Vegetarian Shepherd's Pie

The other week at work, I received a major blow. Whilst pouring myself a glass of Innocent smoothie in the communal kitchen, a man from another office walked up behind me and uttered the crushing line: “Excuse me, are you the cleaner?”

Now, as people always write when mistaken for someone in a job supposedly less prestigious than their own, I have nothing against cleaners. Other than the fact that after university when I applied to clean tables at lunchtime in a primary school, I was rejected. Nothing personal there though, as I was also rejected from McDonalds, Subway and Pizza Hut and consequently ended up “selling” gas and electricity for an anonymous energy supplier.

Where was I? Ah yes, in the kitchen at work. To paint a clearer picture, I was wearing an ex-boyfriend’s oversized Ben Sherman jumper, some trousers that I originally bought for my work experience at age 15 which are all frayed at the bottom hems and some chequered Vans slip-ons.

So, bitterly, I took the erroneous remark by the horns and gave myself a proverbial kick up the arse. Off I marched to Westfield to splurge on some office wear. I mean, I do TRY to dress professionally but it’s just not in my nature. I have the wrong body for pencil skirts and I just can’t walk in heels unless I’m battered, which sort of rules them out as work wear.

The only good thing about Westfield is that they have one of those pretzel stalls that continuously give out free samples of warm, sugary, cinnamony doughnuty things. After a few laps of the pretzel place, with different facial expressions each time in an attempt to disguise myself and not look like I was just one greedy person substituting supper with free samples, I made my way into Primark. Yeah, I know it’s rubbish quality and crap fitting, yadda yaddaa, I don’t care I just wanted some cheap shirts.

It seems as if I’m not the only one having an image overhaul; so are the government! At least they’re encouraging all of us to have an overhaul anyway. Change 4 Life is brought to us by the NHS and it aims to get people to eat less junk and more vegetables. My mum emailed this recipe to me the other week and suggested that I try it, so I did.

The thing is with all Quorn based products is that you can tell that it’s not meat. It doesn’t have the flavour or the aroma or the consistency. To enjoy this one, you need to be one of the following:

a) a vegetarian/vegan (I think this is vegan friendly but correct me if I am wrong);

b) a person who wants to cut down on their meat/is open to veggie stuff; or

c) an omnivore with a really bad cold rendering their taste buds inadequate.

However, two positive points to note about the meal are as follows:

1) There isn’t much washing up. As a person without access to a dishwasher, the amount of dirty dishes a meal produces is always a good “shall I bother cooking this” barometer; and

2) I discovered that I quite like the smell of singed oven glove (caught it on the grill, twice). It’s a bit like bonfire toffee, which I love.

Ingredients

2 carrots, chopped

300g swede, chopped

600g potatoes, cut into small cubes

1 tsp vegetable oil

1 onion, chopped (I used 2)

I spontaneously added 1 red pepper

300g vegetarian mince

300ml reduced salt vegetable stock

1 courgette, grated

100g frozen mixed vegetables or frozen peas

Ground black pepper

1 tsp cornflour (I used plain flour)

1. Cook the carrots, swede and potatoes in a large saucepan of boiling water until tender, about 20 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat the vegetable oil in a large saucepan and gently fry the onion for 2-3 minutes, until softened. Add the vegetarian mince (at this point I added my plain flour) and stock. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat and add the courgette and frozen mixed vegetables or peas. Cook, stirring occasionally, for 4-5 minutes. Season with black pepper.

3. Preheat the grill, warming a baking dish underneath for a few moments. Meanwhile, drain and mash the carrots, swede and potatoes, seasoning with black pepper.

4. Blend the cornflour with 1 tbsp cold water and add it to the mince mixture, stirring until thickened (didn't bother with this bit, due to the plain flour escapade but i think it would make a nicer gravy, which was slightly lacking in mine). Transfer it to the baking dish and spoon the vegetable mash on top. Grill for about 5 minutes, until browned. Serve.

