Continuing the theme of accidentally vegan food, here are some other Indian dishes that I cooked during my vegan month. As I utilised a range of ready-made elements these were actually speedy enough to prepare quickly after work too. Firstly from the south of India, the classic masala dosa, and also the classic Gits dosa mix. It's going to be very hard to replicate a proper paper thin dosa at home, but actually the Git's mixes work pretty well even if my dosas were a little on the thick side. I cooked quick potato filling to go in them, as well as a green beans thoran.

I basically used this recipe for the beans, which proved to be excellent; fresh and crunchy, beans and coconut are an excellent combination. The potato masala was a simple mix of a medium potato, carrot, onions and peas with some added flavourings. Firstly fry a couple of teaspoons of mustard seeds in some hot oil until they start popping, and then fling in a small handful of curry leaves, around a tablespoon of ginger paste, a medium chopped potato, a small chopped onion, and a generous sprinkling of salt. Turn the heat down, put a lid on and leave until the potato is virtually cooked through. You can also add a little water if things are starting to stick. Then put a couple of handfuls of frozen peas in, and put the lid back on. Once the peas and potato are fully cooked, add a small handful of roasted cashew nuts, and give everything a good mix. Once the vegetables are done, I made up the dosa mix and cooked these in a non-stick pan. You'll definitely need to work quickly to spread the mix to get it as thin as possible, but even if they are bit on the thick side, they are still very tasty.


Moving further north, I utilised some ready-made Shana parathas to go with my soya mince keema. I always tend to have a packet of these in the freezer as they are very handy for emergency dinners, and on further investigation I also discovered that they are vegan (huzzah). Soy mince, like Quorn, is pretty flavourless so you need to be very generous with your other flavours. For this keema I fried two red, sliced onions in a couple of tablespoons of plain oil, with a couple of bay leaves, a stick of cinnamon, and two cardamom pods. Once the onion was softened and slightly browned, I added 2 tablespoons of garlic/ginger paste, a heaped teaspoon of chilli flakes, and good sprinkling of salt. This was all cooked over a medium heat, until the onions were nicely browned. At this point I added 3 teaspoons of garam masala, and 1 teaspoon each of ground coriander and ground cumin. After allowing the spices to fry for a bit, I tipped in around 300g of vegan soy mince. Once everything was well mixed and heated through (around 10 minutes), a couple of handfuls of frozen peas went in, and I left everything to simmer gently until they were cooked through. You should end up with a dry and spicy keema, which can be neatly scooped up by some hot off the pan parathas.

So there you have it, two pretty speedy dinners, which are full of flavour and spice and just happen to be vegan.

So here's a recipe that falls into the accidental vegan category. Home made baked beans form an excellent brunch option, and are more satisfactory than just pouring some out of  a tin (though the work of Mr Heinz has its place too). Making them means that you have the option of adjusting the levels of seasoning and adding some extra flavours and spices too. For this batch I added a little chilli, but soy sauce, thyme, and mustard have all made appearances previously (though probably not together). Using tinned cooked beans might not seem quite in the spirit of things, but it does make this a pretty excellent meal to make from stuff in the cupboard, and without the need for soaking things overnight. I think a key aspect of these beans is the chunky tomato sauce base, and with some garlic mushrooms, and sliced avocado, this made a really filling and tasty winter (vegan) brunch.


Recipe (enough for around 4 people)

1 tin (410g) cannellini beans, drained
1 tin (300g) haricot beans, drained
2 small dried bay leaves
1 medium white onion, finely chopped
1 small carrot, finely chopped (optional)
1 small stick celery, finely chopped
2 fat cloves garlic, crushed
1 tsp chilli flakes
1 tin (400g) chopped tomatoes
1 fresh tomato, roughly chopped or handful of cherry tomatoes (optional)
1 tsp dried mixed herbs
1 tblsp sundried tomato puree
1-2 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp salt (or to taste)
Some generous grinds of black pepper
2-3 tblsp olive oil
Some water

Warm the oil in a medium saucepan and then put in the onion, carrot, celery, and bay leaves. Stir well and leave to cook over a medium/low heat until the vegetables are soft (probably around 15 minutes), then add the garlic, dried herbs and chilli flakes and cook for another 5 minutes or so. Add the fresh tomato if you're using any, and then the tinned toms and puree. Make sure everything is well mixed, stir in the sugar, salt and pepper, and pour in around half a tin can full of water. Leave the tomato sauce to simmer gently for around 30 minutes, adding a little more water if it ever looks super thick. Tip in the beans and simmer for another 5-10 minutes before checking the seasoning. Serve piping hot on some nice bread (I had some fancy sourdough and spelt and sunflower seed options), toasted and spread with something non-dairy (eg olive oil or a sunflower spread), and bask in the glow of being an accidental vegan.

