ASDA

Hello,

I am a regular shopper at ASDA - it's my local supermarket, and is cheap and easy to get to. However, I have learned some things about the supermarket this week which have put me off totally!

First, the recipe for their soya milk (used in this blog to make the Vegan Lasagne) includes Vitamin D3. I was horrified to learn that this is derived from lanolin, which in turn is derived from sheep's wool, making it unsuitable for vegans! Imagine making a soya milk which is not suitable for vegans - appalling!

Secondly, they have started changing some of their recipes which were previously vegan to include milk. Two items which I regularly buy (because I'm a little vegan piggy) are ASDA's dark chocolate and bourbon biscuits, both from the "Chosen by You" range. It's lucky that I check regularly, because last time I went shopping, I found that the choco contains lactose now, and the bourbons have a new part on the packaging, which exclaims proudly "Now with Milk!". So there's two of my favourites scratched off my shopping list!

I'm sure that ASDA think they are doing us a favour by making the items a bit more "luxurious". However, they need to remember that they are excluding vegans, not to mention those with allergies. I have written a letter which I'll post tomorrow complaining about this. If you are an ASDA shopper, even a casual one, I would recommend that you do the same. Other supermarkets are catching up with us by starting to label their products as suitable for vegans, whereas ASDA seem to be taking a step backwards! They won't know that we aren't happy unless we tell them, so dust off your laptop/typewriter/printing press and get writing!

I'll let you know if/when I get a reply.

Plenty of vegan good wishes,
Callum

Vegan Pasties - "Chicken" Curry

Hello everyone,

When I decided to turn vegan, one of the things I really missed was the convenience of being able to grab food on the go in just about any shop. I used to like popping into Greggs to pick up a cheese and onion pasty, but now I have to be a bit more creative when I'm out. However, even better than creative is well prepared. Just because I'm making a stance against animal abuse, it doesn't mean I never want to eat a pasty again! Today's post shows you how easy it is to make your own delicious pasties at home, with only a few inexpensive ingredients and about half an hour.

Ingredients

 

Only a few simple ingredients needed here - why complicate things?

• Ready-made vegan puff pastry
• Soya chicken style pieces
• Curry sauce of your choice
• Chilli sauce/powder/fresh chillies (optional)
• Frozen peas (not pictured)
• A little soya milk (not pictured)
• Vegetable oil (not pictured)

I know, ready-made pastry is a bit of a cheat, but I've made puff pastry from scratch before, and it's an awful lot of effort. It's surprisingly easy to find vegan puff pastry, because all but the luxury brands tend to use vegetable margarine instead of butter. I'm using Asda own brand, but I know that there are other possibilities.

The curry sauce I'm using gives a sort of yellow Chinese-takeaway-style curry sauce, but you could use any kind of indian style sauce if you wanted. I'm also adding a bit of chilli for spice, but if you don't like the hot stuff, just omit it.

The Filling

Put about a tablespoon of vegetable oil in a frying pan, and fry the chicken until it just starts to brown slightly. Add the frozen peas, and fry until they are hot through. Now add the sauce, following the instructions on the pack - for my sauce, I added a heaped tablespoon to the pan, stirred it around for about 30 seconds, then added half a cup of boiling water. Bear in mind you don't need much sauce. It should just be a coating - too much sauce will make it difficult to contain the curry in a pasty.

Assembly

Roll out the pastry until it's at the required thickness - about 2-4 mm seems about right. Cut the pastry into rectangles - I got 6 out of the packet. Take about two heaped tablespoons of filling, and put it on one half of the rectangle, leaving space around the edges to seal the pastry. Use the back of the spoon to flatten the filling as much as possible. Using a pastry brush or a finger, cover the edges of the pastry in a little soya milk. Now fold over the pastry and press lightly all around the edges to seal. Using a thumb and forefinger, crimp the edges by squeezing the pastry together all oround the edges. You can cover the outside of the pastry in a little soya milk for a shiny finish. Finally, use a sharp knife to cut a couple of slits in the top of the pasty. This lets steam out from the filling.

Now, simply bake the pasties on a lightly floured baking tray for 15-20 mins or until golden brown (these are guidelines - always consult the instructions on your pastry!).

The Result

This really is a dish to warm your soul - oven-fresh pasties, easy to make and not time-consuming. Great to pack when you're going out or to take to work for lunch.

