Vegetable Stew

Some good hearty vegan food right here. I forgot how much I enjoyed having stew, to be honest with you I haven't eaten it much at all but after making it yesterday and it being so cheap and easy, I get the feeling it will become a regular. I like it really chunky, for some reason I feel like I'm eating more food and then I feel more full.

The best thing about stew is you can literally put whatever you want in it. Just empty all the vegetables you own into a pan and bam - delicious. It's also great for if you have guests coming round, it doesn't require too much attention so you have time to prepare everything else (like yourself).



Making the Stew:
(Measurements are estimates as this was made up as I went along)

Boil two medium potatoes in a pan of boiling water. Use enough water to cover the potatoes completely. I would advise keeping your potato chunks big so you get a chunkier stew.

This part is literally up to you - add whatever and as many vegetables as you please. I added cabbage, mushroom, sweetcorn and Tesco mixed frozen vegetables (carrots, peas, green beans and pepper). The potatoes will take around 10 minutes to boil, add the other vegetables in depending on how long they take to cook. Cabbage takes around 7 minutes to cook so was added 3 minutes after the potatoes.

(Sorry for the blurred picture) Empty out 1/4 of the water or so that the water is level with the vegetables and they are not completely submerged. Then add 1 tbsp vegetable bouillon and 2-3 tbsp gravy granules depending upon your required thickness. Stir the bouillon and gravy granules in well.

Leave the mixture to simmer for 10-15 minutes so that the liquid thickens and the vegetables absorb the flavoured water. Then serve and enjoy.


Serves 2






Tip for this meal:

Make in advance and leave the stew to cool completely and then reheat in the microwave for 3-4 minutes. The stew will be much thicker and the vegetables will be extremely flavoursome.

If you do not like the flavour of gravy an alternative would be to used bouillon stock and thicken with cornflour.

Chocolate Truffles

Chocolate is life. Let's get that out there early. So my Aunty bought me a vegan recipe book for Christmas which I was browsing through yesterday. In it is a recipe for a chocolate mousse which looked devine. I decided I would make that today but then found a 'variations' page which gave alterations to the recipe to make truffles and the truffles looked a lot more fun. So here we are now, with a fridge full of truffles in mini cupcake cases. Just a pre-warning - I quarted the recipe and got 10 balls. I will reveal the recipe for the yummy balls below but I have had an idea I want to mention first...

These balls are quite soft so I would recommend quick handling and storing in the fridge. As they are so soft I've decided that, hopefully tomorrow, I will go and get some more chocolate and coat them in melted chocolate to create a hard coating around the soft centre. More like a lindor chocolate. So hopefully, I can give that a go tomorrow and add pictures and comments to the end of this. If they go well they will be so good. The chocolates currently sit at around 60 calories each but we will have to see once I've added yet more chocolate. Everyone needs a treat once in a while.

These truffles are good because they're simple. Four ingredients: tofu, chocolate, vanilla essence and icing sugar. Not difficult ingredients nor are they weird ones that no one ever has in their cupboards. I hate recipes like that - a thousand ingredients that you've never heard of let alone have in your cupboards. But on to the recipe.

Making the chocolate truffles:

So the ingredients:
350g tofu - preferably silken
275g vegan chocolate
225g icing sugar
1 TSP vanilla essence
Optional: 2 tbsp amaretto/few drops almond essence

Place the tofu in a food processor or mash it by hand with a fork until the texture is smooth.

Sift the icing sugar into the tofu mixture and combine until well mixed. Then add the vanilla essence to the mixture.

Melt the chocolate in a double boiler, stirring frequently until smooth. Pour into the tofu mixture and beat by band to combine. Place in a dish to chill for 2 hours in the fridge.

After the chilling time, work quickly to roll the mixture into several small balls. If you have them available, drop the balls into mini cupcake cases. I quartered the recipe so yours will make more than this.

Sift either icing sugar or cocoa powder over the top of the balls for decoration. And viola!

Chocolate Coated Truffles:

Melt two rows of chocolate (80g?) in a double boiler, stirring until smooth.

Get your truffle balls from the fridge and roll them around in the chocolate with a spoon.

Coat all of the balls and drop them back in to the mini cupcake cakes with a spoon.

Sift cocoa powder or icing sugar over the top of the balls before they harden and then place back into the fridge to chill and there should be a hard chocolate coating with a soft centre.

