Category Archives: Vegan

Wild garlic pesto, two ways

I was recently given two very large bags of wild garlic foraged from London by recent-Airbnb-guest-turned-friend-and-colleague Kanna Ingleson. Wild garlic is a leafy herb that tastes and smells much like garlic and grows wild in woodland across the UK. It’s a forager’s favourite but is oddly hard to find in my local area in Wiltshire. Thankfully, there are hard-foraging people like Kanna in this world and I like the slice of irony that found the big bad City saving my wild garlic day here in the countryside (let’s take a moment now to give it up to London for rocking the green space).

There is lots to be done with wild garlic: soup, frittatas, risotto, ravioli… and being so akin to garlic, wild garlic can easily be used in any recipe where garlic is called for. Add a few chopped leaves to a salad, stir the greens in with pasta, add to soups, stews, you name it. Yes, options abound, but even so, to eat all of this wild garlic within the couple of weeks it would survive in the fridge would not have done my breath (or my social life) any favours. So the question turned to storage. I did freeze some of the leaves, but decided to turn a fair bunch of it into pesto, too.

The first pesto was a no-brainer: walnut and wild garlic pesto adapted from this parsley pesto recipe that I love. I’ve made it before and it’s perhaps my favourite pesto (be it with wild garlic, parsley or any combination of herbs) because it is most versatile – I love it as a topping for pizza, swirled into soup or blobbed on toasted sourdough with sautéed mushrooms and arugula.

The second pesto is a sun-dried tomato and wild garlic pesto adapted from this recipe for sun-dried tomato and basil pesto. I omitted the garlic and parmesan, substituted wild garlic for basil and added lemon and more pine nuts. Kanna also gave me the idea of adding lemon zest and chilli, so that went in there too. Props to my friend Sam from Shipton Mill who knows a thing or two about delivery devices for good bread and was on hand to help bring the pesto together. We ended up eating a fair bit of it as an appetizer with Turkish flatbread, hot off the grill.

(Hefty tip for UK fans of sun-dried tomatoes: you can buy them in bulk on Amazon: £11.55 for a kilo, and they’re organic!)

If I have one struggle with pesto, it’s this: getting the consistency right. I like mine chunky, but it’s easy to over-process the nuts, creating more of a pesto paste, which is fine, but I like some texture. The easiest way I found to achieve this is by putting the nuts in towards the end of the pulsing process, or leaving them out altogether and hand-processing the nuts with a mortar and pestle. It all depends on what your up for, and how much you can be bothered.

You’ll also notice that both of these wild garlic pestos are vegan – and you totally won’t miss the cheese.

The wild garlic pesto keeps well in the fridge for a few weeks, as long as you keep it covered with a good layer of olive oil. Or do as I do and store it in the freezer (I freeze the pesto in ice cube trays).

Here’s some more wild garlic stuff you might like:

Wild garlic and potato frittata, one of my earlier wild garlic discoveries [smarterfitter.com]
Last year’s wild garlic forage in the Forest of Dean with Gloria Nicol [flickr.com]
Gloria’s delicious wild garlic pesto, made with the traditional way with parmesan and pine nuts [laundryetc.co.uk]
Why wild garlic is good for you [guardian.co.uk]
Wild garlic recipes from Rachel Demuth, including her neat wild garlic malfatti, sort of like a gnocchi made with ricotta [vegetariancookeryschool.com]
How to have wild garlic all year round, Kavey’s super simple method of preserving wild garlic by blitzing it with oil and freezing it [kaveyeats.com]

5.0 from 1 reviews

Wild Garlic & Walnut Pesto

Ingredients

100g walnuts, toasted
50g wild garlic, washed and dried
About 150ml good olive oil (or extra-virgin rapeseed oil)
Zest and juice of ½ lemon
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

Put the walnuts into a food processor and process until finely chopped but still with some granular texture.
Add the wild garlic and blitz again to chop the leaves, then begin trickling in the oil while the processor runs. Stop when you have a sloppy purée.
Taste, season as necessary with lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Store in the fridge – if you completely cover the surface of the pesto with oil so all air is excluded, it should keep for a couple of weeks. Or freeze it!

