad day, so we both really wanted comfort food. I had a particular hankering for ready made spinach and ricotta cannelloni, which of course is bad for me with both wheat and cheese. So we concocted this really easy to make, delicious and rather guilt free alternative. Since the tomato sauce is home made using only 4 ingredients, it's suitable for people with sugar problems too since none is used to sweeten the sauce. 

Lentil stuffed sweet peppers

Based on 'A lentil stuffing for a cheap supper' recipe by Nick Slater in Tender, p 289.


Serves 4-6 people.


Ingredients:
200g green/brown lentils,
1 sweet pepper per person,
2 large garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 onion, chopped
6 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 tsp sweet paprika,
2 tsps hot paprika,
Salt,
Pepper
Olive oil.


Preheat the oven to 180°C

Veggie jambalaya (photo step by step)

Without a doubt this is one of Gar's favourite things (and even my mother's) among my cooking repertoire. There's nothing like a big bowl of this on a cold miserable day with some bread on the side to mop up the flavours. I use a small cheat when I make this, a jambalaya should be started on the hob then finished off in the oven , but I skip the oven and just leave it to cook all the way on the hob. 


I decided to beef out the last one I made with more vegetables than usual to make it less of a carb-fest. It's pretty good both with and without the added veggies. :) 

Wheat free enchiladas (completely from scratch)

A few months ago Gar cooked enchiladas for dinner using corn tortilla wraps and a really nice jar of garlic and tomato sauce. He also melted mozzarella over the top of them while they cooked in the oven. Needless to say they were very yummy. I've been holding off on cooking them myself at home because I haven't been able to find the corn tortillas in the shops where I live, even though I'm convinced they're one of the Old El Paso products. I made almond and garlic sauce to go with some pasta and quorn chicken earlier in the week and still had some left over sauce sitting in the fridge. I really wanted to see what the sauce would be like with enchiladas so I decided to try and improvise making wheat-free alternative for the tortilla wraps at home. The easiest thing I could think of to substitute them with was spelt flour pancakes. This may cause a raised eyebrow response. But honestly, they worked wonderfully. 

Easy homemade relish

We had some of Gar's friends over for dinner recently and I decided that it could be kinda fun to do a DIY burger night. So the buns, the cooked patties, some different cheeses, lettuce, chopped onions and tomatoes, mayonnaise and couple of homemade relishes would be on the table and everyone could make up their burgers the way they wanted. It went down pretty well with our guests, though I managed to badly burn my thumb taking a tray of chips out of the oven since Gar doesn't have an oven mit in his house. So I spent a pretty big chunk of the evening with my thumb in a little cup of ice trying to eat my burger using just my left hand. It was a pretty good burger though. :)


I got the recipe for the relish from Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills of Cooking book and reduced the recipe to make one jar of relish rather than the originally intended 12.


Ingredients:
300g fresh tomatoes, chopped
37.5g onions, chopped
37.5g eating apple, chopped
108g sugar,
70ml white wine vinegar,
Half teaspoon of salt,
1 teaspoon of ground ginger,
Half teaspoon of ground black pepper,
Half teaspoon of allspice,
1 big garlic clove, crushed.
Quarter teaspoon of cayenne pepper,
28g of sultannas.

Barbecued aubergine stacks

So it looks like summer has come early and there's a regular wiff of burning charcoal as people dust off their garden barbecues. While barbecues are mainly a meat eater affair with some corn on the cobb, baked potatoes and salads for the vegetarians. How dull. Myself and my mom really got into veggie barbecuing last year and so far, a piece of meat has yet to grace it's grill. One of my favourite things to cook on it, which is also super easy to make and very tasty to boot, are aubergine stacks. 

Irish nettle soup

We have a big patch of nettles growing out in the back garden and I know they can be eaten. So I decided to make the most out of my unintentional crop and try using them in a soup. I found a recipe for a very nice Irish nettle soup in Darina Allen's Forgotten Skills Of Cooking book. 

According to her book, the leaves are best picked (obviously wearing gloves) in Spring, I had heard before that they are unsuitable to eat later in the year because they become too "woody". She goes on to explain that nutritionally nettles are a good source of vitamin C, iron, histamine, silica acid and potassium, which help rheumatism and other pains. They also appear to help lower blood pressure and blood sugar levels to increase haemoglobin in the blood as well as improving circulation. 

