Planet Veggie

While I was out running yesterday, I had the urge to make moussaka. I don’t know why, as I usually find it a bit of a faff and I’m not especially fond of faff.

I said to The Meat Eater that I was going to make moussaka and he asked why that reminded him of Demis Roussos. I said because it’s Greek? The Meat Eater said yes. I said I could put some Demis on if he liked but The Meat Eater said no. Then I said we could watch Abigail’s Party but The Meat Eater said no to that too.

Never mind, the moussaka was good.

Vegetable moussaka (serves 6)
Recipe taken from Low-Fat Vegetarian Mediterranean Recipes

450g aubergines, sliced
115g green lentils
600ml vegetable stock
1 bay leaf
225g fresh tomatoes, roughly chopped
25ml olive oil
1 onion, sliced
1 garlic clove, crushed
225g mushrooms, sliced
400g can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
400g can chopped tomatoes
2 tbsp tomato puree
2 tsp dried basil
300ml natural yoghurt
3 eggs
50g cheese, grated
salt and black pepper

1. Place the lentils, stock and bay leaf in a pan. Cover, bring to the boil and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the lentils are just tender. Drain well and keep warm.
2. Heat 10ml/2 tsp of the oil in a large, non-stick pan, add the onion and garlic, and cook, stirring, for 5 minutes. Stir in the lentils, mushrooms, chickpeas, fresh and canned tomatoes, tomato puree, basil and 45ml/3 tbsp water. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer gently for 10 minutes.
3. Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Heat the remaining oil in a non-stick frying pan and fry the slices in batches for 3-4 minutes, turning once.
4. Season the lentil mixture. Layer the aubergines and lentils in an ovenproof dish, starting with aubergines and finishing with the lentil mixture.
5. Beat together the yoghurt, eggs and sale and pepper, and pour the mixture into the dish. Sprinkle with cheese and bake in the oven for 45 minutes.

Tonight’s dinner was practically free, made with ingredients from the greenhouse and garden: courgettes, potatoes and peas.

Roasted courgette stuffed with cheese and tomato (serves 2)

2 courgettes, sliced lengthways
4 cherry tomatoes, halved
20g cheese, grated
Olive oil
Salt and black pepper

Score a criss-cross pattern into the courgettes and brush with olive oil
Bake in the oven at 200C for about 15 minutes, until tender
Scoop out the flesh and mix in a bowl with the cheese and tomato, then season with salt and pepper
Pile the mixture back into the courgette skins and bake for another 15 minutes

As courgettes are in season at the moment, I’ve been having courgette soup for lunch every day for the past two weeks made with yellow courgettes from the greenhouse, and green courgettes from Riverford.

This week, the soup has been made from our home grown yellow ones.

I’d never even heard of a yellow courgette before, let alone seen one, but The Meat Eater assured me they were supposed to be yellow and weren’t just unripe green ones.

Yellow courgette soup (serves 3-4)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 onion
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 large yellow courgettes, chopped
1000 ml vegetable stock
30g cheese (I used strong cheddar), diced
chilli flakes (use as much as you want, to taste)
salt and pepper

Fry the onion and garlic in the olive oil
Add the courgettes, stock and chilli flakes
Season with salt and pepper
Simmer for about 15 minutes, until the courgettes are tender
Add the cheese and stir until melted
Blend until smooth

It became something of a tradition last year to pop into the Good Intent in Aldington Frith and have a pint in their beautiful beer garden on the way back from cycling to the beach. Although they have an area set out for dining, I’ve never seen a full menu so didn’t know what type of food they served, or if any of it was vegetarian.

A few weeks ago, The Meat Eater suggested cycling up there in the evening for a drink. I suggested also eating there. Would there be anything vegetarian though, he asked. I said they probably at least do a vegetarian lasagne, I’m sure I won’t starve (I wasn’t aware they had a website at the time).

So off we went. I asked for a menu and not only did they cater for vegetarians, they even have a vegetarian category. I love it when restaurants and pubs have a vegetarian category. This means they do actually care about their customers.

My first choice of red onion and gruyere cheese tart wasn’t available, so I asked for my second choice of leek and wensleydale crumble. I also wanted some chips (I don’t know why, but I always want chips when I eat in a pub) but didn’t know what the portion sizes are like (another nearby pub, The Blue Anchor, serves stupidly MASSIVE portions so no extras are required) so I asked the waitress and she said that they were normal size, but if it was too much for me there wouldn’t be any problem if I left some.

Before I’d even had a bite of my food, the waitress came back and said she was sorry but the wrong topping had been put on my crumble and she’d have to take it away and the chef would make me a new one and I wouldn’t be charged for it. She also said she’d take The Meat Eater’s meal away too and bring him a new one at the same time my replacement meal came. We said that would be a waste of food and I was happy to wait for mine.

My new meal came back very quickly, along with my chips and some mayonnaise in a bowl (another thing I like to see. None of this Hellmann’s in a sachet nonsense). I asked the waitress what was wrong with the previous topping (imagining bits of pig in it or something) and was told that the chef had accidentally put on the apple crumble topping by mistake.

My leek and wensleydale crumble was lovely (and a normal size portion), as was the beautifully creamy homemade mayonnaise.

After we’d finished, we agreed that because the food was so nice, the waitress was so friendly, efficient and helpful, that there was no need for the cost of my meal to be taken off the bill but the chef/landlord said he really appreciated the offer but he wouldn’t take my money.

