How To Make Vegetarian Food | Recipes

I love this photograph taken by my husband in my first year of blogging.   The blueberries which are cupped beautifully in the hands of my nephew are from my garden which makes this picture even more more memorable for me.  So back to 2015, and I am pleased to say that half of the blueberries in this Galette are homegrown, and the other half are from the  Fruit Machine.  The size of the blueberries from the grocery van and mine were vast.  I had some apples at home, as you can see they have shrivelled, but the end result of the galette was oozy luscious blueberry kiss.  The galette is not the neatest I've ever made, but it was like a sugary cosy blanket for the fruit inside.  D has requested that I make it again, I shall - just with different fruit.  You may be interested to note that around this time last year I shared this  Wild Blueberry Swirl Bundt Cake  for Vegan Mofo, so with the prompt being blue - I thought why not s...

These days, I don't have much energy to cook from scratch when I get in from work unless its something like pasta such as  Spaghetti dish, but strangely enough I did actually make this Three Pea Tagine after work in the late evening.   I was rather surprised that I had both the energy and the inclination.  This was one of those days, when i decided to myself that I was not going to plonk myself in front of either the computer or sofa and instead use those couple of hours a little more usefully, then laze.  Other than making couscous, grub was made and it was plenty to last us two days if not more.   Its actually a relatively easy recipe, after sauteing the onions, garlic and spices, you could happily leave it for 40 - 45 minutes for the yellow split peas to cook in the vegetable stock, then stir in the remaining ingredients such as chickpeas, raisins, green peas, cherry tomatoes which happen to be home gown for 10 minutes and its pretty much done.  ...

I have been working this weekend, so you will have to forgive me with what is going to be a short post on two subjects I quite like - my kitchen and cookbooks.   In the past five years, I have lived in three different places and therefore cooked in three different kitchens.  The first was in my flat when I lived in Glasgow.  I had a really tiny eclectic kitchen which I absolutely fell in love with. I made a little film of it before  packing up for our inevitable move to Wales. Then we had  the kitchen in my rented abode;  and finally our new place also in Wales, it's not my dream house or my dream kitchen - but it is home and its where I want to be most of the time.   So I share with you a glimpse of my kitchen from the hallway.  Some posts you may be interested in reading that are related to  my new Welsh kitchen and more recently  vegan month in my kitchen .  I do have to point out, although I have started to get back into c...

The prompt today gave me the chuckles ' Share something vegan (and delicious, duh) with a non-vegan'.  Well I am the non-vegan here participating in Vegan Mofo and everything I have been making this month has been vegan and pretty delicious.  But I haven't kept it all to myself.  I have been very generous with my kitchen experiments taking some of my edible creations to family and some into work and sharing with friends and colleagues, some are vegetarian, but most are omnivores.   H ere are some dishes that I have recently shared with non-vegans and non-vegetarians in my life. First up is an  Ethiopian and Ertirean inspired Zigni Broth  based on the more familiar D'ba Zigni.  This one has sweet potatoes and spinach. It was the first time some of them had tried an Ethiopian and Eritrean food and like me were surprised at how spicy it was.   Next we have a vegetarian chilli.   You can't go wrong with a vegetarian chilli with family...

I made this Green and Yellow Summer Vegetable Minestrone a couple of weeks back with homegrown golden yellow courgette and runner beans, though I have to admit the sweetcorn and peas both at the height of the season have come from the freezer.  I know shame on me, call myself a seasonal cook.  Anyway, this Minestrone was fresh and tasty. The courgettes had crunch, the runner beans imparted that faint beany flavour, the peas and sweetcorn were sweet and the broth light and fragrant from both fresh basil and min. But there is a but.... I was not convinced by the addition of rice, so maybe next time I would replace the rice by stirring in some baby pasta, but that is no criticism to the dish itself, it tasted alright and if presented wit it again, I would happily eat it especially on a breezy day like today.   I am sharing this post with Deb at Souper (Soup, Salad and Sammies) Sundays   and  Lisa's Kitchen.  and Jac at  Tinned Tomatoes. ...

' Tomatoes are the Elixir of Summer '  Anna Thomas of The Epicurean I have come to enjoy  home grown tomatoes, not pureed to a pulp in a soup or mushed for a pasta sauce, not roasted or de-hydrated either, but completely natural in their own right.  It wasn't always this way though, I used to find them rather bland and tasteless.   Let me tell you something,  in the early 2000 when I graduated and got a job with this big organisation, I used to have to attend formal dinner party events, award ceremonies and that kind of thing.  Well the most innovative Western inspired starter this vegetarian would often get served (and I write this with some sarcasm) would be a 1970s style large beef tomato hollowed out and then stuffed with some herby grain like barley.  I would not mind that much at all had the star of the plate, this fruit (and yes tomato is a fruit) been deliriously tasty, instead it was often insipid, tough and tasteless and the filling was...