With all these benefits combined with how easy and cheap it is to source since it's a pretty common weed, it's pretty much the perfect student food! Free and very nutritional, who can argue with that?

Stuffed aubergines

Testing out another recipe from my new Spanish cookbook and adapting it to make it veggie friendly and wheat-free. To make this recipe vegan friendly I'd suggest replacing the quorn mince with brown lentils or soya mince and replacing the egg with some olive oil to help everything bind. I'd also suggest that if you're not into sweet seasoning like myself, you might prefer to replace the cinnamon with something like paprika or basil.

Ingredients:   (serves 2)

1 large aubergine,

100g of quorn mince,

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 tomato, chopped

1 red onion, chopped

1 egg

1/4 tsp ground cinnamon,

2 tbsp chopped parsly,

50g ground almonds.

Veggie chicken in almond and garlic sauce

Recently I expanded my cook book collection with 3 new additions on gourmet vegetarian, Japanese and Spanish cooking. I studied Spanish for 6 years but after 2 years of not using it I have to say though I'm horribly out of practise. Reading through the Spanish cookbook has not only got my drooling over most of the recipes but it think it's reignited my enthusiasm to brush up on my Spanish and start using it more.

On Mother's Day I wanted to cook dinner and decided on the recipe for pulpo en salsa de almenderas, namely octopus in almond garlic sauce, but substituted Quorn chicken pieces instead of the octopus. I also made patatas a lo pobre (poor man's potatoes) as an accompaniment and the whole thing went down a treat with my mom. I kinda wish I'd made bigger portions because it was so tastey! On a plus note though there was a lot of left over sauce, so I was able to keep it in a jar in the fridge and finish it off last night. Yum yum yum.

I reckon if you want to make this recipe vegan friendly, use pressed tofu instead of the quorn chicken pieces and the sauce should work equally well with it!

Lazy Miso Soup

Veggie miso soup is wonderfully easy to make and very nutritious. The Blazing Salads cook book recommends that vegetarians and vegans have a small bowl of miso soup daily because of it's beneficial B12 content as well as the iron and calcium provided by the seaweed. Traditionally it's a soup made using a dashi stock, but when I make it I want a quick fix and don't really have the patience to pre-make a stock, then the soup. 


While I'm not a big fan of salt on food, I should mention though that miso paste has a wonderful salty taste to it, so if you feel like making this for yourself, have a few glasses of water lined up!

I think it makes for a great starter as it always wets my appetite and if I'm feeling poorly, it's my alternative to chicken soup. Since one of my wisdom teeth is at me again, I think it likes to bother me now during the weeks running up to my birthday. Same spot got infected last year causing me an understandable lot of pain. It's starting to become difficult to enjoy food that enjoys any real chewing or has a texture that aggravates the gum further I think I may end up having to make a large batch of veggie miso soup this week and live on it and soft rice noodles until the pain subsides

Spelt Toad in the Hole

Hello everyone, Happy Pancake Tuesday! I decided to be my usual weird and different self and go the non-traditional pancake route today. Instead I made toad in the hole using the pancake recipe from 'What to Eat When You Can't Eat Anything', p39.

Ingredients: serves 3 people
5-6 veggie sausages, I used Quorn ones,


To make the batter
190g of spelt flour,
2 free range eggs,
375 ml of rice, oat, soya or goat's milk,
2 tbsp bio-live or organic yoghurt.


Heat oven to 220°C


Measure the flour out into a bowl. Make a well in the centre, crack in the eggs and gently mix together. Whisk in the yoghurt followed by the soya milk, until a smooth batter has formed. If you can the original recipe recommends that you leave the batter to stand for half an hour before you use it. During this time I heated the oven and a deep dish in which I cooked the toad in the hole with some vegetable oil in it. When I was sure that the oil was hot (do not touch it to check!!) I added the Quorn sausages and put the container back in the oven. I let them cook until they had begun to turn golden brown, checking regularly to turn them in the oil. 

Thrown together Mediterranean veg pot

Last night for dinner I threw together what hadn't originally been intended to be a stew, but it is sort of how it turned out. 

