Asparagus and Artichoke Pies

So we all know it’s summer (or is it?). That means I’ve been going a bit crazy over the cheap produce and buying way too many veges for one person to eat. So I’ve been improvising dishes and using up my ingredients to stop anything from going to waste. One of those dishes were these little pies. My vegan creations are usually ones that only my Insinkerator would love but I’ve had a good run the last couple times and made some super easy, delicious and nutritious treats which I though were worth sharing!

This recipe makes 6 baby pies.

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch asparagus finely chopped
• 1/2 block firm tofu mashed
• Approx 200g artichoke hearts chopped (I like the ones from New World deli)
• 5 Tbs Soy sauce
• Salt and pepper
• vegan puff pastry
• Olivani for greasing ramekins

Method:

preheat your oven at 180°C

Place the asparagus, tofu and artichoke hearts in a mixing bowl. Add the soy sauce and mix to combine all the ingredients. Taste the filling and add a little salt and pepper to your liking.

Grease 6 ramekins (or  a muffin tray should do the job) and carefully lace with puff pastry sheet, cutting off the excess from the top.

Fill ramekins with pie filling, distributing it evenly between the 6 pies.

Lay some more puff pastry on top to cover the pies, once again cutting off the excess and poke some wee holes on the top so the air can escape.

Bake for approximately 20-25 minutes or until the pastry starts to golden.

Enjoy 🙂

 

Hotdogs – Vegan Student Style

Looking after yourself is really important as a student, but sadly, time and money gets in the way for a lot of students.

Veganism is interesting financially, as it’s so variable. You can live dirt-cheap as a vegan, eating bulk lentils and veggies from the saturday/sunday market. On the other hand, in New Zealand, although the vegan market seems to be expanding, the vast majority of mock meats and non-dairy milks are more expensive than their dead animal counterparts.

I try to have one exciting meal a week; something like a $7 Ethiopian meal with injera bread from the Saturday market, or pies with curly fries and a milkshake.

I had this glorious hotdog on Monday, before my physical chemistry test. It has the benefit of being reasonably cheap (sausages are $1 each and I only need 2-3), but super super quick and amazingly tasty. It is Fry’s Braai sausage, fried red onion, tomato sauce, American mustard and Edmonds Dijonnaise (sandwich mayo, which is vegan!). The flavours complimented each other perfectly.

You put the sausages in the sandwich press and turn them twice in about 8 minutes. It’s much better than the frying pan because it’s convenient, and they always cook in the middle, despite being prepared from frozen.

Mushroom Burgers with Foccacia – German Bakery

The German Bakery in Kelburn has quite a few vegan items, including focaccia. They let me have a look through their ingredients book last time I went there, and I was surprised to see a number of dairy and egg-free items, including the beer bread and focaccia.

I absolutely cannot make focaccia, I have tried several times with dreadful results, despite never having problems making other breads. For this reason, I’m so ecstatic about the focaccia being vegan. Focaccia makes for lovely mushroom burgers.

I used to have homemade sourdough with mushroom burgers, and it was the nicest bread I’d ever had, but for some reason or another, after two years the sourdough starter went off, and I was left devastated. When I have more time, I will try to make a new starter, but until then, focaccia is more than good enough as a delicious mushroom burger bun. Large, flat mushrooms are the best to use.

The recipe I based the mushroom burgers off was the post punk kitchen’s Perfect Grilled Portobellos, so I marinated the ‘shrooms in soy sauce, balsalmic vinegar, olive oil and garlic, then grilled them in the oven, and I’m sure they’re much better on the grill, (but cbf, need to save time as a student), and assembled focaccia with lettuce, tomato and avocado.

Vegan Jalapeño Cheddar Bagels

The Cruelty Free Shop had a free shipping weekend a while back, so I used the opportunity to buy a few things. One of those things was Leahey Cheese Sauce Mix. It has a hint of a yeasty flavour, and it’s perfect for making Jalapeño Cheddar bagels.

