It’s just food…Indian take-away recipe

A decent Indian take-away will offer plenty of vegetarian and quite a few vegan options but as always, you can always make one for yourself. This Indian take-away style recipe takes a bit of preparation and practice to get it right but with fresh ingredients can be healthy and spicy! We never use animal products in ours.

INGREDIENTS

• Basmati or pilau rice
• Plain naan bread
• Yellow split lentils
• Two medium potatoes
• 1/4 cauliflower
• Bag of fresh spinach
• Large fresh tomatoes
• Yellow and green pepper
• Large onion
• Chickpeas
• Indian herbs and spices (see bold text).

 

METHOD: PREP TIME 20 MINUTES, COOKING TIME 50 MINUTES

There are several parts to getting this right and lots of shortcuts if you wish, too. We like to start our meal with poppadoms and pickles; mango, brinjhal/aubergine and a tomato and cucumber mixture finely chopped. Sometimes we buy ready-made samosas and onion bhajis too. We don’t make our own naan but I know someone who does! So here is the break down:

Lentil dhal

Place the lentils in a pan and cover with enough cold water to come to around three cm above their surface. Bring to the boil (skim off any scum that rises to the top), and reduce to a simmer. Put a 2 tsp each of turmeric, garam masala, hot chilli powder and cumin in a tbsp of rapeseed oil with three chopped cloves of garlic. Drain the lentils when cooked and add to the spices and keep stirring until a thick porridge is formed. Chop fresh coriander for a posh garnish.

Bombay Potatoes

Cut one medium potato into quarters and boil, set aside to fry spices (1/2 tsp each of chilli, turmeric and mustard seeds) in tbsp of rapeseed oil. Add half a bag of washed spinach then add the potatoes for about 8 to 10 minutes.

Chickpea and potato rogan josh curry

Par-boil your potato in 1cm cubes and chop the cauliflower into similar sized pieces and add to the water; this avoids the overly crunchy texture of undercooked cauliflower. Chop onion and garlic and add to a 2cm piece of root ginger, 1/2 tsp each of paprika, chilli, turmeric, coriander, cumin and 2 tsp of garam masala. Add more or less of the spices according to personal preference. Stir in your chopped peppers and can or fresh tomatoes, then the potato and cauliflower from earlier. Finally, add the chickpeas and a half can of water. Keep on a high heat until the water has evaporated and a nice, thick sauce has developed. Taste it regularly to get the spices as desired; we like ours quite hot and will use fresh chillis (green bird’s eye ones) and sometimes fresh coriander too.

Serve the three dishes at the same time; maybe two large spoons each per person with basmati or pilau rice and a small piece of naan bread to mop up the sauces.

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It’s just food… Tex-Mex recipe

This Tex-Mex inspired meal can be served with long grained rice, flour tortillas or both and is adaptable to your taste for spicy chilli! The fun part of this meal is the element of ‘build-it-yourself’ that is a big hit with teenagers. The chilli is obviously based on the minced beef one but we make ours definitely without.

INGREDIENTS

• One tin plum tomatoes
• Soya or Quorn mince or lentils
• One tin kidney or chilli beans
• Small tin sweetcorn
• Small onion/garlic
• Two small peppers
• Two or three Jalapeño peppers
• 2 tsp chilli powder
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• Pinch of oregano
• Flour tortillas; wholegrain is best
• Lightly salted Tortilla chips
• Salad; cucumber and tomatoes chopped
• Small tin refried beans (beware; some brands use pork gelatine in refried beans so double-check ingredients)
• Home-made or supermarket brand salsa and guacamole (again, check ingredients on the guacamole, some add milk and/or cream).

 

METHOD: PREP TIME 5 MINUTES, COOKING TIME 30 MINUTES

Prepare your rice (we use a steamer so takes about 20 minutes). Add the spices to a tbsp of rapeseed oil then add finely chopped chillis and onion. Add your tomatoes and sweetcorn and then your choice of soya mince/Quorn mince or lentils with a half cup of water. Turn the heat up to reduce the water and thicken the sauce. We heat our refried beans in a pan to serve hot and microwave our flour tortillas for 30 seconds. Assemble tortilla with your preferred mixture (including the tortilla chips and dips!).

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It’s just food… Spicy Rice recipe

This spicy rice recipe is great for achieving your 5 portions of veg a day and an alternative to a meat-inspired dish too. It’s great with (lightly) fried rice as well as boiled and adaptable to whatever your favourite ingredients might be.

