sides – Food That We Make

Carrot and Puy Lentil Salad

hannahnicklin — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 21:54:00 +0000

Most of this recipe is marinating time, so it’s a good one to make for a packup (that’s my silly lincolnshire word for ‘a packed lunch’, I didn’t realise it was silly until I said it in London. NOW I KNOW. Thanks, Southerners), or just generally the night before. Totally vegan, and surprisingly filling (well, to me, I always expect salad to be light), but I think I’d do a 1.5 portion for a full lunch, or maybe stuff this into a toasted pitta? That would be ace. This is based on a Hugh F-W recipe from the Guardian Blog, I think. Too tired and short of time to google, sure you can find him if you want.

Prep Time: 10 mins | Cook Time: 40 mins | Servings: 2
Nutritional Info: 229 kcal, 25g carbs, 11g fat, 7g protein

Ingredients:

First off bring the lentils to a boil, then drain them, then put them back in the pan, cover with water again, and add parsley stalks garlic and bay leaf. Simmer for about 25 minutes until tender. I don’t know why you do those two bits separately. It’s probably like an uber-rinse.

Meanwhile mix all of the dressing ingredients together in a container, that’s the olive oil, grate garlic, cyder vinegar, mustard and a half pinch of sugar, whisk with a fork.

Grate your carrot, and when the lentils are cooked, drain them, remove the bay leaf garlic and stalks, rinse with cold water, and tip them into a container with the carrots. Add the dressing, season well, and leave to marinade

After 20-30 minutes, longer if you have patience (I don’t) stir through the chopped parsley and serve.

Mixed mushroom, cranberry and hazlenut quinoa

hannahnicklin — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:43:23 +0000

So this was, strictly speaking, a little more work of a lunch than I had time for today, but it was very worth it. Best only making it if you have a full hour, though it’s mostly letting it simmer while you do a sudoku or something. Pretty faithful to the original Alice Hart recipe (seriously, buy her book, it’s the perfect useful/nice to look at mix), except I got basil pesto instead of parsley because I am busy and tired and not paying attention at the moment. Also I used half/half bulghar and quinoa, and it tasted good, and looked really nice, so might be worth a try if you fancy the speckled look? Commence recipe:

Prep Time: 25 | Cook Time: 25 | Servings: 2
Nutritional Info: 401kcal 34g carbs 26g fat 8g protein

Ingredients:

place the dried mushrooms in a jug and cover in 350ml boiling water, set aside

melt half the butter with the oil and fry the fresh mushrooms over a high heat until golden brown, tip into a bowl and set aside

return the pan to a gentler heat, add the remaining butter and soften the shallot/s,

add the garlic and quinoa and cook, stirring for about 5 mins until golden and pale

Strain the soaked mushroom, saving the soaking liquid, chop up the porcini and add to the quinoa

Pour over the mushroom water and add a good pinch of salt. Lower the heat and simmer gently for 18-20 mins until the liquid is nearly all gone.

Stir in the cranberries and pesto just a minute or two before the liquid is totally absorbed

serve with a squeeze of lemon, sprinkle with hazelnuts and parsley.

et voila:

Looks nice, tasted good, too.

Pesto, pine nut, tomato and mushroom couscous

hannahnicklin — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 14:21:51 +0000

Another really tasty hot couscous lunch, this time of a vegetarian (not vegan variety). Make sure your pesto is veggie friendly, too. This is equally as good the day after, cold, so stick it in the fridge for a lunch when you’re out of the house, or take it to a barbecue. I always take this and homemade coleslaw, falafel, and salsa/guacamole to barbeques and all the meat eaters ask for the recipes, so TAKE THAT, MEAT. Or something. Anyway, here it is, based pretty faithfully on a 101 Good Food Seasonal Salads recipe, I think.

Prep Time: 15 mins | Servings: 2

Nutritional Info: 291 kcal, 7g protein, 29g carbs, 17g fat (4g sat), 1g fibre, 0.49g salt

Ingredients:

Make sure you’ve toasted your pine nuts before starting. Then start your couscous going by putting it in a bowl, pouring in the boiling stock, and covering.

Should take about 5 minutes, which is enough time to prep all your veg, halve the tomatoes, and thinly slice the spring onions and chestnut mushrooms. Buy good tomatoes and mushrooms/onions, because this is one of those simple ingredients recipes where good ingredients make all the difference.

When the couscous is done, fluff up, then add the olive oil and pesto to taste.

Stir through until well covered. Chuck in every thing else,

mix. Season to taste, and serve immediately, hot, or cool the same/next day as an awesome salad.

Courgette and mushroom couscous with pine nuts

hannahnicklin — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:58:49 +0000

A good, quick, hot vegan lunch this, with some really good flavours. I might also add in a stir of pesto if you were looking for a non-vegan version. (Also, if making vegan version, make sure your couscous is vegan, as it’s an odd pasta variant thing). This is a fast recipe, so set the couscous going just after you’ve prepped the veg, so that when the veg is cooked you can combine immediately.

Prep Time: 10 | Cook Time: 10 | Servings: 1

Nutritional Info: calories: 332, fat: 12.3g, carbs: 50g, protein: 10.6g

Ingredients picture:

prep the veg, start the couscous, NOW! (keeping back a couple of tbsp of stock for later on)

heat the oil over a medium-high heat, and add the courgette and garlic, stir for 2-3 minutes

add the mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, basil and stock

stir fry for 2-3 more minutes, until the courgettes are ‘crisp-tender’

combine with the (fluffed) couscous and pine nuts, stir, season, drizzle with a tiny bit of olive oil, and serve!

