Mary McCartney's Spicy Nutty Stir Fry

Phew, long time no blogging.  However, course is now finished and moving is now completed so now I have a bit more time, and so many blog ideas!

One of the advantages of my new place is the kitchen is more functional.  I've gone from a tiny kitchen that was designed for students (i.e. big enough to make beans on toast!) to a kitchen where I have multiple cupboards and plenty of workspace.  This has certainly allowed me to be more creative in the kitchen as I now have the space to cook and the storage capacity to store more ingredients.

I have become quite obsessed with buying both the Cook Vegetarian and Vegetarian Living magazines on a monthly basis, one month Vegetarian Living had a free booklet with tasters for Mary McCartney's new cookbook- Food and this is where I found this recipe for 'Yummy Spicy Rice Noodles'.  This has now become a new favourite to cook, however I tend to vary the type of noodles I have and the veg I put in and just make the sauce to the recipe.

This recipe is so good and the sauce is delicious, when I first made it, I was making it for one and miscalculated the sauce and made it too runny. After eating it I shamefully tried to drink the rest of the sauce straight from the dinner plate!

Vegetarian Beans and Sausages.

Sometimes beans on toast can be a bit, well, unsatisfying and monotonous so I don't actually eat it that often.

But, as a child I LOVED the tins of beans and sausages you could get, it just added that little something to just plain old beans on toast.  But as a veggie, this is something I have to say good bye to, or so I thought...

This week is moving week, so I was after meals that would be quick to cook (I have a lot to do still in preparation), cheap, reasonably nutritious and wouldn't require ingredients that I would have left over (therefore more things to take over).  Reluctantly I decided on beans on toast.

However, when I went to procure said beans from my local ASDA I found that they now sell VEGETARIAN sausages and beans! Woo Hoo!

They taste as good as the non-veggie sausages and beans (although I doubt that the normal sausages actually contain that much meat anyway!) and they have made meals this week a bit more bearable.  Probably not the healthiest of options, but then I'm sure I can cope for 4 days.

I try not to make a habit of shopping at supermarkets, and try where possible to use independent shops, but it's not always easy to do with busy lives, especially when independent shops insist on sticking to 9-5 opening hours. However ASDA do some great veggie stuff, including vegetarian chocolate mousse (although there low fat version contains gelatine!) and I think all (if not a great deal) of their vegetarian frozen food is approved by the vegetarian society.

So if, like me, you're a veggie hankering after childhood memories of tinned beans and sausages head to your local ASDA!

*Having read this, it seems like I'm promoting ASDA, and I would like to therefore add that I am NOT receiving any payment in any form (including freebies) from ASDA or the Walmart company and all opinions are my own.

Restaurant Review: The Great Kathmandu, Didsbury

This last two months have been a little indulgent, with so many birthdays and Father's days etc. etc.

Anyway, one of these indulgences involved a visit to The Great Kathmandu in Didsbury, Manchester.

The Great Kathmandu was founded in 1987 and offers traditional Nepalese cuisine in the lovely area of Didsbury.

The first thing that you notice as you sit down and look at the menu is that there is much more on offer than the typical dishes you expect at Asian restaurants, which is great for me because I like to try new things and I can't stand it when you go to a restaurant and every single dish is familiar.

There is a wide range of vegetarian food, in fact a whole section of the menu is devoted to it (rather than the usual 'same sauce, just with the veg instead of the meat') and a lot of thought had obviously been put into the vegetarian options.  There are vegetarian starters but the do not seem to appear on the online menu for some reason?!

I also liked the poster in the window that said 'Keep Calm and Eat Curry', it definitely made me laugh but at the same time, it's so true- the UK has fully embraced Asian food, and food from all other cultures for that matter.  I think Jamie Oliver is right, we ARE a nation of magpies when it comes to food!

I ordered the Muttar Paneer, which is paneer cheese and peas, as I had a craving for paneer and anything with peas gets my vote!  Plus, since The Boys (The Boy plus twin) were present we also ordered a paneer starter as well. The service was good, the waiters were friendly, the food was lovely and reasonably priced. The portions were just right and weren't too filling, and the only issue was the cheese nans, which The Boys ordered, apparently we're that cheesy- although I think they were expecting cheese to come oozing out, so I'm not too concerned by that! We did have the issue of table too small for all the dishes, but that seems to be an issue at most Asian restaurants.  Unfortunately, again I forgot my camera so there are no photos.

I would definitely recommend Kathmandu, and it is worth a visit.

Hospital Inn- Preston.

I've not posted in a while now due to being to busy with studying and moving.  But since I've managed to magic some free time (nothing on TV, except Gok Wan cooks Chinese and since there are no veggie dishes this week there seemed to be no point in watching it) I decided to do a blog post.

One of my favourite pass times is eating out, it stems from frequent pub meals as a youngster, when my Dad use to pick my Mum up from work (he worked nights, my Mum 9-5) and on the way home she'd say:

"So what's for tea?"

My Dad, having got too distracted by Neighbours (and therefore was frequent late on picking her up) to think about tea would say

"Pub???"

