Vegan Monday Archives | Planet Veggie

Mexican Vegan Crustless Quiche

24th February 2014 1 Comment

I was supposed to be writing a script so, obviously, instead I did my washing, sent photographs of wallpaper to the decorator, went to the Post Office, emptied the cat litter tray and, most importantly, satisfied my urge to make a vegan crustless quiche.

I’ve had the urge to make a vegan crustless quiche ever since my friend Gemma said on Facebook she wanted to make one. This made me curious so I found this recipe for Mini Crustless Tofu Quiches, which Gemma duly made and pronounced delicious.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any firm silken tofu in my local supermarket and buying nutritional yeast would have meant a trip to Holland and Barratt, so I had another look for a recipe that didn’t require tofu and found this recipe for Mexican Vegan Crustless Quiche which, as well as being dairy-free and egg-free, it’s also gluten-free which, although I don’t have to avoid gluten, lots of my friends do.

I’ll have to admit, I was dubious. But I’m going to take back my dubiousness because this was amazing. It’s firmer than an eggy quiche but because it’s the eggyness that’s the worst bit of a quiche for me, that’s fine by me.

The way I did it, is pretty much the same as the original recipe, except Laura’s uses coriander (bleurgh) and she mixed up the chickpea flour and water mixture with the vegetables, whereas I didn’t have a bowl big enough to do that in, so I poured the vegetables into the dish, then poured the chickpea flour mixture over the top.

Mexican Crustless Chickpea Quiche
(adapted from www.sprint2thetable.com)

4 cups loosely packed cups spinach, de-stemmed and chopped
1 large tomato, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
1 red chilli, chopped
1/4 cup red onion, chopped
2 cups chickpea flour
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp olive oil
1.5 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper, to taste
3 cups water

Pre-heat oven to 200C. Lightly grease a 9″ spring-form pan or other oven-proof dish.

In a medium bowl, mix together the vegetables.

Using a handheld blender or food processor combine the chickpea flour, oil, cumin, salt, pepper, garlic and water. Blend until smooth and frothy.

Pour the vegetables into the ovenproof container, then pour the chickpea mixture over the top.

Bake for around 45 minutes until the quiche is brown on top, and a cake tester comes out clean. Allow to cool slightly before removing from the dish.

Serves 6.

Approximate nutritionals (per slice): 175 calories, 4.8g fat, 24.1 carbs, 5g fiber, 5.7g sugar, 8.8g protein

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Vegan Monday: Black olive and sundried tomato bread

26th November 2013 No Comments

Okay, I slipped up with the lip balm thing again. And the hot chocolate thing. I am officially rubbish at Vegan Monday.

Still, breakfast (fruit), lunch (leek and potato soup) and dinner (leftover aubergine and lentil curry from last week) were all vegan. As were the snacks – I had peanut butter bars, raw vegan chocolate fudge and I made some black olive and sundried tomato bread in my new bread machine. This bread was so delicious it was fine on its own without any butter – it was Vegan Monday, after all.

Sundried tomato and black olive bread
(recipe taken from Bread Making Recipes)

2 tbsp olive oil
240ml water
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
150g strong wholemeal bread flour
300g strong white bread flour
1 tsp fast-acting dried yeast
75g sundried tomatoes, chopped (if in oil, pat off the excess with kitchen roll)
70g pitted black olives, chopped

Add all the ingredients except the sundried tomatoes and olives to the bread machine in the order set out in the instructions that came with it.
Set the bread machine to the basic setting, light crust and press start.
When the bread machine bleeps for extra ingredients, add the sundried tomatoes and olives.
When the bread machine’s done its thing, remove the bread and leave to cool on a wire rack.

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Vegan Monday: aubergine, tomato and red lentil curry

18th November 2013 No Comments

Hooray, it appears I made it successfully through a Vegan Monday for a change. No lip balm or hot chocolate slip-ups this time. I had fruit for breakfast, mulligatawny soup for lunch and a vegan chocolate peanut butter bar as a snack along with my vegan hot chocolate.

And also for a change, I made a proper dinner and didn’t just heat up a frozen burger-type product and serve it with chips and beans.

Go me.

