Quick, easy vegan dishes and snacks

Last week I posted the recipes for my homemade tomato conserve. This week I am giving you idea for quick and easy vegan dishes & snacks. Most of the dishes here are made with the smooth version of the tomato conserve

Use it as a spread on a piece of toast for breakfast or snack.

The vegetable platter:

Serve the conserve as one of the dips for a vegetable platter. Here the patter includes cucumbers, carrots, red and yellow peppers, potato chips and Shop bought humous.

The tomato can be used as a base for canapés.

The Tofu canapé:

Here, the first set of canapés is made out of thin French toast, smooth spreadable tomato conserve, rocket salad, fried courgette and browned tofu. For the courgette and the Tofu, cut them in the size you will use in your canapés, then, dust with salt and pepper. Heat. 2 table spoons of rapeseed oil then brown each side of the tofu and courgette. This will only take about 1 min and half per side. Leave both to cool down before the montage, or the rocket will become limb.

The caviar of lentils canapé:

The canapé above is made of French toast, tomato conserve spread, rocket salad, grilled tomato caviar of green lentils.
Cut a fresh tomato in the size you will use on your canapés, again, dust with salt and pepper, drizzle with rapeseed oil and place under the grill for about 5 mins each side. Do keep an eye on it or it will burn. For the lentils (precooked), measure the quantity you will use for the canapés, add a dollop of the smooth conserve with melted dairy free butter and black pepper. mix. Now you are ready for the montage: toast, spread, rocket leaf, grilled tomato, lentils caviar.

Roasted vegetable & tofu served warmed on a bed of rocket salad.
As you can see, I have used the left over from the vegetable platter, added some onion rings with tofu chunks and placed in the oven for 45 minutes at 180C. Serve warm and top with partially crushed cashew roasted nuts



Roasted vegetable & tofu - Serving suggestion

Aubergine layer & Lentils caviar
Cut your aubergine in 2 cm thickness, do the same for courgette, tomato and tofu. Pre fry the aubergine and courgette in olive oil for 1 min on each side before mounting and ready for the oven. In the following order: aubergine, tomato conserve, courgette, tomato conserve, fresh tomato and then, tofu. Dust with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil and place in the oven for 30 mins at 180C. Layers to be served hot with a caviar of green lentils. The caviar is made out of precooked lentils, a small amount of the mouth conserve and dairy free butter.
Et voila!

Hope you will try one or two of these dishes.
C ya!

Griddled tofu and Samphire stir fry

Quick Lunch for 2

 

The ingredients

Ingredients:

·         200g pressed tofu

·         ½ yellow, red, & green sweet peppers

·         1 small onion

·         half a red  scotch bonnet (chilli)

·         2 garlic cloves

·         4 sundried tomatoes slices in oil

·         Salt & black pepper

·         90g samphire

·         100g aubergine

·         4 tablespoons of oil from the sundried tomato jar

·         1 Maggi cube crushed

The marinade

Prep:

The marinade for the tofu: 3 tablespoons of flavoured oil, 1 tablespoon water, pressed garlic, very finely cut sundried tomatoes (slightly mashed), very finely cut scotch bonnet. Mix well, add the crushed stock cube, salt & black pepper. Set aside.

Cut the tofu in 2 to reduce the thickness, then cut again from corner to corner. You should obtain 8 pieces. Dip the pieces in the marinade and set aside for about 10 minutes.

Cut the aubergine in the same size (1cm thick) as the tofu, quarter the half peppers and onion, lie them on a plate and throw on it the rest of marinade. Leave to the side.

Now remove the samphire from the package and rinse.

Method:

You will need a griddle pan and a frying pan.

Heat the griddle pan and line up the slices of tofu and aubergine on it. Fry each side until brown and cooked through for 1 minute and half. The aubergine might need 30s more on each side than the tofu.

All lined up in the griddle pan

In a very hot frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the flavoured oil. Throw in the multi-coloured peppers, and onions with salt and pepper. Stir fry for 3 minutes. By this time the contents of the pan should be slightly soft and brown, but crunchy. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Now add the samphire and continuously stir from side to side and top to bottom to bring the heat to the surface.

The samphire softens very quickly. So, 1 minute or one minute and half should suffice while the peppers and onions should remain crunchy.

the rest in the frying pan



 Plate up and serve as suggested.

This is a very light lunch with a little kick to it. With the peppers still crunchy, their sweetness still comes through. Nothing else is needed but, if you must, potato wedges will do.

Bon appetit!

 

Tuck in! Griddled tofu and Samphire stir fry

 

Fried Tofu salad

Fried Tofu salad

Serves 2 as mains or 4 as a starter 

• 70g wild rocket - washed
• 150g beansprouts – blanched & drained
• 200g tofu - fried in caramelised sugar
• 2 fresh tomatoes - Cut and de-seeded
• 1 Teaspoon of Sesame seeds

For the vinaigrette

• 3 tablespoons mustard oil
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 generous pinch of ground ginger
• ½ teaspoon of caster sugar
• 1 pinch of salt
• ½ small red chilli - very finely chopped
• Garlic granules

Prep:

The tofu is sold as a block that will need to be cut and fried. Use the DragonFly pressed tofu as they are much tastier and absorb flavours.

