This is a real easy one for those rough Mondays after a big weekend! Buy the ready made polenta to make it even easier. Slice the polenta into fries and cook at 180 for 25 minutes. Serve with tomato dipping sauce – I like the one that’s meant for pizza sauce. Great as a snack but add a little spinach, tomato, avocado salad on the side and you’re got a whole meal.
This is a super easy and versatile recipe that can be used for breakfast, lunch or dinner. Keep some polenta on hand and you can just throw in whatever vegetables you have. It’s all in the flavour of the broth.
First prep your vegetables, I sauteed a leek, mushrooms and swiss rainbow chard.
Next bring 800g vegetable broth to a boil. Add some spices to it, I used a tsp each; mixed italian herbs, smoked paprika & cayenne pepper as well as a little salt & pepper.
Once it’s boiling turn it down to low and slowly stream in 200g polenta while stirring. Keep stirring as it thickens, up to 10 minutes
When it starts to get hard to stir it’s about ready so just throw in your veggies and combine.
Pour out into a greased pie dish and let it sit for 45 minutes.
Slice and serve with a rocket & tomato salad all drizzled with oilive oil, lemon juice, salt & pepper.
What if I post an easy, vegan recipe every single Monday? I’ll do it early enough that you can pick up the ingredients on your way home from work… Well I just missed my UK folks today but from next week – earlier, I swear! I promise it will be tasty & not super time intensive – because Mondays are already tough enough.
Imagine how much we can do for the environment personally by participating in Meatless Mondays!
Forgoing one burger a week has the environmental impact of taking your car off the road for 320 miles, according to the Environmental Working Group. And if your family of four skips meat and cheese for an entire day each week, it’s like taking your car off the road for five weeks.
Imagine the personal impact on your health!
Going Meat free will reduce your risk of many chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, diabetes and obesity.
Sounds like a great plan to me! I eat vegan every day and on Monday I am usually thinking about dinner by noon anyway so I may as well share my recipes and together we can fight for a better health for us & our planet.
So here’s the first one:
Vietnamese Hot & Sour Soup
Makes enough for 4
Ingredients:
200g tofu
200g prawns
1 tablespoon thai red curry paste
3 tablespoons tamarind paste
2 tablespoons sesame oil to fry
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons lime juice
2 teaspoons sugar
a sprinkle salt
1 litre water
1 each medium chopped
onion
tomato
100g each
mushroom
baby corn
sugar snap peas
pineapple
bean sprouts to garnish
1 stick celery sliced
1 chilli sliced
2 spring onions sliced to garnish
30g torn coriander to garnish
In a pot on medium heat fry tofu, onion & prawns. Add curry paste, stirring to dissolve. Add water, tamarind paste, soy sauce, lime juice, sugar & salt – check broth flavour and adjust to suit. Turn down to low and add in mushroom, corn, tomato, chilli, peas, celery & pineapple. They barely need to cook at all, you still want them to be fresh and pretty crunchy. Pour in a bowl and top with bean sprouts, coriander & spring onion.
Lately I’ve been buying my weekly shop based on what’s in my Vegbox, really utilising every last bit of goodness in there. It has livened up my vegan diet and given me so many more ideas. Funny how thinking inside the box has really got me thinking outside the box. (Pun very much intended).
This one is actually the second recipe I have now made based on one of Vegangela‘s so I must give her props! As I don’t cook with any oil or eat any vegetable oil (base of most vegan margarine) I left out the margarine completely and used the wine for cooking the onions and garlic, easily the least I’ve changed a recipe in years.
For the cauliflower, I sliced it, dipped it in a teaspoon of dijon mustard mixed with 2 tablespoons warm water and rolled it in gluten free breadcrumbs and baked it in the oven on 180c for about 40 minutes.
The flavours work really well together and it’s a luxurious, filling wintery dish.
I know I’m way behind the curve here but I LOVE KALE! People have been waxing lyrical about it for ages but I never bought it because I wasn’t really sure what to do with it.
Recently I started getting a Vegbox delivery and we get loads of kale in it so I started experimenting. I obviously started with the hugely addictive kale chips and they are fabulous – so long as I don’t forget to take them out and set the fire alarm off! I moved on to a quick little garlic sauteed side dish. Roasted in the oven with other veggies works great too & just throw some cous cous, nuts, seeds, & dried fruit on top of your leftovers for a new yummy lunch. I even got bold and threw it into a stir fry & a thai curry, which both worked wonderfully.
Last night I wanted a fresh side and while I was googling around for vegan kale recipes came across a few for salad. The main thing seemed to be to make sure you macerate the leaves with your hands in the dressing, it wilts & softens them a bit. I used a couple pieces of a couple recipes and came up with this and I want to eat it every day it is so good!
Wash & slice the kale into strips (taking out most of the large veins) 5-10 pieces about the size of your hand
In a mixing bowl whisk together:
4 tablespoons water
3 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons lemon juice
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon cayenne powder
salt & pepper
throw in the kale and squash it around in the liquid with your hands, it will get a bit smaller, softer, and darker.
Date squares always remind me of my grandmother but they were a much more buttery & sugary version. This vegan version came out fantastic on the first try! They are light enough for breakfast or a mid morning snack but sweet enough to be served warm for dessert, perhaps with a little soy cream or ice cream.
An 8in by 8in square pan will be perfect but as you can see from the photos I used a cast iron skillet without the handle.
Combine 325g dates in a small saucepan with a tbsp vanilla. Add about a pint glass of water (may have to add more depending on how dry dates are). Bring to a boil then turn down to medium, cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. This is what the dates should look like at the end.
