Vegetarian

Huevos Rancheros

~ Kitty ~ 2 Comments

This post follows on nicely from the last one. The link? Both recipes were shared with me by Emirates cabin crew. A complete coincidence, but not surprising I suppose living where I do. I have decided that the best thing to do with the blog while living in Dubai is to collect international recipes – this recipe is number two in the series and shared with me by Raquel who is Portuguese – although the recipe is Mexican. You can follow Raquel’s travels on Instagram here.

Ingredients

  • 1 Onion
  • 4 tomatoes
  • a red pepper/ capsicum
  • a bay leaf
  • ground black pepper
  • a 400g can of beans (such as red kidney beans)
  • eggs (maybe one per person – how hungry are you?!)
  • chopped coriander or parsley to garnish.

Method

Chop one onion and throw it in a pan with some olive oil. Let it fry for a bit and add four chopped tomatoes, red capsicum to your liking, a bay leave and some ground black pepper. Add some organic tomato puree. Let it cook for 3 minutes. Add a 400g can of beans (I used red beans) and let it cook for 2 minutes. I smashed the beans a bit to release its flavor into the stew. Add the eggs (as many as you like), some salt and cover the pan. Let it cook for 5 minutes. At the end sprinkle some coriander or parsley and voilà!

Serve on a slice of bread.

Yum!

Czech Cherry Cake

~ Kitty
Czech cherry cake
cherry cake
Czech cherry cake

One of my favourite things about living in Dubai is that it is such a diverse international community. I have been trying to decide what to do with the blog while I am here (British seasonal and frugal food doesn’t quite fit) and I think that collecting recipes from around the world may be the answer.

To start me off my Czech friend Tereza has taught me how to make her famously delicious cherry cake. She uses a special flour which she brings over from the Czech Republic, however I have tested the recipe with ‘normal’ plain flour and it still works very well.

Tereza tells me that there are three basic types of flour in the Czech Republic:

  • fine (hladka– which is ‘normal’ white flour),
  • semi-rough (polohruba– the one in the picture, used for the Cherry Cake), and
  • rough (hrubá– close to semolina).

Give the recipe a try and let me know how you get on!

Ingredients

  • 4 eggs, separated
  • 200g caster sugar
  • 150ml vegetable oil
  • a drop of vanilla essence
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 100g plain flour
  • the zest of one Lemon
  • a couple of handfuls of frozen cherries, defrosted

Method

Don’t forget to take the cherries out of the freezer! Pre-heat the oven to 180oC.

Whisk together the egg yolks, vanilla essence, half of the sugar and the oil. Next whisk the egg whites, adding the rest of the sugar until you have ‘soft peaks’ (as though you were making meringue).

Mix together the flour and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the egg yolk mixture and fold in, adding a splash of milk until it is the consistency of thick custard.

Fold in the egg whites along with the lemon zest. The lemon smells divine!

  • egg yolk
  • egg white
  • czech cherry cake recipe

Pour the mixture into a ceramic oven dish. Coat half of the cherries in flour so that they don’t sink too much and put them on top of the mixture, followed by the un-coated cherries.

Bake in centre of oven for 30 to 45 minutes. Allow to cool before cutting into pieces.

  • czech cherry cake
  • czech cherry cake
  • cherry cake

This wonderfully light cake can be served as a dessert with cream or with a cup of coffee.

Janey’s Venerable Vegan Chilli!

~ Kitty ~ 1 Comment

Hurrah, a guest post – thanks Jane! It is so refreshing to be able to share someone else’s cooking and writing styles. I met Jane at a toddler group that I used to go to when I lived in the UK. She is a supermum (although I’m sure she doesn’t always feel like it) who has set up her own business making incredibly impressive party cakes. You can see her fabulous cakes here. This isn’t a cake recipe – I expect that she didn’t want to share her trade secrets!

I really enjoyed testing this recipe. We used smoked paprika because we couldn’t get hold of liquid smoke. The observant amongst you will also note that we missed out the sweetcorn – we were convinced that there was some at the back of the cupboard, but alas there was none. This made a huge amount of chilli – we should have invited the neighbours! I am looking forward to having it again as a freezer meal on a lazy evening.

vegan chilli

I love this “chuck it al in” chilli in January, a veg packed antidote to the over indulgence of Christmas and mercifully quick to temper one’s exhaustion at the thought of what to serve for tea (the eternal dilemma haha)! Protein rich, store cupboard friendly and super yummy with either long grain or wholegrain rice with some home-made guacamole or for vegetarians sour cream with chopped chives/grated cheese. The liquid smoke, if you can get hold of it, adds a super special magic and really does take it to a new level! Lastly, kids actually like this….all three of mine and this is a minor miracle as they all have such different tastes (I have a Venn diagram under a fridge magnet lol).