5.0 from 1 reviews

Wild Garlic & Sundried Tomato Pesto

Ingredients

150 g sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in boiling water
100g wild garlic, washed and dried
½ cup pine nuts, toasted
zest and juice of one lemon
2 tsp red chilli flakes  (optional)
1 cup olive oil
salt and pepper

Instructions

Combine sun-dried tomatoes, and a bit of the oil in a food processor and pulse until the sun-dried tomatoes are roughly chopped (adding more olive oil as necessary).
Add the pine nuts and pulse until those are roughly chopped, too.
Add the wild garlic and pulse until it approaches the consistency you like for pesto (I like mine chunky).
Add the lemon and a few good grinds of black pepper, pulse a few times, then taste. Add more lemon, salt, or pepper as you see fit.

9 Comments

Vegetable “Noodles”

A few people have been asking about the “noodle” dishes I’ve been Instagramming and which feature prominently in my food ideas for intermittent fasting. The basic idea is this: take any noodle or soup recipe for which you’d use pasta noodles and use julienned vegetables instead. You get the twirl-with-a-fork pleasure of pasta with fewer calories, more nutrients and, some might argue, better flavour, especially when you use really good vegetables. Soup in particular is very handy when fasting as liquid is very filling but low calorie.

My essential tool for the job is the julienne vegetable peeler pictured below. My mom gave this to me years ago and I have no idea of the brand, but an Amazon search for julienne peeler will turn up a few options (this Kuhn Rikon Julienne Peeler looks pretty flash).

The vegetables I julienne most frequently are carrots and zucchini, and occasional parsnips. Occasionally some swede (rutabaga) will come along for the ride.

Vegetable “Noodle” Soups

Here I tend to err on the Asian side. The two soups I make most regularly are Miso “Noodle” Soup and Vegetarian Pho; both are extremely quick and easy to make and basically work like this:

Make a delicious stock
Add some vegetables if you’d like: broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, bell peppers, mushrooms, potato, pumpkin (be sure to be sensitive to cooking times and add those long-to-cook veggies ahead of the rest)
Add your vegetable noodles
Serve with your favourite garnishes

Miso soup can be as simple as mixing miso and water, then adding soy sauce and sesame oil to taste. I usually opt for white miso and follow this recipe as a guide: Basic Miso Soup.

Vegetarian Pho requires a bit more work, so I make the broth ahead and freeze it. This recipe on the New York Times is my go-to: Simple Vegetarian Pho Broth.

In both cases, I heat up the stock to a simmer, then add my vegetables, and try to be sensitive to their cooking times. (Broccoli cooks faster than cauliflower so I’d add the cauliflower ahead of the broccoli.) I like my vegetables crisp, so the vegetable “noodles” always go in last and only get a minute or two, otherwise they go floppy and their flavours disappear into the rest of the soup. If using leafy vegetables like spinach, I’d also add this with the “noodles”.

My favourite garnishes: spring onions, firm tofu (fried or raw), fresh herbs (mint, basil and cilantro are good), sliced fresh chilli, Sriracha sauce (who doesn’t love Sriracha?).

Vegetable “Noodle” Salad Bowls

As with noodle soups, noodle salads can also be adapted to use vegetable “noodles”. I absolutely adore this Noodle Salad with Lemongrass Dressing, pictured below, made with vegetable “noodles” instead of rice noodles.

Vegetable “Noodle” Pasta

I got the idea from this zucchini pasta recipe. You can make it with a vegetable peeler rather than a julienne peeler, making for “noodles” that are almost fettuccine like. The original recipe uses the zucchini raw, but I like to cook it for just a moment, with a few added carrots because I love them. And as with many foods in life, I like this one topped with a poached egg:

Other Vegetable “Noodle” Ideas

One of my favourite comfort foods: take thinly sliced onions and cabbage and sautee slowly until absolutely sweet and soft. Add carrots and cook for a little longer. Season with salt and pepper. Serve topped with a poached egg and garnished with smoked paprika. A little avocado on the side doesn’t go amiss.

Another great candidate is pad thai, and I’m somewhat addicted to Rachel Demuth’s Vegetarian Pad Thai recipe (alas, I’ve always devoured it greedily before getting around to taking a picture that doesn’t suck – if you don’t mind a sucky picture, then look at this one).

