I have a friend whose conversion to veganism reads like a Road to Damascus moment. She met a cow one day. They had a moment of connection within which she realised- or felt, deeply- that that cow was as curious about my friend as she was about her. She says that in that moment she realised that her and the cow were both people, equal in dignity and worth. From that moment on, she was a vegan.
My story is far more prosaic. I’ve never made friends with any cows, chickens or sheep. I live in the city! Dogs, cats and crows are the only animals I tend to meet. And while I did make friends with a crow last year (more on that one another day) I’ve never been in the position of looking my future dinner in the eyes. I’m not a vegetarian because of an epiphany or any strong emotional experience at all. I’m a veggie because, given my circumstances, removing my support from the meat industry felt like the right thing to do. Continue reading “Bloody hell, I think I’m going vegan.”→
One of the great things about being money-poor and time-rich in this part of the world is that you get to spend a lot of time cooking with fresh, tasty, seasonal foods. Doing it when there’s an internet about means you’re also never short of inspiration!
These days, ’round these parts, you can pick up a bag of parsnips, a great big turnip, or a bag of carrots for around 50c, and spuds are €1 a kilo. I don’t know about you, but in my world that means one thing: soup time!
Here’s what I’m making now. It’s ridiculously easy to make and incredibly adaptable- just substitute the veggies and herbs for whatever you’ve got around that looks like it’d be delicious.
Roasted Root Vegetable Soup with Cumin, Thyme and Rosemary
Ingredients:
2-3 medium-large potatoes
2/3 of a turnip
2 parsnips
3 carrots
vegetable stock
a couple of cloves of garlic
olive oil
Cumin, thyme and rosemary. Fresh is great, but dried is fine too.
Preheat the oven to a low-medium heat- around 170C should be fine, if you’ve a fan oven. You want to roast the veggies slowly.
Chop the turnip, parsnips and carrots into nice chunky pieces a little under an inch across. Small enough to not take too long to cook, but big enough that there’ll be lots of soft, sweet roast veggie in between the crispy outsides. Arrange them on a baking tray big enough that you don’t need to pile them on top of each other. Give them a good sprinkling of freshly-ground cumin and a nice dollop of olive oil. Pop them in the oven for a half-hour or so.
Chop the potatoes into inch-sized squares as well. Put them into a big-ish pot. Grate the garlic over them, add a little olive oil. Toss them over a low heat- barely hot enough to sizzle- for a few minutes to bring the flavour out in the garlic.
Boil a kettle of water for 1L or so of stock. Probably more. Add the stock, as well as a generous pinch of rosemary and thyme, to the potatoes and garlic and simmer until soft. Remove from the heat until the veggies are done roasting.
When the veggies are soft through, add to the potatoes. Add more stock if you need to, and simmer for a few minutes.
Whizz it up in a blender until smooth. Realise it’s way too thick, make up some more stock, add more stock. As with most soups, this is even more delicious the next day. So make a bunch of it, leave it to sit overnight, and bung it in the freezer for delicious, warming soup anytime.
While I think this is delicious enough to not need jazzing up, if you would like a little more excitement in your soup I think it would be delicious with a dollop of soured cream or yogurt, or crispy chorizo bits for the omnivores. Chicken stock instead of/as well as veggie stock would probably be lovely as well, if that’s how you roll. This recipe is gluten-free as long as you use GF stock- there’s loads available and they’re yummy.
Enjoy!
If this looks good to you, check out the rest of my recipes! They’re almost all veggie and almost all either gluten-free or easily adaptable to be, while being easy on the budget.
There’s a friend of mine who’s been asking me for my lentil moussaka recipe for months now. Tonight, I finally gave in, and figured I might as well share with You Lot as well. Also, it’ll make up for my having posted a non-veggie recipe earlier today, right?
This is a rather edited version of a recipe for lentil moussaka that I found in a Hare Krishna recipe book- the one you can get for around €2.50 in any of the Govinda’s restaurants around Dublin. Edited because they don’t use garlic or onions, and also because my cheese sauce is totally nicer than theirs. Measurements are, I’m afraid, either in imperial or Dollop. So here goes!
Rather Tasty Lentil Moussaka
You’ll need:
3 or 4 aubergines/eggplants, sliced about 1.5cm thick.
For the lentils:
2 cups lentils. They say brown lentils, but I normally use a mix of red and green. Or just whatever I have lying about.
Some chopped onion and garlic. However much seems like a good idea.
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
2 teaspoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons salt
black pepper
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
olive oil
For the cheese sauce:
(this one doesn’t have measurements, because I never measure. Dollops will have to do)
A good chunk of butter- about two or three tablespoons, heaped.
Enough flour to get that to a consistency where it’s still bunching together, but not greasy. To make this gluten-free, just use a gluten-free flour here.
Milk- a few cups. Enough to get the sauce to a reasonably thin consistency before putting in the cheese. But not too thin. Like tomato soup thickness, I guess?
Grated cheese. I like to use a few different types of cheese for this. I normally have some combination of gouda, edam, cheddar and parmesan lying around, and they’re all lovely. And you want.. enough. Keep grating until it’s nice.
