Vegan Recipes

 Like this. Various recipes suggest breaking it up so it resemble shredded chicken... not sure I like the idea, never had shredded chicken and I don't see the appeal of it, but the jackfruit 'core' is a little hard, so some mashing goes well here, and the spices combined well. I used this to fill tacos, with the usual salad, tomatoes, guacamole and salsa verde, it was good, and I made several variations ever since, but I now use cans of organic Jack Fruit, they are easy to find in all supermarkets! And I got better at mixing my own spices ;-).

Do you want a carrot soup that taste carroty but not too much? Carrot taste can be a little 'overpowering' and I am tired of seeing so many carrot and coriander soup recipes, so here is a variation with onions and thyme.

1 kg carrots
1 large onion
olive oil
Fresh thyme
salt
vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to season
Coconut Yogurt to serve (optional)

Clean and steam the carrots. In the meantime slice the onion and cook in a frying pan with a little olive oil, salt and a few sprigs of fresh thyme until translucent. Place the steamed carrots and onion in a mixer and turn into a puree. Place into a soup pot and cover with vegetable stock. Simmer on low for 20-30 minutes (the longer the better). Add salt and pepper to taste and serve hot with a few fresh leaves of thyme and, if you like, a dollop of coconut yogurt.

One of the easiest way to cook these notorius vegetables is in a soup, a bit like a minestrone, so that all the flavors from the other vegetables, plus the starch of pasta, 'improve' the distinctive taste of Brussels sprouts.

Chop one onion, half a carrot and one celery stalk with leaves, sauté with a tbsp of olive oil and then add 1.5 l of vegetable stock. Simmer until the carrots are soft and then add the Brussel sprouts, a cube of frozen spinach and a handful of pastina (small pasta like stelline). Simmer until the pasta and Brussels sprouts are cooked, add a little more extra virgin olive oil and black pepper to taste. Easy and yum!

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.

In Lima I heard a lot about quinotto, quinoa cooked like risotto. Many of my Italian blogger friends also  make it, and I though of trying, starting with a classic saffron style 'quinotto'.

I chopped one onion and cooked it with a little olive oil, then I added 450 g of quinoa. Once the quinoa was 'toasted' and 'greasy' with oil, I added one glass of white wine, and then, ladle by ladle, slowly slowly, and stirring often, one litre of vegetable stock. I added the saffron just at the end, when the quinotto was cooked.

How was it? Well, I liked it very much, my son liked it too, but my husband and daughter weren't so sure... they ate it, but are they are not going to beg me to make it again, they prefer risotto with rice :-).

And did you ever try to make quinotto?

These lovely and aromatic little onions can be served hot or cold, as an antipasto or side vegetable.

I should have used little Italian flat onions, like the borrettane, but they don't sell them in NZ so I used some normal pickling onions. Peel the onions, soak in water for two hours, drain and then cook very slowly with a dollop of vegetable margarine (or a tbsp of olive oil), a few fresh sage leaves and a pinch of salt for a long long time. I cooked them in a Le Creuset pot, with the lid on, stirring often. Check to see if you need to add just a little water half way through, but personally I didn't need it, mostly they cooked in their own steam (Le Creuset pots have great lids!!) and they caramelized a little too, becoming sweet and fragrant. All in all they took about 2 hours. Once they were cooked I turned the element off and added a drizzle of Aceto Balsamico Tradizionale di Modena Extra Vecchio (25 year old), covered them again with the lid, and let them rest for 20-30 minutes before serving.

Popular variations include adding cloves, or grilling the onions instead of simmering them (obviously the flat onions are easier to grill than the round pickling onions!).

 At this point I usually add the coconut milk/cream, but I didn't have any, so I used this coconut powder my husband brought me from a trip to Hainan in China (the place is famous for coconut!). he was told to place the content of a sachet in a cup and add hot water to make a hot coconut drink. We did, and it is ok, basically it is just coconut... but I am not really used to drink hot coconut milk, so I added 4 sachets to the soup instead (we still have plenty more). I simmer everything for a bit longer and then added coriander and Vietnamese mint to flavour.

I love this soup!!