Mushroom risotto

Photo by tristanf

1 Tbsp dried porcini mushrooms
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 large or 2 small onions
3 garlic cloves
300g fresh mushrooms (I used half button, half portobello for cheapness and variety)
350g arborio rice
150ml white wine preferably dry
1+ litres hot vege stock
3 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
2 Tbsp chives, spring onions or fennel
a little more oil, Avocado is nice as well as good Extra Virgin Olive (non-Vegans can use c25g Butter)
Salt and pepper
Non Vegans can top with grated Parmesan

 

Cover the dried mushrooms in hot water and soak (c15 mins), drain them.

Chop the onion and garlic finely. In a heavy saucepan big enough to take the full recipe, heat the olive oil and fry chopped onion and garlic (use a low heat, the idea is to sweat them until soft, not turn them to carbon). Chop the fresh mushrooms and fry them also for a few minutes. Add the rice and stir to coat. Add wine and simmer, stirring often. When it has been absorbed add stock a little at a time. Keep stirring! Add stock (Remember it is important that this is hot, we don’t want to shock the poor little rice grains do we?) till the rice is tender.

Chop and add the porcini and parsley. Season and add the extra oil (or butter and Parmesan).

Breads and dips

Again the photo is not our meal, I must get in the habit of taking shots of my food :( so, photo by jbcurio

One of the most pleasant Vegan lunches is breads and dips, most often when it’s just the two of us it is bread and dips, but several breads or toasts do help make it more special. The recipes are simple, keep well in the frig, and cheap too :)

For lunch today we had hummus, skordalia, some olive oil with a little fruity balsamic at the bottom, and Miriam’s competition recipe Guacomole.

Miriam’s Vegan Guacamole

  • 1 perfectly ripe avocado (you can tell it’s perfect when then little knobbly bit where it used to be attached to the tree comes off easily when you nudge it gently-ish with your thumb).
  • 1/4 onion/red onion or one shallot or a couple of spring onions cut into tiny little pieces.
  • 1 small-medium sized tomato cut into equally tiny little pieces.
  • lemon or lime juice
  • plenty of salt and pepper
  • 1-2 teaspoons of ground cumin
  • 3 or 4 good shakes of your favourite hot sauce (I favour Kaitaia fire)

Mash up the avocado with a fork, mix everything else in, add more lemon juice etc to taste.

I omitted the hot sauce, though I got quite used in Africa to adding chili paste to my meals I don’t like to add a little chili to everything as so many Kiwis do, I also reduced the salt, making a healthy dip even more healthy.

Nathan’s Really Quick, Really Tasty, Really Easy Lunch

The remains of the Really Quick, Really Tasty, Really Easy Lunch after the Carey Baptist College Staff Lunch Club had both eaten their fill

  • Can of mixed beans, drained.
  • Sundried tomatoes, sliced.
  • Fresh parsley or whatever herbs you have, torn/shredded/chopped/cut/rubbed/whatever.
  • Olive oil and a splash of balsamic, (Nathan says S&P I wonder if he meant Lea and Perrins? I used lemon juice).

Serve with nice bread and mixed leaves.

Nathan adds some ground corriander and chilli flakes or whatever I have around.

This really was really, really quick, really really easy, and pretty tasty too :)

Green lentils and sausage

Cooked green lentils (photo by Maggie Hoffman) when you add the oil they'll glisten scrunptiously, the sausage is icing on the cake ;)

This recipe is NOT Vegan, except Vegans can easily adapt it by removing the sausage and adding a little more oil and salt.This is simpler than the public as imagined by a politician, and tastier than even you could imagine (just use plenty of good oil and real ground or flaky salt added just before eating)

  • Green lentils 1/2 cup per person (boiled gently till just soft)
  • Splash or three of nice olive oil
  • Several grinds of sea salt
  • a little thinly sliced sausage (Chorizo is good, but I prefer the thin ones that taste a bit like salami)

Serve with mashed potatoes.

For myself I often leave the sausage out, but it used to help tame the family carnivores ;) and does add a nice contrast.