Some of you may be looking for Calorie counts on these recipes but I’m afraid that despite my mathematics degree, I haven’t done the math (my mode of fasting avoids calorie counting if possible). From time to time I clock the numbers and can say that the soups tend to be very low calorie (200-300) depending on how you garnish them. Other dishes can tend more towards the 400-500 calorie range. It all depends on what you add to it. But a really useful tool I find for quickly adding up calories is CalorieCount’s Recipe Analyzer.

Alright, hit me with some more vegetable “noodle” ideas. Why haven’t I made “spaghetti” and “meatballs” yet? Maybe that would be just a bit TOO much food pretending to be other food that it’s not. And perhaps that’s why most of these dishes aren’t very Italiany. Regardless, I’m open to suggestions, and the julienne peeler is open for business!

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Salsa Macha: The life changer.

I almost didn’t make this recipe because it calls for two cups of olive oil. But when all was said and done, I ended up with a “salsa” that has completely blown my mind and changed my world. I’m not exaggerating!

It began with a recent good fortune: a few weeks ago I won a “goody bag” of dried chillies from the Cool Chile Company. I rarely enter competitions, and win them even less, so I was pretty psyched to receive a weighty parcel of dried pasilla, ancho, guajillo and chipotle chillies, and a bonus sack of masa harina.

Ever since, my mind’s been reeling over what to do with them. One of my objectives is to use this opportunity to get to know the unique flavours of these chillies. I’m very familiar with chipotles and their wonderful smokiness, but the others are a bit of a mystery to me.

I first made the ancho lentil tacos, where I discovered that anchos (dried poblano peppers) are milder than chipotles, though still a touch smokey, and sweeter. I’ve also made tortilla soup, which includes pastilla chilli, which seems similar to ancho to me, except is possibly milder.

Moving on from these recipes I wanted to take advantage of something that was really all about the chillies, so started hunting for salsa and sauce recipes. Rick Bayless’ salsa macha caught my attention because it was suited for any one or a mix of dried chillies, and also included some interesting ingredients like almonds and sesame. I only noticed the oil quantity after I’d mentally decided to make it. But I’m so glad I pushed on.

This isn’t a “salsa” like the kind you find in jars at the grocery star. It doesn’t contain tomatoes or lime or cilantro. This is more like chile pesto, a puree of dried chillies with nuts, seeds, garlic and a little salt, vinegar and Mexican oregano. And the flavour is out of this world.

I used six guajilla chillies and four chipotle chillies, plus some of my homemade apple cider vinegar. The resulting “salsa” has an awesomely sweet and smokey aroma with a flavour to match. There’s only a little bit of vinegar in the recipe, but it’s just enough to make the puree seem almost “fresh”, despite all the oil. The nuts and seeds, which have been fried in the oil, add further depth of flavour and balance out the chillies.

So it’s good, but life-changing? Well yes, for a vegetarian anyway, who isn’t accustomed to eating foods that are so deep, rich and satisfying. Although I don’t eat meat, I can understand why some meat-eaters would find it difficult to go vegetarian because it’s very difficult to duplicate meat’s, well, meatiness in vegetarian food (meat-eaters, maybe you can explain this phenomenon?).

Still, eating this salsa made me feel very much like one must feel after eating a good steak. I used the salsa macha in something very simple: a bowl of sautéed onions, potatoes and greens (a bit of egg would have been good here, too). I included some of the salsa in the saute pan, and then added a little more at the end. The flavours were so intense and wonderful that I finished the meal with a weird satisfaction that I’m not really used to. It had nothing to do with spiciness – in fact, the guajillo and chipotle combo resulted in a pretty mild heat – but pure flavour.

I think the phrase “awesome sauce” is appropriate here. I see myself using this all over the place – potato, eggs and tofu come to mind. I can also see adding it to other salsa and sauce recipes to add deeper flavour. Rick has a recipe for Slow-Cooked Fennel where salsa macha is used almost as a baste. He also does lamb chops with salsa macha for any meat eaters who are keen to give this a try. And you should, because it really is a life changer. And I can’t stop opening the jar just to have a whiff.

5.0 from 1 reviews

Guajillo and Chipotle Salsa Macha

Author: Rick Bayless

Adapted from Rick Bayless’s recipe for Salsa Macha.

