Beignets de maïs & bananes servi avec des haricots verts aux amandes

Beignets de maïs & bananes servi avec des haricots verts aux amandes mean

Corn & Banana dumplings served with Green beans cooked in almond milk

 Serves 5

 

Ingredients for the beans

Ingredients for the beans:

• 400g frozen green beans
• 100g raw almond flakes
• 1 onion
• 1 red scotch bonnet (optional)
• 5 garlic cloves
• 2 stock cubes
• Salt
• Sesame oil.

Read the whole recipe before starting.

the almond cream sticks to the sides

Prep: Cover the almonds with cold water and leave aside for 1 hour in order to rehydrate them. Once rehydrated, pass through the food processor to blend very finely with about 200 ml water. Set aside.

Take the sliced beans out of the freezer and leave them to unfreeze, then rinse and put on a colander to remove the extra water. Set aside.

Dice onion, Butternut scotch and garlic set aside.

Method: Pour in the liquidised almonds in a pan, add onion garlic and the stock cubes. Add 3 tablespoons of sesame oil (this will add more nutty-ness to the dish). Stir and leave to simmer for 5 minutes. We want some of the water to evaporate and leaving behind a creamy texture. The onion will have lost its crunch by then and the cream should stick to the sides of the pan.

Now add the green beans and chilli, mix well continuously for 3-5 minutes until the beans soften to your liking. It is done.

Note: if you intend to reheat, just switch the heat after adding the beans.

 

Now onto the dumplings

 

Ingredients for the dumplings:

• 2 over-ripped bananas (about 300g)
• 300g fine corn flour
• 200 self-rising flour
• 20g sugar (I don’t like sweet stuff much)
• A pinch of salt
• 200ml water

Banana & Corn batter

Method: In a bowl, crush the bananas with the corn flour… Because the corn flour is so grainy, it is ideal to use it to mash the bananas.

Once that is done, add water, salt and sugar. Mix well to melt the sugar especially, then add the flour. Mix until you obtain and homogenous wet batter. Leave to rest for about 30 minutes to allow the corn flour to soften.

Heat about 500ml of vegetable oil in a deep pan. The oil has to be really hot and to test it, drop a small amount of the batter in it. If the dough rises up to the surface immediately, your oil is ready.

Yum... Golden and well formed

Using a table spoon and a bowl with cold water. Scoop the batter and drop into the hot oil. In order for the batter not to stick to the spoon, deep the spoon quickly into the cold water and scoop again… so forth and so on.

Given how hot the oil is, it should take about 1 minute and half for the dough to cook through. Make sure to turn them so all sides will be golden.

Just like when frying chips, remove the dumplings from the oil and place on a tissue paper to remove the extra oil.

The dumplings cannot really be reheated unlike the beans above and they are best served hot if for dinner as served below. The left over can be used for breakfast too.

Tuck in! Serving suggestion

I love these dumplings and do them often. I forgot half way to take pictures, but you’ve got the idea.

Hope you like it.

Send me your comments. x

:-)

 

3 flours vegan pancakes

Eat my shorts Picasso!

Today is Shrove Tuesday, which is the Tuesday before lent start. In some part of the world, this day is also known as Mardi Gras or Crepes day… in most houses here in the UK, people will be making pancakes with all sorts of topping.

Unfortunately for me I am currently on sick leave and cannot go out to buy extras for my pancake.  I just had to make do with what I found in the house… and this is what I found.

The brownest on is the wheatbran

For the pancakes:

·         50g Natural wheat brand

·         50g Fine corn flour

·         50g self-rising flour

·         4 Apples (sugar replacement)

·         150ml Soya milk

·         150ml fizzy water (great for the bubbles)

·         Rice Bran oil

Fruit Salad:

·         1 Sharon fruit

·         1 Pear

·         5 Dates

·         1 Orange (for the juice)

·         1 Pomegranate

 

Directions:

Fruits salad

Start by preparing the fruits salad.

Peel and cut the Sharon fruit, pear, ½ orange, pomegranate and combine in a bowl.

Chop the date and set aside as the will be added just before serving (a wet date does not taste good).

The other half orange will be drizzled over the dish before serving as the juice will keep it all wet and moist.