Aubergine, tomato and red lentil curry (serves 4)
(Adapted from Easy Vegan)

3 tbsp olive oil
1 large aubergine, chopped into large chunks
1 red onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp ginger, grated
250g cherry tomatoes
6-8 curry leaves
1 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp chilli powder
1 tbsp tomato puree
125g red lentils

Heat 2 tbsp of the oil in a large frying pan and add the aubergine. Cook the aubergine until it darkens and the oil it’s absorbed seeps back out, about 10 minutes. Remove the aubergine from the pan and set to one side.
Add the remaining oil to the pan and add the onions, garlic and ginger and cook for 5 minutes. Add the cherry tomatoes and cook for a few minutes until they start to soften and collapse, then remove them from the pan and set aside with the aubergine.
Add the curry leaves and cumin to the pan and cook for a few minutes, as the curry leaves pop and crackle. Add the chilli powder, tomato puree, 500ml water and the lentils and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the lentils are tender but retain some bite. About 5 minutes from the end, stir in the aubergine and tomatoes and heat through.
Serve with basmati rice.

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Vegan chocolate peanut butter bars

18th November 2013 No Comments

I’m still experimenting with the peanut butter bars. It’s so easy to just add whatever you’ve got available and you can’t go wrong really.

Today, I had a flash of inspiration and added 50g Seeds of Love and some Choc Shot. Delicious.

I’m not sure where you can buy Seeds of Love, except online – I got mine in a Nutribox a while back but you could add any nut and seed mix. Choc Shot is available in most large supermarkets (I bought mine in Tesco), on the hot chocolate shelf. If you can’t find any, I would imagine cocoa powder would do.

Vegan chocolate peanut butter bars (makes 9 bars)

100g granola
50g Seeds of Love
4 tbsp golden syrup
4 tbsp peanut butter
1-2 tbsp Choc Shot
1 tbsp wholemeal flour

Slowly heat up the golden syrup, peanut butter and Choc Shot in a saucepan.
Mix together the flour, granola and seeds.
Add the flour, granola and seeds to the peanut butter/golden syrup/Choc Shot mixture and stir until it’s thoroughly mixed.
Press down into a 8” square tin and bake at 180C for about 10 minutes, until the edges are turning brown (keep an eye on it, as it can burn easily).
Score lightly into 9 bars and leave to cool.

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Vegan Monday: might as well call it Junk Food Monday

11th November 2013 2 Comments

As the title says, I might as well call Vegan Monday, Junk Food Monday. Or move Vegan Monday to another day – a day when I can actually be bothered to cook something, rather than just see what there is in the freezer to heat up and serve with chips and beans.

Before I get on to what I had with my chips and beans though, let’s go back a bit. Remember last week I realised I hadn’t actually been vegan for any of my Vegan Mondays as my lip balm wasn’t vegan? Even the one I’d got from VegFest? Well, I solved that little problem by popping into Lush after university one day and got myself a little tub of None of Your Beeswax. Problem solved, yay!

So, what did I do this morning? Yeah, got up, brushed my teeth, put on some lip balm … from the bathroom cabinet … which wasn’t vegan, dammit! I’m going to have to buy pots of these to put everywhere although at £5.75 a pot, that’s going to make Vegan Monday quite an expensive challenge.

Anyway, on to dinner. I’d picked up some of Redwood’s (or whatever they’re called now) Fishcakes that I hadn’t had before.

I’d actually wanted some of their fish steaks, that I love, but Holland & Barrett didn’t have any, so I thought I’d give these a go. They were crispy and had a subtle fish flavour that wasn’t artificial or overpowering – I’ll definitely have them again.

Er, yes, they were served with chips (Tesco jacket wedges, to be specific) and baked beans.

Next Monday, I’m going to try harder not to a) use lip balm containing beeswax; and b) eat chips and baked beans.

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Vegan Monday: stew and dumplings and yet another confession

5th November 2013 1 Comment

After my confession on Sunday about using non-vegan stock for my soup, I thought surely I’ve got it sussed now – there can’t be any more hidden dangers can there? Then, while I was applying lip balm for what was probably the seventeenth time on Monday, it occurred to me it probably wasn’t vegan. There weren’t any ingredients on the tube so I did a bit of a Google and, yep, it contained beeswax and therefore wasn’t vegan. So that meant I’ve failed five out of five Vegan Mondays so far. It also meant when I did my Vegan Month five years ago, I almost certainly failed every single day of it. Bummer.

But, then, aha! I thought, I’ve got a tube of lip balm given to me at VegFest the other week and all products at VegFest have to be vegan. It’s the law and everything.

So, I went downstairs (I have lip balm in every room, every bag and every pocket) and retrieved my vegan lip balm. Thing is though, when I checked the ingredients, it contained the dreaded beeswax. But how could this be when I got it at VegFest?

I emailed VegFest (letting them know it was only a slight niggle to me as I’m not actually vegan, just a mere vegetarian, but thought they should probably know) and Tim – the organiser – replied immediately apologising, saying yelp.co.uk (who’d given me the lip balm as a freebie for signing up to the mailing list) had signed a declaration stating they’d only bring vegan products and he’d make sure this never happened again. Naughty yelp.co.uk.

