Category Archives: snack

An even better quiche recipe

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Real men don’t eat quiche. Real men eat vegan quiche, then do the washing up followed by giving their partners a back massage.

This is a superior quiche to this one.

A lot of the heavy lifting steps in this recipe can be done ahead of time, indeed the pastry needs to be made ahead of time and refrigerated for while. The cauliflower can also be roasted a day or two ahead if you happen to using the oven already.

In:

  • 1 batch Shortcrust pastry
  • 1 batch Scrambled breakfast tofu
  • 300 g cauliflower, chopped into small florets
  • Handful of green beans, finely diced
  • 1 medium onion, finely sliced
  • 1 tomato, sliced fairly thinly
  • 1 cup chickpea flour
  • 1.5 cups water
  • 2 tabs of light miso
  • handful of your favourite olives (de-stoned if necessary) and sliced
  • 2 or 3 (semi) sundried tomatoes, chopped
  • Olive oil

Do:

Dissolve the miso into the water. In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, miso water, 2 tbsp of the oil. Cover and let it sit for a few hours or overnight. There’s no need to refrigerate it – in fact…just don’t. The keen eyed will note that this step is based on a Soccatta mix.

Once the Soccatta mix is ready…Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

Roast the cauliflower. Place in a bowl with a splash of olive oil and coat well. Place on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until softened and slightly charred. Put to one side.

Whilst roasting, add a teaspoon of oil to a pan and fry the onions for about 3 minutes until they start to caramelise. Meanwhile, put a small saucepan of water on to boil.

Once the water is at a rolling boil add the chopped beans and blanche quickly. Drain and cool them with cold, running water. We want them still slightly crunchy.

Line an oiled quiche dish with pastry, prick the bottom and bake blind for 15 minutes. Remove from the oven and prepare the filling.

In a large bowl (or use one of the saucepans if big enough) combine the cauliflower, beans, olives, sundried tomatoes, onions, and scrambled tofu. Toss until fairly evenly mixed.

Add everything from that bowl into the pastry shell and gently smooth down until fairly even. Pour the the flour mix over as evenly as possible. Top with the sliced tomatoes.

Bake for 20 minutes. Remove from oven, brush with a little olive oil, place in the oven for a further 5 minutes.

Allow to cool before serving.

Kitchen Note: If you don’t have one of those quiche dishes where the sides can be removed separately from the bottom despair not. The shortcrust pastry has a tendency to shrink slightly so will almost always smoothly pull back from the edges during cooking. Lightly oil the quiche dish if in doubt.

Baked tofu and bean balls

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These balls are ideal for either Loinfruits or as party finger food. They bake to a lovely dark golden colour. To ensure that they were easy to remove from the tray once cooked The VegHead cooked a batch in a large muffin (or “cup cake”) tray – and used a load of the happy little paper cup cake whats-its. The Loinfruit saw the uncooked balls sitting in the gaily coloured trays before they went into the oven and there was a near riot in the kitchen ….

“Look! It’s cakes for dinner!” , said The Loinfruit
“Oh no it is!”, said the Nasty Ogre, cruelly crushing their happiness *

Ingredients:

  • 1 block of medium tofu
  • 1 cup of giant Baked Beans
  • 2 slices of bread, finely crumbed
  • 1/3 cup of cashews, finely crushed
  • 1/3 cup of sunflower seeds, finely crushed
  • 1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh dill
  • 1 tablespoon of finely chopped fresh parsley
  • 2 tablespoons of olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons of light tahini
  • 1 tablespoon of tamari
  • pepper to taste

To do:

  • Mash everything together to an even mixture
  • If too wet, crumb another slice of bread and mix through thoroughly
  • Form into firm balls of approximately 5cm diameter, place into prepared paper cups
  • Bake in a hot oven for 35 minutes

(*) “The Nasty Ogre” is a.k.a. “The VegHead”

Shittake Mushroom dip

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You have to take a break from hommous every now and then don’t you? Though the Bamix eventually gets a little itchy for some blending.

What’s in the fridge?

What’s in the fridge?

