Planet Veggie

The Blue Anchor in Ruckinge does fantastic food and last week we went there for lunch to celebrate The Meat Eater’s 40th birthday with his parents. I’d been there before and know how big the portions are: more than enough for two people and some of the meals come on three plates (one for the main, one for the potatoes, and one for the vegetables). Because I had this knowledge, I opted for the jacket potato with cheese and coleslaw (which came with about a lb of cheese on it, along with a massive salad), while The Meat Eater chose their chilli cheese pie (which the owner assured him was superb). The Meat Eater said it certainly was superb, so I decided to recreate a vegetarian version using the Chilli Con Quorn recipe from the Quorn Kitchen Cookbook.

And here it is.

Quorn chilli cheese pie

Ingredients
1 ready made pastry case
Cheese

300g Quorn Mince
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chilli powder
2 bay leaves
400g tin chopped tomatoes
300ml vegetable stock
1 green pepper, de-seeded and chopped
400g tin red kidney beans, drained
2 tsp cornflour
1 tbsp water

1. Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Fry the onion and garlic until soft and light golden brown. Add the Quorn Mince, spices and bay leaves, fry for 3 minutes.
2. Add the tomatoes, vegetable stock and green pepper and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Stir in the kidney beans and cook for 5 minutes.
4. Mix the cornflour with the water to a smooth paste. Stir into the Quorn chilli to thicken. Cook gently for a further 5 minutes. Remove the bay leaves and discard.

Pour some of the chilli into the pastry case (there will be loads left over, so freeze it to use in the future on rice, jacket potatoes or make more pies out of it), top with grated cheese and put in the oven at 200C for about 15-20 minutes or until the cheese has browned.

I served it with purple sprouting broccoli that I never knew went green when cooked.

I did a lot of exercise last week (running, cycling, cardio machines, gym classes) and wasn’t eating enough calories to keep me going, so I thought I’d better make something healthy to snack on and give me energy.

Anita Bean’s Food for Fitness is always the book I turn to when I want to make something tasty, but healthy. It’s primarily a sports nutrition guide, but it also contains over 200 recipes; not all of them are vegetarian but there are plenty that are.

Anita Bean has written numerous sports nutrition books and although I read somewhere that she’s a lifelong vegetarian (with a name like ‘Bean’, you’d have to be really, wouldn’t you?), she hasn’t written a completely vegetarian sports nutrition book which surprises me, as there’s a definite gap in the market there.

Still, this isn’t a sports nutrition blog, so I’ll get on with the recipe for the muesli bars.

Muesli bars (makes 12)

175g oats
75g muesli
150g dried fruit mixture, e.g. raisins, dates, apricots, figs, apple, pineapple
3 heaped tsp honey
2 eggs whites
175ml apple juice

Combine the oats, muesli and dried fruit in a bowl

Warm the honey in a small saucepan until it is runny. Add to the bowl

Stir in the remaining ingredients

Press the mixture into a lightly oiled 18x28cm baking tin. Bake at 180C/gas mark 4 for 20-25 minutes until golden. When cool, cut into bars.

Per serving (1 bar)
Energy 141 kcal
Protein 3.4 g
Fat 1.9g
Carbohydrate 30 g
Fibre 1.9g

I like it when Riverford deliver portobello mushrooms in my weekly organic vegetable box, because that means I can make Reggae Reggae Mushrooms.

Reggae Reggae Mushrooms are my own invention. They’re quick and easy, and you make them like this:

Ingredients (serves 2)
4 portobello mushrooms
Half a pack of halloumi cheese, cubed
Reggae Reggae Sauce

Brush the bottom of the mushrooms with Reggae Reggae Sauce
Put the halloumi on top of the mushrooms
Bake in the oven at 220C for about 30 minutes

A new cookbook, yay! I’d had my eye on The Boxing Clever Cookbook by Jacqui Jones & Joan Wilmot for a while and kept in my Amazon Wishlist and when I saw it was available for 1p, snapped it up.

It’s designed to help you if you have an organic vegetable box delivery, grow your own vegetables or have an allotment. I have an organic vegetable box delivery from Riverford every fortnight so hoped this book would come in handy in those ‘what do I do with this’ moments?

It doesn’t have any photos but it does have a load of tempting sounding recipes. Tonight, I christened the book with their Leek, Potato and Cheese Pie with Filo Pastry.

Leek, potato and cheese pie with filo pastry (serves 6)

105g butter or margarine
700g leeks, washed and sliced
1 onion, chopped
2 medium potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
6 sheets frozen filo pastry, defrosted
50g walnuts, toasted and chopped
175g grated cheese, such as Cheddar or Gorgonzola

1. Melt 25g butter or margarine in a pan. Add the leeks and onion, and sauté, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes or until softened. Remove from the pan and set aside.
2. Melt another 25g butter or margarine in the pan and add the sliced potatoes. Sauté for about 5 minutes on each side until the potatoes are crisp. Season with salt and pepper and add to leeks and onions.
3. Preheat oven to 200C (400F/Gas 6).
4. Melt the remaining butter or margarine in a small pan.
5. Place 2 sheets of filo pastry on a 24cm (9.5”) greased baking tray, allowing the pastry sheets to extend over the edge. Brush with a little melted butter or margarine.
6. Layer the leek, potatoes, walnuts and cheese in the centre of the pastry.
7. Gather the filo pastry up over the centre of the pie to cover top and pinch together to seal.
8. Brush with melted butter or margarine and bake in the oven for about 20 minutes or until the pastry is crisps and golden.

