Italian sausage and white bean stew

 

When I’m making sausages from seitan, I like to make enough for more than one meal. They keep well without a fridge, so that you can, for example, have them with potatoes and greens on Monday and then make something quite different with them on Wednesday. They are also delicious for breakfast and if you split and heat them, they make a great sandwich, especially in the end of a French stick. You can spread the bread with butter, but tahini also goes well with them, as does a little sun-dried tomato pesto. However, one of my favourite ways of cooking them is with white beans and tomatoes in this stew. Cannellini or butter beans are probably the best, because they are more floury than other white beans, but as both appear to be unobtainable in NZ at the moment, except in tins, I use haricot beans.

Serves 2

Ingredients

1/2 cup of white beans (any kind) soaked and cooked in the usual way

1/2 green pepper

6 Italian sausages (seitan)

olive oil

I medium onion, chopped

1 large clove of garlic, chopped

4 medium tomatoes, diced or 1, 14oz/400g can crushed tomatoes

1 tbsp sundried tomato purée

1 tsp Annie's Italian herbs

Method:

• Remove the seeds from the pepper and cut it into thin strips.
• Cut the sausages into chunky pieces, big, or small, according to your preference.
• Pour the oil into a pan and heat it, then add the onion, garlic and green pepper. Cook over a medium heat until the onion has softened.
• Add the tomatoes to the pan and mix them in. Heat to a gentle simmer. If using fresh tomatoes, simmer until they have softened into a sauce.
• Add the tomato purée, beans and sausages. Once the mixture is simmering, turn to down to cook until the sauce is the consistency that you want.

Serve hot, with bread or smashed potatoes and a green vegetable or salad.

Notes:

• If you don’t have sun-dried tomato purée, use the ordinary stuff. If you’re using fresh tomatoes, the sun-dried purée adds a richer flavour.
• If you’re can’t get crushed canned tomatoes, use diced, but try and find some in tomato purée. It’s worth buying a more expensive brand because cheap diced tomatoes tend to have very thin juice with them, which leads to a watery stew.

 

 

 

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Seitan Italian Sausage

I am besotted with seitan recipes: the texture is so different from most other vegetarian and vegan foods, it’s cheap, and making ‛meat’ with it is so quick.    I’m not fond of tofu and anyway have no fridge to store it, but seitan can often be substituted in tofu recipes.

These ‛Italian’ sausages are great on their own, in a bun/sandwich or in a sausage and white bean stew.    The couscous/bulgar wheat is to give them a more sausage-like texture.   If you don’t want to use that, go for the chorizo sausage recipe instead, and substitute the seasoning.

If you haven’t cooked with seitan before, I strongly recommend you read right through the instructions first.    You will need baking paper and a trivet for your pressure cooker, to follow this recipe.

Makes 8

Ingredients

1/4 cup fine bulgur wheat/couscous + 1/2 cup water

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

2 tsp smoked paprika

1 1/2 tsp fennel seeds roughly crushed

1 tsp cracked black pepper

2 tsp Annie's Mixed Herbs

1/2 tsp chilli flakes

1 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic granules

1/2 tsp salt

6 sundried tomatoes in oil, finely chopped OR 2 tbsp sundried tomato pesto

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 tsp yeast extract OR miso

1/2 tbsp tomato purée

1 tbsp olive oil/ or take some from the tomato jar

1/3 cup water

1 cup vital wheat gluten

Method:

• Cut baking parchment into 8 sheets, approximately 200/8" x 150/6".
• Heat 1/2 cup of water and our it over the couscous or bulgar wheat and wait until all the water is absorbed.   
• Mix in the nutritional yeast, smoked paprika, fennel seeds, cracked black pepper, Mixed Herbs, chilli flakes, onion powder, garlic granules* and salt, stirring between each addition so that it is all thoroughly combined. It has to be very thorough because once you add the vital wheat gluten, everything sticks together in a hurry and it’s hard to mix anything in.
• Finely chop the tomatoes.    Because this is so messy, I use scissors, holding the tomato over the bowl. You can hold onto the tomato right down to the last small piece and both it and the oil will go into the bowl.
• Then add the soy sauce, yeast extract, tomato purée, olive oil (or take some from the tomato jar) and water. Again, mix thoroughly after each addition.
• Now add the vital wheat gluten and mix as well as you can with your knife/spatula and then use your hand, incorporating all the flour that will be trying to stick to the edge of the bowl.    Keep mixing until everything is blended and the dough stops sticking to your hand.
• Place the dough on a board.    Roughly shape it into a rectangle about 100 mm/4" across, or as long as you want your sausages to be.  (Be warned that the dough is nowhere near as accommodating as bread dough when it comes to shaping it).   
• Cut the dough in half, quarters and then eighths If you want your sausages all to be the same, cut as accurately as possible. The dough doesn’t seem to stick very well to itself, once you’ve finished mixing it.    Shape the sausages to be best of your ability – the wrapping finishes the job.    Don’t worry about gaps and creases.    The cooking sorts out most of that.
• 

  Now put each sausage, centred at the edge of a piece of baking paper and roll it up tightly. This helps make it cylindrical.    Twist the paper at either end, like a Christmas cracker, until it’s squashed against the end of the sausage.    Do this with all eight sausages.
  
• Put the trivet into your pressure cooker.    Add about half a cup of water – don’t let it cover the trivet.    Place the sausages onto the trivet – it doesn’t matter if they are stacked – and bring up to pressure; cook for 10 minutes.
• Let the pressure come down naturally.

When they’re cooked, take the sausages out of the pressure cooker and unwrap them.    Put them somewhere where they can cool and dry out a little, before using or storing them.    I find they keep best in my wooden bread bin!    Fry them before eating them – the added olive oil gives additional flavour and I enjoy them cooked until they are slightly crisp.

Notes:

• While the diced, sundried tomatoes certainly add to these sausages authenticity, they are quite messy and have a tendency to keep falling out as you create the individual sausages. If you tend to lose patience with fiddling around, I suggest you go for the pesto, instead.
• *If you find you like these sausages, you might prefer to make yourself a seasoning mix to keep in a jar, using 8 tbsp nutritional yeast, 8 tsp smoked paprika, 6 tsp fennel seeds, roughly crushed, 4 tsp cracked black pepper, 8 tsp Annie's Mixed Herbs, 2 tsp chilli flakes, 4 tsp onion powder and 2 tsp garlic granules.
• If you’re not fond of biting on a fennel seed, use ground fennel instead.

 

 

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Brussels sprouts with mung dal and carrots

This is a great recipe for showcasing Brussels sprouts – a very underrated vegetable in my opinion. When they are unavailable, they can be replaced with courgettes. Having both dal and vegetables in the one pot, means that cooking a proper meal is a simpler process and serving it with rice or roti will complete the protein for best nutrition. Carrots, are also underrated and in combination with the sprouts will provide a good selection of minerals and vitamins and cooked with the bright yellow mung dal, you end up with a very attractive dish. Mung dal are one of my favourite legumes; they cook quickly and have their own distinct flavour. They don’t break down quite as much as split lentils (masoor), but are softer than chana dal. I use them a lot.

The original recipe ends up with completely softened sprouts and carrots. I like well-cooked carrots, but prefer my Brussels a bit firmer. Please see the * Note for alternative cooking. 