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 large onion
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 1 red and 1 yellow pepper
  • 2 carrots, peeled and cut into batons
  • 1 broccoli head chopped into florets
  • 1-2 tbsp of chilli powder depending on your spice threshold!
  • 1 tsp of smoked paprika or a splash of liquid smoke
  • 1 tsp of ground cumin
  • 1 tsp of oregano
  • 1 tin of chick peas
  • 1 tin of kidney beans
  • 1 tin of tomatoes (add a little veg stock if required)
  • 1 tin of sweetcorn
  • 1 tsp sugar (I would start with half a teaspoon and then add more to taste)

Method

I used a large, shallow pan with a lid.

1)  Saute the onion and garlic on a medium heat in the olive oil until starting to soften.

2)  Lower the heat and add the carrots and broccoli, plus the peppers, stir frying until they soften a little.

4)  Add the chilli powder, smoked paprika/liquid smoke, cumin and oregano and stir until the veg are thoroughly coated.

5)  Add the tomatoes and chick peas, as well the kidney beans and sweetcorn. Add the sugar and stir through.

6)  Simmer away on a low heat until the veg are cooked through but still a little al-dente and the liquid in the tomato base sauce has thickened (if it is still a little watery add some diluted cornflour to thicken at the last minute or add more liquid if vice versa…either another tin of toms or veg stock).

Serve as suggested above and enjoy!

vegan chilli

Mum’s Vegetable Pie

~ Kitty ~ 1 Comment

This is the delicious vegetable pie made by my mum, which I alluded to in my Bread and Butter Pudding post. It used up all the vegetables we had in the fridge, along with pastry and cheese which were left over from making New Year party snacks. A great using-up meal, and a special treat since I didn’t have to cook that evening (thanks mum!).

What is your favourite recipe for using up Christmas and New Year leftovers?

vegetable pie

Ingredients

  • one leek 
  • one carrot
  • a handful of mushrooms 
  • a handful of green beans
  • a splash of cream
  • a couple of spoons of cream cheese (we used a Middle Eastern cream cheese called Labneh, it is similar to Philadelphia cheese)
  • a small handful of hard cheese (we used stilton)
  • one egg
  • a sheet of puff pastry

Method

Saute the leeks and mushrooms together in oil or butter for a few minutes. Next blanch the carrots and beans and combine all the vegetables in a bowl  with cream, cream cheese and crumbled stilton. When this mixture is cool, stir in the beaten egg (it would be good to keep a little bit of the egg to one side to brush the pastry with).

Lay out the pastry on a baking tray and put the filling on one half (leaving space around the edge to seal the pastry parcel). Brush the edges with milk or egg and then fold the pastry over so that it has a lid and press down the edges with a fork. Brush with egg or milk and top with a grind of salt.
Bake at 180oC for approximately half an hour.

vegetable pie

Aubergine and Preserved Pepper Bake

~ Kitty ~ Leave a comment

This is the first recipe from my new kitchen… in Dubai! Yes, the ‘quiet year’ we had planned after the craziness of last year all went to pot when we moved half way around the world. Our possessions from the UK arrive today, hurrah! We have been rattling around in a rather empty apartment until now. As I have shared with you previously a kitchen with limited resources makes for some creative cooking… as does a  frequently breaking fridge-freezer it turns out. grrr. I am never buying a second hand fridge-freezer again!

There is nothing quite like a broken fridge-freezer to inspire a new use-it-up recipe. Sometimes these dishes are a bit ‘interesting’, however this one I will definitely make again. Past successes have included ‘disaster jam’ (can’t waste frozen fruit). I wasn’t sure what to call this one, ‘disaster vegetable moussaka bread and butter pudding’ – doesn’t have quite the same ring to it!

aubergine

Ingredients

  • Dry bread, buttered
  • Two aubergine (Eggplant), sliced
  • One red pepper
  • Four tomatoes
  • Stuffed peppers preserved in oil
  • Salt, pepper and chilli flakes

Method

Pre-heat the oven to about 180oC.

Fry the pepper and tomatoes in some oil from the preserved peppers (the deliciously flavoured oil is too good to waste).

Place the bread butter-side down in an oven dish.