INGREDIENTS

• White or brown rice; we use half each mixed in a rice steamer
• Flaked almonds and/or pine kernels
• Kale
• Sweet yellow or orange peppers
• Fresh chilli; jalapeño are best
• One courgette/zucchini
• Two large carrots
• 1/2 head of broccoli
• Two cloves of garlic
• Spices as per your choice from: cumin, Cajun spice, Moroccan spices (like ras-el-hanout), Chinese 5 Spice or Japanese 7 spice

 

METHOD: PREP TIME 10 MINUTES, COOKING TIME 30 MINUTES

Boil or steam your rice; as above, we use a mix of half white rice and half brown as my youngest daughter isn’t that keen on chewy brown rice. I use a cheap rice steamer as it keeps the rice warm while I’m prepping vegetables. Into a large pan or wok, throw in your roughly chopped vegetables with a tsp of rapeseed oil. I like kale in small pieces with the stem removed. Be sure to fry your spices in the oil not just layered on top of the veg as this releases more of the aromas and flavours. When the rice is ready (after 20 minutes) and the veg are soft add the rice to your pan and stir on a lower heat. Keep flipping the mixture to stop it sticking. This takes around ten minutes.

Serve with an unsweetened plant-based yoghurt or tzatziki.

 

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It’s just food…Chinese take-away recipe

This is Hoisin vegetables, spicy noodles and chips with curry sauce. It may not be an authentic Chinese meal, but as an alternative to buying from an actual take-away it’s nice once in a while to make your own. We use a wok and ready prepared Blue Dragon Hoisin sauce and Sharwood’s Chinese style curry sauce for speed as this is a quick Friday night  meal.

INGREDIENTS

• Mushrooms
• One large green pepper
• Two or three bird’s eye chillis
• Onion, garlic
• Optional: beansprouts, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, tofu
• Oven chips
• Wheat or rice vermicelli noodles
• Blue Dragon Hoisin
• Sharwood’s Chinese style curry sauce

 

METHOD: PREP TIME 5 MINUTES, COOKING TIME 20 MINUTES

This is a go-to quick meal when you’re tired after a long working week. Put the oven on at 200° and put your chips in. Prepare your noodles in hot water and toss in small frying pan with chopped chilli, beansprouts and tsp of sesame oil (or ground nut oil). In the wok (or large frying pan) use a tbsp rapeseed oil to fry off the onion, garlic (chilli if you like hot spicy Hoisin), vegetables and tofu if you have any. Don’t chop anything too small as the crispness adds to the textures of the dish. Add your sachet or jar of Hoisin as you like it and heat through thoroughly. Heat your curry sauce slowly in another pan. Your stir fry takes only about 5-10 minutes or everything goes a bit limp. Once the chips/fries are cooked and golden, serve everything together, pouring the sauce on the chips! Yum. Quicker than a deliveroo.

 

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It’s just food… Leek pie recipe

Leek pie is a hearty and appetising meal that tastes good with butternut squash, mushrooms or a chicken alternative (seitan, Quorn etc). We use Jus-Rol flaky puff pastry, lots of white wine and Tesco Chic’n chunks and leeks but no dairy to make ours as we don’t like creamy sauces. Definitely no meat.

INGREDIENTS

• Two large leeks
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• One small onion
• Jus-Rol puff pastry (or make your own)
• Three carrots
• 1/4 head broccoli
• White wine (Pinot Grigio?)

Serve with roast potatoes, parsnips… whatever you like!

METHOD: PREP TIME 10 MINUTES, COOKING TIME 30 MINUTES

As your roasted veg takes longer (about an hour), prepare first and put in a 200° oven. We like to fry off the onion in olive oil and cut the leeks into rustic, bite-sized chunks. Carrots and broccoli also not too small as they cook in the pie; once onion is transparent, add a 1/4 of a bottle of white wine and bring temperature up – smells lovely! An alternative to wine would be a veg stock cube and I have seen recipes that add (non) dairy cream or plant milk to make a different kind of sauce. We like to use vegan Quorn chunks or Tesco Chic’n chunks as a robust chewy filling. After ten minutes transfer to an oven pot or casserole dish and cover the top with your pastry (home-made or not). Brush with plant-milk if you like the glazed effect.

After 30 minutes, the top of your pie should look a golden, caramelised colour and if you’ve timed it right your roasted vegetables should all be ready to serve too. Delicious.

