Toasted cheese sandwich

I no longer eat butter and dislike margarine, so if I want to make a toasted sandwich these days, I tend to fry it in a minimum of olive oil.  However, so far I've been unable to find edible vegan cheese in New Zealand, so, sadly, toasted cheese sandwiches now exist only in my memory.  

I'm still looking for a successful vegan "Cheddar cheese" recipe.  All suggestions gratefully received.

Makes one

2 slices bread

butter

Cheddar cheese or similar

• Butter the bread generously.
• Slice the cheese and fit it to the bread – don’t make the sandwich too lumpy or it will be difficult to toast and don’t let the cheese overlap the crusts because it will drip onto the toaster and start to burn.(This is much less of an issue if you 'toast' it in the frying pan) 
• Put the toaster over a medium flame and carefully place the sandwich on it. Don’t use too high a flame or the bread will toast before the cheese has started to melt. Depending on the size of both your bread and the flame, you may have to move it around to toast evenly. 
• When one side is done turn it over and toast the other side.

Variations:

• Cheese and mustard: make as above, substituting Dijon or your preferred mustard for the butter. If you don’t watch calories, you can use butter and spread the mustard on the cheese.
• Cheese and onion: add thin slices of onion with the cheese.
• Fried egg sandwiches are good at any time of the day, although this isn’t strictly a toasted sandwich.
• Peanut butter is good, and even better with a couple of slices of tomato.  Beware that the tomato can get extremely hot.
  
• Make them with banana skin bacon. Toast the bread on one side only and if you’re feeling particularly decadent, dip the untoasted side in the cooking oil before assembling the sandwich.  
• Any bean or nut spread will go well on a toasty.  This can also get extremely hot.
  

Savoury scone

Sometimes you want something more sustaining than a sandwich, but don’t want to eat out of bowls. A savoury scone can provide just what’s needed.

1 onion 

1 tbsp olive oil

 1/2 tsp sage 

1 cup flour

 2 tsp baking powder

 pinch of salt

 4 tbsp soft butter – OR 3 tbsp olive oil

1/4 cup milk or water

• Dice the onion and fry it in the oil until soft. Put to one side
• Add the sage, baking powder and salt to the flour.
• Rub in the butter/oil, or mix it in with a fork until you have a coarse, crumbly mix.
• Quickly mix in the milk until you have a fairly soft, but non-sticky dough that you can handle easily.
• Knead this for half a minute and then roll it out on a floured board into a roughly circular shape. Alternatively, if you have an oven, roll out the dough and cut it into six or eight discs, using a glass or a scone-cutter.
• Put the dough in a frying pan over a flame tamer on a low flame. Cover and cook for 15 minutes or place in a preheated hot oven for 15 minutes.
• Turn out, cut into wedges and split each, buttering and serving it while it’s still warm.

Variations:

• Use some fresh herbs, if you have any available.
• Add 1/4 cup grated cheese to the flour before mixing the dough.Fry some diced Seitan chorizo with the onion.
• Add garlic to the onion, if you like./
• Spread some Marmite or Annie's Big Mix (or both!) on the scone.
• Instead of making scone dough, use Zebedee bread.

 

Welsh Rarebit

Sometimes known as Welsh Rabbit, but I can assure you this is a vegetarian meal.  Vegans can make the Vegan cheese sauce variation of Basic white sauce, and add the additional flavourings suggested below, or follow this recipe substituting grated Vegan cheese if you use it.  Welsh rarebit is a favourite in England for lunch or a light dinner.

 Serves 2

 

1 portion Basic White Sauce

1 cup grated cheese

1/2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce OR 1 tsp Dijon mustard

salt and pepper

2 – 4 slices of bread

• Make the white sauce.
• Reduce the heat, add the cheese, Worcestershire sauce or mustard and season with more salt and pepper, if you think it needs it.
• Keep the sauce warm while you toast the bread.
• Pour some sauce over each slice of toast and eat immediately.

Crispy fried chickpeas

These make a change from peanuts and can be as hot as you like!

Serves 2

1/2 cup dried chickpeas, soaked and cooked

1 tbsp coconut or olive oil

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 tsp garam masala

3/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 to1/2 tsp cayenne, or to taste

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1/2 tsp dry mango powder OR 1/4 tsp kala namak (black salt)

 

Method:

• Drain the chick peas.
• Add them to a bowl and then add all the spices and mix well. 
  
• Heat the oil until it’s hot. 
• Tip in the spiced chick peas and fry until they’re crisp and golden all over.
• Add more salt if you want and serve.

Popcorn

It may seem silly to include a recipe for this, but not everyone knows how to make popcorn.  This assumes that you are using a fairly large pan.  Do it in two stages in a smaller one – two tbsp, when popped, will completely fill a 1 litre (1 quart) pan.

Olive oil to cover the base of pan
 4 tbsp popping corn 

 Method:

• Put a heavy-based saucepan over a high heat and pour in sufficient olive oil just to cover the base. 
• Drop two or three kernels into the pan and put the lid on. Use a flame tamer if your pan is a bit on the light side.
• When the kernels start to pop, add 4 tbsp corn and cover immediately. The corn should start popping straight away. With a decent quality pan, you should not need to shake it more than once or twice, and that is only to ensure that the kernels don’t get caught in the popped corn. However, if you smell burning, reduce the heat.
• When the corn has finished popping – be patient – immediately empty it into a bowl and season with Annie's seasoned salt. 