Exceptional service and food. 10 out of 10.

I’ve got a voucher worth £3.49 that can be exchanged for an Innocent Veg Pot of your choice in any supermarket.

All you have to do to win is post a limerick below and I’ll send the voucher to the composer of my favourite one.

To start you off, here’s the first line (or you can choose your own):

There once was a veggie called Kate

Good luck!

Terms
UK residents only
Competition closes at midnight on Monday 18 July 2011

I get a lot of emails from charities, asking me to promote their event or campaign. I mostly ignore these (unless they’re from Cancer Research UK or other vivisection-funding charities, who get an email telling them why I won’t support them) but last week I got an email from Rebecca Moore from the World Society of the Protection of Animals and included in her email was a picture of a cow

which obviously automatically made her my New Best Friend (unless she’s the Rebecca Moore who was mean to me at school, but she assured me she isn’t).

The WSPA are currently running a campaign called Not in my Cuppa trying to stop the introduction of US style mega dairies into the UK (where cows would spend the majority of their life indoors in very unpleasant conditions).

They’re looking for people to take part in Run to the Beat for them. Unfortunately, I’m doing Folkestone Half that day but if you want to do the race and want a worthy cause to run for, what better than cows?

(Posted also on JogBlog)

Innocent are doing a survey, and would love your comments on vegetarian eating.

You can access the survey here.

When my running’s going well and I’m feeling fit and healthy, that’s when I usually reach for Anita Bean’s Food for Fitness book that has a load of delicious, healthy recipes (not all vegetarian but plenty that are) that are quick and easy to make. Tonight’s was no exception.

Spicy bean lasagne (serves 4)

1 onion, chopped
2 tsp olive oil
1 tsp each of cumin and ground coriander
2 tins (2 x 420g) borlotti beans (or other variety [I used black eye beans]), drained
1 tin (400g) chopped tomatoes
12 sheets lasagne (I actually only used 6)
350g (12 oz) cottage cheese (I used cheddar)
40g (1 1/2 oz) reduced fat mozzarella, grated

1. For the spicy beans, heat the oil in a pan and saute the onions and spices for 5 minutes
2. Add the beans and tomatoes, bring to the boil and cook for a few more minutes
3. Spray a baking dish with oil spray or coat lightly with a little oil
4. Place 3 sheets of lasagne in the bottom of the dish and cover with one quarter of the cottage cheese. Repeat the layers, finishing with the beans and cottage cheese
5. Sprinkle with the mozzarella and bake at 180C/gas mark 4 for 30 minutes

As I was going to be out all day on Wednesday, I’d left instructions with The Meat Eater to rescue the Riverford veg box from the hiding place our nice veg delivery lady leaves our box in if I’m out, and when I got back in late that night, he said ‘WE’VE GOT AN ALIEN VEGETABLE’ and dragged me off to the fridge to show me. I already knew we were getting some kind of weird looking vegetable, as after seeing on the Riverford website this week’s box contents, I’d seen we were getting a kohlrabi and looked up what it was. It’s one of these

and after uploading the photo, I thought it looked familiar and realised it’s the spit of The Running Bug logo.

Separated at birth, eh?

I had a look in The Boxing Clever Cookbook which lists recipes by season and decided to make this, halving the ingredients to serve 2:

Kohlrabi gratin with buttery crust (serves 4)
900g kohlrabi, peeled, halved vertically and cut into thinly sliced semi-circles
3tbsp fresh parsley
Finely grated rind of one lemon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
90g butter or margarine
300ml carton single cream or fromage frais
90g white breadcrumbs
1-3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
120g Gruyere or Edam cheese, grated

1. Preheat oven to 190C/Gas 5
2. Lightly grease 1.5 litre gratin dish
3. Arrange half the kohlrabi in the bottom of dish. Sprinkle with half the parsley and lemon rind. Season
4. Dot kohlrabi with 1/2oz butter or margarine
5. Make second layer with remaining kohlrabi, parsley and lemon rind, and season again
6. Pour cream or fromage frais over the mixture and dot another 1/2oz butter or margarine over the top
7. Loosely cover the gratin with foil and bake for about 40 minutes until kohlrabi is just tender
8. Meanwhile, melt 50g butter or margarine in frying pan, add the breadcrumbs and garlic and fry over a medium heat for 2-3 minutes until crumbs have absorbed butter or margarine and are beginning to go crisp. Season.
9. Remove foil from gratin, first sprinkle over cheese, and then breadcrumbs, and bake uncovered for about another 15 minutes

This must be the first cookbook of its kind. At least, I’ve never heard of anything or seen anything like it before.

The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions is a new cookbook by Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman, authors of 500 Vegan Recipes.

At 272 pages, it contains six sections, each section comprising chapters showing how to substitute for dairy, eggs, meat, animal by-products (e.g. honey and gelatine), gluten, soy, refined sugar and fat.

There are over 200 substitutions and recipes, step by step instructions and plenty of colour photographs. At the back of the book is a handy complete chart of vegan food substitutions.

I think it’s a fantastic book. The only downside is that it’s American and therefore the measurements might be off-putting to some of us over here in the UK (although measuring cups are widely available), and also there are those hard to find ingredients such as seitan, tempeh and liquid smoke that you see so often in American recipes.

But, if you fancy having a go at recipes such as Salisbury Steak with Mushroom, Onion and Sage Sauce, Eggs Benedict with Ham, or Savoury Artichoke Pie, then this book’s for you.