Hmm….some nice shittake mushrooms, and a bag of fruity brown gilled mushrooms too…

Mushroom dip….yumm….

The following is how The VegHead would make it next time, as the first time it ended up a little sloppier than the ideal consistency.

Need to find in your fridge:

  • 4 to 6 large shittake mushrooms, chopped
  • an equal amount of open gilled “standard” mushrooms, chopped
  • an equal amount of pine nuts (by volume), fairly finely crushed
  • 2 thin slices of red onion
  • 1 small clove of garlic
  • olive oil
  • teaspoon of dark sesame oil
  • teaspoon of mirin
  • 1/2 teaspoon of tamari
  • tablespoon of tahini
  • ground pepper

きのこののり作成方式 (*)

  • Lightly sauté the shittake mushrooms together with the garlic, onion and pepper in a little olive oil
  • Blend the cooked shittake mushrooms etc together with the raw mushrooms.
  • Add the nuts, and the sesame oil, mirin, tamari and tahini. Continue blending to a smooth paste

Store in a covered container in the fridge, lightly drizzled with a little more olive oil. Try to finish it within 3 days of making.

* Roughly translates as “The method of making mushroom paste”

Potato and bean balls

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The Larger Loinfruit polished off nine of these together with a salad for dinner, and had to be dissuaded from stealing a tenth off the plate of the Smaller Loinfruit, who isn’t as keen on them and who would have been happy to foist one off his plate if he could have got away with it.

These balls cook to a lovely light golden colour, however their popularity meant there were none left to pose for the camera so you’ll just have to take The VegHead’s word for it. Perhaps next time the potato paparazzi will be in town.

All well as keeping Larger Loinfruit fed, these are a good grown up party finger food, and can be made and refrigerated ahead of time and placed into the oven 20 minutes before you need them.

When you roll the balls, aim for a bit smaller than a squash ball.

The following makes about 12 balls, depending on how large you make them.

You will need:

  • 1 large potato; peeled, boiled and mashed
  • 1/2 cup of cooked butter beans (or haricot)
  • 1/4 cup of finely ground roasted cashews (not salted variety)
  • 1 slice of wholemeal bread, finely crumbed
  • pinch of black pepper
  • pinch of cumin powder
  • 1 fine slice of red onion, finely chopped
  • 1 clove of garlic, minced

Get all dressed up and go to the Potato and Bean Ball:

  • No black tie required, but roll up your sleaves and make sure someone is around afterward to turn on the tap so you can wash your hands
  • Lightly saute the onion and garlic in olive oil
  • Mash all ingredients together
  • Knead lightly until mixture binds fairly well
  • Form into evenly sized balls
  • Grease a baking tray lightly with olive oil
  • Lightly brush each ball with same oil
  • Bake in a medium oven for 15-20 minutes

This recipe is courtesy of SheWhoMustBeFed

Broad bean hommous

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SheWhoMustBeFed fffzzzzzz’d up the pressure cooker today, so it was the VegHead’s duty to follow up with some hommous. Unfortunately, SheWhoMustBefed was doing three batches of beans; adzuki, chickpea and butter beans. The adzuki beans got done first, leaving The VegHead with an hour before having anything to do as the chickpeas weren’t ready.

How to pass the time?

Fiddle…fiddle……fiddle…..

Decided to lightly saute the garlic and cumin for the hommous.

Then had time to think and so decide to use half and half chickpeas and broad beans.

Fortunately by then the chick peas were ready!

What went in…

  • half a cup of cooked chick peas
  • half a cup of blanched broad beans
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1/2 teaspoon of cumin powder
  • olive oil
  • french walnut oil
  • 1 tablespoon of tahini
  • 1 tablespoon of water
  • juice of 1/2 lemon

Doing….

  • very lightly saute the garlic and cumin in a little olive oil
  • blend / bamix everything together

SheWhoMustBeFed’s Nutballs

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Warning – these are not in fact vegan, as they contain honey. You could swap the honey for maple syrup if you wanted. Though we can’t attest to the affect that might have on consistency or flavour – but maple syrup is yummy so it should be lovely.