When the pepper and tomatoes have started to cook down add half to the dish as a layer over the bread. Add some of the preserved peppers, focusing on putting them in any gaps between the bread.

Add a layer of aubergine followed by the rest of the pepper and tomato mixture and the remaining preserved peppers.

Top with the last of the aubergine. Add a spoon of the flavoured oil onto each aubergine slice and season generously with salt pepper and a spice mix of your choice – I used BBQ chilli flakes.

Bake in the oven for approximately half an hour.

Enjoy!

  • eggplant
  • aubergine bake

Vegan Chestnut Stuffing Sausage Rolls

~ Kitty ~ 4 Comments

I love a guest blog post – this isn’t because I’m lazy (much), but because I love discovering and sharing other people’s recipes and writing styles. This recipe comes from the fabulously creative Kate.

Kate is, amongst other things, a Laughter Yoga teacher, a creative writer and seriously skilled at making cakes. Embracing the vegan lifestyle has, if anything, made her more creative in the kitchen and I always enjoying sampling the tasty treats she makes.

So without further ado, and in her own words (and with the help of playdough), here is Kate’s recipe for Vegan Sausage Rolls.

vegan sausage roll

So… near the start of the month I had a vegan sausage roll from Greggs (pleasant warming snack).

But then I got obsessed with sausage rolls!

I wrapped a Linda McCartney vegan sausage in pastry… also good.

Then I made my own stuffing with bagels, chestnuts, pecans, sage, dried cherries and spices and made it into this super fancy braided sausage roll based on some random video that appeared on my newsfeed. And it is the best yet!

I wrote it into my titchy recipes notebook (started in 2002!) but here it is slightly more legibly.

Day one: make the stuffing and eat some of it with some roast potatoes and veg

Day two: turn the rest into sausage rolls.

Special skills needed: adding just the right amount of water to things.

Ingredients:

(Stuffing fills a 15cm diameter, 7cm deep round oven dish)

STUFFING

  • 2x bagels
  • 200g ready to eat chestnuts
  • small handful pecans
  • 8 dried cherries (I like the Urban Fruit ones as they aren’t sweetened)
  • 6 sage leaves
  • pinch of ground nutmeg
  • pinch of smoked paprika
  • sprinkle of mixed pepper
  • sprinkle of mixed herbs
  • water
  • dessert spoon of vegan margarine

PASTRY

(to make three sausage rolls)

  • 180g plain flour
  • 90g vegan margarine
  • pinch of salt
  • cold water to mix

Method:

Day one:

Blend bagels, chestnuts and pecans on a low speed until they are in crumbs/small pieces. Tip into a mixing bowl.

Boil the kettle.

Preheat the oven to 180oC.

Snip cherries into thirds, add to bowl (It is possible that using a different amount of cherries cut into different fractions will also work!).

Skip idyllically into your garden to harvest some sage leaves, wash them, then rip them up and add to the bowl.

Add the spices and smush around with your fingers.

Pour a splurge of boiling water on until the texture looks like stuffing. Add the margarine on top and stir to melt it in.

Cook in an ovenproof dish for 25 minutes.

Day two:

Preheat the oven to 200oC

Make the pastry. Rub margarine into flour and salt. Tip a little cold water in until you get a dough, then roll it out and cut it into thirds. Top tip: don’t go back and forth over your pastry like a steamroller, just push it one way at a time then it won’t go tough.

Place a chunk of stuffing in the middle of each rectangle.

I didn’t have the opportunity to make another batch of pastry to demonstrate the braiding technique… but I did have some play dough and giant chalks (see below images for a step by step guide. ed).

Please do not consume chalk or play dough in a moment of confusion.

Cut the pastry in diagonal lines, wet the edges, braid it and do something rustic with the ends (or find a slightly more detailed tutorial if you aren’t a fan of super chunky pastry!).

Cook for 25 minutes.

Enjoy the wodge-tastic January comfort food goodness! Smile and then you can ingest your chestnuts in jest. Sausage ROTFL. Ha!

😋

braided sausage roll

vegan sausage roll

 

Chocolate Brownie Tarts

~ Kitty ~ 5 Comments

Chocolate Brownie and pastry – why had I not thought of this before?!

One of the things I love about leftovers is that they make me use my imagination. Today I had a very ripe banana and some leftover pastry from making quiche at the weekend. In trawling Pinterest for banana recipes (saved here for a rainy day) I came across some wonderful brownie recipes and an idea was born.