Making the pancakes.

Batter

Peel, cut the apple and blend with the milk to obtain a smoothie-like mix.

In blender or food processor, combine the wheat bran, corn flour and the smoothie. Whizz to obtain a very smooth batter. I should mention here that wheat brand looks a bit like really tiny flakes that do not tend to break down on the contact of a liquid.  Putting all the flours through the food processor will help the flakes to become a bit more flour like and help perfectly combine it with the corn and self-rising flour.

Fresh pancakes

Once all that is done, pour the batter into a bowl and fold in the fizzy water with a small pinch of salt. The pancake mix is ready.

Note: this batter will not behave like a plain flour mix. It take a lot of oil and will take long and a gentler touch to manipulate. You won’t for example be able to flip it over. So take your time with it while frying.

Got this after my half marathon

So, in a hot pan 3 table spoons of Rice Bran oil and measure up about 2 table spoons worth of batter for each pancake. Don’t do too many at the time as you may lose track of time and burn the pancake.

Fry each side for 1 minute to 1.30 minutes on medium to low heat to allow the batter to cook through. Again, because it isn’t made of flour, it take slightly longer to cook. I had few mishaps while doing it and learning as I went.

With the measurements above, you should obtain 9 to 10 small pancakes.

Serve warm with the fruit salad washed with orange juice.

Serving suggestion

If you’ve got sugar, you could cook the fruits in caramelised sugar and serve with the juice from the cooked fruits!

This is just perfect for digestion with all that fibre!

Enjoy!

Creamy Spinach & garlic roast potatoes

It is as tasty as it looks

Dinner for 2

 

Ingredients:

• 

  Ingredients

  150ml Alpro cream
• 1 medium carrot
• 200g bag of spinach
• 2 white shallots
• 6 small potatoes
• 50g soya mince
• 2 garlic cloves
• 4 Brazil nuts
• 1 spring onion
• Salt & Pepper
• Groundnut oil.

Prep:

All chopped and ready to go!

Rehydrate the mincemeat in boiling water for 10 minutes, then sieve and set aside.

Wash the spinach and set aside.
Parboil the potatoes in salty water and halve them.
Peel and chop the carrot, garlic, shallots & spring onion. Keep them separated and leave aside.
Grate the Brazil nuts.

Method:

Preheat the oven at 180C.

Boiled and seasoned potatoes

In an oven dish, place the halved precooked potatoes with 1 chopped garlic and spring onion, a pinch of salt and 1 table spoon of groundnut oil. Toss to mix well. Place the potatoes face down in the dish then, using the potatoes masher press the potatoes down to mash them a bit. Place in the oven for about 10-15 until they start crisp.

In the meantime, in a hot pan with 2 table spoons of groundnut oil, fry the shallots until brown, add the mincemeat with salt, pepper 

Roasted potatoes

& garlic.  Stir until the mince starts to crisp. Now add the chopped carrot. Hope fully the latter has been chopped thinly enough not to take too long to soften. In this case, it took about 2 minutes. As all that starts to brown it adds flavour to the dish.

Now add the grated Brazil nut and the cream. Leave to simmer for about 3-5 minutes then, stir in the spinach, adjust the seasoning and leave to soften for about 2 minutes.

All this shouldn’t take more that 10-12 minutes and the potatoes should be ready by then. Serve.

Serving suggestion

This dish is the worst nightmare of a person with nuts allergies make sure none of them is around.

Enjoy!

See you next week!

 

 

 

Homemade potatoes crisps

I was bored so I made this!

 

All you need is

·         Potatoes

·         Herbes de Provences or pepper

·         Salt

·         Mustards oil.

 

Preheat the oven at 200C

 

Method:

No need to peel the potatoes, just wash them and using a mandolin, cut them very finely.

Once they are cut, dry with tissue paper.

Season with the herbs, salt and a drizzle of mustard oil.  Lay the crisps on one single level on the baking tray.

 

Place in the oven for 20-25 minutes depending on how reliable your oven is, keep an eye on the oven and turn them if necessary.

 

I served mine with the carrots dip made the week before…

 

 

 

 

Put the rest in a jar for snacking at work...

 

Bon Appetit!

Love that jar!!!

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