Put the oil in a pan over a medium/low heat. Add the mustard seeds, the sausages and the onion. Cook for five minutes to soften the onion and colour the sausages.

Stir occasionally. Add the chilli and garlic:

Add the lentils, the chopped tomatoes, and 100ml of water. Stir in and bring to the boil. Then turn the heat down and cover. Cook for 10 minutes.

Add the sage, and then cook uncovered for about 10 minutes, maybe a bit longer, until the liquid has reduced enough.

Serve with boiled potatoes, baked potatoes, or, as in this instance, mustard mash.

Wine with that? Why not a Portuguese Alentejo Tinto?

Serves: 6 | Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 30 mins
Nutritional info: 227 kcal, 35g carbs, 7g fat, 8g protein

Ingredienty:

Prep: get the stock boiling. Chop the onion, cube the tomatoes, crush and chop the garlic, break up the spaghetti, drain the chick peas, chop up the beans into 1-2cm pieces.

Get a big pan, put the oil and onion in it. Soften the onion. I have illustrated this in case you are uncertain.

Add garlic. Fry for a couple of minutes more.

Add everything that isn’t the rocket.

Bring to the boil, simmer for 15-20 minutes, until pasta is done.

When the spaghetti is cooked, stir through the rocket. Season to taste. Serve.

How easy?

Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 35 mins | Serves: 4
Nutritional Info: 350 kcals, protein 16.4g, carbohydrate 68.5g, fat 3.1 g, saturated fat 0.3g, fibre 8.3g, salt 2.66 g

Ingredients pic: missing garlic and lemon, 1 too many potatoes, 1 too few tomatoes, and 2 two few chillies, because I made those changes as I went along:

First off (I’ve spared you the picture) pop 1 tsp of sunflower oil in a pan over a med-low heat and soften the onion, garlic, and chillies together for 5 minutes or so. Then add the chopped tomatoes, garam masala and tumeric, and fry over a medium high heat for a couple of minutes, to get it fragrant and stuff.

Then add the stock and lentils, bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.

Then add the sweet potato chunks, simmer for 15 minutes or until tender (but not completely mushy)

I decided to blend mine a bit, but only a bit, and I think this was a really good choice, leave some chunks, but just give it a whizz. A bit of mashing would work too, if you don’t have a hand blender.

Then add the spinach, stir through until wilted.

Season to fuck. Seriously. LOADS of salt. Taste it as you go, but that brings out the flavour. Then add the squeeze of half of or a whole lemon to taste.

And serve. Mmmm…

Serves: 4 | Prep: 5 mins | Cook: 35-40 mins

Nutrition:  (I can’t imagine my tweaks have changed this too much) 241 kcalories, protein 9.7g, carbohydrate 39.6g, fat 6 g, saturated fat 1.6g, fibre 7.4g, salt 1.86 g

Ingredients pic: (I have been known to add a half a leek per person, too, works nicely)

add the oil to a pan and soften the onion and garlic

Then add the carrots, celery and parsnips, and continue to soften

when beginning to get tender, add the lentils, bay leaf, tomato puree, 3/4 of the stock, and a healthy dollop of marmite.

around about the same time, chunk your potatoes, put them into some salted water and start them off

the pie mix should be gently bubbling away, simmer for 25 minutes, or until lentils are tender. You can speed this recipe up by about 15 mins if you leave out the lentils, but they are worth it. Add more stock if it needs it. You want gloopy. Gloopy pie mix.

Just as the lentils are nearly cooked, hopefully your potatoes should be ready. Mash them.

To make the mash, once the potatoes are well cooked, drain, put about 1/2 a tsp of butter per person, a little seasoning, and a generous splash per person of alpro soya cream in (trust me on this, dairy consumers, its slightly vegetabley taste comes into its own in savoury dishes) and if you’re feeling posh a tiny bit of rosemary. Mash.

Then clean out that pan (or if you’re the kind of fancy person with more than 2 medium pans, just get a new one) and set some water on to boil ready for the green veg.

Hopefully your pie mix should be nice and thick now. Spoon it into a casserole dish.

And using a spoon and fork, very thinly spread the mashed potato on top, it never goes as far as you think, so be sparing to begin with. The technique I use is teaspoon of mash, and sort of spread it from the spoon onto the pie using the reverse of the fork. Leaves a nice texture, too.

Your water should be boiling now, chuck in the broccoli (and about 3 minutes later the green beans). Pop the gardener’s pie under the grill when you start the greens. Dunno what heat, mine just seems to have an ‘on’ or ‘off’ mode. Put it on ‘on’.

I totes have a gas oven now. I sort of haven’t gotten used to it yet. Much more unpredictable.

Anyway, all being well, veg and pie should be done at the same time. Drain the veg, serve with the pie which should be lovely and crispy on top. That’s it. Tasty, easy, cheap, vegan. Yes.

Prep: 5 mins | Cook: 15 mins | Serves: 2
Nutritional Info: 467kcal, 44g carbs, 27g fat, 12g protein

Ingredients:

Prep everything. Then pop the pappardelle on the boil in salted water

While that cooks, soften the onion and aubergine in the olive oil. This is when I’d chuck in some mushrooms if you feel like bulking it out a bit.

Meanwhile, gently toast the pine nuts (keep an eye on them and keep moving them around to keep from burning the damn expensive things, remove from the heat when almost-tanned)

After 8 minutes in, add garlic to the aubergine/onion and fry for 2 minutes more

Then add the artichoke hearts, capers and sundried tomatoes, and heat gently

When the pasta is al dente, drain, and add the aubergine mix to the still-warm pan. Combine.