These are truly moreish. Eat one…and you’ll want more, more, more…oh dear you’ve split in half.

You will need:

  • 250g pack of almonds
  • honey (or not)
  • cashew butter or peanut butter
  • dessicated coconut

The way of making the balls:

  • Roast the almonds, probably for about 15 minutes or so, at a moderate temperature.
  • Allow to cool slightly, and grind to a medium grind with a food processor. Get a dessertspoon and get as much honey as you can get on it and add to the almonds. Repeat.
  • Using the same spoon (or a clean one if you’re really fussy), take your nut butter and do exactly the same as you did with the honey, including the repeat.
  • So now you have ground almonds with 2 big spoons of honey and 2 big spoons of nut butter.
  • The mixture needs to be combined and will be quite sticky, so you need adequately strong wrists. Remember to roll up your sleaves before you start or you’ll need to call out to a friend to help you do so afterwards.
  • Roast some of the dessicated coconut for rolling. This will burn very quickly once it starts to roast so you need to watch it. The dessicated coconut should be fairly finely ground. If it is a coarse grind then make it just a bit finer with a bit of a go in the food processor. Keep the coconut handy in a bowl.
  • Form the almond mixture into balls about an inch or so in diameter, but you can make them whatever size you like really. Roll each ball in the roasted coconut.
  • Eat.
  • Store any that may be left in the fridge……if they last that long.

Tomato Soup in 15 minutes

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I just don’t get why anyone would want to eat canned tomato soup. This takes 15 minutes at the most, which I reckon must be only a little longer than it would take to open a can and heat it.

SheWhoMustBeFed often tries to avoid too much wheat and this filling lunch can be eaten with or without bread. This recipe feeds one; or two if accompanied by toast/fresh bread.

Ingredients & Preparation

  • 3 thin slices of onion, finely chopped
  • 1 clove garlic finely chopped
  • 1 teaspoon each chopped fresh rosemary, thyme
  • 3 medium/small tomatoes, chopped
  • 1 Tbspn miso
  • 1 Tbspn tomato paste
  • Tspn ground pepper
  • ½ cup of water or light stock
  • Olive oil
  • When serving: (thick) balsamic vinegar

Method

  • Lightly sauté onions, garlic and pepper.
  • Meanwhile lightly blend rest of ingredients
  • Add to pot, stir thoroughly and simmer on low for 10 minutes
  • Serve in wide, shallow bowl.
  • Drizzle balsamic vinegar in a thin spiral swirl from the centre to the outside
  • Serve with hot crusty fresh bread.

Hommous…Hommos…Hummus…its all just chickpea paste to me

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The basic ingredients of hommous are something I’ve known for a while. Recently I have however discovered “the trick” that suddenly made for a much more evenly blended and light consistency.

What you need

  • A lemon
  • Light tahini
  • One clove of garlic
  • Water
  • Olive oil
  • Chick peas
  • (Optional) chopped parsley

What to do

Here’s “the trick”….what I used to do was blend up the chickpeas first and then add everything else. The resulting hommous was OK, but it could have been smoother IMHO. So then I thought….” Hhmm…..Tahini Sauce has almost the same ingredients as hommous only without the chickpeas…..I wonder…..”

As an aside; if you’ve never made Tahini Sauce then here’s what happens: When you blend tahini, water and lemon the mixture first gets amazingly gooey and then as you add just a l-i-i-i-i-ttle bit more water it suddenly changes consistency and becomes more a mousse consistency. You have to see this happen to understand the change.

So….blend in this order:

  • half a lemon worth of lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup of tahini
  • 1 small clove of garlic
  • (optional) a few sprigs of chopped parsley
  • water (until it gets the mousse texture). At this point the mixture should be slightly “wet” as the chickpeas will then thicken the mixture.
  • THEN….add and blend the cooked chickpeas until the mixture thickens to the desired consistency – I figure you’ve all bought ready-made-hommous so you know what you’re aiming for. Remember that after refridgeration the mixture will thicken slightly.