Jam thumbprints (biscuits)

These are a fairly easy to bake treat, I often make them around christmas, when my thoughts tend to turn to baking and comfort food. They look cute as well.

 

Ingredients:
8oz soya marg
9oz plain flour
6oz sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
some jam!

To make:
heat oven to 180
mix sugar, marg & vanilla and almond extract until creamy
add flour and mix well
Take scoop of dough and roll into a walnut sized ball
Place the balls onto a greased baking tray and use your thumb to make an indentation. Fill with jam
Bake for 15 mins, do not let the biscuits brown.

Rhubarb & Ginger Jam

This is absolutely one of my favourite things to make! It's really quite easy and makes a lovely gift as it is quite an unusual flavour. I'm not going to reproduce the recipe here as this one from the BBC Good Food website is fantastic - all you need is rhubarb; fresh ginger; crystalised ginger; jam sugar; and lemon.

I'd recommend playing around with the amounts of ginger you put, depending on how much you like the taste. Personally I like quite a lot.

Enjoy!

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1091639/rhubarb-and-ginger-jam

Kidney Bean and Beetroot Salad

This is very quick and easy and a nice light-ish summer lunch with pitta bread and a leaf salad.

Tin of kidney beans
Cooked beetroot, chopped
Handfull of parsley, chopped
Balsamic vinegar
Olive oil

Mix beans and beetroot together with the parsley. Cover liberally with the vingar & oil (to taste). Simple and very tasty and also very healthy

Vegetable Tagine

This wasn't strictly speaking a tagine, as I don't own a proper tagine anymore (mine sadly was victim to a house moving incident) but I slow cooked in a casserole and it didn't seem to suffer too much for this culinary crime....

Anyway to the recipe, this was fairly random, and I think that is the joy of this sort of meal, just stick what you have to hand in there...

• Selected veg - we had:
• new potatoes (just pulled from the garden today!)
• baby carrots (ditto)
• aubergine
• courgette (also from the garden)
• onion (ditto!)
• tomato
• 2 small preserved lemons, chopped
•  about 3/4 Lt vegetable boullion/stock
• chopped dried apricots
• tin of chickpeas
• 1 tspn smoked paprika (or non-smoked is fine!)
• 1 tspn ground ginger
• 1 tspn mixed spices
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tspsn cumin

 Oil your dish and layer the chopped veg over the bottom of the dish, sprinkle the chopped lemon, apricot and chickpeas on top. Tuck the cinnamon stick in there somewhere (I cut mine in half to better distribute)

Make up the bouillon and add the various spices to it. Pour over the veg and then cover and pop in the oven on a fairly low heat for 3/4 an hour to an hour, until the veg are tender and have absorbed all the flavours. Then serve, we had this with cous cous and a generous blob of harissa.

Vegan Quiche

So this is what I'm making the husband for dinner tonight, he loves it but it's not quick dish so he doesn't get it very often. (the amounts here are for a fairly large quiche!)

For the Pastry
200g plain flour
100g vegan marg
2-3 tablespoons olive oil mixed with 2-3 tablespoons of water
pinch of salt

Sift the flour into a bowl, add in the salt and marg and rub until all the lumps have gone.
Add the oil and water mix to bowl and mix until it forms a dough
Wrap the dough in clingfilm and put in the fridge for a while to chill.

Bake the pastry in a flan dish for 15-20 mins at 200c/gas 6

For the Fillling
1 chopped onion
1 tablespoon of olive oil
1 packet of tofu
1 crushed garlic clove (I'm using smoked garlic today as I really like it)
around 100g of whatever veg you like - I'm using broccoli, mushroom and probably some pinenuts.
1 table spoon of soy sauce

Fry the onions gently and then liquidise with the garlic and tofu.
Fry the mushrooms and boil the broccoli for 4-5 mins until tender
Mix together and add in the soy sauce, and if you have to hand fresh herbs, salt and pepper
Spread the mixture into the pastry case and bake for c20 mins at 180c/gas 4

Can be served hot or cold.

vegan products & ingredients

I thought it might be useful to list some of the products & brands that we use on a regular basis in our cooking. We don't have the benefit of a good health store near us, so most of our shopping is done at the supermarket, unless we have time to go into town. Thankfully most of the mainstream stores have got a lot better at catering for dairy free diets.

Milk: we usually use soya milk - most supermarkets do their own brand versions now, which are generally cheaper, as well as selling the big brands like Alpro. Some people prefer rice or almond milk, which is less regularly sold in the big stores.

Marg: We tend to buy Pure - which again is available in most supermarkets. The husband prefers the sunflower version. http://www.puredairyfree.co.uk/

White Fat (for pastry): I usually buy Trex, which again you can get at the supermarket.
http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/tesco-price-comparison/Butter_Margarine_And_Spreads/Trex_Vegetable_Fat_500g.html

Pesto: Morrison's sell a vegan nut free pesto, amazing! It's called Florentino Basil Pesto and is available in the specialist diet section.  http://www.seedlingshowcase.com/db/product.asp?id=43148

For more specialist products & treats for the serious vegan, I recommend Redwood Foods - they do good vegan cheeses, various 'meat replacement' products & vegan fudge!
http://www.redwoodfoods.co.uk/

Vegetable Bryinai

This is yum!! I love this meal, it takes a bit more work than the curry I've posted, but it's good for a dinner when  you're keen to make something a bit more special. The spices used in this smell amazing, I love cooking it for that reason alone.

Ingredients

• 500g of basmati rice
• 2 large onions, sliced finely
• Fresh ginger (a good sized knob) chopped finely
• Curry paste (1-2 table spoons)
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 6 cardamom pods
• 3 star anise
• 250g potato, diced
• 1 small cauliflower, chopped into small florets
• 250g soya yogurt
• 200g frozen peas
• soya marg for greasing.
• Fresh corriander.
• Oil
• 300ml water

Method

• Rinse the rice very well and then soak in cold water for about half an hour, to ensure you've removed the starch (although as with many of these things I have short cut around this before without too much harm!)
• While the rice soaks fry the onions until soft and then add the chopped ginger and fry for another couple of minutes. Then stir in the spices (star anise, caramom & cinnamon sticks). 
• Add the potatoes and cauliflower and water, cover and boil for 5 mins or until the veg are tender.
• Stir in the soya yogurt and peas.
• Drain the rice, tip into a pan of boling water and boil for about 5 mins, then drain again.
• Use the soya marg to 'butter' the bottom of an oven proof dish (use one with a lid). Spread the curry sauce over the base then spoon the rice on top. Cover with foil and then put the dish lid on. At this point if you're preparing early you can put this in the fridge until you're ready to cook.
• Put in the oven at 180c/gas 4 for 3/4 of an hour to an hour.
• Sprinkle with fresh corriander.