 

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It’s just food… Moussaka recipe

Moussaka is an aubergine/eggplant and/or potato-based dish, often including ground meat, in the Levant, Middle East, and Balkans, with many local and regional variations. We use potato and aubergine, no dairy to make ours. Definitely no meat.

Ingredients

• 1 large aubergine, 1/2 cm slices
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large red onion, chopped in sizeable pieces (not too small)
• 4 oz (115g) mushrooms, sliced
• 3 large potatoes (Maris Piper work best)
• 1 medium courgette/zucchini, finely chopped
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 tin plum peeled tomatoes
• 1 tbsp tomato puree
• 2 tbsp vegan red wine – optional
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1/2 tsp fine cinnamon
• rough ground black pepper

Bechamel sauce:

• 1 oz (30g) wholemeal flour
• 1/2 pint (275ml) plant milk
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• Bay leaf

…or buy a free-from Bechamel in a jar or carton!

METHOD: PREP TIME 10 MINUTES, COOKING TIME 30 MINUTES

Place sliced aubergine on a  plate and microwave on high for 3 minutes until tender. Alternatively, grill for 5 minutes or place in an oven (on 200C) for 5 minutes with no oil! Whatever you do, don’t fry your aubergine, it ruins the flavour and makes the whole dish rather heavy. Cut the potatoes into 1/2cm slices and cover in a pan with water. Boil until nearly (!) cooked but still firm.

Heat the olive oil and sauté onions and garlic for 5 minutes. Add mushrooms and garlic and cook for 5 minutes more. Pre-heat oven to 200C if you haven’t already. Stir in tomatoes, puree, wine (if used) and herbs/spice and cook gently until a sauce forms. Add pepper. If necessary, add a drop more oil, vegetable stock or tomato puree mixed with water.

For the Béchamel white sauce: put the oil, flour, nutmeg, bay leaf and plant milk into a saucepan and whisk continuously over a gentle heat for about 5 minutes until thick and smooth.

Lightly grease (with a vegan margarine) a shallow oven-proof dish. Firstly place the drained potato slices at the bottom. Add some sauce to cover completely. Arrange half the aubergine slices, top with half the sauce and then a little of the white sauce. Repeat. The majority of the white sauce should now go on the top. Bake for 30 minutes.

Serve with a crusty bread and salad.

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It’s just food… Gemista

Gemista or yemista (which in Greek means ‘filled with’) is a traditional recipe for Greek rice-stuffed tomatoes and/or other vegetables that are baked, until soft and nicely browned, oozing with juicy olive oil. We usually make a stuffed tomato and pepper per person and serve with roast potato slices. Definitely no meat.

INGREDIENTS:

• Large tomatoes (we call them ‘beef’ tomatoes in the UK)
• 4 green bell peppers
• 1-2 eggplants
• 5-6 potatoes, cut into wedges for roasting
• 2 red onions, finely chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 courgette/zucchini, chopped
• 500g/ 18 oz. rice (for risotto)
• 1 tin chopped tomatoes
• a small bunch of parsley, chopped
• a small bunch of fresh mint, chopped
• 2 tbsps tomato puree
• salt and freshly ground pepper
• Lots of extra virgin olive oil

METHOD: PREP TIME 15 MINUTES, COOKING TIME <90 MINUTES

To prepare this stuffed tomatoes and peppers recipe, start by slicing off the top of the tomatoes; using a spoon remove the inner flesh of the tomatoes and keep it in a bowl. (use this in the sauce). Slice off the top of the eggplants and remove the flesh, using a spoon. Cut the flesh of the aubergine/eggplants in small cubes and set aside, as you will use them later for the filling of the Gemista. Slice off the top of the peppers and remove the seeds and white parts from the inside. Place the empty vegetables on a large, deep baking tray. Try to leave the vegetables as thin as possible, leaving just a little of the flesh, but be careful not to poke through their skin. Season the empty vegetables with a pinch of salt and sugar and add a little oil on the bottom of each one.

