One Day a Week Vegan :: sunshine soup

The patchwork quilt March weather where one minute the sun is shining and the next rain or even hailstone clouds stain the sky dark grey, makes me want warm, comforting, substantial food. This wholesome seasonal root vegetable soup is a change from the usual pumpkin, or carrot and coriander. Spiked with ground spices that add extra earthy flavour and chilli for a warming hit; with the addition of dried split peas and pearl barley that make it nuttily hearty to keep you going on early spring days like today.  

Ingredients for four good sized bowlfulls:

• About a pound of organic carrots
• One medium sized red onion
• Two or three cloves of garlic
• Sea salt and black pepper
• A little ground cumin and turmeric...partly for the lovely earthy flavour but mostly because it looks like bottled sunshine in the jar.
• A good pinch of chilli flakes
• One or two bay leaves
• Two sticks of celery
• A small piece of swede (optional)
• Vegetable stock or hot water (there's a good recipe here)
• A handful of dried split peas
• A handful of pearl barley
• Olive oil or alternative

Method:

1. Peel and finely chop the onions, pour a little olive oil into a heavy based saucepan and cook until soft.
2. Meanwhile, wash and peel all the other vegetables. Cut the celery sticks lengthwise and then chop very finely. Grate or finely chop the carrots and dice the swede. 
3. Once the onions are cooked add peel and crush the garlic and add to the pan and cook for a few minutes being careful not to burn. Add the ground spices and cook for a further few minutes.
4. Add the salt and pepper and mix well and then add all the other vegetables. Stir well to combine all the flavours and cook for a couple of minutes until they begin to soften.
5. Wash and add the barley and the split peas again stirring to absorb all the flavours. 
6. Add a litre of hot stock or water bring to the boil and then reduce the heat and leave to cook until the lentils and barley are cooked.
7. Remove the bay leaf.
8. Check the seasoning and adjust if necessary. 

You could blend this soup if you like a really creamy consistency but I like to leave the grated carrots to meld into the soup leaving the lentils and barley for a little chewy  texture. This is a new favourite. Delicious with my home made spelt bread substituting the honey with a little maple syrup or brown sugar on vegan days.

...it's a shame I forgot to take a photo before it all got guzzled up...I'll add one next time I make it. Oh and I'll share the recipe for my new favourite barley risotto too.


This is just part of a vegan day menu...you can find some more recipes for complete vegan days on the following links:

• One day a week vegan :: Japanese Sober Noodle Salad
• One day a week vegan :: Comfort food 1 - Nostalgia
• One day a week vegan :: 'Detox'
• One day a week vegan :: Fresh
• One day a week vegan :: Butternut squash and Tai style curry 
• One day a week vegan :: Baba Ganoush

An Oscar Wilde Moment : Spicy Vegetable Patties.

 

I wish you could smell my kitchen right now. It's just like Christmas...All cinnamon and clove-ish...The Michaelmas Fair has been and gone.  Even the straggling  Runaway Fair. The mornings are dark till really late...Sometimes it never seems to get light at all...But the lamps make the house cosy and hobbit-like. 

I asked 'A' to bring my computer down so I can work on the kitchen table today. Do a big batch of cooking without burning anything.  I get so engrossed working upstairs in my study lately, that I totally forget everything else, until I detect the awful, acrid smell of burning...Usually something sweet that sticks to the pan like glue. 

Sunday afternoon the wind was howling, rain drumming against the windows. We brought winter clothes down from the loft because snow's forecast next month. It was fun trying everything on again. Like having a whole new wardrobe. 

There was a clothes-free space on the bed. It was just about my size, with a lamp burning next to it, and my book  close by. 'A' was downstairs marking maths papers...I couldn't resist. It was an Oscar Wilde moment. I curled up on the bed in the middle of the afternoon and read for a whole hour. It was so good.

The point is, that once I'd finished my book, looking round for something else I started reading a 1930's recipe book 'Balance Meals with Calorie Values for the Ordinary Household'. I'd bought it for the vintage book section of the shop but I can't let it go now.  I keep obsessively reading the recipes. Almost every one of them has carrots, turnips, or swede. No avocados, red or yellow peppers, hardly any choice...Just local seasonal veg.

The best bit is, I kept finding little tissues of paper ephemera in it. Recipes: like baking parchment with a handwritten list of ingredients, small desk calendar pages with printed ones, or carefully cut out from a 1939 newspaper.  