Today you can call me a 'vegan taff', I won't mind.  Taff is a slang word that was often used to describe a person from Wales. There are a few different explanations to its origins, some say it refers to the River Taff (which sounds more likely) and others claim its is derived from the Welsh name David pronounced Dafydd in Wales.  I remember being called Taffy quite clearly when I was small, especially whenever I would visit distant relatives in England, their neighbours would hear our accent and shout out 'taffy's' here.   Anyway, today's prompt is ' make or eat a traditional local dish' and tomorrow's is 'h onour a human (or non-human) that inspires yours veganism' .   So I thought I would take the opportunity to share a post that I shared last year for Vegan Mofo,  as this touches on both: it is filled with lots of Welsh vegan goodness, some traditional and some original and its respectfully acknowledges St David, the patron Sai...

Yes its all about the tomatoes and this week I have mostly been eating tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Here is a Orzo Pasta Salad with tomatoes and runner beans.  I made a big batch that was good for three working day lunches. My work lunches are often home-made as buying from eateries adds up over the week.  So here are some other lunches from the past.  Barley Salad Pot with grated carrots, pumpkin, sunflower seeds and raisins.  Portion of spicy nuts,  I don't do breakfast during the working week, so a banana or apple in the morning is what stops my tummy from rumbling.  And this time some Nakd cocoa delights, I actually like these very much, but would be happy to give the Nakd bars a miss.  A wholemeal bread sandwich right at the back and a muffins and flapjacks now and again, but as I said sometimes its nice to have a sneaky treat.    A different Pasta Salad, yes with tomatoes again, but also black  ol...

Because of my South Asian features and heritage, a lot of people who don't know me stereotypically assume I just specialise in food from the Indian Sub-Continent.  And yes, although I can make a mean killer Chickpea Curry and Creamy Lentil Dal ,  I have always branched out and made other worldly vegetarian cuisines.    I don't and have never wanted to be put into an 'ethnic' box. I have always avoided tokenism at work where people have used their ethnicity to progress; or permitted employers to use their photograph in promotional materials, when in reality the organisation was doing very little in relation to workplace diversity and addressing inequality, and I am sad to say such tokenism occurs somewhat in cooking too. I refuse to play that game and be a stereotype. I have and will always continue to remain true to myself.  I am diverse person and love cooking ethnically diverse world wide cuisine.   Saying all this, I am very aware and proud of my root...

The same neighbour that gave us some cherries a little while back, knocked on our door and handed us over a bag of the reddest apples I have ever seen in my life.  He is growing them for home brewing -  cider production.  They are good eaters and I have been taking some into work to munch on, but I will do some baking with them too.     We repayed the compliment, this time not with plums but with a mixed bag of tomatoes.  The tomatoes have certainly been rewarding us this year.  As well as tomatoes, I harvested the last of the runner beans and purple beans.   Sadly I don't think I will be getting any Rainbow Swiss chard from the garden, but I did get a handful of black Tuscan kale.   Some Cherry tomatoes had fallen to the ground in the greenhouse, D brought them in and placed them in the windowsill to ripen.  And finally these are the last of the plums.   Here is a Cinnamon Plum and Almond Galette that I made. ...

I do struggle to  know what to do with runner beans in the culinary sense, but I do like growing them in my garden. So with the prompt being 'use all seasonal produce',  I was excited as it gave me the opportunity to use  some of the runner beans  as well as some of the cherry tomatoes tumbling from the greenhouse.  Oh I must not forget the last of the purple french beans too, that turn green on cooking.    I made a recipe called Harissa Runner Beans that I saw in the cookbook  Veggiestan . The only thing that I did differently was use Blodyn Aur  Lemon Infused Rapeseed Oil, hence the Lemon Harissa Runner Beans.   The recipe reminded me of a lot of Sri Lankan  Ceylonese Runner Beans  that I made many years ago, as well as some  cooked in paprika. We had these simply with Jacket Potatoes.  I have also made some Green Chilli or Verdi Chilli to sound more interesting with runner beans and green beans, but I will s...

I am not a lazy person when it comes to making pastry from scratch . I make pies all the time, but I wanted to make a different style of pastry this time, both easier and perhaps lighter. I've been enjoying making sweet Galettes with homegrown fruit , so a savoury one was just waiting to be eagerly made. Its my first time baking with spelt flour, and I thought it would be a lot more sturdy to hold the filling,, but the recipe I followed from a blog that I hadn't previously used a recipe from, sadly the pastry just collapsed and crumbled.  Despite the spelt pastry falling apart, the pastry was crisp and biscuity in texture and this balanced well with the sweetness coming from the roasted sweet potatoes. As I had really enjoyed  VPud 'Black Pudding' last time , I was very keen to get my hands on some more to make this particular galette as I have been imagining this combo would work well together. And it did, the vegan Black Pudding surprising spice  kick offsets...