Gammon Style Roast

Okay so Holland and Barrett can be an expensive shop to buy from BUT i urge you to pay it regular visits. The original price is often close to £3 and above but they discount their products often and they discount them by a lot usually. I bought this gammon Style Roast for £1.12 and it would serve me four roasts minimum. With this I also bought some vegan sausages wrapped in bacon for 87p, they were both Christmas stock so on their way out but they can be frozen for up to a month so they still have good use in them. This is just a quick post to show you how I used my gammon steak and still kept my meals relatively healthy.
Image: vbitesfood.com

Gammon Roast with 'Pigs in Blankets':

The most obvious use for this is to just cook it and have it as a roast - as I did. I cooked up some roast potatoes without any oil to keep them healthy, some Aldi tinned carrots and Tesco reduced cabbage and broccoli medley. I had one sausage from the sausage wrapped in bacon that I bought and froze the rest for later use. For gravy I used vegan bouillon vegetable powder made into a stock and thickened with cornstarch.

For the whole meal - <500 calories and 38g protein.

Price - <£1 per portion
This includes: 
  1 medium potato
  1/4 gammon joint
  1 sausage wrapped in bacon
  1/3 cabbage and broccoli medley
  1/4 tinned carrots
  1 tablespoon bouillon powder
  1 teaspoon cornstarch

Pulled Pork Sandwich:

Now this was simple. To make this use 1/8 of the entire gammon style roast and literally shred it. I ripped it apart with a fork to make a 'pulled pork' texture. Then simple add in your favourite BBQ sauce - I used Heinz - mix it all up and slap in it a sandwich. This was toasted Tesco wholemeal bread with the pulled pork and spinach. A nice touch would be some melted cheese on top - delicious.





For the sandwich - <300 calories and 19g protein.

Price - <40p
This includes:
  1/8 gammon style roast
  2 slices of Tesco wholemeal bread
  20g of Heinz BBQ sauce
  6 spinach leaves

Mediterranean Fajitas

Fajita Fajita! 
A quick and easy one - mediterranean fajitas. I love fajitas because they're simple to make and you can fill them with what ever veg/flavouring you want. When I was younger, before I was vegan, my dad used to make us fajitas quite a lot but since moving to university and cooking for myself I have only made them a couple of times. Why, I don't know.
This was the first time I had made fajitas this way and it was delicious. Took 15 minutes max, prep and cooking. Vegan fajitas are lower calories and saturated fat than your average meat filled fajitas as it is just packed completely with vegetables. You can't go wrong with vegetables.

Making the Fajitas:

 Add 1-2 handfuls (enough to fill your tortilla wrap) of Tesco frozen Mediterranean chargrilled vegetables to a frying pan. Add oil or some water if it gets dry but it should cook fine on its own as they have a lot of water in them. Cook on a medium heat until defrosted and hot - 3-5 minutes.

Add 1 tablespoon of barbecue rub (or any flavouring of your choice) to the cooking vegetables and stir in for 1-2 minutes. Make sure all of the vegetables are covered in the flavouring.

Assemble your mixture in a tortilla wrap. I included some spinach leaves, grated Violife cheese, Plamil mayonnaise and some red pepper houmous on the side to dip into. Roll your tortilla up and enjoy.

Tip for this meal:

Follow these instructions for a fool proof way to fold your fajita. I know the pain when you go to eat it and it all falls out of the bottom.

Image: Searchpp.com

Healthy Homemade Tofu Nuggets and Chips

Being vegan, I don't miss meat at all. But I do miss chicken nuggets, southern fried chicken and other fattening, fast food things. Not because I want the chicken, its the crispy breadcrumbs and the fact that it's deemed unhealthy which makes me want it even more. Other than shop bought, fairly high calorie vegetable burgers, I haven't really eaten anything of this sort. Recently though, my boyfriend - who is annoyingly trying to put on weight as I try to lose it - has been eating at a lot of kebabs and fast food chains. The fact that I know I shouldn't eat fast food chips and veggie burgers as they are unhealthy has made me crave it.

This morning, I lie on my bed considering what I should make for my lunch - as the boyfriend still sleeps. I run through various options of Aldi vegetable burgers, stir fry, soup or falafel but with what carbs? Mash, rice, pasta, jacket potato, sweet potato? But I just don't want any of them, I can't be bothered to make them as I have no interest in them. I wanted fattening food, things I have black listed in my head. I wanted chips, vegetable burger wraps with heaps of vegan mayonnaise. You know the drill. It was on those mornings.

But as I thought about the tofu in the fridge that I need to use up, I had an epiphany - Tofu Nuggets!

I didn't want to look up a recipe for it as I knew it would involve ingredients I didn't have, or tell me to soak the tofu in egg. So, I thought about the ingredients I had and tried to conjure up a recipe that would work and be delicious. I read online that you can use butter, oil and milk (vegan options obviously) to bind the breadcrumbs instead of egg but all of those are fairly high calorie. I decided to try out my Orgran egg replacer and see if it worked. I didn't have a packet of breadcrumbs so I toasted my Tesco wholemeal bread and scrapped at it so the toasted crumbs fell off. This took a little while as I had to keep re-toasting the bread so I could get more crumbs out of it, so feel free to just use shop bought crumbs if you don't want to spend the time making them yourself.