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Pretending To Eat Meat - Episode 1

Before becoming a v-e-g-g-i-e I was a fervent meat eater. Unlike some of my friends who have been brought up as vegetarians and so have never craved meat, I fucking loved meat. 

There are so many of my favourite things that have now become confined to the history books. Examples include McDonalds (Thankfully, I can still have the fries), steak (not usually a massive fan but after my first and last visit to Relais de Venise it’s another darling gone) and my two most beloved curries ever (one of which is at a restaurant in Sheffield and the other is one I used to make for my boyfriend). Sob.

Anyway, chin up because even though I can’t eat animals anymore, I can still pretend! I will therefore strive to update my blog with things I find that brighten up the melancholy meat-free life.

Frazzles

I would describe these facon (fake bacon…fay-cun) crisps as middle-class pork scratchings. I hate pork scratchings but I do like bacon and so these stripy little tabs, vaguely reminiscent of meat are actually quite good. So good in fact that from the 8 pack I bought yesterday, I only have one packet left. Please note that as I do not have any friends, I’m ashamed to say that I am the consumer of all 7 packets.

Haribo

Alright, not ALL Haribo is suitable for vegetarians. In fact, most of it isn’t, including my all-time favourite sweet ever – Maoam. Maoam are just the fruitiest bites of chewy joy anyone could ever experience and whoever invented them is a genius but also very weird because let’s face it, who would even consider putting ANIMAL in kids’ chews.

In light of the above, you can imagine how joyous I was when I stumbled upon some Haribo that didn’t contain stuff from animals’ bones. I didn’t even bother to read the packaging or stop to consider that I might not like them, I just chucked them in my little wheelie basket and hopped along to the self-service.

Long story short: they’re not as nice as normal sweets so I suppose the animal stuff really makes a difference. They’re not really chewy and the flavours were a bit shit. If one thing is going to be my downfall with the whole veggie thing, then it WILL be Maoam.

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Potato Wedges

Self control. Discipline. Strength.

Just a few of the traits I do not possess. Some people can eat a normal bar of chocolate, feel satisfied and move on with their day. Other people can go out for a couple of drinks after work – hell, maybe even three or four – and then trot off back home feeling satisfied. Some amazing people can get their laptop out, have a quick browse through Facebook, update their Tumblr with a picture of 1990’s nostalgia and then turn off their laptop and resume real life.

I am not one of the aforementioned people. In fact, I am the antithesis of every rational and controlled person on this planet – which to me, seems like EVERYONE.

Let’s take the same examples and apply them to my life. The only chocolate I eat comes in packages which are plastered with “To share!”, “Seal back up for later!” and “For all the family to enjoy!”. Are they TRYING to rub it in? I mean, does anyone actually use those shit stickers that are never big enough or sticky enough to actually hold a bag of Maltesers shut? Well, anyway, I frequently eat a bag of these chocolates a day. And then I move onto sweets and crisps.

Nights out and drinking is another failing point and my work Christmas party is a prime example. Instead of going home afterwards, like all the other well-behaved and rational people, I decided to stay out. Even by 5am I was sitting at a bus stop on Bishopsgate thinking that I wasn’t yet ready to go back to my hotel (I got a hotel as little Christmas present from the Boss). To make matters worse, I was the ONLY one who was meant to be working the next day. I turned up to work at 11.30am (only because the hotel checking out time was at noon) and spent the day on a make-shift bed (two office chairs) with intermittent trips to the toilets to stick my head in the bowl.

I imagine I’m not the only person with an internet addiction but I really think I take it to another level, to the point that I don’t really socialise in real life because I spend ALL my time reading blogs of people I wish I knew but don’t. Probably those people would never actually want to know me, as I imagine that they have become interesting people by hanging around with people who are also interesting.

