Vegetarian Foods Archive

These days, I don't have much energy to cook from scratch when I get in from work unless its something like pasta such as  Spaghetti dish, but strangely enough I did actually make this Three Pea Tagine after work in the late evening.   I was rather surprised that I had both the energy and the inclination.  This was one of those days, when i decided to myself that I was not going to plonk myself in front of either the computer or sofa and instead use those couple of hours a little more usefully, then laze.  Other than making couscous, grub was made and it was plenty to last us two days if not more.   Its actually a relatively easy recipe, after sauteing the onions, garlic and spices, you could happily leave it for 40 - 45 minutes for the yellow split peas to cook in the vegetable stock, then stir in the remaining ingredients such as chickpeas, raisins, green peas, cherry tomatoes which happen to be home gown for 10 minutes and its pretty much done.  ...

Food from the Indian Sub-Continent is what I grew up with and I love its diversity, but when I left home for University all those years ago, I discovered a whole world of global vegetarian cuisine from Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Moroccan, Malaysian, Thai, Greek, Turkish, Irish, Scottish and Mexican.  Vegan Mofo prompt today is to share your favourite cuisine.  Its hard to choose one cuisine that i favour over others, but I can hands down say what dish I really really like - Vegetarian Chilli. Although the Mexican cuisine I had in Scotland and Wales has never ever authentic, more Tex - Mex style, I developed a taste for Mexican flavours and vegetarian Chilli in its many incarnations became my favourite go to meal.  Perhaps the first vegetarian Chilli I ever had was made with soya mince.   Later when I started making my own vegan Chilli from scratch, it was always made borlotti, pinto or kidney beans, then I discovered black turtle beans and this dish became my favo...

I made this recipe a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for inspiration to use up the last of my courgettes.   Apparently, the descriptive 'Calabacitas' is often used in Mexican restaurants to describe a vegetarian filling that usually contains squash, corn and spices.   The recipe suggested serving this as a Taco filling, but I am not into taco's that much - Burrito being my first choice, always, but this time round I fancied a bit of crunch and decided to make some Tortilla baskets. The calabacitas was utterly gorgeous, not just the colour: gold, green and cream, but also to eat, the sweetness from the sweetcorn, the buttery butter beans, the zing from the lime.  For me though, it was both the coriander and jalapenos that elevated the courgettes to a thing of sheer culinary delight.  I served my portion of Calabacitas in a tortilla basket.  The crunch was amazing.  D insisted on having his burrito style with soured cream, grated cheese an...

What's the weather like where you are?  Or should I not ask?! It's not so nice here at all, we went into Cardiff this morning and driving there and back - well it felt like we were in a submarine with the rain coming down in buckets.  I am not feeling 100%, plus its been a good, but busy week at work, so I was actually glad to get back home when we did, as I was not in the mood for Christmas shopping and the hustle and bustle.  I was glad that I didn't need to do any cooking either when we got in either. I made this Savoury Crumble a couple of days back, yes I know two Savoury Crumble s in one month.  This one is very autumnal in appearance, though its quite wintry outside.  Gold and yellow from the butternut squash and sweetcorn, moss green from the kale and studded with clay brown aduki beans.  It was quite pretty to gaze at, but then I went and covered it with a blanket of wholemeal flour and cheddar cheese crumble topping.  Once baked, a ...

Eating black eyed peas at the start of the New Year had become a bit of a tradition in my home, reputed to bring good luck and prosperity.  Goulash made with Black Eyed Beans Black Eyed Peas Hot Pot Ginger Black Eyed Peas Trini Black Eyed Peas with Rice Well whether its true or not, I fancied a change this time round and made something different. Still with pulse goodness.   I like the natural buttery nature of butter beans more than cannelini beans, but choose whatever white bean takes your fancy if you want to try this recipe.  What really tempted me to make this White Bean Soup was actually the  Arabic Seven Spices  known as Baharat .   Follow this link to learn and see so many other variations of the  Middle Eastern - Arabic Seven Spice - Baharat . When the dish was completed, I felt it was more of a stew than a soup which was actually a good thing, making this suitable more for a meal than a light lunch.  The weather has been stu...

I made this rustic French Lentil Soup with Capers and Fried Pine Nuts from Adam Sobel's Street Vegan a little while back.  I've had many a French Lentil style soups in my time, but what was different about this one and what I loved about this soup other than the Puy lentils was the undertones of the Balsamic vinegar, enhanced further by a garnishing of minced piquant capers and in place of croutons, some fried pine-nuts.  This soup had real depth of flavour! These pine nuts scattered over this soup were given to me by a friend who had just come back from Pakistan.  The pine nuts were still in there shells too so took time to shell, but I didn't mind it. I have never thought about it before, but Pine Nuts do have that cheesy greasy texture and I can totally now see why pine nuts are used in vegan 'Parmesan' cheese recipes.  And yes there is rosemary in the soup too, hence my soup bowl posing with it. This is the first of many The Vegetarian Library chall...