I randomly decided to do another vegan month for February. I quite enjoyed it last time round, and now feel I have a lot more confidence in cooking in a vegan stylee, and not just falling back on a default option of Linda McCartney sausages and vegetables. This time round, I expanded into exploring some more vegan baking, cooked a lot more Indian food, and other food that just happened not to have dairy as a key ingredient. And I have to say I really enjoyed it again.

So here's my recipe for vegan apricot, pear and almond crumble with custard. In the depths of a gloomy February a hearty hot pudding was an essential, so I was delighted to discover that crumble and custard is very simple to veganise.


These days I usually buy ready-made, fresh custard from the supermarket, but googling revealed that the instant custard powders I remember as a kid were accidentally vegan; consisting of just cornflour, vanilla flavour, and colouring to be mixed with sugar and milk (no eggs involved!). So on this principle, I warmed a pint of almond milk with around 2 tblsp of caster sugar, until it was fully dissolved. I then made a loose paste with around 1.5 tblsp of corn flour and a little more milk, and gradually mixed that into the hot milk. Once the custard had thickened, I added 1 tsp of vanilla extract. You can just adjust the amount of cornflour so your custard is as thick or thin as you prefer. I suspect using soy milk would have resulted in a less nutty taste, but this was still very nice. Alternatively, you could just use Bird's custard powder with your plant-based milk of choice, for a fully traditional yellow custard.

The crumble was made with a fruit base of four sliced Rocha dessert pears, which did not require any advance cooking, and a tin of apricots halves (feel free to use fresh ones in the summer). The crumble topping consisted of 125g plain flour, 75g ground almonds, 75g sugar, 100g sunflower spread, and a handful of flaked almonds. Combine the flour, sugar, ground almonds and spread together and until they form loose crumbs and then stir in the other almonds. Scatter the topping on the fruit, and bake at gas mark five for around 25 minutes or until lightly browned on top, and serve with the hot custard. This should be enough for six people, or several helpings for two across a weekend.

So I am definitely no longer vegan. Over the past couple of weeks I have eaten some fish and a reasonable amount of cheese, but there was no huge animal protein blow out. In fact it was actually quite hard to stop being vegan. I never intended for this to be a permanent change of eating habits, but once I'd done my thirty days I was quite disinclined to switch back to pescatarian eating. I really can't rationalise this, but somehow without the 'rules' of veganism I just felt an immense sense of confusion about what I should eat. Anyway, after a period of readjustment I am now enjoying the delights of (moderate amounts of) Quorn sausages and halloumi cheese. Somewhat randomly I am still consuming a variety of non-diary milks and yogurts, mainly because they are quite nice.


So to round up these posts, here are couple of things I made in the last week or so. I was inspired by the Waitrose lentil and cauliflower salad to make my own version. It wasn't an exact flavour match, but it was damn tasty nevertheless. I ate this over several days with an assortment of courgette bhajis, aubergine stew and pesto. The bhajis were also excellent, if I do say so myself- slices of courgette, dipped in a gram flour, self-raising flour, and black onion seed batter, and then fried in hot oil- resulting in a crispy but vaguely nutritious side dish. I've included my cauliflower recipe below, but do adjust to suit your own tastes.

Cauliflower and lentil salad (enough for 2 as a generous main meal, or 4 as a side dish)

1 small cauliflower, cut into florets
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
2 spring onions, sliced
1 red pepper, chopped into small pieces
3 medium cloves garlic, crushed
1-2 tsp ground cumin
0.5 tsp chilli flakes
0.5 tbslp sun-dried tomato puree
1 tsp fennel seeds
390g tin of cooked green lentils, drained
Generous squeeze of lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste
2-3 tblsp olive oil
Small handful coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Cook the cauliflower florets in the olive oil, with the onion, garlic, red pepper and spices. When the vegetables are almost cooked through, mix in the tomato puree. Once fully cooked and with some colour, take the vegetables off the heat, and allow to cool a little. While it's still warm, stir in the lentils, spring onion, lemon juice, coriander, and season to taste. Eat while warm or at room temperature.



