Memories of Mallorca and home-made paella (Vegan)

We went to Mallorca last summer (third time) and whilst there I had my first ever paella.

Vegetarian food was pretty hard to come by where we were, although the fact that was 35-40C during the day meant that my appetite was non-existent (apart from ice-cream cravings!) so it wasn't too much of an issue.  It was so hot I couldn't even face the thought of eating any of the GIANT olives on the market stalls.

Despite this, we managed to find a handful of places with decent vegetarian options- one of them did vegetarian paella. This was probably the only Spanish thing I ate throughout the trip, the only other places that did decent meat free options were Italian (expensive restaurant with a great view of the sunset on the beach, but couldn't remove the stones from the olives on my pizza), a Chinese place and an Indian with cute and ingenious serving plates!

Anyway, during the Christmas holidays, The Boy decided to try and recreate our trip by making a paella, being using this recipe. The recipe says to use any rice, but he got paella rice anyway.  We added a squeeze of lemon juice to add to the flavour.

The recipe is pretty good so I made some more for tonight's tea, served with a ginger ale is a wine glass made from a recycled beer bottle!

Bean and sausage hotpot

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

I've not posted in a while due to a combination of Christmas, work, eating mainly beans on toast and Heinz tomato soup and finally a rekindled love of reading causing a newly found obsessing with Harry Potter.

But now Christmas is over, work/life balance has been restored, Harry Potter books all read and I've grown sick of beans on toast and soup!

I came across this recipe for bean and sausage hotpot in a Vegetarian Society booklet I picked up last spring and I have wanted to give it a go for a while.  It's pretty simple to make, the ingredients can be found in any reasonably stocked kitchen and it's cheap. Not to mention yummy, especially with some warm crusty bread.  As you can see in the picture below, I've a weak spot for bread!

You can make it vegan just by using vegan sausages, which don't have to be expensive- Mary McCartney sausages are vegan and are currently on offer at Lidl- 99p a pack, or ASDA are doing 2 for £3.  I chose to grill them instead of frying (the slightly burnt appearance of the sausages are due to my crappy grill).  Another of my favourite veggie sausages are Cauldron sausages, but they can be pricey unless you get them on offer.

Roots Manoeuvre Curry (Vegan)

Things have been so busy at work lately, I've been leaving the house at 6:30am and then not getting back until 6-7ish. So the last think on my mind is cooking, and I'm not too fond of beans on toast!

So I've taken to making one big meal to eat during the week and as curries work well with this method, last week was a Thai inspired curry, but this week I decided on something more Indian.

I got turnips and carrots in my veg box this week, and I never get round to using the potatoes I get every week, so Abel and Cole's roots manoeuvre curry looked ideal as you can add pretty much any root veg and any other veg you have lying around.  I settled on potatoes, turnips and carrots.  But I was very tempted to roast some broccoli too because, as proved previously, roasted broccoli rocks.

This is a vegan curry, but I had some left over sour cream and chives from making nachos over the weekend, so I dolloped some on which went really well with the curry, but you could always use an alternative if you desire.

The curry was really nice, I think veg tastes so much nicer roasted and was worth the extra effort, plus they retain far more nutrients than boiling. If I made it again I would probably add more potatoes as I parboiled them as you would when making roast potatoes which is unsurprisingly nice. I found this out when visiting a very popular Indian restaurant in Bolton called The Royal Balti House for my Birthday, the website isn't that impressive but it is very popular and was featured on an episode of Phoenix Nights and it was my Parent's local Indian when I was a kid (and I wouldn't touch curry because it looked weird, even though I liked the smell!). Anyway, getting back to the point I had a curry from said restaurant and they roasted the potatoes, and ever since I've been obsessed with roast potatoes in curries!

This would also be an ideal thing to make using left overs from a Sunday roast.

The real faff is grinding the spices, luckily I have a pestle and mortar that I stole from The Boy, but I guess wrapping the spices in a cloth (or sandwich bag) and bashing with a rolling pin would work just as well.

Roasted cauliflower and casperita coconut curry (vegan)

In this week's veg box I got green cauliflower and a casperita squash which is kind of like a white pumpkin.  I knew I was in for a busy week at work therefore I decided to make something that would last me an entire week. So I had a go at Abel and Cole's Cauli and Coconut curry, using the casperita squash as the 'other veg'.