My variations:
I didn’t have enough leeks so topped up with cabbage
I didn’t have any walnuts or other type of nut, so left them out
I layered four sheets of filo pastry into a shallow dish, not a tray
I didn’t mix up the potato and leeks, but put the potatoes down first, followed by the leeks and cabbage, then topped with the cheese
I layered another four sheets of filo pastry over the top (not gathering it up over the centre)

Innocent asked me if I wanted to try out their new veg pots and this morning a courier delivered to me a big box containing four to try, including their brand new Portuguese red pepper piri piri veg pot and a sneak preview of their Thai sweet chilli veg pot that launches in April.

Also in the box was a hessian bag containing fresh thyme and parsley plants (which can be put into an empty veg pot with some more compost and left on a sunny windowsill [remembering to water them every now and then], four wooden forks and some purple napkins with white polka-dots.

Lovely.

Each pot has a cardboard sleeve wrapped around it with heating instructions and on opening today’s pot of choice which was the Innocent Piri Piri Veg Pot, saw a serving suggestion of ‘try adding some cooked prawns’.

THIS KIND OF THING REALLY WINDS ME UP!

Bah.

According to the card that also came with the veg pots, since January their entire rage of Innocent veg pots has the Vegetarian Society’s special stamp of approval. The one I opened didn’t display the special stamp of approval, so I’m assuming that when it does, it won’t suggest serving it with a dead prawn or two.

I heated up my veg pot in the microwave as instructed (you can also heat it on the hob but it recommends it to be heated in the microwave: saves on washing up, too) and had a peek in the pot. Cubes of potato mingled with beans and red pepper in an orangey red sauce. I generally avoid cubed potatoes after an unfortunate experience involving some Bombay potato consumed a few years ago, but I won’t go into that now.

On the cardboard sleeve, it says it’s spicy. There was a hint of paprika but no real spiciness and definitely no chilli kick. Then again, I haven’t got much of a palate, and would definitely fail Masterchef’s taste test.

On the whole, it was fresh and tasty and not like a microwaved ready meal at all (apart from the fact it is a microwaved ready meal, obviously).

Recommended if you’ve forgotten your packed lunch and need something tasty, quick and easy to eat in the office (although I’m not a fan of people eating hot food in offices but I work alone at home and can stink the place out as much as I like).

Nutritional bit:

Naturally low in fat
300 calories
3 portions of your daily veg
High in fibre
Source of protein

Suitable for vegetarians and vegans (if you don’t follow their serving suggestion)

This wasn’t healthy, low fat or low calorie, but it was quick and easy and I’ve just done Janathon, so I don’t care.

It’s yet another recipe taken from the BBC Good Food website and I adapted it by using a 375g packet of ready rolled puff pastry and cutting the ingredients down to 500g potatoes and 200g cheese and using a couple of shallots instead of spring onions. I also glazed it with milk instead of egg.

I know it’s not really the done thing to blow your own trumpet, but I really do think I make the best soup in the world. I certainly make better soup than Tesco’s “3 tins of additive filled tins of flavoured water for £1.50”, and so after making this weeks soup, I was very glad I put those tins down and went off to get a cauliflower instead.

I’m not a massive fan of cauliflower, so wasn’t sure how it would be in a soup, but this soup is WOW.

Spicy cauliflower soup (serves 4)
1 shallot
1 cauliflower, chopped into small florets
1 large potato, chopped into small pieces
1 red chilli, chopped
1,500ml vegetable stock
Approx 100g mature cheddar, chopped
salt and black pepper

Cook the shallot in a bit of the stock for a few minutes
Add the cauliflower, potato, chilli, stock and season with salt and pepper
Bring to the boil and simmer for about 15-20 minutes, until the potato is tender
Add the cheddar and blend

While making tonight’s dinner, I sliced one finger on the mandolin while getting it out of the cupboard, poured boiling water on another finger and burnt my other hand on the oven. The food had better be worth all this pain, I thought.

It was.

You can see the recipe on the BBC Good Food website.

I used normal potatoes instead of sweet potatoes, fresh spinach instead of frozen and I crushed the garlic and left it in the cream with the thyme.

This is an adaptation of the halloumi stuffed peppers dish I made a couple of weeks ago, simply using an aubergine instead of red peppers. It was nice and a good use for the aubergine that came in this week’s organic veg box, but I prefer the red pepper version to be honest.

Ingredients
1 aubergine
25g couscous
100ml vegetable stock
125g halloumi, cubed
olive oil

Method
Cut the aubergine in half lengthways and score with a knife
Drizzle on some olive oil
Bake for 25 minutes at 200C
Meanwhile, pour the stock on to the couscous and leave for 10 minutes, then fork through
When the aubergine is ready, scoop out the flesh and chop roughly
Add the aubergine and the halloumi to the couscous, then pile the mixture equally between the two aubergine skins
Put back in the oven for 15 minutes

I’ve been a bad domestic goddess over the past couple of weeks. I’ve only cooked one meal from scratch; the rest of the time we’ve either eaten out or been living on pie and chips, takeaway pizza, ready-made tortellini with ready-made pasta sauce and garlic bread, although peas did make a brief appearance on the plate yesterday next to the chips.

But now that we’re back in the real world after Christmas, and slacking must stop, I thought I’d better cook something. Trouble is, I couldn’t be bothered to look up any recipes and go shopping. Then I remembered the two red peppers that have been in the fridge for ages but still are remarkably ok and the packet of halloumi and the couscous I bought to make the halloumi stuffed peppers I’d seen on the BBC Good Food website a while ago.

So that’s what I made. Although without the mushrooms, as that would have meant leaving the house to go and buy them.

Delicious.

The Riverford veg box delivery resumes tomorrow, and healthy eating shall be restored.