Chickpea cutlets

I love the chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon, they are easy & really delicious whether you are eating with vegies for dinner or on a sandwich. This was a great meal, one that I should probably make more often because it is so good! It is chickpea cutlets, roasted brussel sprouts, roasted kipfler potates & steamed broccoli - all covered in miso gravy.

The miso gravy recipe is from drbenkim.com which I found when I was googling a healthy miso gravy recipe. it is really delicious & I froze some of it & it freezes really well.

Ingredients:

3 tablespoons of red or yellow miso
1 and 1/2 cups of water
1 and 1/2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1-2 cloves of garlic, minced
3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast
3 tablespoons of unbleached flour
2 teaspoons of minced fresh basil or 1/4 teaspoon of dried basil (I didn't add this because I didn't have any)

Directions:

1. In a medium-sized pan, bring olive oil to medium heat, then add onion and garlic and saute for 2-3 minutes, or until onion is tender and translucent.

2. Reduce heat to low setting and add flour and nutritional yeast. Stir steadily for 1-2 minutes.

3. Add water in a slow drizzle while stirring briskly. Bring heat up to medium setting and continue to stir regularly for about 10 minutes, or until gravy begins to thicken.

4. Once the gravy has just started to thicken, reduce heat to medium-low setting and add miso and basil. Keep the pan uncovered and stir occasionally. It typically takes about 15 minutes for the gravy to fully thicken and become smooth.

Vegan Yum Yum Apple Strudel

I got the Vegan Yum Yum cookbook recently & immediately bookmarked the apple streudel recipe. Last week I was feeling like making dessert so decided to give it a go because I had all the ingredients on hand. This is really, really quick & easy & tastes delicious! I think it would be better with ice cream, but sadly I had none.

Baked potato of deliciousness

Tonight I made baked potatoes for dinner. All day I had been thinking about making a stir fry but at the last minute I decided to change plans & I am glad I did because these were the goods - one of those easy meals that is super tasty. I wrapped some potatoes in foil & put them in the oven until soft, & then topped them with avocado, a kind of chilli con carne (which I made up on the spot with the ingredients I had), corn kernels & cashew sour cream.

The cashew sour cream is from vegan brunch & is really good - it says in the book that it doesn't taste like sour cream & it doesn't but it is really tasty nonetheless.

Kind of chilli con carne

1 onion diced
1 tsp olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 1/2 cups passata
1 tin 4 bean mix
1/2 cup shredded mock chicken (I used a vincents one which has a really nice smoky flavour)
*I also added about 2 tsps of some burrito seasoning that I had in the cupboard, but cumin & paprika would be really nice

Fry onion in olive oil until soft
Add garlic & tomato paste & stir & cook for about another minute
Add seasoning, passata, 4 bean mix & mock chicken, lower heat & leave to cook away slowly while you get everything else ready

Vegan Yum Yum Rustic Bread & Eggplant Lasagne

I love the blog Vegan Yum Yum & have made a few recipes from there which have all been really good. When I saw this recipe I thought it was a brilliant idea because it includes all of my favourite ingredients & it looked amazing. I made it with some day old ciabatta bread & the only thing I did differently was to add a bit of red wine to the tomato sauce. I thought that the bread would end up super soggy & mushy but it didn't at all, even when I had it for lunch for the next two days. Greg wasn't a huge fan of it but I liked it & would like to make it again, maybe varying it with different sorts of vegies in it.

The hangover food of champions

Yesterday was my engagement party. We had it in the afternoon, I spent the morning getting re-blonded by my amazing hairdresser & had to go straight to the pub after. Consequently, given that I spent an afternoon boozing after having only eaten some vegemite toast for breakfast I was extraordinarily hungover today. When I finally felt able to leave the house this afternoon I decided to check out the new Northland Lord of the Fries. It is quite funky & the guy that was working there was super friendly & explained the differences between the menu there & at the city outlets. They even do table service which was nice. Greg had a hotdog which he really liked & I just got nuggets with the aussie sauce, I am keen to go back & check out the chicken burgers but they were sold out. I was pretty empty when we were there but hopefully the store does ok because it is nice to have them over my side of town.

Melindas Passionfruit Slice

I love passionfruit so bought the Melindas passionfruit slice premix. It requires condensed milk in the topping but I thought I would just make a passionfruit icing to top it with. But when I started looking up recipes for vegan condensed milk it looked really easy & I had some soy milk powder in my cupboard so decided to give it a go. I used this recipe which I halved & it was the perfect amount & was really easy to make. This slice is very quick & easy & the passionfruity condensed milk topping makes it really delicious.

Laksa of fire

I love laksa & haven't made it since being vegan, but when I saw that you can now buy a soy version of evaporated milk I thought that it would be perfect for a healthy laksa meal. When I was at the supermarket it seemed that all the laksa pastes had shrimp in them so I bought a curry paste instead - a curry paste that I have never used before & it was apparently the hottest curry paste that I could have bought! This laksa would have been delicious but it was waaaaay too hot for me & I couldn't eat it. I will definitely make this again but will give it a go making my own curry paste.

Recipe

• Small onion finely chopped
• 2 cloves crushed garlic
• Red curry paste (use as much as you want & not as much as I used!)
• 100 grams sliced mushrooms
• 320 gm pack of extra firm tofu sliced into thickish rectangles
  
• 1 1/2 tsp peanut oil
• 1 tin soy creamy cooking milk
• 1 tsp coconut essence
  
• Rice noodles
• Beansprouts

Cook rice noodles as per the packet directions
Heat 1/2 teaspoon peanut oil in a saucepan & fry onion & garlic
When the onion has softened add the curry paste & heat until aromatic
Add soy milk, coconut essence & mushrroms & cook on a low-medium heat until mushrooms are cooked through
Whilst this is cooking, heat 1 teaspoon of peanut oil in a frypan & fry tofu until lightly browned
Place noodles in the bottom of a bowl & top with a handful of beansprouts
Pour soup on top & top with tofu