Ingredients

2 ounces dried guajillo and chipotle chillies (about 6 guajillos and 4 chipotles
1½ ounces (1/3 cup) almonds
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
4 garlic cloves, peeled and halved
2 cups olive oil
1 tablespoon cider vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
A generous ½ teaspoon dried Mexican oregano

Instructions

Stem the chiles, then break or cut them open and scrape/brush/let fall out most of the seeds; cut into ¼-inch pieces – you will have about 1 cup.
In a large (4-quart) saucepan, combine the almonds, sesame seeds, garlic and oil. Set over medium-high heat and cook until garlic and sesame seeds are golden, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the chiles. Let cool 5 minutes.
In a small bowl, mix the vinegar with the salt until the salt dissolves, then add it to the pan along with the oregano. When the mixture has cooled to room temperature, pour it into a blender or food processor and pulse until everything is chopped into small pieces. You don’t want a super smooth puree – leave some texture in there.
Pour into a jar and store in the refrigerator until you’re ready to use.

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Winter Vegetable Breakfast Salad

I thought I’d start sharing my vegan breakfasts as I kick things up for the Healthy Vegan Breakfast Book. Today’s required some creativity with the veg box because I’m down to the dregs: a few carrots, half a swede (aka rutabaga to my American friends), a few broccoli florets, a head of cauliflower and a few lingering leaves of Batavia lettuce. Actually when I type it out like that it sounds like a lot of food, but I assure you the fridge looked sadly bare!

Cooked quinoa (leftovers)
Julienned carrot
Julienned swede (my new favourite use for swede?)
Red onion
Broccoli, diced into small florets
Currants soaked in boiling water for ~10 minutes
Batavia lettuce
Crushed red chilli flakes
A pinch of ground cumin
Tahini (~ 1 Tbsp) mixed with lemon juice (~ 1/4 lemon) and enough water to make a creamy dressing
Salt and pepper

This takes inspiration from American recipes I’ve seen for broccoli raisin salad, and this recipe for raw cauliflower “couscous” that really intrigues me and is the likely fate of the aforementioned cauliflower.

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Avocado Tahini Dressing

Once again, the elusive avocado threatened to defeat me today. Just one light squeeze and I could tell it was on the far side of ripe – and slicing the avocado open confirmed my suspicions. It was green, but starting to get those unpleasant stringy bits. I had no desire to eat the avocado as is, and yet, it didn’t seem totally useless. And besides, avocados are expensive. Waste not, right?

So I got this idea in my head to turn it into a salad dressing. I started with this cilantro avocado dressing on 101 Cookbooks, subbing lemon for lime, parsley for cilantro and tahini for yogurt. The result was pretty stellar, the perfect splooge for my baked falafel. I think I’ll try the rest with roasted pumpkin, or maybe these crispy cornmeal sweet potato fries.

I reckon this is a good starting point for all kinds of creamy vegan dressings. I’d like to try it with other fresh herbs – basil and chives come to mind. Some jalapeño wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Best of all, I have something I can do with my almost-off avocados. Which reminds me, Katy Salter wrote about her quest for the perfect avocado in the Guardian yesterday, which confirms some of my suspicions: The myth of the ripe and ready range.

Avocado Tahini Dressing

Recipe type: Salad Dressing

Prep time: 5 mins

Cook time: 1 min

Total time: 6 mins

Serves: 6

Ingredients

1 large avocado, ripe
juice of 1 lemon
¼ cup parsley
1 clove garlic
2 Tbsp tahini
¾ cup water
½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt

Instructions

Whizz together all of the ingredients in a blender. Taste, and add more lemon, tahini, salt or anything else as you see fit.

Nutrition Information

Calories: 85 Fat: 7.6 Saturated fat: 1.1 Carbohydrates: 4.2 Fiber: 2.8 Protein: 1.6 Cholesterol: 0

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Baked Falafel

The traditional way of making falafel involves soaking chickpeas, blending them up with onion, herbs and spices, then deep frying them into crispy balls of perfection. The key point here is that the chickpeas aren’t cooked – if they were, they falafel would fall apart and you’d need flour or breadcrumbs to hold the falafel together. To me, this defeats the purpose, especially if you’re serving the falafel in a pita. I want to fill my pita with beans, not bread (it’s the age-old veggie burger versus bread burger dilemma).

For lack of good falafel in the Cotswolds, I’ve tried making my own falafel the traditional way but it’s always been a disaster, primarily at the deep frying step. I don’t think I can get my oil hot enough on the electric hob (that, or I’m scared). So the falafel just ends up soaking up all the oil and then falling into greasy gross pieces.