Anyway, I made some potato wedges and they were so fucking good that I pulled them out of the oven, took an un-opened tub of soured cream from the fridge and proceeded to eat all of them, straight off the baking tray and into my mouth. When you find yourself: a) not using a plate; and b) standing whilst eating home-cooking, you know that you are a failure.

Potato Wedges

2 jumbo baking potatoes

Olive oil

1. Cut up each potato into 16 wedges. Lie them on a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil. Use your hands to get them all covered in the oil. Arrange them as a single layer on the tray.

2. Stick them in the oven at about 200c (fan). After about 20 minutes turn each wedge over and stick them in for another 20 minutes until they’re golden.

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Roasted Vegetable Lasagne

Well, well well. After STUPIDLY committing myself to “Soup of the Week” (see last entry), it all went down hill fast. There haven’t been any notable problems: I still have a home and an internet connection and a laptop and a brain and so there is no good reason why I have not updated since fucking OCTOBER.

I promise to never, ever promise about doing anything ever again. It just leads to disaster, in all of life’s departments. Here’s to a new year, a new start and a free and easy non-committal approach to blogging.

Talking about new starts, let’s talk resolutions. Unlike most people, I am actually alright at sticking to new years resolutions. They’re never anything too major, usually just read more (I did), eat less bread (I do), stop being lazy and do revision (I did and got a degree!).

However, this year, I have gone ALL OUT. I have become a vegetarian. There are various reasons behind this but I’m fearful of going into them because so many people get very upset and defensive about people who have become vegetarian. Instead, I’ll just tell you that I read a lot about meat and fish production and decided that it wasn’t for me.

So, in light of the above, my blog about food is going to harbour certain obvious limitations. Who knows how long this will last; as Soup of the Week-gate has proven, it is silly to boast about anything being forever. All I will say is that I am currently, at the moment, presently a vegetarian and here is a delightful recipe that a vegetarian or anyone…except a vegan…can eat.

Roasted Vegetable Lasagne

Ingredients

• 3 red peppers
• 2 aubergine
• 3 large mushrooms (not on the official recipe but I like it)
• 8 tbsp olive oil , plus a little for greasing
• ½ quantity tomato sauce (see link to main site)
• 300g fresh pack lasagne sheets
• ½ quantity white sauce (see link to main site)
• 125g ball mozzarella

Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Deseed the peppers, halve, then cut into large chunks. Trim ends off aubergines, then cut into slices about ½cm thick. Lightly grease 2 large baking trays, then place peppers and aubergines on top. Toss with the olive oil, season well, then roast for 25 mins until lightly browned.

Reduce oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Lightly oil an ovenproof serving dish (30 x 20cm). Arrange a layer of the vegetables on the bottom, then pour over a third of the tomato sauce. Top with a layer of lasagne, then drizzle over a quarter of the white sauce. Repeat until you have 3 layers of pasta.

To finish, spoon remaining white sauce over the pasta, making sure the whole surface is covered. Scatter mozzarella. Bake for 45 mins until bubbling and golden.

The full recipe can be found here: BBC Good Food.

A few notes:

1. The tomato sauce (which you can find on the main BBC Good Food site) is exceptional. It's like a soup. A really good soup. However, like making a homemade soup, it does take a bit of time. Therefore, I recommend making a batch of this stuff, to be frozen and used at a later date.

2. Aubergines are my new "thing". They really are great, for many reasons. Firstly, they are easy as hell. Most vegetables that are aubergine-sized, like butternut squash, are nightmarish to cut up and peel. The great thing about aubergines is that the seeds are ok to eat and you can eat the skin! Like a healthy potato perhaps. Secondly, they soak up flavours like nothing else, meaning they taste bloody good.

3. I was telling my Mum all about this recipe and so she made it for my Dad. It didn't go down well because my Dad missed the meat. Therefore, if you really are a fully fledged carnivore, this might not be the right blog for you anymore.

