#vegan food

Like most of my recipes, this calls for a few main ingredients and the rest is adaptable to suit your budget, timeframe, tastes, and imagination. In the future I think I’ll break this down into individual recipes, but for now, I’m lazy.

Depending on where you are in the world, capsicums (bell peppers) can be cheap or expensive. I’ve found if you can find them in jars, you get a lot more for your money and they take less cooking.

Ingredients

Bell peppers (Red is best, but you can use other colours too)

Filling

There’s a bunch of possible combinations, but here’s some of the ones  that I like:

Spinach, Quinoa, Basil, Tinned tomatoes, Veggie Stock, Garlic, and Onion

Roast Pumpkin, Cashew nuts, Spinach

Cooked Broccoli, Cauliflower, Carrot, Garlic and Onion with Veggie stock, soy sauce, a splash of sweet chilli, and Mashed beans (optional)

Brown rice, Kidney beans, Tinned tomatoes, Corn, Celery, Sweet chilli sauce, Garlic, and Onion

Crumbled tofu, Tinned tomatoes, Cumin seeds, Veggie stock, Capers, and sundried tomatoes

Sauce

Again, lots of options, a couple of my favourites:

Lazy dairy free cheese sauce - Hummus, Oil, Salt, Mustard, Thyme (optional) stirred together

Guacamole - Avocado (smooshed), Lemon Juice, Paprika, Salt, (optionally you can add fresh chopped tomato, grated carrot and cucumber) stirred together

Barbecue sauce

Basil pesto - Fresh basil leaves, cashews/pumpkin seeds/sunflower seeds, a sprinkling of brewers yeast, and a splash of oil, blended together

Sweet tomato sauce - Tinned tomatoes, a dollop of barbecue sauce (or a splash of vinegar and a teaspoon of brown sugar), fried onions, and raisins, simmered for a while

Madness/Method

If you’re using fresh peppers, slice them in half lengthways and remove the core and seeds. If you’re using jarred ones, just drain them and arrange them on a lined baking tray.

Gather up whatever filling you want to use. Chop up anything that needs chopping. Anything that needs pre cooking, like pumpkin, quinoa, or cauliflower, get that going.

Chop and fry garlic and onions if you’re using them, then add whatever else is going in, stir and and adjust to your tastes, then let it simmer till it’s very thick, add a little cornflour if you need to.

Now, depending on the sauce and your tastes, you might want to include the sauce in the actual peppers, drizzle it over the top, or add it after cooking. That’s up to you. I like to pair anything with beans or rice with guacamole and add the guacamole after cooking, but I like to add the hummus sauce to other fillings before cooking.

Preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F).

Spoon your filling into the peppers. It pays to underfill them a little bit since they tend to leak while cooking. Add sauce if you want to.

Bake them for about 20 minutes or until they go a little bit crispy on top.

Take them out of the oven, add sauce if desired, and eat.

Wary of whitesplaining/appropriating a food that is very much African/Middle Eastern, I did a bit of googling about it. There’s some very cool info about its history and how it’s made. Suffice to say that what us folks in the western world buy from the supermarket is the simplified version. But it’s the simplified version I’m gonna talk about in this post - because that’s what I use to make this recipe. And it’s super convenient (and I’m lazy). But seriously, go read about couscous and North African cuisine, it’s really cool.

This recipe has some similarities to Tabbouleh, but it’s a bit different.

Ingredients

Couscous - the make-in-five-minutes kind you can get at most supermarkets.

Fresh herbs - I particularly like mint and parsley, but any herbs you like are great

Any veggies you have lying around - I tend to stick to ones I don’t have to precook, but if you want to precook some, go for it :). I particularly like fresh tomato and raw carrot

Any nuts, seeds or legumes you have floating about - Again, I tend to stick to the kind I don’t have to precook, but precook away if it suits you. Sesame seeds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, etc are all great

Salt - just a pinch

Oil - just a little bit

Sauces - My personal favourites are a dollop of hummus, a splash of sweet chilli, and a teaspoon of wholegrain mustard. But you can add all kinds of sauces, or leave them out entirely.

Onion and garlic (optional) - These are pretty strong raw, so chop them finely unless you want to saute them for a couple of minutes first.

Lemon juice - Optional, fresh is best, but bottled will do too. You just want a splash or two. Maybe half a lemons worth to a decent sized bowl full (unless you really like it bitter)

Water

Method

Precook anything that needs precookin’

In a pot, bring about twice as much water as couscous to the boil, (or boil the jug and add it to a pot or bowl). Add a splash of oil and a pinch of salt, then add the couscous and cover.

Come back in five minutes. Go cuddle the cat, or the dog, and (if you’re me) pretend you never wanted to cuddle them to begin with when they don’t want cuddles.

Chop up the vegetables and herbs etc into small pieces.

