Old carrots second life. Sauce, dip, spread.



Sauce, Dips, Spread in ramekins

This is something I often do when I have not had the time to use the vegetables purchased in my monthly shopping.

Can you tell I have raided the fridge?

Using vegetables this way is great because it give them almost a second life and the bins are starved!

 

Ingredients:
·         500g carrots
·         100 onion
·         10g spring onion
·         1 pepper (optional)
·         6 spoons vegetable oil
·         1 fresh tomato
·         Salt & Herbes de Provences

Method:

Just peel rinse and chop everything. Place the onion, pepper, carrots, spring onion and tomato in a blender with just about 10 ml of water. Blend until very fine. But not liquid. Like on the photo.

In a sauce pan, heat about 6 tablespoons of oil, carefully empty the content of the blender in the pan, add salt and Herbes de Provences. Stir and cover the pan so the ingredients would cook though for 5-7 minutes. That is the first stage.

blended ingredients

At this stage, this carrots mix can be used as a spread for sandwiches as they need a bit of moisture. This spread will keep for 3 days.

The mix can also be used as a dip on a platter. If this is the way it is intended to be used, add Alpro single cream, leave to cook for another 2-3 minutes. Leave to cool before serving. Mine here is served with homemade crisps (recipe of crisps in the next post).

The one with the cream

If it is going to be used for pan fired red meats or warm dishes, instead of using cream, use mustard oil or any other spiced oil then spread on the meat either before serving or before frying.

If using it as a sauce, first fry some chopped onions before adding the content of the blender. Leave to simmer and dry completely before adding 100 ml of vegan stock and cook down to the constitution wanted. Here the carrot are used on a salad served with a warm steak Hache (mince beef steak).

 



The one with mustard oil



The spread

End of January sandwich all leftovers #skint

Skint? make your own (burnt) crisps

 

Used in a main meal - see last week's post

Voila!  Now go create and send me pics of what your have done with your old carrots!

 

Here is the collection: Carrots dip, spread, sauce…

Tip: if your carrots are shrivelled up and wrinkled, soak into fresh water to rehydrate. After an hour, the will look plumb and revived!

C Ya next time!

Encased Stuffed aubergine

All Stuffed

Serves 4

 

Ingredients:

• 
  1 medium aubergine (about 300g)
• 25g potatoes flakes or 1 tablespoon plain flour
• 40g minced dry soya
• 50g fresh parsley
• 1 small red onion
• 50g roast or sundried tomatoes from the jar or fresh tomatoes
• 1 ready rolled puff pastry
• 20g raw sunflower seeds
• 1 table spoon paprika
• Salt & white pepper
• 20ml room temperature water.
• 1 Lemon
• Olive oil

Preheat the oven at 180C

Prep:

Cut the aubergine in half, remove some of the flesh leaving about 1cm of flesh all around the skin. To prevent the inside of the aubergine darkening, rub a bit of lemon juice in it and set it aside.

Cut in small pieces the flesh of the aubergine and place in a bowl.

Chop the parsley, onion and seeds. Keep them in separate bowls. Grate the lemon and set aside.

Rehydrate the soya mince by pouring on it 200ml of salted boiling water. Leave it aside for 10 minutes then, sieve & squeeze out the salted water. Set aside.

Method:

In a bowl, mix the cut aubergine flesh, potatoes flakes, half of the parsley, sunflower seeds, paprika, sundried tomatoes, salt and white pepper, lemon zest, mix well.

If you have chosen to use fresh tomatoes, the juice from the later will help to bind the stuffing. But since we are using roast tomatoes, it is the reason water is need to combine. The stuffing should be able to hold together.

Now that the mix is ready, stuff both halves of the aubergine and

stick them together then, drizzle about a table spoon of olive oil on the stuffed aubergine, then wrap in the pastry.

Place the aubergine on a buttered baking tray, score and pierce the sides of the pastry to allow stream to get out while it is cooking. Place in the oven at 180C for 1 hour.

Once the aubergine is ready, leave to rest for 10 minutes, then serve,

In the meantime stir fry the mince to accompany the dish:

Heat 2 table spoons of olive oil, add the onion and stir for 1 minute on high heat. We are not looking for the onion to brown here we need its flavour and the crunch.

After 1 minutes, add the mince soya and continually stir until the remaining water from the rehydration has evaporated. This should take 3-5 minutes.  Leave the mince to crisp a little bit add pepper and adjust the seasoning. Stir again and then add the other half of parsley. Stir for 2 minutes. That is ready. The mince should

take in all 10 minutes to get ready and can be done while the aubergine is resting.