Although becoming a Vegetarian has made eating out more challenging, it still something I do whenever I get chance to. So I thought I would start to do my own restaurant reviews. This post is about the Hospital Inn in Preston (sorry it doesn't have a website!).

It all started on the Boy's and his twin brother's (also a veggie) birthday two weeks ago, they planned on going to Smithills, however that was out the question when we found out it didn't open Wednesday tea time so the hunt began to find a new venue. After driving to two other pubs in Bolton- one who's veggie options were mushroom risotto with parmesan and roasted stuffed aubergine with brie (both of these were £15!) the other had only one option of cauliflower cheese risotto with parmesan (and then asked if we ate fish) a decision was made to drive to Preston and go to the Hospital Inn, a place The Boy's family rave about but I had yet to visit.

When we arrived there, I noticed that the specials board- which in most places only has meat options, had a whole section of vegetarian specials. Including:

Sizzling Halloumi with stir fried veg in a teriyaki  sauce and served with rice
Leak, broccoli and Stilton pie
Pasta with home made cherry tomato pesto served with garlic bread

Plus various other options on the regular menu.  I opted for the sizzling halloumi special (halloumi is the one few cheeses I like).  The halloumi was well cooked, sometimes it can be 'squeaky' but this had been cooked to perfection and hence, was 'unsqueaky', the teriyaki sauce was divine and  although I got 2/3 of the way through it and started to feel full, it was too nice not to finish.  So I finished it, and then felt very sleepy afterwards! Unfortunately I forgot my camera, so I haven't any pictures.

The Hospital Inn goes to show that British pubs can be veggie friendly, and vegetarian food doesn't have to be an after thought, and it can be as different and exciting as the meat options.

I would definitely recommend that you give the Hospital Inn a go.

Vegan Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

So operation use up all my perishables before my move in July continues!

I've been so caught up in trying to use up all my savoury items that I totally forgot my glut of baking supplies that I hoard, so I thought I would start and try and use it up.

I have a fascination with vegan food, I love the show Come Dine With Me and my favourite shows are the ones with vegan contestants because I love to see the creative ways that vegan cooking gets around the problem of not using any animal products. Especially in the case of using egg as a 'glue' in cooking, which is why the thought of vegan baking is so intriguing...

However I did want to use egg replacers or other fancy ingredients, which is when I stumbled upon this recipe from the lovely We Don't Eat Anything With A Face which uses grated apple hold the cakes together.  The only thing I did differently was add 3 tbsp of bicarb as I realised that I only had 60g of self raising flour and the rest of my supply was plain. On reflection the three tablespoons was a bit too much (I was quite scared that the cakes might actually explode in the over, they just kept growing!).

These cakes have to be the best chocolate cakes I have ever made, and the grated apple makes them really moist and yummy inside- I'm salivating at the thought as I write this!

I took them into work and told everyone that they were 'special' chocolate orange cupcakes and didn't tell them they were vegan.  After making 'mmm' noises, and making ridiculous guesses at what made them special, I finally told them that they were vegan and everyone was surprised.  Once colleague actually said that if he know they were vegan beforehand he wouldn't have had one, but will now think again about vegan cakes- then another colleague agreed!

If your reading this and thinking the same- please don't judge, keep and open mind about vegan cooking and try this recipe- it's awesome!

Looking Yummy

Yummier

Pretty Awesome

With the yummy icing- I licked it out the bowl after I made it!

Nutty Sweet Potato and Spinach Pie

Yet another adaptation from Joy May's book!

This was suppose to be a low cost meal using ingredients I had in, as I was planning to use the rest of the sweet potatoes from the Country Vegetable Pie but I forgot to bring them with us (I made this meal at mine) so I had to buy more and the The Boy insisted on the addition of goats cheese (no surprise there!).  However it still ended up a cheap meal.

If I was to do this again, I would probably spread the goats cheese over half the pie and leave the other half cheese less, as me and The Boy disagree when it comes to cheese!

Creative use of left over pastry! 

Country Vegetable Pie.

This week, The Boy had the week off, and his parents were on holiday and offered the use of the family home for the week. This turned out to be cooking heaven, as I'm use to my tiny little kitchen with one single cupboard for supplies and a small work surface (even a simple meal of beans on toast can result in the place looking like a bomb site!). Instead this week I had the use of a large family size kitchen which is well equipped and stocked.  So I put it to good use...

The Boy's Mum's has received was Mary Berry's updated Complete Cookbook as a recent birthday present, which we were told we were quite welcome to use. So I did!

I came across Mary's recipe for County Vegetable Pie and decided to give it a go, adding my own twist including the addition of sweetcorn and peas (not enough things contain sweetcorn and peas!), substituting the ordinary potato topping with sweet potato (The Boy's suggestion) and adjustments to the cooking instructions.

I really need to work on my 'pot to plate' technique with pies!

The result went down well, I was a bit worried by the parsley sauce as I'm not a big fan of creamy sauces but this was quite nice. I've attempted to freeze the leftovers, and I'm hoping this won't effect the taste. There were quite a few good vegetarian recipes in the book (a whole section on vegetarian recipes, plus a few more dotted about in different sections) so I will definitely be 'borrowing' the book more often!