Planet Veggie

There’s not really enough room for another gadget in the kitchen, but that didn’t stop me buying a slow cooker. I’d been looking at them on Amazon and hearing good things from friends so when I saw this one on the shelf in Tesco for £14, I thought I might as well give it a go.

Of course, then I also needed a cookbook, so I bought a copy of Slow Cooking for Vegetarians and tonight I made the Thai green curry with Quorn.

One thing I noticed about most of the recipes in this book is that you have to fry stuff first. Huh? I thought the whole point of a slow cooker was that you bunged everything in it, went off to do whatever it is that you do all day and, when you get back, your dinner’s ready. Not so, according to this book.

Because it was my first go at slow cooking, I wanted to do everything properly, so I followed the instructions, fried some of the ingredients first then added everything else and left it alone for a few hours. Everything came out beautifully; each vegetable and piece of Quorn soaked up the flavour of the curry paste and coconut, the carrot was wonderfully tender, the mangetout retained its bite, but the red pepper that was in there had disintegrated, leaving only a few bits of skin.

I’m looking forward to experimenting more with my slow cooker – next time though, I think I’ll just bung everything in at the same time without cooking any of it first, or is that a really bad idea?

Slow cooked Thai green curry with Quorn (serves 4)

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1 carrot, thinly sliced
2 celery sticks, sliced
1 red pepper, sliced
1 tbsp Thai green curry paste
1 garlic clove, crushed
2.5cm piece of fresh root ginger, peeled and finely chopped
300ml vegetable stock
100g green beans, halved crossways
2 tbsp soy sauce
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 lime
400g/large can coconut milk
2 x 300g packets of Quorn pieces, thawed if frozen
100g courgettes, sliced
100g mangetout

1. Preheat the slow cooker on High.
2. Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onion, carrot, celery and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until slightly softened but not browned.
3. Stir in the curry paste, garlic and ginger and cook, stirring, for 1-2 minutes.
4. Add the stock, beans, soy sauce and lime zest and juice. Bring just to the boil, transfer to the slow cooker and stir.
5. Cover and cook on Low for 4-6 hours or until all the vegetables are tender. Stir in the coconut milk, Quorn, courgettes and mangetout and cook for a further 1 hour.