Serves 2

Ingredients

2 tsp oil

1/2 tsp mustard seeds

1/4 tsp fennel seeds

1 Indian bay leaf

a generous pinch of asafoetida

1 green chilli chopped

2 large garlic cloves, chopped OR 1 tsp garlic paste

1/4 tsp turmeric powder

1 medium tomato chopped

dried fenugreeek leaves or chilli flakes

1/2 cup yellow mung dal

1 3/4 cups water

1/2 tsp salt or more to taste

1/4 cup chopped carrots

10 to 12 large Brussels sprouts, or equivalent smaller ones

Method

• Trim the sprouts removing the discoloured leaves and excess stem. Depending on their size, half, quarter them or leave them whole.
• Put a saucepan over a medium heat, add oil and heat it.
• Add mustard seeds and wait for them to sputter.
• Then mix in the asafoetida, fennel seeds and bay leaf. Cook for about half a minute
• Add the chilli and garlic and cook, stirring frequently, until the garlic browns evenly. (If you’re using garlic paste, add at the next stage, otherwise it will spit all over the place.
• Throw in the carrots and Brussels sprouts*, if you like them soft cooked. (See Note) You can add some other veggies depending on availability and preference. Cook them for a minute.
• Now add the tomato, turmeric and cook for 2-3 minutes until the tomato gets mushy.
• Add the dal to the pan with salt, and water and mix well.
• Cook covered on a low heat for 20-30 minutes, until the mung dal is tender.
• Serve hot, with dried fenugreek leaves or red chilli flakes and roti/naan or rice.  I like cumin rice with it.  (Cook the rice.  Fry 1/2 tsp cumin seeds in a small pan until brown and savoury and pour over the rice.)

Note:

•  To make this gluten free, leave out the asafoetida.

• * If you like your Brussels sprouts firm, I suggest cooking the recipe as written, but adding the Brussels sprouts when the dal starts to soften, depending on whether you want them almost crunchy or merely al dente. This unfortunately is a bit hit and miss, depending on how big the sprouts are. Better to put them in too late and then add some more water if the dal is drying out, than put them in too early and overcook them.
• To refresh the dal the next day, make a new tempering: add a teaspoon of oil, to a small frying pan, heat on medium, add 1/4 tsp mustard seeds, a bay leaf and chilli flakes. Wait for the mustard seeds to sputter.  Pour this over the heated dal and serve.
   

Variations:

• Substitute 1/4 cup (31 g) chopped or grated courgette for the sprouts.
  Use mustard oil for a change of flavour. 

 

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Broccoli, chickpeas and tomatoes

 

This is a quick light dinner, ideal for when you come home late, have had sundowners with lots of snacks or simply aren’t feeling very hungry. In spite of its simplicity, it’s really quite delicious: somehow chickpeas and tomatoes are an unbeatable combination

Serves 2

Ingredients

1/2 cup chickpeas, soaked and cooked

1 small head of broccoli broken into florets, stalk trimmed and diced

olive oil

1 medium onion diced

2 cloves garlic, dice

1/2 tsp salt

4 medium tomatoes, quartered

pepper

Method:

• Briefly cook the broccoli until barely softened. Drain and set aside.
• Heat the oil in a frying pan and then add the broccoli stalk, the onion and the garlic and sprinkle over the salt.
• Cook over a moderate heat until softened, but not browned. Cover with a lid to speed things up a little; add a tablespoonful or two of water if it looks like burning.
• Once everything is softened and the onion translucent, tip in the tomatoes and cover once more. Cook for about five minutes on a medium flame until the tomatoes are heated through and starting to soften.
• Gently fold in the broccoli and chickpeas and cook until the broccoli has reached the right consistency. Grind over a generous amount of black pepper and serve hot on warmed plates.

Accompany the meal with thick slices of good bread, to mop up the juices.

Variation:

• You could also serve this over short pasta such as penne, or polenta.

 

 

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Mushroom matar malai - Mushroom white curry

 

This recipe is so freely adapted from the more authentic ones, that I hardly dare to put it into ‘Curries for Cooks’. However, as it uses one or two spices/herb which only dedicated curry cooks are likely to have on board, that’s how I shall categorise it. (This, of course, assumes that anyone ever looks at the pages on this blog!)