It took a while to make, but thanks to my new food processor, it took less time than it would have done using my hand blender to make the sauce. This seems to taste better when reheated as when I had it yesterday it was a bit 'meh' but today it was an improvement.

I really do recommend roasting cauliflower, I'm not a big fan of cauliflower, but roasted the flavour is a lot nicer.

Mushroom risotto with garlic and mushroom bruschetta (vegan option)

A while ago I went to Manchester's Food & Drink festival and picked up a jar of mushroom and garlic bruscetta topping from Francas.

Francas is actually a Italian pizza takeaway in Bolton, but they also do a lot of local food festivals selling their authentic pizzas and Italian ingredients.

I've been meaning to use this for ages, so when I get some mushroom with this week's veg box I decided a risotto was a good idea.

First of all, I made a quick stock using Abel & Cole's 'Stock and Roll recipe', this is really easy and as with any stock, you can use anything you have to hand. This time I used onion, celery and carrot plus a few cabbage leaves and the stem part of a used broccoli.  This resulted in quite a dark green stock!

My new food processor which I received as a Birthday present from The Boy really helped with the stock recipe!

For the risotto itself, I used a basic risotto recipe, and then added the bruscetta spread near the end.

1. Sizzle an onion in butter or oil (I used Suma Sunflower Spread) until tender
2. Add around 50g of risotto rice per person and cook for a few minutes.  Add in sliced mushrooms
3. Add a glass of vegan/ vegetarian white wine and let the rice absorb it.
4, Add a ladle of warm stock.
5. Set timer for 20, add the stock to the risotto a little at a time until the time is up.
6. Add cheese, or as I did add a bit of bruscetta topping and a sprinkling of pine nuts!

The lady at the festival gave me a tip when I bought the spread: when you've opened it and used it, cover the remaining spread with sunflower oil- it makes it last longer and infuses the oil!

Romesco Cauliflower Stir Fry

Today is THAT day of the week.  The day before veg box deliver day when I try to piece together the last of this week's veg into some sort of meal.

This week, I had left half the Romesco cauliflower, some red onions and potatoes. The onions and potatoes will keep so it was more a case of using up the cauliflower, and although I really enjoyed Tuesday night's tea it took a while and I just wanted something quick.

It was a toss up between pasta and a stir fry, and the stir fry won.

Along with the cauliflower (and noodles) I planned to add chilli, garlic, soy sauce and the juice of half a lemon that I had in the fridge.

All was going according to plan, until I accidentally pour red wine vinegar into the wok instead of sesame oil, and since I thought I'd buggered it up all ready I thought I would experiment a bit so added a bit of Thai green curry paste.

I was expecting something vile, but it actually tasted OK and the only thing was I went a bit OTT on the soy sauce so it tasted a bit like a posh pot noodle!

I would post a recipe/method but there isn't one, I think it probably needs a bit of work. But just shows that with a few store cupboard staples, half a cauliflower, chilli and onion you can make a meal. And don't be afraid to wing it!

Roasted Romesco Cauliflower

I admit it. Cauliflower is one of my least favourite vegetables. So when I started my veg box, I added it to the dislike list so I wouldn't end up with it in my box.

With Abel and Cole, you can see what is in your veg box each week before you receive it, anything you dislike is marked with an 'X' and you will receive something random on the day!

Last week, I was due to receive Romesco Cauliflower, but as I had added cauliflower to my dislike list, there was a big X beside it. I'd recently started to hear more and more about this cauliflower and it's unusual appearance  being intrigued I decided to give it a go and removed the dreaded cauliflower from the block list...

So anyway, here is what one looks like

The top is pointed, so if you had two, they would make an excellent Madonna bra for a fancy dress costume (especially if the theme was vegetable celebs)!

Anyway, I decided to try Hugh-Fearnley Whittingstall's Roasted Cauliflower with lemon and paprika (found on the Abel & Cole site) with a side of roast potatoes with lemon and rosemary and some Quorn sticky BBQ fillets.

The cauliflower was really nice, the flavour seems to be a lot more 'delicate' compared to regular cauliflower, and the lemon and paprika went together really well. Surprisingly the big disappointment was the Quorn. It just reminded me of those tasteless Bird's Eye chicken fillets I use to eat as a teenager. The extra BBQ sauce helped to make it more bearable.