Prepare the filling for the Gemista. In a saucepan add some olive oil and sauté the onions, until translucent. Chop the courgette/zucchini in small cubes, add in the saucepan and sauté for one more minute. At the end add the flesh of the eggplants (chopped) and the chopped garlic and sauté, until softened. Add the rice and continue sautéing, unit it becomes transculent. Pour in 1 tin chopped tomatoes  and season with ground black pepper. As soon as the liquid has been absorbed, the stuffing is ready. Remove the pan from the stove and stir in the fresh herbs. Spoon the filling inside the empty vegetables and place the potatoes, cut into pieces, in between the vegetables. Pour any tomato sauce over the top and place the lids back on the top of each vegetable. Make sure there is enough liquid; some people use a glass of white wine or vegetable stock for this. Aluminium foil over the lot to keep the steam in. Take this off after about 40 minutes and watch you don’t burn them; take them out when nicely browned. Your roast potato slices also take about an hour, so don’t forget them as you will want them all together! Sprinkle chopped parsley when you serve. This are also nice cold the next day…

Serve with bread and kalamata olives.

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It’s just a recipe for Greek Mezze

We call this one Greek mezze, but it’s really just an excuse to have lots of smaller dishes all at once. Inspired by Greek cooking but without the use of cheeses like Halloumi or Feta. Definitely no meat.

Ingredients:

• Filo pastry
• Liberal use of extra virgin olive oil to your taste
• 1 bag spinach
• Olives (Kalamata, large green any really)
• Pitta bread
• Can of butter beans
• Two cloves of garlic
• Tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, oregano
• Pickled red peppers
• Houmous/hummus
• A glass of white wine

Method: prep time 10 minutes, cooking time <40 minutes

For the pie; wash spinach and layer in filo pastry in a glass dish with olive oil dripped on it, bit of oregano too if you like. Traditional spanakotiropita also has crumbled feta but we don’t use this anymore in order to make it plant-based. I know during lent they make a cheese-less version called Spanakopita Nistisimi.  Cook in 200° oven until golden on top layer. Make individual slices per person. Keeps for three days afterwards and tastes even better I think.

For the butter beans; chop half an onion and a few tomatoes and add a glass or two of wine and two cloves of garlic. On the stove add a can of butter beans and cook on low heat for 20 minutes. Gigantes plaki or ‘big beans’ are a slightly different variety of bean in Greece but hard to find here in the UK. Butterbeans make a nice alternative. Serve as they cool down rather than steaming hot.

Greek salad; roughly chop tomatoes, red onion, cucumber and add olive oil and oregano. Sometimes a little white wine vinegar and always a choice of your favourite olives. Mine are kalamata olives. In traditional horiatiki there is usually feta cheese (Violife do a vegan one) but we leave that out now and still love bowls of it.

We eat all this with pitta bread and houmous, sometimes making a version of tzatziki with unsweetened soya yoghurt, garlic, mint and cucumber. Lidl have started doing an occasional vegan gyros and Tesco offer Oomph vegan ‘kebab’ that also go well with this style of meal.

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It’s just food (sic)

People are so touchy about being told what to eat.  This recent article in The Guardian follows the publication of a landmark UN report in which the world’s leading scientists warned there are just a dozen years in which to keep global warming under 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods and extreme heat. The report said eating less meat and dairy was important but said current trends were in the opposite direction.

The graphic (reproduced above) really shows how the UK needs to curb its reliance on animal by-products and processed sugars. We’ve known this a long while and let’s face it, people are sensitive about diet. A medical expert can recommend exercise, mindfulness or taking a less stressful route in life but it’s really hard to tell someone what to eat.  The running joke is that vegans always want to talk about their lifestyle but the thing is complete strangers in my experience, want to tell those on a plant-based diet that they’re eating wrongly, nutritionally deficit and weak and weedy! Or that the food they eat is too expensive, unnecessarily meaty in texture (lol) or mimicking animal-based foodstuff (plant milk and vegan cheese). I read that in France you can’t call vegetarian alternative to ‘meat’, ‘sausage’ or ‘cheese’ by any of those terms. Back to the climate though, people could try to adopt a diet less reliant on animal products but they don’t really want to… it’s not cognitive dissonance (doing something they know is wrong anyway) in most people. They just don’t really care.

There are some folks out there who would like to try and cut back; for the environment, the animals and their own health. For them, I will publish a few of my favourite go to recipes and also to prove that plant-based food isn’t as boring as many people make out. After all, it’s just food…

Cacciatore veggie roast

Ingredients:

• Quorn fillets/Portobello mushroom/Seitan* pieces
• A small onion
• Tsp of olive oil
• Jar of capers
• Two cloves of garlic
• Two glasses of white wine
• Other veggies to roast as you prefer; potatoes, carrots
• French beans
• Broccoli

Method: Prep time 10 minutes, cooking time <60 minutes.