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Soup of the week: Tomato, Fennel & Feta

Lunch: it’s a strange one. Firstly, I do not approve of packed lunches, for the following reasons:

1. Sweaty bread. The sandwiches I had as a child were wrapped in cling film because this was cheaper than tin foil (which does sort of make sense - wrapping sandwiches in metal is a very extravagant affair) but the cling film did result in what can only be described as sweaty sandwiches.

2. Eating in a car. This effect has also been felt with Opal Fruits (as they then were). I remember driving to Wales as a very young child because my Grandfather had had a heart attack whilst on holiday. Perhaps it was the general upset of the event that compounded my travel sickness but to this day, I find an orange Opal Fruit makes me feel queasy. The same can be said for wrapped up sandwiches.

3. The “cool” factor. This is probably where a psychiatrist would pinpoint my underlying dislike for packed lunches. I wonder if anyone has ever actually been to a shrink for a packed lunch related problem. No, probably not.

It always seemed as if the cooler kids had school dinners and us geeky ones got the packed lunches. 

By way of example, at one point in my junior school career, I had an obsession with chocolate mouse and on one particularly grim day, I realised that I had forgotten the teaspoon for my chocolate mouse. So, off I went to the communal cutlery tray and grabbed a grimy spoon. Feeling pretty pleased with myself for using such initiative, I sat back down on my seat defiantly, only to hear a pop and a squelch. I slowly stood up, the realisation of what had just happened slowly dawning on me. Yes, you can guess, I am sure. My arse was covered in chocolate mouse because some clown had thought it would be funny to pop the unopened pot down onto my seat. It doesn’t take a genius to imagine how this looked, smeared all over my bum.

Scuttling to the toilet, red faced and teary eyed, I muttered under my breath that this would never have happened to a school dinner kid and that was it; the fate of the packed lunch was sealed.

Since then, I have mainly lived on “bought lunch”. This habit has been especially embraced since my move to London. I work in the City and there are tons upon tons of places to eat. Even if I don’t eat out at Spitalfields (Poncho No.8 is a current favourite), I invariably float into Pret or Itsu. The problem is that this costs money and as nice as a crayfish and avocado salad is (it’s very nice), it does become tiresome after a while.

Alas, the powers that be do not make bringing your own lunch easy. Given that I have tired of the grown up version of the school dinner and have finally shaken of my inferiority complex relating to packed lunches, I am now convinced that my office has a secret pact with all of the local eateries. You see, we are not allowed a microwave. Apparently, it will probably cause a fire.

The less said about this the better. Everything that can be said about this ridiculous rule has been said thirty times in our office already. Not one to be pessimistic though, I called my mother.#

“It’s fucking ridiculous not having a microwave at work. How the hell am I EVER going to be able to bring my own lunch? I better find a new job!”

“Why don’t you buy a flask?”

And so it was born: my love affair with soup.

I have also purchased the New Covent Garden Food Co.’s “A Soup for Every Day – 365 of our favourite recipes”. `The ingredients used in each soup are considered in light of the season, which is always good, I think. The soups range from the normal (Leek and Potato) to the ones I doubt I will ever try (Haggis, Neeps and Tatties).

Since there is only one of me, I am clearly not going to make a different soup every day but I will aim to try a different one each week. I might even try to create a feature: “Soup of the Week”. Although, that has potential to go wrong when I am too lazy/sick of soup. Ah, sod it. SOUP OF THE WEEK, WEEK ONE.

Tomato, Fennel & Feta – September 13th – serves 4

Ingredients

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 fennel bulb, finely sliced (couldn’t find a bulb in my supermarket, so had to use seeds. Apparently this is a faux-pas but it tastes fine!)

1 small potato, diced

1 table spoon tomato puree (I used an entire small tin from Asda)

1 small onion, diced

1 close garlic, finely chopped

1 teaspoon caster sugar (had to use granulated – made no difference!)

