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?

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.

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: 25 mins | Servings: 2
Nutritional Info: 538kcal 77g carbs 16g fat 20g protein (this doesn’t include the splash of red wine or parmesan)

Ingredients (not pictured, chopped toms, parsley, wine, sugar)

OK, it’s time to SOFTEN THAT ONION. About 5 minutes

Add the garlic, mushrooms, celery and carrots, fry until tender, about 10 mins

At this point add a splash of wine if you’re going to, let it reduce by about half before adding chopped tomatoes (not pictured), drained lentils, puree, basil. Season. Simmer.

I’m going to go ahead and assume you can cook spaghetti. The nutritional info on this’un uses wholewheat spaghetti so, about 10 minutes all in all. Salted oily water. Set that to go, all the while simmering the bolognaise, top up liquid with water if it’s drying up (or wine) add a pinch of sugar to taste, and towards the end adjust the seasoning.

Drain the spaghetti, add a bit more salt to it, some chopped parsley if you’ve got any to hand and are feeling fancy, and scrunch some black pepper into it, toss, pop on your plate, and serve the bolognaise on top with a nice bit of parmesan and remaining scraps of basil:

It’s better than Rose’s, I reckon. But, y’know, shoulders of giants and all that.