Chop your carrots and potatoes and place in a roasting pan.  These need to cook at 200° for around 45 minutes to an hour. Chuck your chopped onion and garlic in a glass dish with your choice of a ‘meatier’ textured Quorn/Portobello mushroom or Seitan. The oven should still be about 200° when you place the dish in with the two glasses of white wine. After 20 minutes add the jar of capers (minus the brine). Cook for a further 25 minutes. Meanwhile steam or boil French beans and broccoli to taste for around 5 minutes.

*Seitan is an easily made wheat gluten ‘loaf’ that can be frozen after making and used in dishes like this as a meat alternative. Wheat gluten flour is £2.38 for 500g available from Amazon. A recipe to make your own seitan can be found here. About ten batches of seitan can be made with a 500g bag.

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Modern life is rubbish* – Part 3: Food

*Post title stolen from Blur album of same name equally stolen from stencilled graffiti painted along Bayswater Road in London, created by an anarchist group¹.

What to eat or not? Charlie Brooker put it really well in a recent Guardian column – we should all have pink slime on tap as an instant Bolognese sauce direct from mainland Europe. The current equine burger scandal is merely a repeat from 65 years ago and let’s face it we’re all a bunch of fussy eaters (what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger, right?).

The point of this series of posts is that the past was no great shakes really and don’t let anyone kid you otherwise. Britain’s post war diet was supposed to be the healthiest ever but of course, all depends on household income, standards of living etc. My poor old pops in his single-parent family of seven lived off cabbage and potato soup; healthy maybe but hardly nutrient varied and tingly on the taste buds. His first taste of curry was a full jar of powder liberally applied to a fried steak, after cooking. Poor sod had to endure it and make it look good and yummy.

Okay so people in the UK are getting fatter and eating lazy ready-meals but isn’t this more to do with food production? White bread made the industrial way is chemical-rich, springy and long lasting and if you make your own bread, seems really sweet – yeuch.

Chorleywood (bakers) discovered that by adding hard fats, extra yeast and a number of chemicals and then mixing at high speed you got a dough that was ready to bake in a fraction of the time it normally took.

There is also the matter of health. The Chorleywood loaf has twice the amount of yeast of a traditional loaf, it has enzymes and oxidants added and while certain chemical additives such as potassium bromate have been banned, Paul Barker and other bread campaigners believe it is behind the growth in the number of people who struggle to digest bread.²

But for many it isn’t a matter of choice, just cost. Same with white label ‘value range’ processed foods. Families on a low income would maybe love that hand-massaged wagyu Kobe beef in their lasagne but settle for the variety that costs a pound in the freezer centre.

On a personal note, I’m the archetypal fussy eater myself, obsessed with what I eat. A vegetarian for over 25 years and luckily financially able to buy Quorn to vary my chewing ability. I’m no longer up for the arguments about Veganism (soya gives me foul wind), animal rights (teenage stuff) and frankly bored of justifying my fussiness (on holiday in Italy, people are genuinely concerned that I don’t eat meat and think I’m a protesting Buddhist). But in all this talk of accidentally-served horse meat we are nearing an opportunity to consume lab-grown flesh. Is there a market for synthetic meat? Current costs are at about $20,000³ a burger but it may be more likely a future necessity** to eat ‘tribble’ than Daisy. Or processed food consumption could be the exclusive diet of the wealthy which would leave fresh food for the rest of us.

**…we are going to have to feed a lot more people in the coming decades. The world’s population stands at a little over 7bn; by 2060 this will have risen to perhaps 9.5bn, and that is a fairly optimistic scenario. Not only are there more and more of us, but we are eating more and more meat. Demand for it is expected to double by 2050. The market in chicken, pig, cattle and sheep flesh is worth about $1trn a year. By mid-century this will more than double, perhaps triple at today’s prices, as the cost of land rises.

This is bad news for the Earth. Meat production accounts for about 5% of global CO₂ emissions, 40% of methane emissions and 40% of various nitrogen oxides. If meat production doubles, by the late 2040s cows, pigs, sheep and chickens will be responsible for about half as much climate change impact as all the world’s cars, trucks and aircraft.

Michael Hanlon The Guardian, Friday 22 June 2012

 

¹http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_Life_Is_Rubbish

²http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-13670278

³http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jun/22/fake-meat-scientific-breakthroughs-research