Mm.

Based on a modified version of a recipe from the Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen.

Blackberry and Apple Jam

hannahnicklin — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 13:00:20 +0000

One of my strongest memories of what ‘home’ is, it the heat of a kitchen, the sound of the Archers omnibus, and the smell of pastry baking and jam making. My mum’s responsible for all of my (what she calls) ‘survival skills’ cooking; the basic, good, hearty stuff you can do with ingredients that come straight off the land. Something about bringing kids up in the 80s, I think, she’s always showing me how to bake, grow, and preserve native things. So there was something of a ‘homecoming’ about making my very first jam of my own. My favourite dessert at the moment is soya natural yoghurt with a tsp of my mum’s jam stirred in, and when I ran out of that, I thought ‘why not make my own’. So here it is. My First Jam. Based on a recipe from

Prep Time: 30 minutes | Cook Time: 1 hour cooling | Servings: 1.5kg

Nutritional Info: Per tablespoon: 42kcals, no fat (no saturated), 0.1g protein, 11.2g carbs, 11.2g sugar, trace salt

Ingredients: (there’s also ingredients for strawberry jam pictured, which I cooked just after the blackberry and apple one. Sure you can work out which fruit belongs where)

Put the blackberries and apples into a large pan with the lemon juice and 100ml water. Place over a medium heat and simmer gently for 10-15 minutes, until tender and reduced. Basically they’ll suddenly be FULL OF JUICE around 8 minutes in, you have to wait for that to happen, and then let it reduce for 5-10.

Put a plate into the freezer to chill for later, this is how you’ll test whether or not it’s at setting point. Add the jam sugar to the pan and cook, stirring to dissolve. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly for 5 minutes.

Remove from the heat. Put a teaspoonful of jam onto a chilled saucer for 1 minute. Drag your finger lightly over the jam. If it wrinkles, it has reached setting point; if it doesn’t, boil for a couple more minutes, then turn off the heat and try again with another chilled saucer. Set aside to cool for 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to its lowest setting. You now have to sterilise the jars and lids that you’re going to be using, clean and upturn them – lids off – in very hot soapy water.

Put in them in the oven for at least 15 minutes – on a heat which leaves the glass just ok to handle, pretty much the lowest setting works fine.

Stir the jam, when cool-ish (I only left it about half an hour and it was fine) then ladle into each jar, place a wax circle (wax side down) on top to help seal the jam from any stray bacteria, seal tightly, and label. Ready to eat when cool!

capsicum-free tomato salsa

hannahnicklin — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:30:00 +0000

The brilliant falafel burger recipe that I posted up here the other week is best served with salsa and guacamole. Unfortunately the only salsa you can buy in the supermarket is full of regular peppers, which make me really ill. So this is a nice cool salsa with only chilli peppers for heat, a version based on this. But with a few changes. Worth trying, very simple.

Prep Time: 10 mins | Servings: Serves 8 | Nutrition per serving: 55 kcal, 4g carbs, 3g fat, 1g protein

To make, put all the ingredients in a mixing bowl, season and mix thoroughly. SIMPLE AS THAT.

Soya hot chocolate. Better than all the other hot chocolates.

hannahnicklin — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 16:35:00 +0000

Being lactose intolerant and stuff I’ve been making this soya hot chocolate for so long, that it’s only just occurred to me that people might not know how to make a yummy vegan version of THE KING OF HOT DRINKS – especially if you’re used to using the horrible hot chocolate mixes with milk powder, etc. In fact this is the only hot drink that I like (you all know that tea and coffee are horrible, right?), and having tried it with regular milk, I can confidently say that even if you’re not vegan or lactose intolerant you should ALWAYS make hot chocolate with soya milk; it’s thicker, and slightly sweeter. You’re going to want to experiment a little with sugar depending on what brand soya milk you use (Alpro Soya sweetened, for example, is much more vanilla-y and sweeter than the version I use, for example, so I’d back off on the sugar), or even try almond milk or hazelnut milk. Here’s my basic recipe though:

Serves: 1 large mug
Prep/cook time: 5 mins
Nutritional info: 172 kcal

MAKING:

pour about 15ml of the soya milk into the bottom of the mug you’re making the hot chocolate in, and then put the rest on a pan on the hob. Keep a very close eye on it and don’t be tempted to microwave it, soya milk tips over into crazy foaming monster stage very quickly. don’t walk away from it. You have been warned. Anyway, while bringing the soya milk to the boil, put a tiny bit of cinnamon (like a 1/12 of a tsp), the heaped cocoa, and sugar in with the 15ml of cool soya milk and mix to a loose paste. Add a little more of warm soya from the pan to loosen it if you want.

When the soya milk is bubbling, and just before it starts to foam, pour the milk into the mug about a 1/4 full, thoroughly mix the paste so you don’t have clumps of paste in the bottom, then add the rest of the just-foaming soya milk (catching the skin bit that sometimes forms, if you can)

et voila!

Variations: mix half soya cream with soya milk, and add melted spiced chocolate to the paste for SUPER luxury hot chocolate