Making the Tofu Nuggets:

Using Organ egg replacer (or vegan butter/oil/milk if you do not have this) create '1 egg' in a bowl big enough to roll your tofu in.
Use 100g of tofu (extra firm if you have it - I didn't) diced into nugget sized pieces and roll them in the binding mixture, cover them generously. I would suggest doing one piece of tofu through all of the breading stages at a time but it is up to you.

Once the tofu chunk is covered completely, roll it into your bowl of breadcrumbs. Season your breadcrumbs however you like, I added a tablespoon of barbecue rub but this part is up to you. Be generous with your breadcrumbs - the more breadcrumbs the better they taste.

Do this with all of your tofu chunks (I had four). If you have egg replacer and breadcrumbs left, re-dip your chunks into the binding bowl and add even more crumbs!







Your breaded pieces should look like this ---->

Once you've breaded all of your tofu pieces, freeze them for around 10 minutes to make sure all of the breadcrumbs stick to the tofu pieces. When ready, place them on a baking tray with some parchment paper and pre-heat your oven to 200 C. They will take about 15-20 minutes to cook but do keep an eye on them as you don't want them to burn! Turn occasionally so that all of the edges get cooked and go crispy.

Serving suggestion:

Serve with homemade chips and barbecue sauce. Don't feel the need to put oil or anything on your chips when you bake them, they will cook fine by themselves. Just cut them to shape, boil them for 5-7 minutes to soften them and then bake in the oven bare for 20-30 minutes, turning occasionally to crisp up all sides.

Less than 300 calories for the lot!

Tip of the Week:

Cut an extra amount of chips and freeze them. This way when you can't be bothered to make anything and fancy something 'naughty' you can get these straight out the freezer and cook them. I would suggest boiling them before freezing to save even more time, that way they can go straight into the oven and require only minimal attention.

This could also be done with the nuggets. Always make extra of everything!

Chocolate Cashew Cream

As adapted from a recipe from The Blender Girl. The recipe is originally for raw vanilla cashew cream, but me not being a big nut fan thought "oh, I'll just add some raw cacao powder and all will be fine". I was wrong, the cashew taste in this is very strong so I warn you. But on the other hand if you're a nut lover (like my housemate) this may be the one for you. It is healthy, relatively easy as long as you have a blender and cheap!
All you need is cashews, water, vanilla essence, maple syrup and if you want to make it chocolatey like me, some cacao powder. I'm thinking of making some vegan meringues with egg replacer and if you like the nutty taste this would go great with the meringues and some fruit. So keep updated for the meringue recipe!
Nuts are a great source of protein and healthy fats so they're great for us vegans to eat. They're not too expensive, I get mine from Aldi or Tesco and have them as a quick snack after the gym for a protein boost.

Recipe:

1 cup cashews (soaked for 2 hours, or 15 mins in boiling water)
1/4-1/2 water depending on desired thickness
1-2 Tbsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
A pinch of sea salt

For the chocolate version
1-2 Tbsp raw cacao powder

Put everything into a blender and mix until thick and creamy.

Sweet Potato Fries

Not the most beautiful of pictures but I was hungry so I didn't spend time on this pic. So what do we have here? Sweet potato fries! They are so good. If you haven't tried them get down to Aldi and pick up a pack of sweet potatoes for less than £1 and give them a try. They are so delicious and versatile. Mashed sweet potato and normal potato together is divine.
Sweet potatoes have high vitamin and mineral levels, they are particularly high in vitamin A. They carry fewer calories, more fibre and fewer total carbs than normal white potatoes too. But don't forget your normal potatoes as it is a very close match!
With these fries I knocked up some veg in a tomato sauce. It seemed least time consuming and still healthy, using only chopped tomatoes, chickpeas, some frozen mediterranean vegetables, garlic and mixed herbs. I always make enough for more than one meal as it works out cheaper and easier. Most recipes/tins serve 2 so I just save one portion for the next day or later in the day as a quick and easy meal. Makes sense really.

Recipe:
Sweet potato fries
Serves 1

1 medium sweet potato
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon barbecue rub (optional)
1 teaspoon any oil

Pre-heat oven to 200 C.
Wash and cut your sweet potato into wedges.
Spread out on a baking tray and cover with oil, salt and barbecue rub.
Cook for around 20 minutes, turning half way through

Veg in tomato sauce
Serves 2-3

400g tin chopped tomatoes
400g tin chickpeas
A large handful of Tesco frozen mediterranean vegetables
Pinch of garlic powder
2 pinches of mixed herbs

Pre-heat oven to 200 C.
Combine all ingredients in a oven proof bowl.
Bake for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.