My sister came to taste-test the invention, the verdict was 10/10 when warm and 9/10 when cold. Not bad!

chocolate brownie tarts

The recipe I decided to base the brownie on was a vegan one from the blog ‘recipes from a pantry‘. I halved the recipe because I had only one banana, which also happened to be the right amount for the leftover pastry (more by luck than judgement!). I also didn’t add the additional peanut butter because I wanted the cocoa flavour to stand out. The leftover pastry was just normal ready-roll pastry from the supermarket, so the tarts weren’t vegan. If any of my vegan friends have recommendations for pastry recipes that would be fabulous!

(Update: I have now found out that ‘Jus-Rol’ shortcrust pastry is vegan.)

I have a sneaking suspicion that these would be wonderful with almond butter instead of peanut butter, along with some flaked almond. I will give it a go and let you know.

Ingredients

  • Shortcrust pastry (shop bought or homemade)
  • 1 (very) ripe banana
  • 90 g caster sugar
  • 1.5 tbsp rapeseed or canola oil
  • 1.5 tbsp almond milk
  • 1/2 tbsp smooth peanut butter
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 45 g plain flour
  • 1.5 tbsp cocoa powder, unsweetened
  • 1.5 tbsp chocolate chips, dark (I used 100% cocoa chips which are supposed to be used for drinking chocolate, so very dark!)

Method

Pre-heat the oven to 180oC / 160oC Fan.

Roll out the pastry and use a large biscuit cutter (mine was 88mm) to cut the pastry into rounds. Gently push the pastry into a ‘fairy cake’ tin. If you use a muffin tin (which is bigger) you will need larger rounds of pastry.

Mash the banana into a bowl and then mix in the sugar, oil, milk, peanut butter and vanilla extract. Next, stir in the dry ingredients followed by chocolate chips.

Spoon the mixture into the pastry cases. The brownie only rises a little, so you can fill them almost to the top.

If you have excess pastry then you could add jam to the remaining cases – note that you always need less jam than you think because it bubbles up! If you have excess mixture then you could use paper cases in the same tin and make some little cakes.

chocolate brownie tarts

chocolate brownie tarts

Chocolate Brownie tarts

Ricotta Gnocchi – with lemon, parsley and chilli

~ Kitty ~ 4 Comments

One of the purchases which made up my £10 budget for this week was a pot of ricotta from the reduced section of the supermarket; 250g of ricotta cost me 86p. I hadn’t decided what to do with it when I bought it, but a bit of googling and I had the answer – it was time for me to learn how to make gnocchi! I used the basic recipe from this website – for the simple reason that it used the amount of ricotta that I had and I didn’t want to do any maths! I added fresh parsley from the garden to the mixture and used cheddar cheese because I had no parmesan, apart from that I followed the recipe pretty faithfully.

This isn’t the most camera-friendly dish I have ever made, but it was truly delicious.

Ricotta Gnocchi

Ingredients

  • 8 oz / 250g Ricotta Cheese
  • 3/4 cup / 75 g freshly grated parmesan cheese (I substituted in cheddar cheese)
  • 3/4 to 1 cup / 110 – 150g plain flour, plus more for dusting
  • 1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
  • 1/4 tsp salt
  • 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
  • A splash of lemon juice
  • Black pepper

Method

Combine all of the ingredients – except for the flour – in a bowl and mix together. Add the minimum amount of flour to the mixture and combine until it makes a sticky soft dough. Add the remaining flour a tablespoon at a time, until you have a consistency that you can work with.

Turn it out onto a work surface which is lightly dusted with flour, sprinkle a tiny bit of flour on top then pat it down to a disc about an 2.5cm thick. Cut it into 8 pieces. Next, roll a piece into a log about 1.5 cm in diameter and then cut this into 1.5cm pieces. Repeat with the rest of the mixture.

Ideally, the gnocchi should go into the fridge for about half an hour at this stage. It can keep in the fridge a day or more if you want to be organised and make it in advance.

Bring a large pot of water to boil. Tumble the gnocchi in and cook for a couple of minutes, or until the gnocchi is floating on the surface for around 30 seconds.

Once the gnocchi is drained put some butter, pepper, chilli flakes and lemon juice into the pan and then return the gnocchi to the pan for a couple of minutes. Alternatively the gnocchi can be served with a pasta sauce, such as this favourite of mine (which is the first recipe I ever shared with you!).