Ingredients:
1 red onion,
Half an aubergine, cut into cubes
Half a courgette, cut into half moons
Half a bag of Quorn chicken,
Quarter of a stock cube,
100-150ml of hot water,
3 small cloves of garlic or 1 large,
1 tin of chopped tomatoes,
Lemon juice,
Dried basil,
Green pesto,
Red wine vinegar,
Crack of black pepper,
Frozen spinach, if using fresh add it as one of the last ingredients before serving.

Dinner the other night: Bulgar and feta stuffed squash with salad.

I'm a very keen follower of Biorequiem, the blog of artist, model, co-founder of Coilhouse magazine and self declared Russian Cosmonomad, Zoetica Ebb. Recently she published a post with a recipe for a quinoa stuffed squash with nuts and dried cranberries. The intriguing mix of sweetness and seasoning had me drooling within seconds. I decided to try my hand at her recipe the other night, we're now finishing the leftovers tonight before heading off for the weekend. Follow this link to Zoetica Ebb's quinoa stuffed squash recipe and enjoy salivating before you try it yourself!


I didn't have all the necessary ingredients, I never do! So my alterations were to use broken up walnuts, feta cheese as the protein, cracked black pepper instead of the cayenne and to finish it I added chopped up spring onions.

Roasted tofu ricotta stuffed peppers

I stumbled upon a very interesting food blog called Vegan Cowboy Food which has a recipe for tofu ricotta and I felt really inspired to make it myself with my own little twist. Here's the link to the original page; Vegan Cowboy Food tofu ricotta recipe


I served this the other night along with the lemon & saffron rice together with some steamed asparagus it was a big hit. Sorry about the picture quality, my camera battery was dead so I used my phone. This recipe can be easily made Vegan friendly by using a cheese-free pesto either shop bought or home made.


Serves: 4


Ingredients:
125g tofu, preferably silken
2 garlic cloves, crushed,
2 spring onions, chopped,
2 heaped tsps of green pesto,
handful of cherry tomatoes, quartered,
pinch of cracked black pepper,
2 peppers, red or yellow,
50g of pinenuts,
Splash of balsamic vinegar,
Olive oil.

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Rinse the peppers, cut them into halves through the stem then remove the membrane and seeds. When the oven is ready put the pepper halves on a baking tray and drizzle them with the balsamic vinegar and olive oil before putting them in the oven for 10 minutes. While the peppers are softening in the oven, heat a frying pan and dry fry the pine nuts until they begin to turn golden. Add the chopped cherry tomatoes followed by a generous sprinkling of cracked black pepper and the chopped spring onions. When the cherry tomatoes start to soften remove the pan from the heat. Next break up the tofu into a food processor/blender and blitz it until it looks smooth and creamy. Add the pesto and crushed garlic into the  tofu followed by the toasted pine nuts, cherry tomatoes and spring onion mix. Stir the mixture well.
Remove the peppers from the oven fill each one with the tofu ricotta before putting them back into the oven for 20 minutes.

Lemon and saffron rice

Roll's sister Erica did an Indian cooking course recently and was kind enough to give me the recipes she got for curried lentils and for a super yummy lemon and saffron rice. I didn't have all the ingredients for it, but listed below is what I did have and I think it turned out wonderfully anyway.


Sorry for the poor picture quality, my camera needs charging so I used my phone.


Serves:3-4


Ingredients:
550ml of vegetable stock
1/4 tsp saffron threads,
1 tbsp vegetable oil,
1 onion, sliced,
2 garlic cloves, crushed,
2 tsp finely chopped ginger,
1/2 a lemon rind grated,
250g long grain rice,
1 tsp dried coriander.


Bring the stock to boil in a saucepan, then remove it from the heat, stir in the saffron. Cover the pot and leave it to stand for 10-15 minutes. Heat the vegetable oil in a frying pan and cook the onion, ginger and garlic until the onion begins to brown lightly. Then stir in the rice and the grated lemon rind and allow to cook in the pan for 2 minutes. Bring the pot of vegetable stock and saffron back to the boil, add the contents of the frying pan to the pot as well as the dried coriander and leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes or whenever all the liquid has been absorbed. Lastly stir in the lemon juice and leave to stand with the lid on for 5 minutes.