Seasonings: I like some combination of nutmeg, soy sauce, worcestershire sauce, and mustard. The nutmeg would go in with the flour, and the rest can just go in whenever. Check the ingredients on your seasonings if you’re gluten-free or veggie! Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce contains fish, but you can get veggie versions that are just as yummy.
Some things are far tastier than they look.
The first thing to do depends on what kind of lentils you’re using. If they’re the kind that need soaking or an awful lot of boiling? That goes first. Seriously. Quit reading this and get them in some boiling water now if you want to have this moussaka before next year. But if you just have split red lentils, then get the oven on and start roasting some aubergine slices. I normally have enough to fill up two or three trays, depending on how thinly they’re sliced. You can grill them or roast them. I prefer to roast, though. You can do two trays at once, and it’s a little more forgiving when you’re doing three other things at once and forget to check them for a few minutes.
So pop the aubergines on a tray and into a reasonably hot oven until soft. Try not to forget about them.
You haven't forgotten them and let them burn, have you?
Next comes the lentil sauce. Start off by boiling the lentils in plain unsalted water until they’re nice and squishy. (If this is the kind of thing that’ll take a while, then you can skip down to the cheese sauce bit while you’re waiting.)
Once the lentils are squishy, drain them and set them aside. Put the oil, onion and garlic in a pan over a medium heat, and cook gently until soft. Add the tomatoes, and then all of the other lentil sauce ingredients. Simmer the mixture, stirring occasionally, for about ten or fifteen minutes until it thickens. Set aside. Also, you haven’t forgotten to check the aubergines, have you?
It's a pity that consistency isn't apparant from pictures, really.
Now it’s time to make the cheese sauce. For this, you first put the butter into a pan that’s on a moderate heat. When it’s completely melted, add the flour, stirring all the time (and the nutmeg, if you’re using some). Keep it on the heat as you add the milk slowly, little by little, and don’t stop stirring. At all. If your arm doesn’t hurt, you’re doing it wrong. Once you have the sauce to a nice, relatively thin consistency, grate the cheeses in, then stir some more. Pop in the other seasonings, and stir some more. It’s done when it’s tasty. Oh, and if you have a second between stirring, you are checking the aubergines to make sure they’re not burned, right?
Before anything close to enough cheese sauce had been applied.
After all that? Time to put it all together. Leave the oven on at about 180 degrees (Celcius!) after you take out the aubergines. Place half of the aubergines on the base of a baking dish. Cover them with half of the lentil sauce. Layer the rest of the aubergines on top, and the lentil sauce on top of that. Finally, pour the delicious, delicious cheese sauce on top of all of it. Bake the moussaka for about 50 minutes, or until it’s nicely browned, and you’re done! It’s delicious with loads of different kinds of sides- leafy green crunchy things give a nice contrast, potato and root veggie wedges are nyommy dunked into all the moussaka sauces, petits pois are excellent.
Enjoy!
Unfortunately I was too busy stuffing myself to remember to take photos of the finished moussaka. You'll have to make do with this.
As some of you may know, a few weeks ago I moved house. In the process of moving house it became clear to me that while I am by no means a rich or wealthy person, I appear to have become someone who is the proud owner of an abundance of quinoa, and only a vague idea of what to do with it. Luckily, I am also a person with access to an astonishing repository of information at my very fingertips, so with a bit of googling, poking around in the cupboard and taking some inspiration from a recipe or three online, I ended up with this:
As for how to make it? Well, nice that you asked! Since I can’t quite remember the precise amounts, so I’m going to go with the Dollop scale, instead of metric or imperial.
You’ll need some quinoa, a stock cube or so, some almonds (possibly other nuts like hazelnuts might be nice instead?), some dried fruit, a weensy bit of oil and a bunch of your favourite sweet spices.
You get a decent bit of quinoa- a handful or so, depending on how hungry you are- and soak it for about 15 minutes in cold water. Ten, if you’re in a hurry or hungry.
Put the kettle on and make up a few cups of stock- enough for your quinoa.
In the meantime, pop a bunch of flaked almonds* into a pan with a weensy bit of oil. Get ’em good and toasty- toast ’em till they’re lovely and golden and smell like toasted almonds. Take the almonds out of the pan.
Drain the quinoa, and pop it into the pan with just the water that remains in it, as well as a generous shake of whatever sweet spices you have lying around. Cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and/or cardamom are lovely for this. You might fancy throwing in a bit of ginger while you’re at it. Whatever seems tasty to you. Have fun! Toast the quinoa like this until it seems toasty enough. Then pour in the stock and a good handful of raisins. Or whatever other dried fruit you have. I had raisins. I think that dried dates and apricots would be yummy as well.
When it’s cooked, mix in the almonds. Then eat up!
I had it today with some chilled chopped carrots and sugarsnap peas, and a generous handful or two of the spinach, watercress and rocket salad you get at Tesco. The chopped carrots and peas were too delicious to be sullied with a dressing. For the salad, I made up something involving honey, ginger and lemon juice. It was.. okay, but not spectacular. I’m still a novice at making dressings, since I was only recently converted to eating green stuff. But the rest of it? Awesome.
*I didn’t have flaked almonds so I made some out of whole almonds. It was perfectly lovely, and also it is very fun, if a tiny bit messy, to bash almonds with a meat tenderiser. Then I remembered that I did, in fact, have flaked almonds after all.