I also tried my first bit of proper vegan baking. This was probably the area of food I was most sceptical about not working well. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the cinnamon doughnut muffins I tried making from this excellent blog (which also turned out to be my favourite vegan/veggie cooking blog). They were light and delicious, and I'm not sure if would have been able to identify them as vegan if I hadn't known.

I tried adapting a Scott Jurek recipe for a chocolate bean bar too, which was ok if not amazing. To be fair, they are not sold as a pudding (more of an energy bar type thing) and I did a lot of subbing for the flours, etc,which may have made the final product a bit different from its intended state. They were quite chocolatey and very dense, but with a slightly strange texture from the beans; imagine a slightly not right mochi. Definitely edible (I did finish them) but not one I'd be running off to make again (unlike the muffins). Quite nice with a iced almond milk mocha coffee though.


I also found a new vegan snack from Burt's, so that was a bonus.

So the conclusion to all of this is that being temporarily vegan made me much more aware of what I was eating; and I'm still eating a lot more whole grains, legumes, and vegetables, and probably more dairy alternatives (though I'm not sure why). I've found myself eating more accidentally vegan meals, and not just chomping on cheese unthinkingly. I have discovered lots of new products (not all great) and some fab new food blogs (which mainly were fab). So I'm really pleased I gave this a go, and though the intention was not to make it a permanent change, it's somehow reassuring to know that I could if I wanted to.

I'm going to say it- I am quite enjoying being vegan! Though it is undoubtedly restrictive, it has made me think more creatively about food, and actually be open to some things that I've previously been a bit scathing about. And most importantly, everything I've cooked has genuinely been really tasty (I'm still quite surprised by this).

The Bircher muesli, and salad and bean based lunches are still going strong during the week, as are snacks based around nuts, crisps (one of the most delicious vegan foods), and fruit. Dinners during this week have been particularly successful though. I made a vegetable and cashew nut stir-fry with one of those bags of supermarket ready-prepped veg, a Japanese-style aubergine nasu dengaku, and leftover black pepper tofu. I've only ever eaten nasu dengaku in Teri-Aki before but it looked pretty simple to make. Just fry (or cook by your preferred method) pieces of aubergine, make a sauce by gently heating some miso paste, mirin, and sugar, mix together, and ta-dah- Japanese deliciousness results! The only slight flaw in the plan, was that the Sainsbury's miso paste I picked up was not a 'pure' one and had stuff like ginger in it too. It was still perfectly nice, but I'll make sure I purchase an unadulterated version in the future. I also toned down the amount of sugar I used, as some recipes seem to have loads. I added 1tsp of brown sugar to 2 heaped tblsp of miso and around 4 tblsp of mirin. This suited me, and was plenty to coat my medium aubergine, but you can of course adjust to taste. The sweetness of the aubergine was just the right antidote to the burn of the tofu, and a generous amount of nuts in the stir-fry added texture (and some more protein).


Aubergine made an appearance later in the week too, when I cooked a very simple tomato sauce/stew to go with courgette 'spaghetti', and a cheese-free rocket and walnut pesto.  Courgette spaghetti is just courgette cut into fine strips with one of those julienne peeler things. I must have bought one on a whim years ago, and it's actually pretty handy. It's obviously not essential to have your vegetables resemble pasta, but there is something psychologically beneficial about being able to twirl your food round on a fork. I have made this before, but looking back I definitely over-cooked the courgettes. So everything tasted nice, but the veg had a not brilliant, watery texture. I've learnt my lesson though, so once my two courgette was julienne-ed up, I cooked them in two batches for no more than 3 minutes in some olive oil. Courgettes can basically be eaten raw, so mine were just slightly softened, and cooking smaller amounts at a time meant they they didn't release loads of liquid. The tomato sauce was a basic mix of onion, garlic, and aubergine sautéed in olive oil until soft, and then simmered with a can of chopped tomatoes, some water, a sprinkling of dried mixed herbs, a tablespoon of sundried tomato purée, and finished with some fresh basil.


For the weekend, I thought I'd try and put together some sort of vegan roast dinner. As I don't eat meat anyway, this wasn't actually much of a leap from the type of thing I'd make for a hearty, winter lunch (just with more sunshine). Quorn products aren't vegan, so mini sausages were out, but I instead ramped up my nut roast efforts, made an onion gravy, roasted potatoes and parsnips, sautéed Savoy cabbage, and steamed some broccoli.