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

300g tomatoes, chopped (bough whole tomatoes and chopped myself, not a tin of)

1 tablespoon sun-dried tomato paste (didn’t bother – used extra tomato puree instead)

450ml water

50g feta cheese (I chucked the entire 200g block in. I love cheese and feta isn’t too naughty is it? 

Definitely recommended – it makes the soup extra tasty).

1. Heat the oil in a saucepan, add part of the fennel (“only 40g at this stage” says the book. I chucked in a fair amount of seeds, enough so it was pungent in the kitchen!), followed by all of the potato, tomato puree, onion and garlic. Cook gently for 8-10 minutes until the vegetable are soft and without too much colour. My vegetables didn’t go soft and I couldn’t tell if they were colourful or not because they were covered in tomato puree.

2. Add the sugar and white wine vinegar, then reduce by half. My mixture was already pretty solid and was sticking a bit. It didn’t really need reducing all that much.

3. Once reduced, add the chopped tomatoes and sun-dried tomato paste (this sounds heavenly but I couldn’t find it. It seems to work fine without), then cook for a further 5 minutes.

4. Add the water, cover, then cook gently for a further 30 minutes. Yawn, did a bit of washing up.

5. Blend until smooth, then add the feta (which doesn’t really melt much, meaning you get beautiful cheesy bites) and the remaining fennel (a few more seeds). Season to taste, then cook gently for a further 10 minutes and serve.

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Toad in the Hole

It’s coming up to the end of September and at work this means only one thing: it is time to start organising the Christmas party. In years gone by (when I have not been with the company) the Christmas do has been a thing of legend.

The other day, my boss (aka the Boss – he looks nothing like Bruce Springsteen but for obvious reasons, I will use the name regardless) boasted that last year’s Christmas party had cost a whopping sixty five THOUSAND pounds. However, much like the number of women men claim to have slept with, you are always advised to half the Boss’s claims and just to be safe, half them again. And again. Anyway, all exaggerations aside, the event was clearly lavish and plush and everything else that is wonderful.

Naturally, I was expecting big things this year. The line of business I work in doesn’t really get affected by recession and so there was no risk of the excuse that it had been “a bad year” or anything else like that. So, it was to my surprise when the Boss declared that we would not be having a party this year. Instead, we would go for a nice, hearty meal with drinks to follow.

The Boss said he wanted to go to a restaurant that was a “reeeeally good gastro pub that was reeeeally nice and very British and very Christmassy”. My colleague correctly pointed out that the only place that was really Christmassy at the moment was the Harrods grotto. Apart from that, pretty much every restaurant is going to be at least vaguely Christmassy come December 23^rd. So we decided to discount that requirement.

The first and only idea we managed was Rules but after calling up and being a little underwhelmed by the Christmas menu, we were already feeling defeated! The Christmas party plans are all still up in the air. However, I was feeling inspired to create my own British feast.

I’ve recently realised that I hardly ever eat British food. Since I moved out of my family home, I never have a roast and when I eat out, it is invariably Pakistani, Arab, Indian, Thai, Chinese, Greek, Italian etc cuisine that gets my vote. In a bid to alter this, my colleague and I took things into our own hands and decided that a good toad in the hole would not go amiss for the evening.

We used the BBC Good Food recipe and I honestly think that we did a pretty good job! My friend is so daring, that she actually GUESSED measurements. This was something that made me feel incredibly nervous but I somehow managed to stay calm and resist intervening (probably because I was at her flat, in her kitchen). The result was tremendous and delicious.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that ours looked BETTER than the toad in the hole on the website. As my friend pointed out, the toads aren’t really in their holes on the recipe photo, whereas our toads are all cosy and wrapped up.

The onion gravy was also spectacular and really easy. We averted major disaster with careful planning. The recipe for the gravy required soft brown sugar which we didn’t have! Luckily, I had cannily stolen a sachet of granulated brown sugar from the kitchen at work earlier in the day. Excellent preparation and highly recommended for cost cutting.