I’ve experimented with several baked falafel recipes, all of which involve using cooked chickpeas, or in Leon’s case, chickpea flour. The baked falafel I made with my sister was decent, but not exactly ultimate.

At last I came across this baked falafel recipe, adapted from The America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook, which follows the traditional method of soaking the chickpeas. To get around the fried bit, olive oil is included in the falafel mixture itself, and in the baking tray.

I’ve made these twice now, and while they don’t have quite the same wow-factor as really good deep-fried falafel, they are still pretty damn good and, as it seems, worth making again and again. They also keep well in the freezer which makes them handy for lunches (I re-heat them in the toaster!).

I like to serve mine with a simple tahini sauce made with lemon juice, tahini and enough water to make a drizzle-able dressing. Chilli jam or harissa is nice, too.

The next thing to master are those great pickles you get with falafel in good falafel joints. The best I’ve ever had were the falafel and pickles from Arabica in Borough Market, though the last time I had them they weren’t quite as good as I remember. (I’ve since been told I must go to Mr. Falafel in Shepherd’s Bush.)

Is it pickled turnips I’m after? And I haven’t even touched on the falafel sauce. Tzatziki? Tahini? Hot sauce? All of the above?

Suggestions welcome.

Recipe: Baked Falafel

5 Comments

Homemade Larabar Recipes

Or “Laraballs” as the case may be. In case you’ve never seen them, Larabars are raw snack bars made with dried fruit and nuts. It’s a pretty simple formula that results in an amazingly tasty snack. And unlike many snack bars, they aren’t full of weird ingredients. In fact, most Larabar packages will list only two ingredients on the package: dates and nuts.

Last year I came into possession of a box of dates that I didn’t know what to do with. I’m not a huge fan of dates on their own – I find them too sweet – but since it was Christmas time, I thought I’d turn them into by making homemade Larabars (aka “Monibars” or “Moniballz” depending on the form facator). With a food processor, these things are a cinch – and they’re tasty!

If you Google ‘homemade Larabars’, you’ll find loads of recipes and limitless flavour combinations, but these are the ones that worked the best for me (my personal favourites are Banana Bread and Cocoa Mole):

Cashew Cookie

1 cup raw cashews
1 cup dates
pinch of sea salt (optional)

Ginger Snap

8 oz. dates, chopped
1 Tbsp. minced fresh ginger
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp cloves
4 1/2 oz. almonds
3 1/4 oz. pecans

Banana Bread

1/4 cup dates
1/4 cup dried banana (Trader Joe’s sells these as “Nothing But Banana, Flattened”, or you can follow Oh She Glows‘ method for drying your own)
1/3 cup raw almonds

Cocoa Mole

1/2 cup cashews
1/2 cup dates
2 Tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/16 tsp cayenne pepper

Cherry Pie

1 cup almonds
1/2 cup dates
1/2 cup dried cherries

The method for making any of these is the same:

Pulse the nuts in a food processor until they’re crumbled into small bits, but not completely ground into a powder.
Remove the nuts and put the dried fruit and any spices into the food processor. Pulse a few times so that the dried fruit forms a sticky goop.
Put the nuts back into the food processor and pulse until everything comes together.
Shape into balls or squares using your hands or a square container as a mold (see below).

Tips:

If your food processor isn’t doing a good job of goop-ifying the dates, try a blender on low speed.
If in step 3 the mixture doesn’t seem to come together, turn off the food processor and use your hands. Squeeze the mixture and see if it comes together that way. If not, you might need to add another date or two to the mix.
Try to get good, soft dates. The dates from Medjool.co.uk worked well, as did these Natural Delights Dates. Both were sticky and squishy to touch. I’ve used other dates that were almost smooth and hard on the outside – these didn’t work so well in the food processor and I had to use the Vitamix to goopify-them.
It helps to wet your hands before shaping the bars / balls.
All those people who take pictures of their Larabars (or other bars) artfully stacked and tied together with cute little ribbons must not live in the real world. Wrap them up individually in cling film or wax paper so that they’re practical and easy to transport.
The bars are easiest to shape by using a container lined with cling flim. Push the fruit-nut mush into the container, then remove and slice into whatever size you like:

I prefer “bars” to “balls”, but my mom likes the balls because they’re bite-sized (I won’t read further into that).