I made this when I had been ‘off my food’ for a while and unable to face the thought of any Indian food. As I generally adore such recipes, this was a personal tragedy at the time. I had been sent a malai recipe in one of my blog feeds, and it attracted my attention as having not too many spices and looking like something might tempt my appetite. The recipe in question was for paneer, which I can’t obtain locally (and as an aspiring vegan, try to avoid), I looked to see if there were any more recipes on the Internet and came across a mushroom malai, with even fewer spices – perhaps too few- so I took a bit from both recipes.

When I came to look more closely, I discovered that these ‘white’ curries usually contain cashew nuts (this isn’t just a vegan spin on Indian food: a lot of Indian recipes call for cashews), which I don’t include and malai, which means cream, which I also left out. Vegan versions use cashew nut cream; vegetarian versions seem to use cream plus some yoghurt, which I think is because Indian cream is thicker than what is available in most countries (the UK being – or was! - a notable exception) and sounds more like ‘double cream’. Anyway, this is all irrelevant, because I simply used a goodly amount of nice, thick yoghurt.

The onions, garlic and ginger are meant to be ground to a paste in a blender. I couldn’t be bothered (another side effect of the appetite loss) and simply diced them very finely. They certainly didn’t intrude.

Matar, by the way, means peas, so they are, strictly, essential. Otherwise it will be simply mushroom malai. I used freeze-dried peas – essential voyagers’ provisions. The curry, even with all my alterations, was incredibly good. I could have scoffed the lot – so obviously it also restored my appetite for Indian food!!

I have made it several times since, and it has become one of my favourite ways to eat mushrooms. I’ve been tweaking the spices to keep the curry mellow, but with lots of flavour and, having now got it about right, I feel I can finally post the recipe. If you’re not fond of too much chilli, leave out the chillies and simply use the Kashmiri chilli powder. I have even made this recipe without any cream, yoghurt or cream substitute and it is still delicious. I’m afraid the photos don’t show a white curry: the button mushroom that I buy locally, always turn any sauce brown. Oyster mushrooms would probably produce a lighter-coloured sauce. Use as many mushrooms as you think you can eat: this isn’t a particularly filling meal.

Serves 2

Ingredients

1½ tbsp ghee or oil

1/2 tsp cumin seeds

1 small piece mace

1 or 2 green chillies, chopped

1 small onion, finely diced

1/2 tsp ginger paste

2 garlic cloves, finely diced or 1/2 tsp garlic paste

2 green cardamoms, seeds only

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp water

2 cups of white mushrooms quartered

1/2 cup thick yoghurt, thinned to pouring consistency

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/3 cup freeze-dried peas

1/4 tsp ground white pepper or black, if that’s all you have

1/4 tsp garam masala

1 tsp kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves)

Method:

• Heat the ghee in a heavy-based saucepan and sizzle the cumin seeds and mace.
• Add the chilli and cook for a few moments.
• Now add the onion, ginger, garlic, cardamom seeds, coriander, chilli powder and salt. Cook for a couple of minutes, lower the heat and add the water. (This is to stop the vegetables browning). Cook until the onions, etc are soft adding a drop more water if necessary.
• Now raise the heat once more, add the mushrooms and cook for a few minutes, ensuring that they are well-covered in the ghee/spice/aromatics mixture.
• When the mushrooms are starting to soften, add the peas and a drop more water if necessary.
• Cook for another four or five minutes and then stir in the yoghurt and cinnamon and bring everything to a very gentle boil. Now turn the heat right down until the mixture is barely simmering and add the pepper.
• Put a lid on and simmer until the mushrooms are cooked. Remove the lid so that the sauce can thicken to the consistency you want, then add the methi and garam masala. Cook very gently for another couple of minutes.

Serve with roti, brown basmati rice, or cumin rice if you prefer.

