Planet Veggie

Another recipe from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Veg Everyday! cookbook. One thing I’ve noticed about this cookbook is that it has no approximate cooking or preparation times in it (not that I ever take any notice of the preparation times; I’m so slow, I take about four times as long as it states). This is annoying as I like to know roughly how long something’s going to take so I know when to start cooking (or if it’s not a meal to make when I’m late back from uni) and if there’s something to go with it, what time to start making that. Reading the recipe doesn’t give you much of an idea either as he doesn’t often state timings in minutes (rather, giving instructions such as ‘cook until the liquid has evaporated).

Still, I didn’t really need cooking times tonight and so made this recipe, which I knew was nice and fairly faff-free, as I made it a week or so ago.

I’m not going to type out the method but I’ll give you the ingredients and you can probably work out what to do with them yourselves (by the way, it takes about 30-40 minutes to make).

Mushroom risoniotto (serves 2)

2 tablespoons rapeseed or olive oil
A knob of butter
500g mushrooms, thickly sliced
150g risoni or orzo pasta
2 garlic cloves, chopped
A few sprigs of thyme (leaves only)
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
About 175ml dry white wine
About 50ml double cream or creme fraiche
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
A good handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped, to serve

The Meat Eater gave me a copy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s ‘River Cottage Veg Every Day!’ cookbook for Christmas and tonight I gave one of the recipes a try. It’s a great book, packed full of tempting recipes and gorgeous colour photos. After a week of wine- and cheese-based indulgence, I only wanted something light, so went for the pasta with greens, chilli and garlic recipe.

Hugh’s recipe called for spring greens, kale or Savoy cabbage, but my local Tesco had none of these in, so I used some spinach instead.

The following method and ingredients aren’t exactly as stated in the book, but this is what I used and how I did it.

Pasta with greens, chilli and garlic (serves 2)

100g spinach
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
3 tbsps olive oil
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 onion
150g pasta shapes
salt and pepper

Fry the onion in the olive oil for about 10 minutes (put the pasta on to boil in a separate pan when appropriate for timing)
Add the garlic and chilli to the onion mixture and fry for a couple more minutes
Add the spinach to the onion mixture and fry until wilted
Season with salt and pepper
Drain the pasta and mix with the spinach and onion mixture

Cook Vegetarian Magazine contacted me a few weeks ago and asked if I wanted to be part of a feature about vegetarian Christmases. Yes please, I’d be delighted, I said. And so here I am, in the January issue, out now.

A few weeks ago, I had a sore throat that lasted for a week. One of those sore throats that hurt all day and all night and don’t ease off, no matter how many throat sweets you eat or hot drinks you drink. There were a couple of benefits to having a sore throat though:

1) I found out that my local chemist sells wine; and 

2) waking up in pain at 4am and not being able to get back to sleep made for some very productive days

but, ideally, I’d have liked my sore throat to have disappeared and as my throat sweets and hot water with lemon didn’t seem to be working, I Googled for some remedies and saw one that involved apple cider vinegar and, lo! it just happened that that week, I’d been sent some from a supplier of vitamins, supplements and organic foods called Higher Nature. When I’d been sent the apple cider vinegar, I hadn’t known what to do with it, as the only time I’ve used it in the past was when I sprained my ankle while out running and I wasn’t about to purposely fall down a ditch just to get a review written.

Most of the sore throat remedies I saw involved gargling with vinegar, and I didn’t fancy gargling so I found a recipe that consisted of a mug of hot water, 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon of honey and 1 tablespoon of lemon juice (I’m going by memory, as I can’t find the exact recipe).

It won’t surprise you that it tasted vinegary, but with the lemon juice and honey, it wasn’t overpowering and it went down easily. I can’t say it was a miracle cure for my throat but it did ease it for a while and my sore throat disappeared a couple of days later.

This is simply cauliflower cheese with mashed potato and cheese on top, then baked in the oven. I used the BBC Good Food Cauliflower Cheese recipe (halved to serve 3), forked some mashed potato that we had leftover from the night before on top of it, covered it in grated cheese and baked in the oven at 200C for about 15 minutes.

I made this last week but didn’t take a photo, which I should have done, because it was bare noms (that means ‘very nice’ in young person speak [don't worry, that will be the last time I use that phrase, honest]).

Today I made it again and did take a photo, and you’ll have to take my word for it that it tastes nicer than it looks. Actually, it looks fine in real life, I’m just rubbish at taking photos.

