Slower Cooker Curry

It has been a very long time since I used my slow cooker, in fact the last time I used it was August 2008 when I cooked my last omni meal.  I remember that I made a beef red curry in it & ate it & felt so sick afterwards that I went vegan the next day, I had been planning on going vegan at some stage but thought that I might ease my way into it but this meal pushed me over the edge & I went vegan straight away.

So, somewhat ironically when I decided to dust off the slow cooker again I chose to make a mock beef red curry with some 'beef' chunks that I had bought at Minh Phat.  This was yum.  Even though I am not working at the moment & it is nice to have food prepared of an evening & not have to do to much besides cook some rice in the rice cooker (which Greg did anyway so all I had to do was serve).

My very simple & not very authentic curry recipe

• 2 tbsp red curry paste ( I bought mine from Aldi)
• Can light coconut milk
• Mock beef chunks
• Cauliflower florets
• Green beans topped & tailed
• Peeled potatoes cut into chunks
• Half a huge eggplant diced
• 1 onion sliced

Put it all in the slow cooker & cook for around 7 hours & then serve over rice - easy!

Next time I make it I won't use cauliflower though because it went really mushy, all the other vegies came out beautifully though, especially the eggplant so I am now looking at other eggplant slow cooker recipes.

Chocolate Melting Moments

So I am now on maternity leave which is why I actually have free time for the first time in a long time & can blog regularly.  The best things about maternity leave (besides the whole not working thing) are being able to catch up with people on weekdays who don't work regular Monday to Friday hours and having time to cook more.  My mum is a high school teacher but only works 3 days a week so she came over recently for afternoon tea so I baked the chocolate melting moment biscuits from the book 'Vegan Indulgence'.  The biscuit dough is very, very dry to the point that I really wanted to add some soy milk but didn't and I had some trouble rolling them so they ended up huge!  The recipe says that it makes 20 sandwiched biscuits, I made 10 enormous biscuits.  They are very yummy though but disappeared way too fast given how few I made.

Pumpkin Soup with Savoury Muffins

Now that the weather is getting cooler we have been eating lots of soup which I love.  One of the regular soups I make is a very easy & delicious pumpkin & chickpea soup.  You must add the fennel seeds, they add heaps of flavour & make the soup so much more delicious!

• 1 onion diced
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 jap pumpkin chopped into big chunks
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• Vegetable stock
• 1 can chickpeas drained & rinsed

Heat olive oil in a big saucepan or stockpot & add onion & garlic & cook until onion is soft.
Add pumpkin, fennel seeds & vegetable stock to cover everything (I like my soup really thick)
Cook until pumpkin is very soft
Blend & add chickpeas & season to taste


I decided to make some savoury muffins to eat with the soup which were also really good.

• 2 cups self-raising flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• pinch salt
• 1 small zucchini, grated
• 1 small carrot, grated
• 2 vegie sausages
• 1 cup grated cheezly
• egg replacer equivalent to 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup soy milk
• 75ml canola oil

Preheat oven to 200°C. Lightly grease a muffin pan or fill holes with muffin liners if you are so inclined. 

Mix flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Place zucchini and carrot in a large sheet of paper towel. Squeeze out excess moisture. Add vegetables, sausage and 1/2 cup cheese to flour. Stir to combine.
Whisk egg replacer mix, milk and butter in a jug. Add to dry ingredients. Using a large metal spoon, stir until just combined. Two-thirds fill muffin holes with mixture. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Stand for 5 minutes in pan. Turn onto a wire rack to cool.

Veganomicon Seitan Cutlets

I recently made the seitan cutlets from Veganomican for the first time.  Normally if I make seitan I use a recipe where you simmer them for about an hour then leave them to cool in the cooking liquid for about another hour so it is quite a long process.  This recipe us a lot quicker & I found them really tasty.  I am a big fan of the chickpea cutlets & these are quite similar so I will definitely make them again.

The recipe made six cutlets so we had them three different ways.  I make sandwiches for Greg to take to work everyday so two went into sandwiches for him.

I felt like eating roast potatoes so with two other cutlets we had them pan fried with roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli, steamed beans & VWAV punk rock chickpea gravy.  It was not so pretty, but we both really enjoyed this, a perfect cold weather meal!

For the last two cutlets I decided to make another recipe from Veganomicon which was the 'Seitan Piccata wtih Olives & Green Beans'.  I pretty much completely followed the recipe except it calls for shallots which I didn't have so I used thinly sliced red onion instead.  This meal was another winner - easy to make & really tasty.

Vegan Brunch Toasted Coconut & Chocolate Chip Mini Muffins

These are actually the Toasted Coconut and Mango Muffins, but I didn't have any dried mango so I subbed some chocolate chips.  We bought a mini muffin tray for the cupcake kebabs & have been using it all the time since, I didn't make a whole lot of muffins or cupcakes beforehand because they are often too big but the mini muffin pan makes them perfect size for eating with a cup of tea & it makes heaps so you can't really go wrong!

This recipe is super easy & the toasted coconut flavour is delicious, they also feel healthier than a normal muffin with the addition of wholemeal flour & they don't have huge amounts of sugar in them.

Mediterranean Olive Bread

Whenever I make soup I like to make bread to go alongside it so when I recently made a delicious tomatoey vegetable & sausage soup I decided to also make Mediterranean olive bread from The Joy of Vegan Baking.  This bread is so, so good!  It is essentially savoury cake with rosemary, olives, sundried tomatoes & olives all through it.  It doesn't have yeast in it so is really quick & easy too for a weeknight meal.  Completely delicious & goes exceptionally well with soup.

The soup that I make is a very easy soup & a good way of using up lots of vegies - I chop up whatever vegies I have on hand & cook in a little bit of olive oil & add a tin of tomato soup & massel chicken stock until I have about 4 serves worth & this time I had some vegie sausages in the freezer so I chopped up some of them & added them as well.

Shepherds Pie

I usually do all the cooking & Greg does all the cleaning which is really the ideal situation for me, but he recently had a week off so did some cooking.  He made a shepherds pie one night which he was very proud of & it was really tasty, it was loosely based on this recipe.
As much as I like cooking it is really nice to come home & not have to think about dinner.