A busy weekend and another problem :(

Cosset Cafe 1087 New North Rd, Mt Albert, Auckland NZ offers a mainly Vegan menu, including some meal options, but most cafes and cheaper eateries don't :(

Our busy weekend reveals another difficulty with trying to cut back meat, eggs and (possibly) dairy. We were rushing from place to place so we only had 2-3 meals (including breakfasts) at home over the weekend, one lunch was fish and chips (the only other option in that part of town was a meat pie), though one cafe meal was mushrooms few cafes have more than one vegan (or even quasi-Vegan) meal on offer.

In Auckland we could have gone to Cosset, but eating out on busy days may prove difficult :(

Milk without Money

Well perhaps not, but I thought that quote from Isaiah 55.1 was appropriate since that’s what it can seem like when trying to eat less meat and animal products.  It seems like there is dairy everywhere, flowing with milk and honey indeed!

Just after Tim’s most recent post about dairy and its relationship to being a repentant carnivore, I realized just how big of a deal dairy is. Over this past week I’ve been out and about a lot. I’ve been at family and church gatherings and also been caught having to eat at restaurants a number of times. When it comes to family and church gatherings I think these situations are probably most difficult for meat avoidance.  At one family gathering this past week, it was either eat meat or virtually nothing at all (my wife’s family had a crawfish boil, though I’m not sure about the ecology of eating crawfish).

In the case of eating out, I am realizing that vegetarian eating decisions are sometimes fairly easy to make while vegan ones often are not (There are no restaurants that I know of with vegan offerings anywhere within about a 45 minute drive from my home).  The reason for this is that many of the vegetarian dishes that I have seen, at least at the restaurants I have eaten at recently, contain cheese or some other dairy product as a primary ingredient.

One meal that I ate was at a microbrewery that is also a restaurant.  I mainly go there for the beer ;-) (and please no one tell me that beer is ecologicially bad, I’m not sure I could bear that this early on in trying to make a change), but my wife likes the food.  Oddly enough, there they had several vegetarian style offerings (Based on past experiences I would normally not expect a brewhouse to be so sensitive).  Yet in each case the vegetarian offerings had cheese as one of the primary ingredients.  So, I did the best I could.  I ordered the personal size vegetarian pizza.  I suppose I could have asked them to hold the cheese, but I’m not sure how appetizing that would have been.

In another case, my wife and I ate at our local Greek and Lebanese restaurant called Albasha.  I like Albasha’s fare because many of the dishes that I like are devoid of meat.  However, once again everything usually comes with some sort of yogurt sauce or dressing.  I ordered the falafel sandwich.  It had a bit of a creamy tahini sauce on it and it came with feta salad, but I did feel better about it than the vegetarian pizza.

I guess these experiences just reinforced that one’s decision about dairy can be a really important one and one that I have been thinking a great deal about…

Vegan recipe competition

If you are, or are friends with, a Vegan (or just like trying different recipes) and have a good recipe that is:

  • tasty
  • nourishing
  • Vegan
  • for a lunch or savoury main dish
  • one you have tried
  • not needing hours of work (hours of cooking is fine as long as it requires time not me)

Then enter it into the comments below. Tell me:

  • Quantities – approximate is fine
  • Instructions – remember I have not watched your Auntie prepare this dish ;)
  • If possible link to a photo of the end result

I will try any that sound like possibles, and give a prize to the best, any I try and like will feature here (with a link to your blog, Facebook page etc. naturally).

If I’m to start a radical change in the way I eat, I need more Vegan recipes. I have stacks of delicious meaty and/or Vegetarian recipes but to reduce my use meat etc. to just once a day I need some Vegan recipes to add to the mix. Since breakfast is Vegan already most days (delicious luxury porridge with fruits and nuts) I need light lunches and savoury mains. The competition is only for recipes you have cooked and enjoyed (please don’t just cut and paste from some website without testing it first ;) entries will remain open indefinitely but I will pick a first winner when I have six meals I plan to cook again.