Anyway, the recipe:

Leek and mushroom stuffed peppers (serves 2)

2 peppers, any colour, tops sliced off and deseeded
3 mushrooms, sliced and roughly chopped
1 leek, sliced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
75g Cheddar, grated
Salt and pepper
1 tbsp olive oil
25g butter

1. Place the peppers in a baking dish and bake at 200C for about 20 minutes, or until just about turning brown
2. In the meantime, melt the butter in a frying pan with the oil and fry the leek, mushrooms and garlic for about 5 minutes, until soft
3. Take the leek and mushroom mixture off the heat, season with salt and pepper and stir in the grated cheese
4. Fill the peppers with the leek and mushroom mixture and put back in the oven for about 10 minutes

After last Tuesday’s disastrous attempt (see yesterday’s blog post) at ordering online from either Pizza Hut or Domino’s, we decided to give Pizza Hut another go today, with me ordering it earlier in the day for collection in the evening (my local Pizza Hut doesn’t do deliveries).

Blimey, it was certainly a lot easier today than it was last week. I went to the vouchercodes.co.uk website, searched for Pizza Hut, chose my offer (buy one get one free) and clicked on the link which took me straight through to the Pizza Hut website where it allowed me to choose any base, any pizza and customise my toppings (I chose the Heavenly Veg Speciality Pizza [only available on the regular Italian base [yes, the same one it wouldn’t allow me to choose last week]] and swapped the caramelised onions and rocket for mushrooms and spinach, and also took advantage of their free jalapeño offer). I ordered the King of the Coast Speciality Pizza for The Meat Eater and swapped the cream sauce base for a tomato one.

I wasn’t impressed with the range of sides on the Pizza Hut menu. They had the usual garlic bread (with or without cheese), jacket wedges and chicken wings but no jalapeño bites (my favourite) or mozzarella sticks (my second favourite). Shame. I ordered the jacket wedges which come with a choice of dip. One thing I do like about the Pizza Hut menu though is that they tell you the calorie count against each item (garlic bread with mozzarella = 685 cals. Eek.).

Ordering was simple. It all went through easily and the cost of the cheapest pizza was automatically taken off the total.

At 7pm, just as we were about to leave to pick up the pizzas, Pizza Hut rang to say that they didn’t have any spinach and what would we like as a replacement (I chose onions). When we got there, the restaurant was empty except for a few members of staff sitting at a table. A waitress came over to us immediately, went out the back and brought out our pizzas.

Unlike my Domino’s pizza, this one wasn’t generously covered with toppings (although whole black olives instead of those horrible rubbery slices some pizza places serve was a bonus) and was a bit cold, dry and congealed looking, but tasted ok. The Meat Eater said his pizza was lovely and much nicer than the Domino’s one we’d had at the weekend. The jacket wedges were much the same as the jacket wedges we buy from Tesco (which isn’t a bad thing). The sour cream and chive dips were cold and thick; much nicer than the warm dips Domino’s and Papa John’s serve.

Overall then, between Domino’s and Pizza Hut, I declare Domino’s the winner by far on quality, freshness and taste. The Meat Eater, on the other hand, much preferred Pizza Hut.

Money-wise, Pizza Hut wins. We got two 11” pizzas and a side order of jacket wedges for £12.70, whereas our order of two large pizzas and a side order of garlic mozzarella wedges from Domino’s cost £22.74. Bear in mind though, that the Domino’s pizza was ordered at the weekend when most pizza chains don’t offer their best deals.

But, like I said yesterday, until Domino’s start doing cheesy jalapeño bites, I won’t be abandoning Papa John’s.

Update (in case you didn’t see it on yesterday’s blog post): I sent Domino’s (via Twitter to @dominos_uk) the link to yesterday’s blog post and they replied to let me know that their techies will soon be changing the #TwoforTuesday banner to click straight through to that part of website.

So if you were having any problems (as I was) ordering through their website, it should be sorted soon. Now all I need is for them to start making cheesy jalapeño bites. Are you listening, Domino’s?

I got asked by vouchercodes.co.uk if I would like to review pizzas from Domino’s and Pizza Hut for them. Being a pizza lover, it didn’t take me long to click on the send button with a kind of ‘oh go on then, twist my arm…’ (e.g. ‘Yes please, I would love to!’) type of response.

So, last Tuesday, The Meat Eater and I decided to give Pizza Hut a go (I don’t really like Pizza Hut, so we decided to save Domino’s for the weekend, as you need something nice to eat at the weekend, don’t you?) and looked on the vouchercodes.co.uk website to see if there were any offers. Pizza Hut were offering two pizzas for the price of one and so we decided to go for that and pick it up for collection (my local Pizza Hut doesn’t deliver).

I was impressed with the variety of vegetarian pizzas on the menu and also that you can customise it by making up to three changes on your toppings. They also let you add jalapeños or green chillies free of charge (a BIG plus for me, as I always want jalapeños on my pizza).

We spent a while choosing and customising our pizzas then went to check out. It wouldn’t accept our code for the 2 for 1 offer as it said the contents of our basket wasn’t valid. I checked the terms and conditions and saw that the type of pizza I’d chosen (Italian base) wasn’t included in the offer, so I went back and started again, after checking the terms carefully. Again, the website said the contents of the basket weren’t in terms with the offer. We wondered whether it was because we’d customised our pizzas, so started again and chose pizzas straight from the menu with no customisation. Yet again, the offer still wasn’t valid. We’d been back to the vouchercodes.co.uk website to try and get a different code but nothing would work. We gave up and went to the Domino’s website instead.

