Tag Archives: vegan

Raw oats soaking

Posted on April 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

Oats with sultanas soaking in a cereal bowl in fron of a mirror

If you find it hard to eat first thing in the morning (as I often do) try this for breakfast. Cover a cupful of oats with water (preferably overnight but an hour is better than none).

Soaking in water makes oats extra-smooth and digestible because the proteins get broken down. You will hardly notice the soaked oats slide down your gullet yet they pack a nutritional punch.

Oats are full of fibre so good for a regular system. Fibre (as the name suggests) is the steady and reliable sort which also slows down the release of sugars into your bloodstream. No drama with oats. In fact they are a mood-soother. We all need loved ones like that.

To the soaking oats, I add sultanas. The water well-plumps them up. I sprinkle cinammon for its immune-boosting properties and sweet taste.

Make all the ingredients organic or biodynamic and you will be laughing all the way to the vitamin bank.

Haricot beans and pumpkin

Posted on March 18, 2008 | 3 comments

A pan on stove with beans and cut up pumpkin and sweet potato

As a cook, I’d say my forte is ‘gunge’. OK, it’s never going to win a beauty contest but the concoction is reliable and balanced. What more do you want from a lifetime companion?

I had covered the dried organic haricots beans with water, soaking them overnight. The next day, I struck a light under their pan’s bottom and let the beans simmer away in bubbling hot water for a good hour and a half.

I fried a whole onion (sliced) in olive oil and added a dried chili, finely sliced. Wait. Chili is important. I did not discover it until mid-life. If it passed me by, could it have passed you by too? If so, I beg you to experiment with the fiery creature. Let me know how you get on.

I then attacked the half of a butternut pumpkin loitering in a forgotten corner of the fridge and after peeling and de-seeding it, then cutting it in cubes, I hurled it into the frying onions. After that, I felt calmer. After adding more olive oil, I let it slowly braise with the onions (with Neil Basilo’s tips for unctuousness ringing in my ears), stirring it occasionally to stop the mixture sticking.

Typically, I then lost my focus and did something else. Not good for a dish. It feels neglected and doesn’t give its all. Realising the pumpkin had gone too soft, I quickly peeled, cubed and boiled a sweet potato in another pan. This flirtation with another veg produced fresh bright orangeness (although I felt a bit disloyal to the overcooked pumpkin). Then I assembled them all with the drained beans (see above).

When the time came to serve, I heated it all up again extremely hot with brown rice from the night before (always blast cooked-again food with bug-obliterating heat).

Having morphed into a kind of risotto and topped with some fresh organic leaves, the dish didn’t look half bad (see below) and tasted even better.

Voilà – a classic gunge. Everyday fare. Might not get a fanfare. But treats you fair.

3 Comments

Posted in eating well on a budget, food, recipe idea, vegan

Tagged chili, haricot beans, pumpkin, vegan

Barley and thank you

Posted on March 9, 2008 | Leave a comment

Barley and purple sprouts in white bowl, photo in very far corner

Sometimes I don’t pay attention while cooking. The other evening I put barley in the pan to boil for an hour and shook spirulina in for flavour and nutrition. I thought the raw superfood would add seaweed interest. (And my mind was elsewhere).

I was in denial for most of the hour barley was cooking then conceded defeat. I’d put too much of the strong algae powder in – it was revolting. I gave the barley grains (with sliced fennel) a quick rinse and started again.

New water, and now cubed sweet potato for colour and sweetness. It was touch-and-go but turned out alright. Especially served with Aconbury’s purple organic radish sprouts (a raw super salad) bought at Better Food in Bristol, and flicked with balsamic vinegar.

(I rate balsamic above all vinegars. Worth every penny.)

I served the dish up again for its photo shoot the next morning by the window next to my “Thank you John”.

John is my dad. He has had a big stroke that has changed him. In the light of losing him (last September) I suddenly became aware of how much I was made from him.

Hemp spaghetti with oyster mushrooms and seeds

Posted on March 7, 2008 | 1 comment

Hemp spaghetti, with steamed veg and fried almond flakes and seeds

I have been on a cream and cheese fest for the last twenty-four hours. Last night Ingrid Rose brought me some Manor Farm organic double cream (Manor Farm is the real deal by the way – real food lover farming) which I spooned on last night’s pudding, my midnight snack and this morning’s porridge. At a lunch time meeting today, I positioned myself next to the cheese-board and grazed.

Finally my body went: Stop! It was craving something fresh and vegan, so I decided to humour it, the poor darling.

Once back in Bristol after my meeting in corporate London (see pic below), I dropped into one of the best organic shops in the universe, Better Food.

This real food lover supermarket based in Bristol BS2 yielded all I needed for my eat-for-health dish.

I cooked the hemp spaghetti (cannapasta) (fun to say!) in boiling water.

Over it, I steamed organic purple sprouting broccoli (still in season) from the Walled Garden, sliced fennel and oyster mushrooms. Served with grated raw carrots.

My tour de force was melting creamed coconut in slugs of olive oil and pan roasting flaked almonds, sunflower seeds and sesame seeds, with dribbles of tamari at the end to make succulent pan juices.

Good to be home.

Atrium of corporate offices

1 Comment

Posted in food, recipe idea

Tagged better food, oyster mushroom, vegan

What’s in your cupboard?

Posted on February 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

Today I decided to explore the forgotten corners of the kitchen cupboard.

That’s where I found the dried peas. Cinderellas of the store cupboard, they scrub up well when you take them to the ball. Feeling like a fairy godmother, I whisked them away from their dreary existence.

I rattled them into a pan, then added water and a peeled whole onion pierced with a few dried cloves. (Respect and credit to Rose Elliot’s The Bean Book).

That in itself (with salt and black pepper to taste) will make a fine pea soup in twenty minutes.

But I was an experimental mood so I continued my expedition in the Land of Cupboard.

Peering into unlabelled jars, I unearthed more treasures. Into the soup went a palmful of buckwheat, the same of puy lentils and (I thought this rather masterful) ground almonds.

The result was a lovable, luxurious yet light and comforting soup.

What’s in your cupboard?

Guilty food secret

Posted on February 5, 2008 | 1 comment

When I said I hate tomatoes – and mentioned tomato-substitute, Nomato – I got a comment that made me feel like a ketchup bottle getting a shake.

My commentator, Neil Basil (I keep wanting to call him Captain Vegan, but in a nice way) asked: “Why cook a pretend tomato for someone who doesn’t like tomatoes?”

He’s right. In addition, what place does pretend food have when real food is at stake?

I myself am rather snobby about food technology concoctions such as vegetarian mince and – dare I say it? – vegan cheese.

But stop. Before I cast out someone else’s mote, I should pull out mine own beam.

It’s time to confess: I am addicted to a factory-made milk substitute, soya milk. I prefer it to milk which I find too animal-y in a cup of tea.

I feel I cannot justify my love of organic soya (and oat and nut) milks because they are highly processed and come in Tetrapak cartons that are hard to recycle – although not impossible.

One day when I am living in my dream eco-cottage I will make my own soya milk.