These were made by adapting a recipe by John D Lee from hubpages.com
Makes 8 bagels.

4 cups flour
1 T sugar
1 1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp yeast from Edmonds instant sachets
1 1/4 cups of warm water

1 cup Leahey cheese sauce mix (the powder)
1/4 cup (or more) chopped jalapeño from jar, with excess water removed (preferably dry them with a paper towel)

Dissolve sugar in warm water. Sprinkle the yeast over it and wait around one minute for it to go frothy. Add flour and salt, and knead for about 10 minutes, until it forms a really smooth dough. Add a little more water if the dough is unmanageably solid (up to 1/4 cup).

Next, add the cheese sauce mix powder and chopped jalapeño.

At this stage, I mix the ingredients in, and if the mixture is too dry, I add a bit more jalapeño, and if it’s too moist, I add a dash of cheese sauce powder (or flour).

Then, make sure the cheese sauce mix and the jalapeño are well-mixed, and divide into 8 balls. These should be left to rise for 10 – 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200°C

To make them into a bagel shape, you basically roll one of the dough balls into a long, cylindrical piece, then you wrap it around your palm, and squish one of the ends onto the other.

Leave the bagels to rise for 20 minutes.
Next, you boil the bagels in a pot of boiling water, for one minute on each side. Place them on a lightly greased, lined baking tray. Bake in oven for around ten minutes on each side, until they are golden on each side. Leave to cool for 20 mins, then go nuts.

Vegan Sausage Rolls – Recipe Review

So, I put these recipe reviews on this website because the only ones that are posted about are recipes that are either really tasty, really easy, or both. This way, the internet gets flooded with the best vegan recipes, so (hopefully) less yucky recipes are viewed by people.

As you can see, it makes a big tray of sausage rolls, which is a good, sizeable meal for two people. These were ridiculously nice!

The recipe can be found at Veggieful.com.

I used New Way Flaky Puff Pastry. It used all but one sheet. I used the last sheet to make fejoa custard pies.

Tandoori Wraps – Recipe

I loved tandoori chicken wraps as a teenager, but halfway through high school, I went vegetarian, and thought I would never eat tandoori wraps again. It wasn’t until I read Louise Hagler’s Tofu Cookery, which tells you that freezing tofu lends a chewy texture, that I had the inspiration for this recipe. The chewy tofu is really good, it gives it this really spongy appearance, and is crispy on the outside. It works perfectly with the vegetables and it’s really easy to make.

Normally, I’m not a big fan of the tofu that I cook, but this recipe is foolproof.
It’s pretty student friendly, the market tofu is ~$3.00 and it’s the “meat” that goes in the wrap.

Serves 2

Ingredients:
1 package soft tofu (from Saturday market), frozen
5 Tablespoons Tandoori paste
1 large tomato
1/2 capsicum
Handful cucumber
3 burrito wraps (not the tiny ones!)
Vegan cream cheese, such as Tofutti (optional, $$).

Freeze your tofu. It should change colour, and maybe look a bit icy, like this:

Then, you want to remove it from the packaging, and microwave until it’s soft enough to cut into bite-sized pieces (note: there will still be ice):

Microwave until just warm (if you let them get really hot, they won’t retain their structure and will turn into tiny pieces).

Remove the excess water, either with hands (take care not to burn yourself), by pressing, or with paper towels.

Coat with tandoori paste.

This is my favourite tandoori brand:

At this stage, you can leave it to marinate, or cook straight away.

Heat oven to 180 degrees C. Bake or grill with a bit of oil for 20 minutes, or until crispy on the edges. I usually toast the burrito wraps and chop the veggies after 15 mins.

(during cooking process)

When they are cooked, the tandoori will no longer be wet, and the tofu will be crisp on the outside.