Notes:

• Whole mace, unlike the ground variety, has a surprisingly intense flavour. If you’re not used to using it, be careful how much you add. I broke off a piece about the size of a small cardamom pod

Variations:

• This recipe would be a good one for voyagers who make their own yoghurt, or have cream on board or have cashews and a grinder. I would suggest that if using dairy cream, you would add some powdered milk to thicken it.
• For a more filling meal, add ½ cup chickpeas or white beans, soaked, cooked and drained. Or a can.
• This is quite a quick meal to make because you can just add everything in order, stirring to ensure that it’s all mixed as you don’t want the fried vegetables and spices to turn brown

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Cornish pasties

Pasties originate in Cornwall, so perhaps it’s not surprising that I associate them with Falmouth.  Known locally as ‘Oggies’ for some obscure reason, they were a neatly packaged lunch for men working in the tin mines.  The story goes that they were savoury at one end and that the other end was filled with jam. Nowadays, they’re usually made with meat, but of course they were originally vegetarian – miners couldn’t afford meat for lunch. Rowes, in Falmouth, used to make (and probably still do!) probably the best vegetarian pasty that I’ve ever eaten.  However, they used flaky pastry, which is far from authentic and so awkward to make, that I don’t suggest it for any of my recipes, in spite of which, the following recipe is an attempt to replicate Rowes' masterpiece.

 

Ideally, pasties are made in an oven, but if you don’t have one, they can be ‘dry’ fried in a heavy frying pan and are almost as good. To do this, put the frying pan over a flame tamer and a low flame. When you’ve made the pasties, put them in the pan. Their semi-circular shape makes this quite straightforward. After about 10 minutes, carefully turn them over, using a fish slice and/or tongs. Cook the other side. The pastry should brown nicely where it’s in contact with the pan and the rest should cook through to become opaque. Turn them again for another 5 minutes each side if they don’t seem quite done. If you have a well-vented lid to let the steam out, (so that they don’t end up soggy) you can cover them to speed things up a little.

 

Makes 2 pasties

 

Ingredients

 

1 portion of pastry

1 potato

1 carrot

1 small swede or turnip - about the size of a tennis ball

1 onion

a good pinch each of rosemary, thyme and sage

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp white pepper

 

Method:

• If you are using it, pre-heat the oven to Fairly Hot. 
• Thinly slice the potato, carrot, swede and onion, then put them into a pan of lightly salted water, bring to the boil and cook for 5 minutes.
• Add the herbs, salt and the white pepper. Half a tsp might seem a lot, but in my opinion, good pasties are always quite peppery and cook abit longer, until tender – about ten minutes. Drain and cool, trying not to break up the slices.  
• Make the pastry and roll out; cut out two discs about the diameter of your frying pan or about 200mm/8 in across, if you're cooking in the oven.
• Pile the filling carefully in the centre of each disc. 
• Now moisten the edges with water: a 12 mm (1/2 inch) paintbrush is ideal for this, or just use your finger. Fold each disc in two and pinch the edges together. The easiest way tends to be to start from the middle and work to the ends. Poke back any of the filling that tries to drop out. When the pasty is sealed, fold the seam back over on itself, at 12 mm/1/2 in intervals, to double seal the edge and pinch it between finger and thumb. This should result in a highly professional looking crimped effect.
• Bake in a Fairly Hot oven for 20 – 25 minutes. Or dry fry them in a heavy frying pan (see introduction to recipe). Eat hot or cold.
• 
  

Notes:

• If you don’t have white pepper, use black, but the white pepper is what is traditionally used and adds a different sort of ‘heat’ from black.
• If you are confident about the pan/flame tamer arrangement, add a little oil to the pan before adding the pasties. This will ensure a delightful golden crust, but if the pan is too hot you could easily burn the pastry.

Variations:

• Cook a small diced potato, small carrot, small onion and 1/4 cup split peas in a small saucepan. Season with a few herbs, salt and pepper and, when it’s cooled, pile onto the pastry. Complete and cook as above.
• Leftover stewor hotpot can also be used. Ensure it’s well drained before putting it on the pastry.
• Add freeze-dried peas to the filling.
• Any of the fillings for empanadas can be used to make a savoury pasty.
• Pasties are good hot, as a main meal, with a green vegetable such as Brussels sprouts. I dare say some people would like to add a gravy or sauce of some description, too.