The nice thing about these DIY Larabars is that they keep for ages so they’re handy to stash in the car or backpack as an “emergency snack”. They’d also make perfect high-energy portable treat to take on long hikes or bike rides: a good excuse to go trekking if you ask me.

Thanks to these helpful sources: Tastebook, Oh She Glows, So I Married a Chef, edible sound bites, This Chick Cooks

8 Comments

Indian Cabbage Salad

I had a pretty stellar Thanksgiving this year. The party included two of my bestest friends of all time, Rachel and Dave, visiting for the occasion all the way from Austin, Texas (via a year-long stint in Berlin).

On the evening before our big day of nut roast and Prosecco, I decided a pre-Thanksgiving dinner detox was in order. So I went with the kind of food that I know I can make well, tastes a bit celebratory, but just happens to be healthy and vegan at the same time. The meal: my reliable red lentil dahl with panch phoran, Indian cabbage salad, basmati rice and flatbread masquerading as naan.

Of all the dishes, the cabbage salad was the biggest hit, a nice thing because I never know if my love of this salad has something to do with my own personal obsession with all things cabbage, or with the fact that the cabbage salad really is that good. Rachel seems to confirm my suspicion that this, indeed, is cabbage clad in awesomeness, so I’m posting the recipe here for her and for all cabbage lovers of the world. (Consequentially, I also made this salad for my friend, Claudia, last year – you can see it in the picture above, made all the more better by her rad vintage tableware – she also gave it the thumbs up.)

This salad is basically a winter riff on this cucumber and coconut salad and leaves a lot of room for improvisation (because I know how much Rachel loves improv). Any cabbage will do for this salad, though I am partial to the texture of Savoy. Chop it chunky or slice it fine. Skip the carrots if you don’t have them, or try adding other slaw-style goodness like bell peppers. Up the spices or the chilli if that’s your thing. Go nuts with the coriander.

I don’t usually follow a recipe when I make this, but I’ve attempted to write it up as such all the same. Do let me know if you try it and what you think!

Indian Cabbage Salad

I left out the asafoetida and curry leaves when I made this for Rachel and Dave but if you have them, use them. Feel free to chop the cabbage and carrots as finely or as not finely as you have the patience and inclination. My tendency is often to slice as finely as possible, but sometimes I like a chunky salad!

Ingredients

½ head of cabbage, finely sliced or chopped
2 carrots, shredded or sliced
a small bunch of fresh cilantro (i.e. coriander), finely chopped
2 tsp olive oil
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
½ tsp asafoetida (optional)
~10 dried curry leaves (optional)
1 green chilli, finely sliced (be careful with these – they can be HOT!)
2Tbsp grated or dessicated coconut (or more to taste)
juice from half a lemon
salt

Instructions

Put the cabbage, carrots and coriander in a bowl and set aside.
Put the oil in a large frying pan with the mustard seeds, cumin seeds, asafoetida and curry leaves. Turn the heat up to medium and wait for the seeds to start sizzling and smelling delicious.
When the mustard seeds begin to pop, add the green chilli and fry for another few seconds, then pour the oil and seeds over the salad. (If you’re struggling to get all of the seeds out of the pan, put some of the salad in the pan and swirl it around, then scrape back into the bowl.)
Add the lemon juice, a pinch of salt and the coconut. Taste, adding more salt, lemon or coconut if desired.

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Beetroot and Walnut Veggie Sausages

I wrote about these veggie sausages for Great British Chefs this week, but thought they were so good I wanted to give them a wider audience. Make them and enjoy with a crispy salad of carrot, apple, celery, red onion and honey mustard dressing, plus a big blog of good dijon mustard on the side.

Yesterday, Monday, 5th November 2012 marged the beginning of British Sausage Week, a time intended for encased-pork devotion. I may not eat pork, but I do have a fondness for sausage-esque foods. This may have something to do with my Chicago-based upbringing, studded with Polish sausage at family gatherings and an ardent appreciation for the Chicago-style hot dog, served with yellow mustard, whtie onions, pickle relish, “sport peppers”, tomato and celery salt (never ketchup). (Mention must be said of Hot Doug’s, the “sausage superstore and encased meat emporium”, for doing the best Chicago-style veggie hot dog in the world – it’s wrong, but oh so right.)