Stir the couscous, it should be light and fluffy. Add everything else. Stir, and adjust sauces and herbs according to your personal tastes.

If you want the salad warmed through, you can stir it over medium heat for a few minutes, or put it in the microwave for 30 seconds to a minute on low to medium power.

Fight off anybody else trying to steal it.

Unless it’s the cat. Then you must render unto Felis Catus the things that are Felis Catus’. Unless there’s garlic or onions in it. Then you must protect your feline emperor at all costs.

Pasta sauce can be expensive, at least over here. It’s decidedly cheaper to make your own, and pretty easy.

If you wanna go the whole nine yards and start from scratch with whole tomatoes - awesome, but put aside an afternoon for it. I’ll post a modified version of a friends basic pasta sauce recipe in the future.

Base Ingredients

• 2 cans of tinned tomatoes
  
• 3 tablespoons of crushed garlic (or about twice than much chopped)
  
• A few tablespoons of oil
  
• A pinch of salt
  
• Half a teaspoon of brown sugar
  
• Water as you need it
  

Optional Extras

• Onion, Capsicum, Mushrooms, Greens like Spinach or Kale
• Basil, Parsley, Oregano, Thyme
• Black pepper, Paprika, Cumin
• Brewers/Nutritional yeast
• Soy sauce

The Plan

Fry the garlic (and any extra fryables) on medium heat in the bottom of a big pot, once it starts to smell good, add the tomatoes, sugar and salt (and any herbs and spices), and stir. Add water as you need to. Bring it to the boil and let it simmer till it’s soft and the flavours are all merging nicely, add water as you need it to get the thickness you like.

If you like your pasta sauce chunky, use it as it is, if you like it smooth, run it through a blender, or in a pinch force it through a sieve - this will leave some debris behind, but you can throw that in the compost. If you want to smooth out the sauce and then add chunkier vegetables, you can always put the sauce back in the pot and heat the veggies through.

Use it all in one go, or keep it in tightly sealed jars. I find soaking the jars and lids in just-boiled water is a good way to get them clean. Just use tongs to get them out.

From start to finish this should take half an hour or less.

Nutritionally, baked beans are actually pretty awesome. They tend to have a fair bit of sugar in the sauce, but baked beans and wholegrain toast are a fantastic quick/easy/cheap/nutritious meal for anyone. But if you’re like me and keep a bunch of 60 cent cans in the cupboard for when you’re skint, having them more than a few days in a row can start to get old.

So here’s how to jazz things up:

Garlic

Add garlic marg (dairy free) or garlic infused oil (add chopped, crushed or powdered garlic to a vegetable oil and leave it for a while before using) to toast.

Or mix it right in with the beans (if it’s crushed or chopped garlic you’ll need to let it simmer for a few minutes to let the garlic cook)

Spice it up

If you like it spicy, but can’t afford chilli beans (they’re three or four times the price of baked beans over here) you have some options.

Add some straight chilli powder or sauce and sweat it out.

Make something a little more complex, with garlic, onions, chilli powder, maybe even some capsicum. I quite like to add a touch of paprika, a splash of soy sauce, a little lemon juice/apple cider vinegar, some chopped celery, and some cumin, but that’s me. Mix and match to suit your tastes.

Creamy/Cheesey

If you’ve got a bit of almond milk or whatever non dairy milk you like, you can make baked beans really creamy with a couple of tablespoons to the can. You’ll want to simmer it a little bit longer so it thickens.

If you want a cheesier flavour, add a teaspoon of brewers/nutritional yeast. It has a very strong flavour, so add small amounts first until you know how much you like.

Add a squeeze of lemon juice or a splash of apple cider vinegar if you want a sharp cheese taste.

Veggie stock

I find half a cube of veggie stock can add a nice flavour. For liquid stock I’d add about a quarter of a cup. Stir it in while heating, let it thicken, eat.

Herbs

Rosemary, Thyme, Sage, Oregano, Basil and parsley are all really nice in baked beans. Add a little bit at a time and adjust according to your tastes. Dried herbs need a little more cooking before their flavour comes out.

Make a soup/stew 

Depending on what you’ve got going spare in the kitchen, baked beans can be a great way to use up leftover vegetables, and with some grains and legumes you can make it go a long way. If you don’t want big chunks of vegetables you can run them through the blender, most of the broccoli/cauliflower stalk we usually throw out can be used up this way).

I like to add some soy sauce, a cube (or cup if it’s liquid) of veggie stock, some garlic and onion, and then whatever else is around, plus enough water for it to cook in. For a more tomato based flavour I might add in a can of tomatoes. You could go in a totally different direction if you wanted though, non dairy milk goes well in soups and stews, you might find you end up with something more lentil based. Anything goes.

If the veggies or grains etc need to be cooked for a while you can simmer them in a pot, or add them to the crockpot, or even in the microwave.