 Note: 

• Traditionally, people cook popcorn in a frying pan.  I never had any success with this until I bought my Spanish heavy, cast-alloy frying pan.  I now use this all the time, but for the previous four decades used saucepans, which is why I recommend this method.

Variation:

• Season with Parmesan cheese.

 

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Green olives with fennel

Olives are a good addition to a lunch of bread, cheese and some salad, such as tomatoes, cucumber and lettuce.  They are ahandy standby to have with drinks, but sometimes you want something a little more special than simple supermarket olives.  This is a great way of turning cheap and cheerful green olives into something more like a treat!

2 garlic cloves, sliced

2 tbsp sherry vinegar (See note)

375 g/2½ cups brined, green olives, drained

2 tbsp fennel seeds

1½ cups olive oil

3 fresh bay leaves - use dried if you have no fresh

5 small dried red chillies, sliced

1½ tsp grated lemon zest

 

Method:

• Put the garlic and sherry vinegar in a small bowl and leave to steep for 2 hours, then drain.
• Rinse the olives well, then spread out on a clean tea towel to dry.
• Dry fry the fennel seeds in a small saucepan over a medium heat for 1½ minutes, or until fragrant. Lightly crush them in a pestle and mortar or give them a quick whiz in a blender: don't pulverise them however.
• Put oil, steeped garlic, fennel seeds, bay leaves, chillies and lemon zest in a small pan over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until oil just starts to bubble. Remove from heat and allow to cool.
• Pour some oil mix into a 700 ml jar, add the olives and pour in the rest of the oil. Cover tightly and shake gently to mix.  Ideally, store them for 1 to 2 weeks, shaking occasionally so that they take up the flavours.
  

Notes

• I use white wine vinegar, because sherry vinegar is very expensive!
• A ‘standard’ jar of olives is about 200 g, drained weight.  I usually use this size, in which case I cut the recipe in half.

Chorizo (seitan)

This makes one sausage, about 170 x 30. I worked out that it costs no more than a dollar for the vital wheat gluten. Even if you add another dollar for the rest of the ingredients, this is a very cheap chorizo. It tastes just like the real thing and the texture is very similar. I use dried flaked garlic instead of fresh and reckon 1/2 tsp = 1 clove of garlic. This is very hit and miss, however, because the flakes are big and the spoon is small! I smash them up a little bit and the finished appearance is just fine.  Granules would do, but the chunks of flaked garlic look a little bit like the fat that you usually find in chorizo, so add to its verisimilitude.

I can’t recommend this recipe too much, if you like chorizo: it’s dirt cheap, it’s quick, it’s easy and it tastes amazing. It’s also great to have as a tapa when you have friends on board – vegetarian or otherwise.

When you mix this, try to use up every bit of the dough in the sausage so that you leave a really clean bowl. Make sure your tools are clean, too. Gluten and glue have the same root and any dough is a nightmare to clean up, because it sticks to your cloths and scrubbers.

 Makes one sausage, approx 150x 30

Dry Mix

 

½ cup vital wheat gluten (60g)

3 tbsp chickpea flour

5 cloves garlic (See Note)

2 tsp smoked paprika

1½ tsp onion powder

½ tsp cracked black pepper

½ tsp salt

¼ – ½ tsp chilli flakes (See Note)

Liquid Mix

60ml water

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp tomato purée

1 tbsp soy sauce

½ tbsp red wine vinegar

• Peel the garlic and blanch in boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain, leave to cool and then dice into small cubes.
  
• In a large bowl mix together all the ingredients from the dry mix.
• In a separate bowl mix together the ingredients from the liquid mix and whisk them together to ensure that they are well combined.
• Add the liquid mix ingredients into the large bowl with the dry ingredients. Begin mixing with a knife or spatula.  You will probably need to finish by hand: it's not necessary to kned the dough, just mix everything thoroughly.
  
• Put the trivet in the base of the pressure cooker and add ½ cup of water.
• Roughly shape the chorizo into a log that will easily fit in the pressure cooker – about 120 x 50 mm. It doesn’t have to be perfect because the cracks and crevices will disappear during cooking.
• Wrap it in foil or baking parchment, twisting the ends tightly. Place the wrapped chorizo into the pressure cooker, bring up to pressure and cook for 15 minutes. Let the pressure come down gradually.

 

While warm the chorizo stays fairly soft, but it goes harder as it cools, and if left overnight, ends up with a texture very similar to the real thing.  It keeps well wthout refrigeration: up to about a week, as long as it isn't in too moist an environment.

 

 

 

Notes

• If you prefer, you can use dried garlic flakes.  These are really too big, but if you smash them up a bit with a pestle and mortar (or in a blender), after cooking, they end up looking like the fat in a 'real' chorizo.  If you are very patient, you can break them into smaller pieces.  Soak the pieces in a little warm water before using them.  You can also use dried garlic granules, but they are much more even in size and don't look quite as nice.  Use 2 1/2 tsp garlic flakes, or 1 1/4 tsp garlic granules.
• I like my chorizo quite hot, so use 1/2 tsp chilli flakes