Assemble and eat

Vegan Aioli- Recipe

Midnight (on Cuba St) make an absolutely delicious vegan aioli. If you can get past their menu boasting of “Cruelty-free bacon”, I’d recommend you try their vegan nachos, hash stack, or chips with aioli.

I don’t claim that my aioli is anywhere near as good as Midnight’s, but it’s pretty nice, and very easy to make.

I love the packets of Mori-nu tofu because they have such a rich taste and smooth texture, but are without an overpowering flavour, so are perfect for creamy dressings. They’re generally sold at the international food/asian food section of the supermarket (unrefrigerated).

I make aioli to taste, because I find it is quickest, it only takes a few minutes to make and adds so much to chips.

Ingredients

1 package Mori-nu tofu
Lemon juice
Wholegrain mustard (Moore Wilson’s sells huge containers of it for $7)
Sugar
Salt
Fried or roasted garlic
Apple cider vinegar or other vinegar
Olive oil (I only use a little bit)

Blend all ingredients til smooth.

I may try making traditional aioli soon, because I just received a container of the Vegg (vegan egg yolk) which I bought from thevegg.com. Soon, I will post some reviews of french toast and scrambled tofu made using the Vegg.

Creamy Mushroom and Corn Soup – Recipe

This is a really quick recipe I threw together when I realised I had leftover corn and mushrooms. It could be done with canned corn for a faster (but not as delicious) option.

Serves 2

Corn removed from 2 steamed sweetcorn cobs
6 mushrooms, sliced
1 small clove garlic, minced finely
1/3 cup uncooked red lentils
1/3 cup alpro soy cream (sold at New World)
1/3 cup non-dairy milk
1 tsp massel vegetable stock powder
Sliced jalapeño (from jars), 5 slices, chopped

Boil the lentils for about 10 minutes, then drain.
in a pan, fry the mushrooms til soft, then add the garlic and sweetcorn and fry for about 1 minute (just to cook garlic and heat corn). Add lentils, soy cream, non-dairy milk, stock powder and jalapeños. Serve with toast or have by itself.

Green Bean and Artichoke Salad – Recipe

It’s not really a recipe, well, it’s one of those lazy I-just-threw-this-together kind of things which may be good for inspiration for other people who just want to throw things together rather than cook something elaborate.

Serves 4 (light lunch)

1 packet of green beans (from saturday market)
195g marinated artichoke hearts
Large handful kalamata olives, halved
1/2 container cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 T red wine vinegar

Just remove stems from green beans and steam.  Then rinse with cold water, and add to other ingredients.

These artichoke hearts cost a bit more than other brands, but they’re so tasty, just the right softness and zestiness. I’m hooked on them, as is my s.o. The photo on the right shows some of them missing from the container, because we wanted to eat them right away. They’re awesome just on their own.

Chickpea and Cous Cous Salad

So yeah,  my measuring cup was broken (not naming names here), but the result was overcooked cous cous. If you follow the instructions you will get a cous cous and chickpea salad that doesn’t look semi-wartime/soggy like the photo.

The recipe was adapted from  www.myrecipes.com
Even if you weren’t vegan, I think cheese would be unnecessary, as it is really flavoursome and tangy (and think of the baby goats!).

The good thing about this recipe is that its really adaptable.
I’ve made this lots of times and this is how I normally alter the recipe ratios to my taste (and it’s veganized):

• 3/4 cup uncooked couscous
• 1 1/2 tsp Massel “Chicken” stock (or vegetable if you prefer)
• 3/4 cup / 180mL water
• 1 can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 1 tomato
• 1 small capsicum
• Large handful chopped pitted kalamata olives
• 2 tablespoons minced red onion
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
• 2 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• Dash of freshly ground black pepper

Put cous cous in large, microwaveable bowl. Add stock cube and boiling water. Allow water to absorb. If it looks really dry, add a tablespoon more of water. To cook, microwave for about 20 seconds. Fluff with a fork, and add other ingredients. Serve cold.

It works well as a packed lunch. 🙂