Anyway, it encouraged me to buy a swede that I never got round to using, until it was so shrivelled up poor thing, it look like it needed botox...No way, was I going to throw it away. It became the basis for these little vegetable patties that evolved from a few different recipes, and are my favourite things at the moment. 

Spicy vegetable patties

• One small Swede
• Two large carrots
• Four brown mushrooms or one small Portobello
• One or two cloves of garlic, or more if like me you love it 
• Fresh or dried chilli to taste
• Fresh ginger
• Small spring onions/scallions
• A handful of fresh coriander
• Some left over cooked rice, couscous or quinoa...about a cupful
• Third of a cup of spelt flour or breadcrumbs
• Frozen peas, sweetcorn or any kind of cooked beans...black eyed ones are lovely for this
• Four eggs
• Ground cumin
• Ground coriander
• Ground turmeric
• Sea salt and black pepper

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200c
2. Wash peel and cut up the swede and carrot into small pieces. Cook in salted water or stock until tender.
3. Whilst they are cooking chop the mushrooms. Peel and crush or finely chop the garlic and grate the ginger. Peel the spring onions and slice finely and chop the coriander.
4.  Once the root vegetables are cooked if using any frozen vegetables pop them into the pan along with the cooked vegetables for a few minutes to defrost. Drain and put into a large bowl.
5. Add the crushed garlic, grated ginger,mushrooms and other ground spices and seasonings including the chillies. Mix well. 
6. Add the rice and flour or breadcrumbs if using and any cooked beans or pulses.
7. Beat the eggs in a small bowl and then add these to the mixture. Combine all the ingredients together.
8. Oil a couple of baking trays and form the mixture into little patties. Cup measurements are useful for making equal sized ones. My mixture made fourteen substantial pates. 
9. Bake for about twenty minutes or so until the patties are golden brown, turning half way through.

These are a great way to use up left over cooked vegetables, couscous, rice or quinoa. I'd saved some Persian black eyed bean rice that I'd made the night before to add to these. The smoky flavour of the beans worked really well with the earthy spices and root vegetables. 

They are awesome in a bread bun with sweet and sour chilli relish  or pitta pockets with yoghurt dressing, perfect with this crunchy coleslaw salad. 

...and now I can see the sun peeping out of a big white cloud...

...have a great weekend...

debx

Let it snow ...It's great bread and pikelet making weather...

 

Yay it's snowing...It's been such a mild winter that I genuinely thought that the paper snowflake decorations would be the only snowflakes I saw this year.  But we've had the whole gammut of weathers today from sunshine and showers involving a rainbow, to wind, hailstones, sleet and finally snow! Whoopie...

I made these pikelets 

and this bread ... it's amazing how the flavour of a few little sprigs of rosemary permeate the whole loaf...wonderful...

Bargain finds at KOA and Honeysuckle Salad

I know summer's here when the KOA shop is open in the village. This year the money is being raised to help young people in Ghana. I found these baking pans there including a nice bunt pan; and some garden vegetables, perfect for summer salads. Thankfully not everything got eaten on the walk home...I can't resist those tiny baby courgettes...


(oh and a cute little fish knife...I know it's not much use alone but I like it and I'm sure it'll come to good use for something...)

I used the courgettes to make a garden salad with baby spinach leaves, cooked sweet potato, walnuts and tangy Persian feta cheese. Dressed with pumpkin seed oil and Balsamic vinegar it was a perfect balance of sweet and savoury...mmm...


I was really pleased to get the green beans at just 30p a bunch, as you can see mine are still too tiny to pick. They were delicious in a mixed salad with baby cos lettuce leaves, radishes, spring and red onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, boiled egg, carrot shavings, honeysuckle flowers and dill from my rubbish bin bed! This time I made a dressing with honey, grainy Dijon mustard, olive oil, a little sea salt and Balsamic vinegar.


I'm obsessively reading Jekka's Complete Herb Book (the revised edition) written by Jamie Oliver's friend, Jekka McVicar and discovered that not only are honeysuckle flowers edible but you can also make tea from them that tastes fragrantly delicious, is used for treating coughs, catarrh and asthma, as a lotion is good for skin infections; and "has an outstanding curative action in cases of colitis." ...well blow me... hence the use of flowers in the salad...and the copious mugs of honeysuckle tea I'm consuming...

you can see other peoples finds this week here