The beauty is that you don't even need to make a bespoke filling, because you can throw almost anything into a pasty. Made a curry and have a few spoonfuls left over? Bake it in a pasty! I've also used leftover mexican-style bean chilli in the past, and it was a roaring success. I also tried sosmix to make a kind of sausage roll, by mixing the powder as per the instructions then putting it in the pastry uncooked - it cooks very well in the pastry. Try it sometime!

I've also frozen some of the pasties uncooked, and I'm hoping they should still cook well after freezing. When I cook them, I'll update you on how they go!

I hope you enjoy giving this a try yourself - I don't miss Greggs at all anymore, what they sell is no substitute for what you can do yourself!

Watch this space for more ideas and recipes soon!

Yours,
Callum

Vegetable Stock

Hello,

No pictures or recipes today, just a word on stocks. I use vegetable stocks at least once or twice a week in my cooking, most often as a base for soups and gravies, but it can also be used instead of water when you boil rice, beans etc. As a vegan it can occasionally be quite hard to get ready-made stock cubes, as they sometimes (often) contain milk products, or in some cases, meat products! I heard a rumour that some Knorr vegetable stocks contain flavouring from beef, of all things, but don't quote me on that! Even where I can find vegan stock cubes, I really prefer to avoid them due to the high levels of salt, and the flavours are often so strong that you can barely taste whatever you have cooked with the stock.

So where does this leave us? Well, I make my own stock, and it's not difficult or even time-consuming.

My method is this - whenever I'm preparing food with vegetables, I take the trimmings and peelings and put them in a sandwich bag. I then put the bag in the freezer. I keep adding to this bag every time I cook until it's full or I need a stock. Then, I simply empty the bag into boiling water while I'm in the kitchen cooking something else, and let it boil furiously for as long as can! That's it!

After I've drained the stock, I sometimes let it boil a bit longer to reduce it if there is too much liquid. After that, I let it cool and either use it or put it in the freezer. Easy, healthy stock available whenever I want it!

I've recently started doing this in a pressure cooker (my new favourite toy!) because I hear that this helps to retain more vitamins in the stock.

My favourite things to put in are peelings and trimmings from carrots, courgettes, celery and mushrooms, because these give a very earthy and flavoursome stock (especially the mushrooms). I avoid potato peelings, because these are a bit too starchy for my liking. What you put into your stock is entirely a matter of personal taste, or may be affected by what you intend to do with a stock. For example, a delicately flavoured soup requires a delicate stock, so you may wish to avoid fennel, or other strongly flavoured items.

So, never buy stock cubes again! There is truly no substitute for making your own custom stock - it's healthier, tastes better and gives you that little bit extra satisfaction!

Yours,

Callum

PS. More recipes coming soon - I just bought a powdered egg substitute for the first time, so I feel a bit of baking coming on to try it out!

Vegan Lasagne

Hello friends,

Today's offering is a lovely vegan lasagne, which uses soya mince and plenty of vegetables for the sauce, and also features a vegan bechamel (white) sauce. I've never tried the bechamel sauce vegan-style before, but it went well - I can think of some improvements for next time, though!

Ingredients

We have:

• Vegan soya mince (about half a bag)
• 3 small onions
• half a courgette
• 1 medium green pepper
• 1.5 sticks of celery, peeled
• 1 small tomato
• 1 medium carrot
• 3 sundried tomatoes
• 6 garlic-stuffed olives
• 1 carton passata
• Dried mixed herbs
• Salt & pepper
• Unsweetened soya milk
• Plain flour
• Olive oil
• Vegetable oil
• Pasta sheets (which I forgot to picture!)

Serves 4

So the recipe consists for 2 parts, really. That's the mincey tomato sauce, and the becamel sauce, which will eventually be layered up together between pasta sheets to make the lasagne.

Tomato sauce

This part is quite easy, it's just throwing stuff together and cooking it!

Ready for the pan

1. Chop up the courgette, onions, celery, pepper, carrot, olives and sundried tomatoes into small pieces.
2. Over a medium heat in a large pan, heat a spot of vegetable oil. Throw in your chopped ingredients. Stir.
3. After 5 mins or so when the veggies are warm and coated in oil, add the soya mince. Stir from time to time.
4. When all ingredients are soft, add the passata. Stir in and bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for around 10 mins. Season to taste with salt, pepper and dried mixed herbs (actually I used soy sauce instead of salt - try it, you won't regret it!).