Meanwhile, find a glass a bit smaller than a whiskey glass – we’ll call that a cup (c) for the imperial measurement readers.
In a bowl combine:
2 c oats
1.5 c flour (I use whole wheat but you can substitute gluten free flour or white )
.5 c brown sugar
1 tbsp mixed baking spice or 1 tsp each cinnamon & nutmeg
1 tsp baking powder
Add in:
.25 c olive oil
.5 c applesauce
Mix until just combined – it should look crumbly like this:
Spread 3/4 of the oat mixture into the bottom of the pan & pat it down with your fingers until it looks like a solid crust.
Spread the date mixture over the top.
Sprinkle the rest of the oat mixture over the top.
Bake it in the oven for 20 minutes on 180c/375f and then LEAVE IT TO COOL FOR AT LEAST AN HOUR. This is in caps because no one ever thinks it’s important but it really, really is. If you don’t the whole thing will just crumble when you try to cut it. When you do cut in stab the knife into it rather than just dragging it over the top to try to keep the top layer in place.
After recently switching over to a vegan diet and cutting out all cocoa solids the only “chocolate” left in my life is cocoa. While there is one great recipe for chocolate muffins I’ve been using (more on that later) I’ve missed being able to just have a quick little piece of chocolate that is ready when I want it – mostly while sitting in front of the tele! So I’ve started experimenting with popcorn. I’ve got an old school air popper so it’s a breeze to make the popcorn itself but now I can make it sweet when I want.
First up was a salted vegan caramel – YUM!
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup maple or brown rice syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1 tbsp salt
Melt it on the stove til it bubbles and then just drizzle it over the popcorn while mixing. It tastes absolutely amazing and while it does look like a ton of sugar, and it is, there is the same amount of sugar is a couple biscuits from the shop as well so don’t feel too bad. This works for about a cup of popcorn – so it’s really a party sized bowl – you can make it in smaller portions as well. If you’re not familiar with cups as a measurement just pick a small glass and use that, a little smaller than a whiskey glass, or about a half a tea cup.
So now to get some chocolate flavour in there! You can use the same recipe as above but with an added tbsp of cocoa and minus the salt. You can also use marshmallow or marshmallow fluff (now available at morrisons!)
3/4 c marshmallow fluff
1/4 c soy milk
1 tbsp cocoa
Melt it on the stove and drizzle over popcorn while stirring. Gooey and chocolatey and lovely! And way less bad for you than a chocolate bar!
This fresh & fabulous recipe came with my VegBox this week – along with the requisite ingredients of course! I tried it out last night and it was a real winner.
1-2 raw beetroots, peeled & coarsley grated
2 carrots, peeled and coarsley grated
1 oragne
1tsp honey
1/2 garlic clove, crushed with salt to a paste
1tsp sesame seed, toasted
2tsp olive oil
fresh coriander (optional)
mix the beetroot and carrot together in a large bowl
zest and juice the orange, and mix with sesame seeds, honey, olive oil, garlic and coriander
season the dressing with salt & pepper to taste and mix with the beetroot & carrot to serve
They list the coriander as optional and I put it in, but wouldn’t next time; the salad is so full of flavour that you can’t even taste it.
I used the food processor grater, just to make it even faster and easier.
Same idea, different day…. In general I’ve found the transition to a vegan diet pretty easy but sometimes I miss the old favourite comfort foods. Today it’s cannelloni.
I thought lasagne and cannelloni would be off limits, it’s one thing to be able to fake a melty, cheesy sauce but vegan ricotta seemed out of the question. Until I found this recipe! It is so tasty I have to stop myself from eating it all as I’m making it. There is something I find a bit strange about the yeast based vegan cheeses, the flavour, or the smell, it’s just something I can’t have too much of, but this vegan ricotta is delectable!
Start by cooking an onion, red pepper, mushrooms and garlic in *red wine on the stove. Once they’re soft add in a jar of tomato passata; 3 cans of crushed tomatoes will work just as well. Finish it off with some herbs – I used parsley, basil, oregano and sage, and a sprinkle of salt, pepper and sugar, then just let it simmer.
Meanwhile make the “ricotta” in the food processor. Afterwards I dumped it into a big bowl where I added some defrosted spinach and vegan minced beef – about a big handful of each. Fresh spinach is fine too but it makes it a lot harder to stuff the cannelloni, it would work great for the lasagne though.
I’ve tried every different way possible to stuff cannelloni and decided messy fingers is the way forward. So get in there and get your hands dirty. Just shove the mixture in from both ends until it’s full and line them up in an oven dish. Cover them with the sauce and cook them in a pre heated oven at 180 for about 35 minutes. As with most vegan dishes they are not as filling as the fatty cheese filled ones so be sure to make extra!
You can also use this recipe for lasagne! I use the sheets you don’t have to pre cook but without the added oils from the cheese you need to use extra sauce so they get soft. I would make the same amount of ricotta mixture but double the sauce for a pan of lasagne. Put a little sauce on the bottom of the pan to start then layer lasagne sheets, “ricotta” mixture and sauce until you’re out of ingredients. Be sure to cover all the top sheets with sauce and cook it in a pre-heated oven at 180 for about 40 minutes.
Feel free to get crazy with the ingredients! I’m thinking of trying a pumpkin & sage based one with a becehmel sauce!
* Having been advised to keep oil and saturated fat limited for health reasons I’ve been experimenting with cooking using other things. So far my best advice is apple juice for roasting veggies in the oven & wine when cooking on the stove top.