Though the aubergine may still be moist, I recommend to serve this dish with some kind of sauce or dip. Mine here is served with a carrot sauce.

I will be posting the recipe of the carrot sauce here soon.

Thank you for reading and don’t forget to tell me what you think!

 

Et voila!

Bon Appétit!

Nash

Happy New year!!!

Hi all, happy 2015.

This New Year comes with a lot of great things in the horizon for All-Vegan and hopefully I will be able to post recipes much more regularly than what I’ve done in the last 6 months of 2014 as I was working on and promoting on a recipes book for foodbanks. If you have not seen The Bank Cook, please visit www.TheBankCook.com.

I also took part in the Royal park half marathon to raise funds for a homeless day centre called Webber Street. To donate or volunteer visit http://webberstreet.org/

Just to wet your appetite for this blog on 2015, here are pictures of the dishes coming up in the next few weeks!

Guess what the ingredients are and post + your comments below.

Thank you again for following the blog.

Again, best wishes for 2015.

Yours truly. HJ

Got a question? Inbox me vis tweeter @hjulienne or email nashjulie9@gmail.com

My Minty Circus

So, this woman walks behind me in the Turkish shop… the green bunch she is holding has such a strong smell. I turn around and ask, what is that? Mint. she says… wow, never had one with such a strong smell.

So I bought a bunch for myself. As I walk out of the shop, I am wondering what I should cook that involves mint… it is a hot day in London, I’ve got no soft drinks in the house… ideas start shooting… there is ginger in the house, maybe I should add orange or lemon? I walk pass Lidl and have little tour… too many oranges in the pack. Only need one. I opt for grapefruits and lime which are sold loose… Let’s see what we can do with these… If it goes wrong, I won’t do it again.

The result tastes really really good and is very refreshing. By leaving the juice in the fridge for 24 hour with a slice of lime the taste is much stronger with a hint of bitterness… wow! Will definitely do it again.

I have called this My Minty Circus.

Ingredients:

• 2 limes
• 1 big grapefruit
• 100g sugar
• 2L cold water
• Fresh mint - 15 large leaves

Using a spatula, beat the limes and grapefruit before cutting and pressing out the juice to death.

Once the juicing is done, rinse the mint leaves and roll them in your hands to bruise before adding in the juice... Now add water, sugar and mix with the spatula until the sugar has dissolved.

Now using a medium sieve, strain the drink and press the residues as if you were trying to pass them through the tiny holes. This will allow you to recuperate as much flavour as possible from the citrus pulps and mint leaves.

Once this is done, either use a tea strainer or tissue to pass the juice trough so what you will obtain with be a really clean and pink drink.

Et voila!

Beetroot and avocado wrap

Serving suggestion with red currants

4 ingredients:

·         The Wraps
·         Beetroot spread
·         Avocado
·         Mix leaves salad

 The only prep needed is peeling and cutting the avocado length ways and about 2cm width.

Ingredients

Beet spread - Has chilli in it

To make the beet spread see the recipe on one of the previous posts here

This is there just because I like it!

Excellent for lazy afternoon snacks, just using left overs... the beet spread is really hot as in chilli hot and the current overly acidic... The Avocado here almost play the roll of a plain natural yogurt as a calming agent on my assaulted tastes buds.

Lovely!

Cassava, coconut cream, Veggies parcels

Ingredients for 4

• 1 large leek
• 100ml Oat milk
• 25g coconut cream
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 small shallot
• Rapeseed oil
• 50g courgette
• ½ of a Green, a yellow and a green pepper
• 12 whole green beans
• 250g Handmade Devon Tofu
• 100 Gary flour – made out of cassava same origin as Tapioca

Method:

The only difficulty in this dish is to make the parcels…Got kids? Let them do the parcels!

The Parcels: Start by prepping the vegetable. Cut the green, red and yellow peppers length ways and about 1cm width.

First veggies parcel

Use the length of the pepper to cut the courgette and the leek. Before cutting the leek, gently remove the outer layer, rinse and set aside. As the outer layer of the leek is harder and more stringy, it will be used as a rope to tie the vegetable parcels.

For each parcel use: 1 piece of courgette, 1 green pepper, 1 red pepper, 1 yellow

pepper, 1 piece of leek then 3 green beans. Tie all that together as on the picture and repeat until all 4 parcels are done. Set those aside.