My cooked ingredients, before adding the passata

Easy, right? If you're not a fan of fake meat, you can easily use lentils instead and it's just as good. Or, just use vegetables (but I would recommend throwing in chickpeas for protein).

Bechamel Sauce

I found this simple recipe on the internet, but I'm sorry to say I can't remember where, otherwise I would reference it! 

The recipe didn't work perfectly for me, but I'll give it to you as I found it, then I'll tell you how I would change it.

1. On a low heat, warm up a quarter cup (sorry about American measurements, but I quite like them!) of olive oil.
2. Add 2 tablespoons of plain flour, and whisk to dissolve.
3. When the mixture starts to bubble, add 2.5 cups of soy milk. Whisk until thick.

That all sounds really easy, but it didn't quite float my boat. Firstly, my sauce didn't thicken very well, so I added 4 tbsp more flour at the end (bringing my total to 6 tbsp), which ended up being too much! If I was doing this recipe again, I would use 4 tbsp flour in total at the start. Also, I prefer the traditional method of adding the milk gradually bit by bit, rather than just throwing it all in. Finally, I like to season the sauce at the end. Those would be my amendments. Other than that, it's a great recipe, uncomplicated and effective.

I'd like to try it with some cheese melted into the sauce at the end, but the flavour/meltability of vegan cheese is hit-and-miss. Maybe someone can recommend a good one to me?

Put it all together

Now it's the fun part! I used pasta sheets which don't need precooking, but make sure you follow the advice on the box.

1. Coat the bottom of a flat ovenproof dish with as thin a layer as possible of the tomato sauce. 
2. Line this tomato sauce layer with pasta sheets, being careful not to overlap them if they aren't precooked, otherwise the overlapped parts will be chewy!
3. Cover the pasta sheets in a layer of bechamel sauce. 
4. Repeat until you run out of space/ingredients! I like to finish with bechamel sauce on top.
5. For decoration, slice a tomato and put the slices on top of the final layer of bechamel sauce.
6. Bake in the oven (I used gas mark 8).

Ready for the oven

Lasagne layers!

The Result

After 10 - 15 mins in the oven

Served up "pub-style" with roasted potatoes and a fresh side salad, yum!

As with almost everything I cook, I don't use a hard-and-fast recipe. I use whatever vegetables I have and think would be nice. Unfortunately, I ran out of garlic, which is usually a lasagne staple ingredient for me! Apart from that, it's up to you what to use. I also like to serve up my lasagne with homemade garlic bread, which is likely to become a future recipe on this blog, because it's one of my favourites!

I hope you find this useful. In the quest for exciting and tasty food with no ethical compromise, I think this is a firm winner!

Yours,

Callum

My first food post

Introduction

Hello and Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to my brand new blog on all things vegan!

My name is Callum, and I've been a vegan for around 9 months, after being vegetarian for 7 years before that. Although it hasn't always been 100% smooth, I have loved the transition to a vegan lifestyle. I've learned so much about what it means to be a vegan, and how to do it properly without missing anything from my diet.

There are lots of reasons why I've finally decided to lose my blogging virginity and write this.

The first is to document some of the food I cook and eat, and to share the recipes for them. I would also like to talk about any restaurants I go to, and how good they are at looking after vegans. The plan is to upload loads of pictures of lovely vegan food, accompanied by easy-to-follow recipes (if it's something I made myself!).

Secondly, I really want to blow the stereotype that vegans live off boiled vegetables! Nothing wrong with boiled vegetables, of course, but I love food, and I like my food to be exciting, tasty and full of flavour! There's no reason for me to lose that just because I decided to be a vegan!

Finally, I hope that this blog will encourage you to consider veganism if you haven't already. The last thing I want this blog to be is preachy, but I will occasionally mention animal rights issues - after all, that's why I decided to go vegan! My advice is to non-vegans is to approach veganism with an open mind - I ask nothing more than that. The more I found out about veganism and what it means, the more I can't believe I didn't make the change years ago. Out of all the alternatives, it makes the most sense to me, and I'm sure it would make sense to a lot of people if they are shown that it is ultimately about caring, both for animals and mother nature (that's true for me anyway!).

Comments and questions on anything I write here are very welcome!

So, I hope that you enjoy the things I write here, that you find them interesting and fun, and that you take something good away from it.

Watch this space for the first food post later today!