We tend to enjoy soup at the weekend.  There was once a time when I would make it on a Sunday for us to enjoy during the working week, but the reality was when we come home from a long day at work, we really want to tuck into something more substantial than slurp from a bowl. D has a tendency to pick up tomatoes from the grocers even out of season.  He knows they cannot ever be compared to homegrown, but he likes to have them as an option for his home-made sandwiches or cherry tomatoes for salads.   These tomatoes had not been used for either and to the touch were beginning to soften here and there.  After enjoying the Seven Spice Butter Bean Stew I was inspired to make a soup of them with the addition of butter beans.  As you can imagine, the tomatoes were not the tastiest, so I decided to a little balsamic vinegar for sharp flavour, this was a good move as it made for a good soup. I am sharing this with Farmers Girl  Kitchen and Baking Queen 74 ...

When I say Indian, its more Indian style as I wish to embrace the diversity of all the countries in the Indian Sub-Continent - Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and even the Maldives as they all embrace this way of cooking.  This is also in part to show respect to the many 'Indian' restaurateurs and take-aways  across Europe and the United Kingdom where the owners and workers are often of   Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage.  I make Curried Red Lentil Dal all the time, its part of my South Asian heritage, however I made this particular version of  Pigeon Pea Soup from Prashad's cookbook a couple of weeks back.    It does just look like a simple bowl of Red Dal, but its rather deceptive in appearance because once you take slurp of this soup you are hit first by the heady perfumed herbyness and then Boom - you taste the amazing spices - its really quite something special for some thing could easily be described as a peasant dish.   ...

I am delighted to announce that I will be hosting the 93 edition of  My Legume Love Affair  for March 2015 .   This is a diverse food blogging event, so any worldwide cuisine is welcome, as long as the main ingredient are legumes.  This can be beans, lentils, pulses.  Peanuts are legumes, as are carob, fenugreek and tamarind.  Foods made from legumes such as chickpea flour and tofu are permitted.  Whatever your chosen legume is, please just ensure that it is the predominant ingredient of the recipe.   My Legume Love Affair  was started by  The Well Seasoned Cook .  Lisa of  Lisa's Kitchen  is now the administrator of MLLA, as well as the occasional hostess. For the rules please link to this announcement page and read  Lisa's MLLA information page  as well.   Please link your entry below.   I will post the MLLA Round up in the first week of April 2016. I would also like to take this opportunit...

It must have been a subliminal message of sorts that got me hankering for a Veggie Sausage Casserole.  For days I went onto D 'I need to pick u some veggie sausages...'  yet always seemed to forget and then I repeated myself all over again 'I have to pick up some veggie sausages', but yesterday - I remembered!   And so here it is, a rich thyme and smoked paprika infused tomato sauce based casserole with kidney beans and Romano red peppers.  It turned out very red indeed. You can choose to use any vegetarian or vegan sausage you like, I am not loyal to any particular brand and like to try them all.  If your not a veggie, of course you can opt the real meat variety.   The smokiness from the paprika was just right, not overwhelming at all.   I served this very red vegan casserole with some crushed roasted new potatoes.  It was grand I tell you and well worth the wait. So some of you may wondering why do I showcase a leek here?!  Well I w...

Yes, I share with you another stew of sorts.  Though I have to admit this is a much lighter stew compared to those features a couple of weeks back. I guess its a sign that Spring is here.   Contrary though, the ingredients are not spring like at all, mostly autumnal.  Squashes, sweet potatoes and red and yellow peppers have been featuring quite a bit on my plate recently, I think its the colours that shout and make me feel all warm and humble.   Or maybe its accidental, as I want a change from the drudge brown-beige and greens.   I normally squeeze some fresh lemon juice when eating dishes made with black eyed peas.  Its something my mother taught me as it enhances the dish and I love it.  This time I decided to add slithers of  home-made preserved lemons  to the dish instead to infuse the nutty black eyed beans. The black eyed peas certainly did take on the zing from the preserved lemons that had almost deteriorated in the pot. ...

This yellow turmeric infused rice with butter beans is inspired by a family Pilau  - Savoury Rice recipe . I make a variation of this rice dish with whatever is in season or what I have to hand every other month.   As we are going away for a long weekend to my mother in laws, we have been raiding the fridge and vegetable basket, so there was not much in the way of fresh ingredients, other than some curly kale which I wish was from the garden.  I always have some dried beans, lentils and pulses so decided to make this dish last night when I put some butter beans to soak overnight. For ease, yes I admit I will sometimes opt for tinned beans and pulses such as kidney beans, sometimes chickpeas and pinto beans.  But there are some beans  that I will never ever buy tinned and would prefer cooking them from scratch.  Butter beans is one of those that I like soaking and simmering from scratch, as the ones from the tinned are awful and sometimes a congeale...

Early this month I hosted the 93rd edition of  My Legume Love Affair  for March 2016 .   Here are the vegetarian and vegan legume-lentil-bean fantastic contributions . The first entry comes from Kate at Gluten Free Alchemist.  Kate shares  Reggae Potatoes  loaded with Caribbean flavours.  The legume featured in this recipe is black eyed peas. Next we have Linsy  with No Ginger, Garlic or Tomato Channa Masala .  The legume featured here are the nutty chickpeas.   Rafeeda who blogs at the Big Sweet Tooth is a new blogger to me, so its lovely to make her acquaintance though MLLA.  Rafeeda shares with us Bessara - Moroccan Fava Bean Dip. She had used  dried broad beans for this recipe.   We have another dip, this Hummus with Za'atar comes from Lisa's Kitchen.  I have to add and agree with Lisa though, Hummus is more than a dip or appetizer, it can easily turn into a hearty meal.  The beans used here...