Domino’s were also offering a 2 for 1 deal on a Tuesday and so we went for that but there was nothing on the website to tell us how to access the offer and after choosing and customising our pizzas (Domino’s – like Pizza Hut – also let you make up to three changes on your pizza [no free chillies though unfortunately]), only showed the full amount at the checkout. We went to the vouchercodes.co.uk website to try and get a code but the links on there only went straight to the Domino’s website.

By this time, we’d spent almost an hour trying to buy a couple of pizzas and were completely fed up (obviously not literally) and so gave up and heated up some leftover Papa John’s pizza for our dinner instead.

On Saturday, I decided to give Domino’s another go after seeing that they were doing a ‘buy one pizza get another for £5’ deal. Rather than risk wasting time at dinnertime, I gave it a dummy run in the afternoon and although there was nothing on the website to tell you how to get the offer, when I got to the checkout it asked me if I wanted to upgrade to the pizza for £5 deal, so when it came to dinnertime and I wanted to order the pizza for real, I ordered one pizza (with mushrooms, jalapenos, blue cheese and olives), checked out, clicked on ‘yes’ when it asked me if I wanted another for £5 and ordered The Meat Eater’s one (pepperoni and mushrooms) and a side order of garlic mozzarella sticks.

We’d ordered our food for delivery and the driver turned up 25 minutes later. My pizza was hot, fresh and covered with a generous amount of toppings. The tomato sauce was rich and moist and the crust was light and fresh. Both pizzas and the garlic mozzarella sticks came with a tub of garlic sauce. The Meat Eater said his pizza was nice but very greasy. I have no complaints about my pizza, although I won’t be getting blue cheese on a pizza again (I love blue cheese but it’s a bit strong for pizza and overpowered everything). The garlic mozzarella sticks were ok but not as nice as the cheesy jalapeño bites we get from Papa John’s. I hadn’t had a Domino’s pizza since 1999 and although I’ve only ever heard good things about them and have wanted to try them here in Kent, Papa John’s cheesy jalapeño bites tempt me back there instead every time.

So, Domino’s pizza. Very nice. If they have any offers I can’t refuse, I’ll eat from there again but I can’t give up my cheesy jalapeño bites from Papa John’s.

As for Pizza Hut, I’ll try again tomorrow.

Update (in case you didn’t see it on yesterday’s blog post):  I sent Domino’s (via Twitter to @dominos_uk) the link to yesterday’s blog post and they replied to let me know that their techies will soon be changing the #TwoforTuesday banner to click straight through to that part of website.

So if you were having any problems (as I was) ordering through their website, it should be sorted soon. Now all I need is for them to start making cheesy jalapeño bites. Are you listening, Domino’s?

I invented a game on Twitter a few months ago called Guess the Soup. It’s very easy to play. All you have to do is, um, guess the soup I’m making that day (or the soup someone else is making).

Today, Cassie started a new round of Guess the Soup. After I guessed incorrectly with combinations such as kidney bean and mango, and butter bean and blancmange, I finally won with cauliflower and butter bean. Realising I had some butter beans in the cupboard and a cauliflower in the fridge, I decided to copy Cassie and make it for my lunch too.

I’m not sure of Cassie’s exact recipe and I don’t know if she added chilli and cheese as I did but this is how I made it:

Cauliflower and butter bean soup

Ingredients
1 cauliflower
1 tin of butter beans, drained
1 red chilli
1000ml vegetable stock
100g cheese
chilli flakes
salt and pepper

Chop up the cauliflower
Put it in a pan with the butter beans, chilli and vegetable stock
Add salt and pepper and chilli flakes
Simmer for about 20 minutes
Add the cheese and blend

I like pizza. This probably isn’t much of a surprise to anyone who knows me. So, I was very excited to receive an email telling me about Nearest Pizza – a website that finds the nearest pizza restaurant to you.

I was hoping it would show all pizza restaurants, including take-aways and independents, but at the moment, the website only includes Pizza Hut, Pizza Express, Strada and Zizzi.

The website itself is very basic and could do with a bit of a re-design but it’s easy to use and fast, and I’d rather have a user-friendly website than a pretty-but-slow-and-confusing one.

I typed in my Ashford, Kent postcode expecting to see Pizza Hut and Pizza Express in the top two results, as they’re about 2 miles away in the town centre. What came up in the results was Strada in Tunbridge Wells which is about 30 miles away (although the website told me it was 1.1 miles away). The second result was Zizzi, also in Tunbridge Wells (also not 1.4 miles away as the website seems to think). Plenty of other pizza restaurants came up in other locations such as Maidstone, Sevenoaks and Rochester, but not one in Ashford.

Oh well, it’s off to Papa John’s (Ashford, 2 miles away, nowhere near Tunbridge Wells) for me.