Season, and serve sprinkled with torn basil and toasted pine nuts. Drizzle with a little oil, flavoured ideally. et voila!

Prep: 10 mins | Cook: 30 mins | Serves: 4-6
Nutritional info: Per 1/4 335kcal 51g carbs 10g fat 12g protein

Ingredients:

Soften the onions and garlic for 5-10 minutes

add 3/4 of the oregano and the paprika, stir for a minute

Add the bay leaf, drained tinned beans, squash, stock, and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the squash is just getting tender

Then add the french beans and sweetcorn and simmer for 5 minutes more

Just as the green beans are ready, season very well (I used one and half tsp of salt and loads of pepper), add the last bit of oregano, and serve!

Very filling. Good stuff.

Serves: 4 | Prep Time: 5 mins | Cook time: 15 mins
Nutritional Info: (I think this includes chapatis) 452kcal, 45g carbs, 4g fat, 8g protein

Ingredients:

First off, use the oil to soften the onion and garlic

Add 1/2 a tbsp of the curry powder to some salted boiling water, and then boil the diced potatoes until tender

meanwhile, add the remaining curry powder to the onion/garlic, stir for a minute or so, then add the tomato, season, and simmer.

meanwhile 2: add the tsp of mint sauce to the yoghurt and stir in, another cheaty thing, but tastes well nice, actually. You might want to grate in some cucumber too, that would be nice.

Once the potatoes are tender, add to the tomatoes with 2 tbsp of mango chutney, stir and heat through

heat the chapati as per instructions, then serve the potatoes (2 wraps per person, about 350g of potato mix for 2 wraps) on a bed of shredded lettuce, or maybe some spinach, or just on their own. Scatter with chopped coriander, drizzle with minty relish and a bit more chutney if you want, fold and eat!

I think you get that I’m ready for Autumn. Sorry, it’s my favourite season.

Anyway, that’s mostly why I made this. It’s part of operation ‘pretend it’s Autumn and maybe, eventually, it will be’. This is ridiculously hearty (but also healthy) rich and vegan. Cheap, too. Cheap as hell, which will be important if you make my ‘mazing mushroom soup in the same week. Quite a few tweaks for this one, which is one of Simon Rimmer’s, whose recipes I tend to find a little uselessly complicated. Also, where on earth do you buy Madeira? Not found it anywhere yet. Subbed with some medium dry sherry, because they didn’t have dry, or port. Rubbish alcohol section is rubbish.

Prep Time: 30 mins | Cook Time: 45 mins | Servings: 4 hearty servings (2 pictured)
Nutritional Info: per 1/4 396kcal, 5.8g fat (0.9g sat), 61.7g carbs, 9.6g fibre, 6.6g protein, 8.9g sugars

Ingredients:

I might also be tempted to add a box of white mushrooms to the sauce from the onion softening on in, if you’re wanting to bulk it out even further, and have them soak up some of the ace sauce. Anyway, yes, soften the onion and garlic in the veg oil.

Add the tomato puree and cook for a minute or so

Then add the first lot of stock (200ml if cooking for 4), the sherry/Madeira, splash of soy sauce, bring to the boil, and then add the barley. Bring to a simmer and cover to cook for about 20-25 minutes until the barley is tender & cooked (this is sped up if you soak it beforehand, for about a 10-15 minute reduction on cooking time). Keep an eye on this, you’ll probably need to top up the water in it if it begins to boil dry before the barley is done.

Meanwhile, chop the veg and slice the potatoes very thinly. Parboil the potatoes for 5-10 minutes in salted water. Drain and set aside.

Bring the second lot of stock to the boil, and add all the veg. Cover and cook until tender. About 10 minutes.

Hopefully that will be done about the same time as the sauce. Add the thyme to the sauce…

And then combine the sauce and the veg in one pan. I added a tsp of marmite here. And a little more tomato puree, and a drop more water. Season well (to taste, anyway).

Then transfer into a deep (very deep) casserole dish, take the potato slices, and lay across the top in layers, each layer I sprinkled with salt and brushed with a little olive oil. You might also like to crumble a last bit of thyme leaves over it. You could also sprinkle a bit of cheese if you wanted to un-vegan it.

Stick under the grill for 10-15 minutes until the potatoes are crisp and awesome looking. Stick some green veg on when you put it under the grill and serve with something like green beans…

Comme ci. Le om le nom.

Prep time: 5 mins | Cook time: 15 mins | Serves: 4
Nutritional Info per serving: 188kcal 18g carbs 9g fat 9g protein

Ingredients pic: (vegan if you substitute the butter, obvs)

Melt the oil and butter together, and then soften the onions with the chopped thyme.

When softened, add the peas, stock, and parsley I doubled the parsley amount because, well, I like it.

Cook for 10 minutes or so until the peas are cooked. Blend to a fine puree.

Season to taste, and serve!

Nomnom.

Serves: 2 | Prep Time: 5 mins | Cook Time: 30-35 mins
Nutritional info: 445 kcal, 61g carbs, 16g fat, 14g protein

Ingredients sans parsley and beans (sneaking in at the corner)

Soften those onions!

Add the spices and stir for 10 seconds or so

Then add the tomatoes, raisins, chickpeas, aubergine and stock. Simmer for 20-25 minutes until the veg is soft and juice has reduced. If adding beans, halve them and pop in about 8-10 mins before serving and put a lid on the pan.

Season well, stir through parsley. JUST LIKE THAT.