Raw tofu

The Tofu: I used the handmade Devon tofu because they absorb the flavours more than the usual industrial one which has the consistency of an egg white. This one is very easy to use and doesn’t break easily. I really recommend it as it is the best I have found yet.

Fired tofu

So, cut the tofu as you want and season it with salt and black pepper. Press the tofu a bit so that it absorbs the seasoning, then, deep fry in really hot oil a bit like you would chips. What this deep frying will do is strengthen further the tofu and make it look golden.

Once is it all fried, remove from oil and place on absorbing paper as you would with your chips. Leave it one side.

Cooking the parcels:

Parcels in coconut sauce

Dice about 25g of the left over leek, the shallot and the garlic cloves. Then fry all in 2 table spoons of rapeseed oil. Stir fry for 2 minutes. Add the oats milk and the vegetables parcels, salt, pepper and the coconut cream. Cover the pan for 2 minutes, then base the veggies parcels as you would a roast. Now, add the golden tofu pieces and cover them with the sauce. Now cover the pan again and leave the contents to simmer for 2 to 3 minutes the time for the tofu absorb all the flavours.

Raw Gary

The Gary: This is made out of cassava and it is the less pretty sister of the Tapioca pearls. This is very widely used in South America, Africa and Asia… It can be found in you ethnic shops.

So, to make those lovely doughs you can see on my plate, place the Gary in a deep bowl that has a lid.

Boil 200ml of water then pour it over the Gary, stir and very very quickly pour away the excess water with the tiny pieces of cassava strings that have risen to the surface.

Gary dough balls

Cover the bowl and leave it on the corner for 5 minutes. There is no need to add salt on this as cassava has a very subtle natural acidity.

After the 5 minutes, form some dough balls using a ladle or a big soon.

Serve as suggested with the coconut sauce and veggies parcels.

Enjoy!

2 tones banana cake Chilli -choco and ginger

So, yesterday my colleague left earlier because she wasn't feeling well then she sent me a message letting me know that she’d gone home, but that I could take the banana on her desk. Which I did. I didn’t fancy eating it there and then and by the time I got home it was slightly mushy. I didn’t want to throw it a way and that’s how I decided to bake this treat.

Most ingredients for this dessert where already in my larder so I didn’t need to go shopping.

All the ingredients

Ingredients for the cake:

·         1 ripe banana (about 100g)

·         100g flour

·         75g dairy free butter

·         25g sugar

·         A pinch of salt

·         1 teaspoon chilli flakes

·         1 teaspoon of dark coco powder

·         1/2teaspoon baking powder

·         75ml of water (or rice milk)

·         4 ramekins

Ingredients for the syrup:

·         25g fresh ginger

·         50g sugar

Method

Preheat the oven at 200C before starting.

In a blender, place the peeled banana and melted butter, salt, sugar and 75ml water. Blend. Transfer all into a mixing bowl. Sieve in the flour and baking powder. Mix well until you obtain a lump less batter.

Ramekin ready for the oven

Now, split the batter in two bowls. In one half, incorporate the chilli flakes and in the other, add the coco powder. Now you’ve got a chilli banana batter and a coco banana cake.

Butter the ramekins that you are going to use for the baking. On the bottom of each ramekin, pour the chocolate cake mix, then on the top gently place the chilli mix. By doing this gently, the cake mixes will remain separated in the ramekin.

Now place the ramekin on the tray on the centre of the oven and leave to bake for 25 minutes at 200C.

Meanwhile, peel chop and blend the ginger with 25ml water. Sieve the mix in a sieve lined with paper towel to obtain a clear ginger essence.

The syrup... still bubbling

Do not throw away what you have recuperated in the paper towel as it could be used in

soups or stir fries.

Those are chilli flakes

Back to our syrup. In a milk pan, melt 50g of sugar until it look clear and golden. This should take 2 minutes. Now add the ginger essence in the pan slowly stir and try now to burn yourself. The content of the pan will froth very much. Just keep an eye on it and pull it away from the stove from time to time. Slowly stir the content of the pan until the water has evaporated and all that is left is a ginger flavoured syrup. This should take 5 minutes in total from the moment you add the ginger essence onto the sugar. Remove the syrup from the pan and place it in a serving dish.

When the cake is ready, allow 5 minutes to cool down then serve by cutting each individual cake and covering them with the syrup.

Serving suggestion

This dessert is hot as in chilli hot literally but it surprising in flavors.

Let me know what you think of it. Tweet @hjulienne