Try this recipe – there is no reason not to. It is easy and it tastes amazing. We ate half each and couldn’t move for the rest of the evening; now that is what I call a success.

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Fruity lamb tagine

I am terrified by everything. This ranges from the normal: flying (I have alerted the cabin crew on two separate occasions to suspicious looking possible terrorists) and being attacked (I carry a rape alarm and a small can of hairspray with me at all times) to the things that normal people do worry about but are hardly terrified of: going to a hairdresser, eating rare meat, failing at writing a blog, getting to the train station late etc.

It also doesn’t help matters that my boyfriend is more cavalier than your average. He would get to an airport twenty minutes before departure if he had his way. In fact, as I said in my last post, we recently flew to New York on a service that did actually allow its passengers to check in to the airport twenty minutes before departure. As I had sorted the flights out, I was toying with the idea of not telling him, hoping that he would assume we were on a normal flight. Obviously I am far too honest to keep something from my beloved and after a little erm, debate, we thankfully agreed on forty minutes. I was a wreck.

This general cautious nature also means that I worry about spending money. I am not one of these people who think nothing of spending five hundred pounds on a neck scarf. Although in a moment of madness a long time ago, I did happen to purchase a Luella jacket from Net-a-Porter, which I have never actually worn. I’m too scared that I might damage it.

Nevertheless, this week I grudgingly spent over ONE HUNDRED POUNDS on pots, pans, baking trays, hand blenders, wooden spoons, knives and so much more. Until today I did not cook because I was too tight to buy any cooking stuff. This meant I happened to eat out a lot (every day), which cost a lot of money. I was stuck in the most vicious of circles.

Thankfully, that stress is all behind me now and with my new found set of pans, I plan to revolutionise my life. Not surprisingly, I am normally a pretty safe cook eg: chicken or fish but usually vegetarian. In an attempt to loosen up, I chose a crazy, zany dish for my first act: a Fruity lamb tegine from the BBC Good Food website

Firstly, I doubt I had ever cooked lamb before and secondly, the idea of having FRUIT in a savory meal was simply something that was beyond me. Nevertheless, the recipe had five stars and it would be stupid to ignore something like that.

The browned lamb, taking a well earned rest.

I did have a few incidents along the way, so please take the following as a guide of what not to do.

Firstly, I was unable to find the Ras el hanout spice mix, which from the reviews seems to be pretty vital. To make matters even worse, my own attempt at blending the particular spices that the mix apparently contained did not really work because I had no cardamom and I just didn’t put enough of the other stuff I did have into the pot. My meal wasn’t spicy. At all.

As I am really quite poor at the moment, I was also unable to buy the full amount of lamb. I used about 250g (half!) but I still used the full amount of apricots, meaning the meal was a little bit too sweet. In fact, it was a lot too sweet and the only positive point I can draw from the apricot fiasco is that it was one of my five a day.

The introduction of the pesky apricots. If only I had take a couple of them out.

As I poured my stock over the mixture, I realised that most of the cube (yes, sorry – not at the stage of making actual stock yet!) had not dissolved. In a panic, I just sort of threw the gritty bits left in the bottom of the jug into the mixture. Not sure if this is okay to do or not. Presumably it is not advisable; otherwise why waste your time dissolving the stuff in a bloody jug beforehand.

The final result of all the risk-taking. Kind of worth it.

All in all, when you taste a spoonful of the meal with the correct proportions eg: one piece of apricot, a big piece of lamb, a big bit of carrot and lots of chickpeas, it really is quite delicious and it is true that the apricot does bring out the taste of the lamb quite beautifully (I feel so sophisticated saying that!).

So, do try this at home but probably stick more rigidly to the recipe than I did. It will probably take me the rest of the week to polish the leftovers off. Apparently it tastes better a few days after it has been made. Let’s bloody hope so.

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