Just cut as in the picture. Dust with salt and ground ginger. In a hot pan, add 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil with 1 teaspoon of sugar. Leave the sugar to brown slightly. Then add the tofu stick and swirl to allow the sugar to coat the sticks. Allow 1 minute for each side to crisp before turning them from side to side.

Once that is done, set aside and prepare the other components of the salad.

The vinaigrette. In a small jar with a lid, add: mustard oil, soy sauce, ground ginger, caster sugar, salt, garlic granules, and chilli. Shake well to combine. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

Now into a large bowl, add: rocket, sprouts, tomatoes and toss. Add the tofu sticks, sesames seeds drizzle the vinaigrette, serve as suggested & enjoy!

 

No comment!

 

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!

Black rice, Tofu, beansprouts



My one pot black rice

Ingredients:

·         300g black rice
·         400g bean sprouts
·         200g Tofu
·         100g frozen petit pois
·         Half cucumber (100grs)
·         1 scotch bonnet
·         1 teaspoon ground lemon grass
·         2 tablespoons dark soy sauce

·         1 small onion
·         5 garlic cloves
·         Olive oil

Method:

Rinse the rice and place it in a sauce pan with 500ml water, salt and a spoon of olive oil. Cook for 1 hour. Regularly check and top up water as needed. Black rice is much harder to cook than all the other rice, so, you will need 45 minutes to 1 hour for it to cook through.

In the meantime, do all the preps as the rest of the cooking goes very fast once the rice is pre-cooked.

Once the rice is cooked, set aside. Assuming that you have done all the preps and cleared your work space, heat 3 table spoons of olive oil in a wok, cut the tofu into chunks and brown with half of the chopped onion.  The tofu tends to disintegrate quite easily, so, once fried set it aside and just add to the dish just before serving. Unlike soya meat, tofu doesn’t absorb flavours. If you have ever eaten a boiled egg white, that is exactly the consistency of tofu.

Once you have removed the tofu from the wok, brown the rest of onion in the same pan for 2 minutes. Now add the rinsed bean sprouts, stir for another 2 minutes. Add the frozen petit pois, courgette, garlic, rice, black soy sauce and finely cut scotch bonnet (chilli). Stir well and cover for 5 minutes.

The hardest vegetable here is the courgette so, after 5 minutes, it should be soft, but crunchy. After 5 minutes  open the pot and stir the content from bottom to top to spread the heat. Cover for another 5 minutes.  Turn off the heat and fold in the previously fried tofu. It is ready to serve.

Bon Appetit! J

Serving suggestion

 

Marrow / potatoes layer with beet and sweet corn stir

Marrow & potatoes layer with beet and sweet corn stir

Serves 3

Ingredients for the layer:

600grs Marrow
2 medium potatoes
3 medium firm tomatoes
100grs Tofu sliced and deep-fried to give it texture
1 small red onion (optional)
3 cloves of garlic
30grs butter (dairy free)
100ml Alpro single cream
50grs Flour
Vegetable stock cube
White pepper
Salt

Preparations:

1 - Peel the marrow and keep the skin strips for decoration. Now slice the peeled marrow in 1cm width and set aside. Peel the potatoes and cut in slices about the size as the marrow. set aside. Now do the same thing for the tomato and red onion. Make sure that your Tofu is deep-fried as it will give texture to your dish. Set aside.

2 – for the batter: Melt about 25grs of the butter and crush the whole stock cube in it to melt it. Add the cream to the mix then add the flour and the finely chopped garlic. Mix well, add salt and white pepper. Set aside.

Preheat the oven at 180 degrees.

Layer ready for the oven

Method:

Butter a regular size loaf tin, place 1 layer of potatoes, then marrow, then onion, then tomatoes, then tofu.  Dust with a pinch of salt and white pepper. Then repeat the process. If you can, make sure that a layer of potato is at the top of the dish simply because you will use it as indicator to judge if the dish it cooked.

The dark green strips you see on this photo are strips of peels from the marrow that I am using to decorate my dish. The strips were placed on the bottom of the baking tin, then folded over the dish and held with tooth pick just before placing it in the oven.
Once the layers are done. Stir the batter previously prepared and pour it, not on top, but on the sides of the layers.

Now place your dish in the oven for 1hr 20 minutes.

Now time to prepare the accompaniment.

Beet & corn stir

For this, you will need:
1 big fresh sweet corn
1 precooked beetroot or a fresh one if you can find it
1 yellow sweet pepper
1 very small red onion
50grs roughly crush walnut
2 twigs of thyme
Fresh parsley
25grs Butter (dairy free)
Black pepper & salt obviously
 

Start by shelling the corn kernels from the cob or simply go through the cob with the knife like I did.

Chop separately all the elements of your dish then set aside.

Now, in a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the chopped onions and thyme until brown. Now, add the sweet corn and stir for 2 minutes. Then add the sweet pepper in the mix, stir for 2 minutes, add the beetroot and the fresh parsley, stir well for 1 minute and add the crushed walnut. Season with salt and pepper, Mix, cover and remove from the stove. It is ready.

 

Time to check on your layers in the oven. The hardest ingredient in the dish is the potato. If you put a knife through the dish and it goes through smoothly, and comes up just slightly moist, then your dish is ready. if not, add cooking time to your oven.

Please note: not all oven perform with the same power

Leave your dish to cool for few minutes then, serve.

Serving suggestion

Don’t forget to post a comment!

Bon appétit. 

Nash