So, I went into town to buy some vegan lip balm. I went into The Body Shop and asked if they had any. One of the assistants said yes, they’re all suitable but another assistant peeled back the label of one and saw beeswax and put it back. She picked up another one, peeled back the label and said this one’s fine, there’s no beeswax in it. Yay, I thought, that’s Vegan Monday re-veganised.

I got home, peeled back the label to have a look for myself and saw beeswax clearly stated on it. Sigh.

Oh well, I’ll buy some online.

Anyway, enough about my lip balm dilemma. Here’s what I ate for this week’s Vegan Monday.

Vegan stew and dumplings

It’s a stew I made for the first time last year but this time I made my own dumplings using Tesco’s own vegetable suet (which is vegan).

The photo above is from last year’s blog post (which is also where you’ll find the recipe). I made the stew last week and this week had the leftovers with Linda McCartney sausages and green beans.

Even The Meat Eater didn’t feel the need to un-vegan it for a change.

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Vegan Monday: vegan haggis stuffed mushrooms

21st October 2013 No Comments

Today’s Vegan Monday went a lot better than last week’s did. This time, I’d been to Tesco at the weekend, so I was prepared. No more ‘accidentally’ drinking non-vegan hot chocolate; Tesco had in some Sweet Freedom Choc Shot Liquid Chocolate that I’d lusted over at VegFest the other week (it wasn’t available to buy there at the time, it was only available to win and I only managed to win a bottle of juice and a bottle of cardamom flavoured tomato sauce).

I had fruit for breakfast and I’d also been to the farm shop at the weekend to buy a leek to make leek and potato soup for lunch. Snacks weren’t a problem either, as I made some chilli peanut butter granola bars.

For dinner, I made a vegan haggis stuffed mushroom, topped with spring onions and tomato. Usually I have side vegetables and potatoes with butter or salad cream, but tonight my condiment of choice was jalapeno and chilli relish – it worked well.

Vegan haggis stuffed mushrooms (serves 2)

1 packet Macsween Microwaveable Vegetarian Haggis
2 large field mushrooms
1 spring onion, sliced
2 small tomatoes, sliced
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Brush the mushrooms with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Bake – covered – at 180C for about 15 minutes.
Stuff the mushrooms with the vegetarian haggis and top with the spring onions and tomatoes.
Return to the oven – uncovered – for another 15 minutes.

Main Meals

Vegan Mondays: Aubergine stuffed with mushroom and chilli

8th October 2013 No Comments

I woke up yesterday morning and decided that, from now on, Mondays would be vegan days. First things first though, and I went downstairs to check if my hot chocolate was vegan. It wasn’t, dammit! But, aha! I had a tub of cocoa in the cupboard, which is vegan. Okay, so it’s two years out of date, but never mind.

Lunch wasn’t a problem. I’d got up so late, I didn’t have any. I felt a bit peckish in the afternoon though so decided to have some cup-a-soup. Then I realised cream of asparagus cup-a-soup probably wasn’t vegan (the ‘cream’ bit gave me a hint), and it wasn’t, but I had a packet of Ainsley Harriott’s Hot & Sour cup-a-soup, which was (as far as I could tell – I’m not an expert at reading labels for non-vegan ingredients). Yay, good old Ainsley.

Dinner was easy, all I had to do was make something and leave out the ‘cover it in cheese’ bit. I had an aubergine and some mushrooms in the fridge, so mushroom-stuffed aubergine it was. The Meat-Eater says veganism is ‘unnecessary’, so he covered his in salad cream and Flora and said it was ‘okay-ish’ (if he hadn’t read on Facebook I was having a vegan day, he’d have said it was nice).

Aubergine stuffed with mushroom and chilli, topped with herby breadcrumbs (serves 2)

1 aubergine, sliced lengthways
2-4 mushrooms, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
1 chilli, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 slice of bread, crusts removed
1 tsp thyme
salt and pepper

Score a criss-cross pattern in the aubergine and brush with oil. Bake in the oven at 190C for about 20-30 minutes, until tender. Scoop out the insides and chop.
Whizz up the bread to make breadcrumbs and add the thyme.
Fry the mushrooms in the oil for about 5 minutes.
Add the chilli and garlic and fry for another couple of minutes.
Add the tomato and chopped aubergine.
Season with salt and pepper.
Pile the aubergine/chilli/mushroom/tomato mixture on the aubergine skins.
Top with the herby breadcrumbs.
Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes, until the breadcrumbs are golden.