Back to British Sausage Week, I thought it a fine excuse to seek out a worthy veggie sausage to honour the occasion. But let’s not misdirect our plaudits: I’m not referring to those “fake meat” varieties of veggie sausage you often find in the supermarket (or dare I say Hot Doug’s), filled with weird stuff that not only isn’t meat, but also isn’t food in my opinion (don’t get me started on Quorn). In fact, these supermarket varieties give “vegetarian sausage” a bad name. In fact, the veggie sausage can be a delight, with as much nuance and comfort factor as its porky counterparts.

So what makes a great veggie sausage? I feel the same way about veggie sausage as I do about veggie burgers: they shouldn’t try to imitate meat – people who want a meaty sausage should just eat a meaty sausage. But if you love vegetables and want to experience them in tubular form, then veggie sausages are the way to go and are a novel form factor in which to showcase delicious ingredients. Options abound, from Rachel Demuth’s Glamorgan Sausages, made with cheddar, spring onions, breadcrumbs and loads of herbs to the Gluttonous Vegan’s Beany Snausages, a sort of rice-and-beans in sausage form.

I like my vegetarian sausages to be about the vegetables, and since we’re in the depths of autumn and beetroot season, I am sharing with you my recipe for beetroot and walnut veggie sausages inspired by Susan Voison. These sausages combine ingredients that work exceptionally well together – beetroot, walnuts, fennel and chilli – to create a sausage reminiscent of American-style “Italian sausage”. It’s great in a bun with sauteed onions and peppers, or on its own with tomato sauce or dijon mustard. The sky’s the limit: these babies are versatile, not to mention vegan and gluten free. You can even crumble them up and put them on a pizza.

Beetroot and Walnut Veggie Sausages

Prep time: 25 mins

Cook time: 35 mins

Total time: 1 hour

Serves: 4

Ingredients

½ ounce dried porcini mushrooms
1 medium raw beetroot
½ cup toasted walnuts
½ medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup cooked chickpeas
2 tablespoons flax seeds
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
2 teaspoons oregano
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)
½ teaspoon dried sage
¾ teaspoon fennel seeds
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon liquid smoke
olive or sunflower oil for baking

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F / 180C. Prepare a roasting tin or baking pan by oiling it generously with olive or sunflower oil.
Place the mushrooms in a bowl and cover with boiling water. Let them sit for at least 10 minutes, then drain and squeeze out the excess liquid.
Put the walnuts into a food processor and pulse to chop finely (but not too finely, we want chopped nuts, not nut powder), then remove and put into a large mixing bowl.
Peel the beetroot and cut it into small cubes. Add it to the food processor along with the mushrooms, garlic, and onion and pulse to chop coarsely. Add the chickpeas and all remaining ingredients and pulse several times to chop the chickpeas. Don’t over-do it: you want to maintain some texture, while still processing enough to form a mixture that you can shape into veggie sausages.
Add the processor contents to the nuts and stir well to combine.
Using a tablespoon, scoop out pieces of the mixture and, using damp hands, form the pieces into sausage-shapes (of whatever size you fancy!), squeezing lightly to compact it (you can also shape them into balls or patties if you wish). Place the sausages on the roasting tin or baking sheet.
Bake for about 35 minutes, turning the sausages once mid-bake, until lightly browned on all sides.

Nutrition Information

Calories: 227 Fat: 12.9 Carbohydrates: 26.6 Fiber: 7.3 Protein: 8.3 Cholesterol: 0

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Waldorf-Inspired Breakfast Salad

This has been breakfast the last few days, a sort of glorified vegan version of the classic Waldorf salad, inspired by this season’s apple harvest and a few stalks of celery lurking in my fridge. You could bulk this out with added quinoa, bulgar wheat, maybe a few raisins, or even a blob of yogurt, but I found this wasn’t necessary. As is, this was my idea of perfect breakfast: delicious food that satisfies without over-filling. Major feel-good factor here.

For one serving:

1 apple, chopped
1 carrot, grated
a few thin slices of red onion
2 celery stalks, sliced
10g walnuts
2 tbsp chopped parsley
a few little gem lettuce leaves
salt and pepper to taste
sliced green chilli (optional)
2 tsp dijon-based vinaigrette (mine was the House Dressing recipe from Arthur Potts Dawson’s Eat Your Veg, but any mustard-based dressing would do – I love this honey mustard dressing recipe)

Mix it all together and serve.

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