The Vegan Thread

Marinated tofu, veg skewers, pineapple slices, big mushrooms (filled with oil n garlic etc) just grilled from one side. Onion, fennel, leeks, courgette, peppers bbq quite nicely. Also sweet potato on the charcoal wrapped in foil.

A really nice variety of salads to serve with is a must too! Cucumber, pickles, tomatoes, etc :D

That all sounds banging. I usually do garlic-y potatoes but maybe I'll mix it up and go for sweet potatoes this time.

Yeah potatoes work great too.

You can have the pineapple plain or marinade with bbq sauce or something it’s soo good.

Also a note on tofu (not necessarily for you but for anyone reading) the longer you press it for the more meat-y it will be. And always buy extra firm -avoid anything with ‘silken’ in the name unless a recipe asks for it specifically.

This guy goes into a few preparation techniques for maximising flavour and texture in mushrooms and tofu. Interesting vids I thought! sorry if it’s a repost

https://youtube.com/c/SauceStache

Grilled/charred lettuce with a simple dressing and some nuts or seeds

Freezing, defrosting then squidging is the key for ultimate firmness. I prefer it as it comes out of the packet for most stuff though, crispy on the outside and soft on the inside.

That's a good call!

I did a whole fennel, whole purple carrots, sliced beetroot, peppers and king oyster mushrooms this weekend. The mushrooms are just he greatest when charred up and in a burger bun.

I usually just mix up olive oil, garlic, chilli flakes and herbs to slather on everything

The mushrooms are just he greatest when charred up and in a burger bun.

I'm sure they are, but any restaurant which serves a mushroom in a bun and tells you it's a burger can get in the sea. Looking at you, Mr Nando.

Nandos do proper vegan chicken stuff now! It's not too bad.

tbf, I only went once, prolly 10 years ago, on a work thing I couldn't avoid, before we got cool.

A totally reasonable amount of food for 2 people... the sweet potatoes (seen hiding in the coals) were great, will definitely be doing that again, thanks for the tip @MCamb . The king oyster mushrooms were excellent as well.

1 Attachment

Looks amazing!

Lemon roasted Savoy cabbage totally works, it turns out

1 Attachment

Fishermen, never knowingly on the right side of history:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/25/rats-of-the-sea-backlash-after-cornish-fishers-call-for-seal-cull

Am rather enjoying the challenge of changing over.

Todays lunch was homemade malted seeded sourdough loaf with a adzuki bean and roasted pepper hummus (boiled a tin of beans with some bicarbonate of soda and blitzed with roasted peppers garlic and tahini, used the oil from the roast pepper jar to loosen)

Dinner is pasta/pesto made from garlic, roasted peppers, sun dried tomatoes, raw cashews, lemon juice and zest, nutritional yeast. So all store cupboard foods and the pesto could be made in the time it took to boil the pasta.

We've got Meera Sodha's Kung Pao cauliflower for dinner which is like Wagas bang bang cauliflower but better. We chuck in a few other veg bits and tofu to bulk it up. Excuse the state of the book, it gets used a lot.

1 Attachment

I got a copy last week and made the Victoria sponge.

Sadly it reminded me why I loathe margarine and cakes made with marg. it has a weird artificial taste. Then there was the buttercream icing which requested 3/4kg of icing sugar. Despite my sweet tooth I only used 500g but even the others eating the cake commented the icing was too sweet and it also had the marg aftertaste.

I need to find some recipes without shortening or margarine.

So far the cake experiment has been the one disappointment so overall am very happy with the switch to plant based food for 5 days a week.

Perhaps an oil based cake like a carrot cake would work better. Sainsbury's vegan cream cheese is a good substitute for the cream cheese icing.

I would suggest you persevere and at least try the peanut butter cookies from the book. Peanut butter makes everything better.

I’ll give that a go. I liked the look of the peanut butter sandwich cookies but it’ll be the same buttercream icing.

The suggestion of an oil based carrot cake is really useful. I have been looking at some of the deliciouslyella recipes which tend to use coconut oil instead.

This isnt the exact recipe I've used before, and I just do it from [flawed] memory now, but this cake is great: https://thefoodiediaries.co/2021/11/06/the-best-vegan-chocolate-loaf-cake/

It's also fast enough to make after dinner on a whim if I just fancy cake, which...has been known to happen

Wife hates chocolate cake 😒

more for you then

And what kind of monster* uses volumetric measurements.

*fucking ‘merkins but it’s so so wrong for pastry cooking and dry ingredients.

Looks good. What type of vinegar do you use?