Saturday 12 May 2012

Not Thai Green Curry

We had some butternut squash, mushrooms and a potato that really needed using so I decided the perfect dish to make would be a curry. When I make curries I just make up the recipe as I go along but in general the same sort of thing happens. My boyfriend is not at all keen on plain rice so we decided to jazz up some rice with garlic, mushrooms and tofu.

Ingredients (Serves 4-6 depending on how much rice you want)

1 medium potato
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 tablespoon cumin seeds
1 red onion
3 cloves garlic
1 medium aubergine (eggplant),
1 medium courgette (zucchini)
1/2 butternut squash
5 blocks of frozen spinach (or most of a bag of fresh)
7 medium size tomatoes
1/2 tin of coconut milk (can be left out for a lower fat curry)


  1. Cut the potato into small chunks and boil in a pan for around 10 minutes
  2. While the potato is cooking, in a separate pan put the oil, spices, chopped onion and garlic to fry for a couple of minutes. 
  3. Chop and add the aubergine, courgette and squash to the onions and keep adding splashes of water to stop the vegetables burning and to keep them sauteing. Do this for around 10 minutes. Or until the vegetables are just about cooked through. 
  4. Add the potato, spinach and the tomatoes cut into quarters and stir until the spinach has defrosted and is equally distributed
  5. Add the coconut milk and stir for a few more minutes
  6. Add salt and pepper to taste
The result is a very green curry (hence the title) but nothing like a Thai green curry.

For the rice:
Ingredients:

White rice (however much you think you need)
Chopped garlic (for 2 we used 2 cloves)
Chopped Mushrooms
Silken Tofu
Turmeric
Cumin Seeds
Salt 
Pepper

  1. Boil the white rice as usual
  2. About 5 minutes before the rice has finished start frying your garlic, mushrooms and spices together
  3. Once the rice has cooked, add this to the frying pan and stir well
  4. Add however much of the silken tofu you like to make an "egg" style rice (we used half a carton)
The turmeric makes the rice bright yellow and this next to the green curry makes an interesting plate of food!


Thursday 10 May 2012

Leftover ratatouille ==> Lasagne

Sorry I haven't posted for a while. Most of the people who read this blog are probably my family and so know the reasons for this but if you happen to be reading this and you don't know me then here's my news: I'm pregnant, trying to write a dissertation and in the process of moving house! Busy times!

One of my boyfriend's specialities is ratatouille, even before meeting vegan me, so a few days ago he whipped up some of the most delicious ratatouille ever with fried aubergine, courgette, fresh tomatoes, onions, peppers and a slight cheat of some shop bought pasta sauce. The pre-fried aubergine in this was just fantastic and I had many helpings (many, many helpings!).

After 2 days of ratatouille (it seriously was a HUGE batch) we decided it was time to turn it into something else so I whipped up a vegan lasagne.

I precooked the pasta sheets as they were dried packet sheets and also fried some mushrooms in olive oil with some herbs (mushrooms were meant to go into the ratatouille but they were forgotten at the back of the fridge). I also made some cheesy white sauce. This is done by cooking some white flour in olive oil for a few minutes (I didn't measure the quantity of flour but it covered the oil (about 3 tablespoons) in a thin layer of flour. I then added some coconut milk (the type you pour on your cereal, not the one in the can) and stirred to keep it smooth. I usually keep adding coconut milk until it has the consistency I like and added about 4 big tablespoons  of nutritional yeast and some salt and black pepper and stirred well for the next few minutes. I layered up all the ingredients finishing with a layer of the white sauce and an extra sprinkling of nutritional yeast. And just for fun added an olive smiley face!

Sorry it is not a precise recipe. I only thought of adding it to the blog when it came out of the oven as a success. I should be doing some more cooking this weekend for someone's birthday though so keep watching for more posts :)




Check out our shiny new hob in the background!