Nut roast (enough for 4):

1 170g pack Paxo sage and onion stuffing, made up with water
1 medium red onion, sliced
4 fat cloves of garlic, crushed
Around 250g chestnut mushrooms, sliced
Around 70g Brazil nuts, roughly chopped
Around 70g walnut pieces
1 tsp mixed, dried herbs
1 or 2 sprigs of fresh thyme
2-3 tblsp olive oil
Generous grind of pepper and a little salt

Cook the onion in the oil until soft and starting to caramelise, and then add the herbs, garlic, mushrooms, and nuts. Season well, and fry until the mushrooms are nicely browned. Make up the Paxo stuffing mix with hot water, and then combine with the mushrooms. You could of course just use an equivalent amount of fresh breadcrumbs and sage, but I genuinely think the Paxo mix (with its extra dried onions, garlic powder, and herbs) adds a flavour boost as well as bulk. The nut roast is basically all cooked, but I assemble it in advance, put into a shallow baking dish, drizzle the top with a little olive oil, and pop into the lower part of the oven at gas mark 6 for around 30 minutes (when the roast vegetables are in). The top should be browned, but be careful not to let it dry out. I have to say that this resulted in an excellent roast dinner.


I also thought I'd try my hand at some vegan baking, but started small with some flapjacks. I took inspiration from this really rather fab food blog, but reduced the amount of syrup (to around 4 tblsp), and added dried cranberries (a generous handful), and around 50g of mixed seeds. I was definitely concerned about using sunflower margarine, rather than butter, and specifically that it would taste strongly of marg. But actually I don't think I would have known the difference. Anything with lots of sugar in it tends to taste mainly of that, and I also had fruit and seeds too. Reducing the amount of syrup did make the flapjacks a bit more crumbly than I imagine the originals were, but there were still robust enough to cut up into pieces. It's also a super-simple recipe, but pretty damn good.

I thought this was going to be my last vegan post, but actually I have a few additional things to write about so there's one more coming!

I'm back with my update on week 2! You can say one thing for veganism- it certainly aids regular blog posting.

I've carried on with many things from week 1. I'm still eating my Bircher-style muesli for work-day breakfasts, and coconut yoghurt at the weekend. I'm still taking some form of salad type stuff in for lunch, but this time with homemade caramelised onion hummus and some genuinely tasty Ryvita crispbreads (the multigrain one). And I'm eating more Linda McCartney sausages than expected.

There have been some interesting food developments though. After a couple of false starts, I think I've finally found an acceptable soy yoghurt. Unfortunately, I can't seem to locate any plain coconut yoghurt (my preferred option) around here and the (delicious) raw chocolate ones from CoYo are just too much like pudding for me to take into work for a mid-afternoon snack. I tried the Tesco Free From soy natural yoghurt in week 1 but it was pretty horrible- a weird chalky taste, and a smell of slaked clay that reminded me of those mud mask sachets I used to apply as a teenager. It was verging on inedible for me, even when I tried it with lots of chopped up fruit and vanilla extract. I'm sad to say I had to chuck this. Next up was an Alpro vanilla soy yoghurt, initially purchased as there was no plain one available in Tesco. Thankfully this was heaps better. Still a very slight chalky after-taste, but nothing terrible and lots of vanilla flavour. In many ways this was more like a vanilla custard, which is probably due to the amount of added sugar in it. I don't want a load of glucose-fructose syrup in my yoghurt though, so was relieved to finally track down some plain soy yoghurt from Alpro. This was not exactly delicious but had minimal chalkiness, so was acceptable with fruit.

I've also tried three vegan 'cheeses'. The soya-free Cheezly brand one was vaguely ok-ish when crumbled over my hot chilli in week 1. Although it doesn't melt, it tasted faintly savoury, like a sort of homeopathic feta. I tried to add it to my lunchtime salads too, but it's far less successful cold. It was just about edible but not that pleasant. I also tried the Tesco Free From strong soya cheese. This was more cheese-like in texture, and looked a bit like (cheap) Cheddar. But I'm afraid that it just didn't work for me in terms of taste or texture, and I could only eat a tiny bite of it. I'm not even sure why, as it wasn't that unpleasant, but I was immediately sure that that tiny bite would be enough. I still have it in the fridge though, and now a few days have passed I'm wondering if I should try cooking with it. But I don't want to ruin a perfectly nice dinner with the cheese of instant aversion. We shall see. I have fared much better with a Free From garlic and herb soft cheese-style soya spread from Tesco (also soy based). The texture of this was much more like cream cheese, and the strong flavourings meant that pretty much all you could taste was herbiness. Not amazing, but nice enough to go on a Ryvita.


