Vegan Recipes

Peas are a precious crop for me, I don't like to buy big bags of frozen peas like everyone seems to do in New Zealand (and other countries), it makes them feel 'cheap' and 'common' and an everyday boring side veggie.

I like my fresh peas and I like them to be the main player in a dish, like for risi e bisi, a traditional risotto dish from Veneto, Italy. And the best part of growing them? Is to keep the pods, and as I am a NO-FOOD-WASTE advocate, to use them to make stock, which will be the base of the risotto. So shell the peas and keep the pods, wash them well and place them in a pot with water (I used about 1.2 litres of water for a basket of peas) and rock salt and simmer for at least one hour. You can also add a little parsley or celery leaves to the stock, but not too much as they have very strong flavour. Filter the stock and keep hot. You can also cut the pods into tiny strips and add them to the risotto, but I just gave them to some hungry visiting chickens (big mistake, they are always around my house now!!).



To prepare the risotto chop an onion and saute with margarine or soy butter (olive oil ok but vegetable butter is better for this). Butter should still be bubbling when you add the rice (I used arborio). Stir until the rice is hot then add the peas.





Stir again and then start adding the stock, little by little. If you use a good casserole you can cover the risotto from time to time and let is absorb the liquid, otherwise keep stirring and adding stock until the risotto is ready.

This is the season for plums, and we also have a few last strawberries in the garden, enough to add to smoothies and make them sweet! In fact I love the fact that plums are a little tart, but they do benefit from the strawberry sweetness. As a base I used half apple juice and half coconut water. Perfect breakfast!

And now a few things from my garden!

Something a little different today, not food but a floral face steam for my two teenagers! I have plenty of calendula and lavender in the garden so I picked some petals and put them in a bowl. Then you just need to add boiling water and enjoy a face steam. My kids loved it, and I am planning to dry some of the petals to keep for winter... just need a bit of sun though!!  (PS, the rose is just for fun.. but you could add rose petals too, try the next recipe).

Then the book says: ....place in a marinade made of 1 cup of rice vinegar, 7 tablespoons water and 2½ taspoons sugar. Allow the ginger to marinate one week.

Well, first of all I noticed that I run out of rice vinegar, but I had some sushi vinegar, which already contains sugar and salt. Secondly, and this is my personal taste, I rather use less sugar (and salt) so I did a mixture of half sushi vinegar and half water. Thirdly, I brought the mixture to the boil, threw the ginger slices in, boiled them from a few seconds and turned the element off. I did this simply because I felt safer pickling it this way, and the result was great! I stored the gari in a glass jar in the fridge for one week before using it, now it is about two months old, almost finished, but still very good.

Natural gari (top) and gari coloured with red shiso (bottom)

Ok, this is nothing to do with veggies, but it is so cool to make grissini, I just use some basic bread dough (500g high grade flour, 2 tbsp gluten flour, 300ml water, pinch of salt, brewer yeast and pinch of sugar), add a bit of olive oil and stretch out long grissini which I roll in polenta flour before baking.

Vegetable soup with: yellow zucchini, green zucchini, plum tomatoes, parsley, chives, celery, carrot, silver beet, onions. The onion are really small but I can't grow them any bigger in the bush so I grow them in pots.

Chop, add water (rain water for me, so this too is free!) and salt, then cook. You can add a bit of extra virgin olive oil at the end.

And here is the minestrone. No recipe, just wash, chop and boil, add salt to taste and extra virgin olive oil at the end. So tasty and healthy! Some of the photos are mine, but the prettiest are Arantxa's!

This is a sweet smelling mountain pawpaw. Apparently you can eat the seeds like for passion fruit, but I planted mine (unfortunately it has been really dry and I think that they didn't survive!). For the flesh I just added a few drops of lemon juice and a tiny bit of sugar, and then I let the fruit marinate for a few hours. Very nice for dessert, snack or breakfast (with your cereals).