Cost

  • 250g Ricotta – £0.86
  • 75g Cheddar Cheese – £0.40
  • 150g Plain Flour – £0.06
  • 2 Eggs – £0.31
  • 1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes – £0.01

Total Cost = £1.64

Ricotta Gnocchi

Vegetable and Chickpea Chilli

~ Kitty ~ 3 Comments

This is the third recipe in my Basic Kitchen series. It isn’t the first vegetable chilli I have put on the blog, nor the most complex or inspired; however, it was cheap and warming and the rice was delicious. Chilli recipes can be very varied, if you fancy having a nosy at the rather different veggie chilli’s I have written up previously the links are below.

This would have been a quick meal, but I had to cook the chilli, put it to one side and then cook the rice. Chilli is always better the next day, so if I had been feeling organised (which I wasn’t) I would have made it the day before and then just had to cook rice for supper.

Vegetable Chilli

Ingredients

  • one onion
  • a small carrot
  • a couple of sticks of celery
  • 1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes (you can add more to taste later if required)
  • black pepper
  • half a tin of tinned tomatoes
  • a tin of chickpeas
  • a stock cube
  • rice

Method

Finely chop the onion, garlic, carrot and celery sticks. Fry in a little oil and a few grinds of black pepper.

When the onions are starting to look translucent add the tinned tomatoes. Crumble the stock cube into a mug and pour over about a half a mug of boiling water, stir and add this to the pan along with the chilli flakes. Put the lid on and let it simmer over a low heat.

After about 10 minutes taste and season if needed. At this stage I removed the vegetable chilli from the pan and put it in a bowl covered with a plate to keep it warm and washed up the pan ready to cook the rice (for those of you who have not seen my recent posts, I have pared down my kitchen to an extreme extent).

Cooking the rice. A number of people have told me that they find it difficult to cook rice; I am lucky to have spent a lot of time when I was at university with friends from Singapore and Hong Kong who gave me some good pointers.

I tend to bulk-buy rice from the international section of the supermarket – either Thai Jasmine rice or Basmati rice. It is cheaper and, I think, tastier to bulk-buy international brands of rice but it is often less processed and therefore needs more rinsing.

Approximately 1/3 cup is a good portion size. Put the rice in a pan, cover with cold water and then give it a swill around; the water will turn cloudy with the starch, pour the water off and rinse again. I find that cheaper rice needs to be rinsed a few times. After rinsing I cover the rice with sufficient cold water that when I put my index finger on top of the rice the water comes to my first knuckle. Add a pinch of salt and less than a teaspoon of oil (I like to use coconut oil for this but it isn’t currently in my store-cupboard) and cook over a low/medium heat until all the water is absorbed at which point it will be done. It is difficult to say how long it takes because it depends on the volume being cooked.

Serve with the chilli and a little cheese if you fancy it.

I cooked extra rice for this meal so that there was enough for a leftovers lunch and a meal of fried rice.

Costs

  • one onion = £0.09
  • a small carrot = £0.04
  • a couple of sticks of celery = £0.08
  • 1/2 teaspoon of chilli flakes (you can add more to taste later if required) – £0.01
  • black pepper
  • half a tin of tinned tomatoes – the cost of this was accounted for yesterday.
  • a stock cube = £0.04
  • rice – six portions = £0.40
  • tin of chickpeas = £0.35

Total = £1.01

No extra utensils this time!

Spicy Tomato Pasta

~ Kitty ~ Leave a comment

This was a very quick, cheap and delicious midweek meal – the chilli was a bit wicked though! I’m not sure that the picture does it justice, I find pasta particularly difficult to photograph (any tips welcome!).

This served two people, with extra for a lunch.

spicy tomato pasta

Ingredients

  • a red onion
  • a large clove of garlic
  • a large red chilli
  • a small handful of olives
  • a teaspoon of mustard seeds
  • a teaspoon of dried basil
  • a generous grind of black pepper
  • a splash of white wine (not compulsory, I just happened to have some open)
  • half a tin of tomatoes (the other half was used in curry yesterday)
  • three tablespoons of creme fraiche
  • a few handfuls of wholewheat pasta
  • grated parmesan

Method

Finely chop the onion, garlic and chilli and fry in a little olive oil along with the mustard seeds, basil and pepper. Chop the olives and add these to the pan along with a splash of wine.

When the onion has softened add the tomato, rinse out the tin with a little hot water from the kettle and add this too. Put the pasta on to cook. Allow the sauce to simmer slowly while the pasta is cooking, adding more water if it looks like it is drying out.

When the pasta is cooked drain it and stir it into the tomato sauce along with the creme fraiche. Serve with grated parmesan on top.