Dinners have continued to be rather successful. I sautéed butternut squash with garlic and za'atar, and made a cheese-free rocket and basil pesto to go over steamed broccoli, which was served with tofu one night and Linda McCartney sausages the next. I also made some frickin excellent lentil and mushroom burgers, which I ate with sweet potato fries, and a big green salad. The burgers were inspired by this recipe from food enthusiast and vegan, ultra-marathon runner Scott Jurek. I changed quite a few things due to an ingredient deficiency and not quite reading the recipe properly, so my version is below, but these were genuinely fab and I will be making them again.


Lentil and mushroom burgers (makes around 6-8 depending on size):

390g tin of green lentils (I used one from Tesco)
Around 100g chestnut mushrooms
3 medium spring onions
3 cloves of garlic
1 tsp mixed dried herbs
0.5 tsp paprika
0.5 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp English mustard
1 tblsp gram (chickpea) flour
Around 1 tblsp chopped hazelnuts
Around 100g quinoa cooked in Marigold vegetable bouillon stock (and cooled)
Plain oil for frying

So firstly, I didn't have things like ground flaxseed and nutritional yeast which the Jurker uses in his recipe. I subbed those and the breadcrumbs for quinoa and Marigold stock powder. I find this quite salty too, so didn't bother adding any more to the mix. I also didn't read the bit about cooking the vegetables first. So I basically put everything above, except the nuts and quinoa, in the food processor and pulsed and until it had a suitably coarse burger-like texture. I then added the other ingredients put it all in the fridge overnight. The mixture turned out to be a little on the wet-side but not too sloppy. When it came to dinner time, I heated up a thin layer of oil in a non-stick frying pan, took a heaped tablespoon of the burger mix and plopped into the pan, using the back of the spoon to push it down and shape it a bit. These needed around 3-4 minutes on each side to form a crust and colour up. They were just about robust enough to be flipped over and later manoeuvred onto a plate. I'm pretty sure that a lot of moisture was coming from the raw mushroom, so I will definitely cook these first next time, and that should make the patties a lot more robust. But nevertheless, these burgers tasted damn good. Lentil and mushroom immediately summons up some sort of stupid hippy, dippy cliché, but these were properly packed full of flavour and had a great succulent texture. I did think that a bit of melted cheese over the top would be an excellent addition, but obviously that's not very vegan, so some grilled onions and tomato ketchup were a very acceptable substitute. The burgers would be great in a bun with green leaves, but I kept mine au naturel and ate them with some sweet potato fries and a big salad.

The weekend involved polishing off lots of the above as leftovers, snacking on salted crisps, crackers with peanut butter, a variety of raw and roasted nuts, and moderate quantities of dark chocolate. As it was so flipping hot (and humid), dinners minimised cooking and were mostly salad based. On the left is a romaine lettuce, fennel, raddish, carrot, spring onion, artichoke heart, and yellow pepper salad, with a side of beetroot, the now ubiquitous Linda McCartney sausages (rosemary and red onion this time) and a stuffed mushroom courtesy of Sainsburys (a rare cheese-free pre-prepared item vegetarian item).

I also managed a visit to the Gog Magog cafe during the week. My concerns that I'd have to sit in a corner with a black tea, while everyone one else had coffee and cake were unfounded as obtaining a soy milk latte was totally non-problematic, and there was even a vegan cake offering in the form of a damn good date flapjack. Huzzah! And now onwards to week 3!

Pesto with spaghetti is a very reliable quick supper, but it only takes a couple of minutes longer to make fresh pesto rather than use some ready-made stuff from a jar (especially if you have a Kenwood mini-chopper or something similar). It also has the advantage of being packed full of fresh flavours.
I am not a vegan but a lack of appropriate cheese meant that this pesto ended up being dairy-free. Do add some pecorino, grana padano or parmesan if you have any, but it's not actually essential as the pine nuts do a good job of contributing richness to the pesto. So to make enough for one combine the following:

Small bunch of basil (about 5 or 6 long stalks)
Two fat cloves garlic
Small handful pine nuts (toast first in a dry pan if you want)
Enough olive oil to make a loose paste
Salt and pepper to taste

Whizz up the above in a food processor or by hand, and when it's done stir through some hot spaghetti or other pasta. Warning- the heat from the pasta will 'cook' out the raw garlic a bit but it's still a pretty powerful flavour. I love garlic but you might want to limit consumption of this dish to when you are planning on staying in rather than heading out on a first date, job interview, etc, etc.