Cheddar Tomato and Onion Quiche

Mmmm!  Real men love quiche!!  It's official!

Serves:
4-6

Ingredients:

I pack 500g (18 oz) ready made shortcrust pastry (I use Jus-Rol (it's Vegan Society approved)- or make your own)
100g (3.5 oz) onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp butter
100g (3.5 oz) cherry tomatoes, halved
100g (3.5 oz) mature vegetarian cheddar cheese, grated
1 tsp dried or fresh parsley, finely chopped
3 eggs
100ml (3.5 fl oz) milk
1 tsp mustard
Any fresh herbs for decoration

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C / Gas Mark 6.

Roll out the pastry on a floured surface and use to line a greased 20cm (8 inch) diameter flan dish.

In a frying pan, melt the butter and fry the onion gently for a few minutes until soft.  Remove to one side to cool.

Sprinkle the cheese evenly across the pastry, do the same with the onion, and finally the tomato halves. 

Beat the egg and mustard into the milk, then pour enough of this into the pastry shell to come just a little shy of the rim (not brimful, as you will need to carry to the oven without spilling!).  Sprinkle the herbs across the top, and season well with salt and pepper.

Place in the oven and cook for 25 minutes, or until the surface has risen slightly and until the pastry edge and the top of the quiche begin to turn golden brown in places.

Allow to cool for a few minutes before slicing.  Decorate with fresh basil or other herbs if liked.

Serve with salad and green beans and hot new potatoes.  Also lovely served cold (cover and refridgerate once cooled).  A balsamic vinegar reduction is gorgeous with this - I buy mine ready made from Tesco in a squeezy bottle and it's divine.

Arnie Vore gave this another 9/10, commenting surreally that it was lovely and that he had never eaten anything like it.

Winter Vegetable Cobbler

It's August, so not the traditional time of year to stuff yourself with carbs and root vegetables - but who cares when they are this TASTY!

This is a reworking of two different recipes.

We had this for dinner tonight, and my fiancé, who I shall henceforth refer to by the pseudonym Arnie Vore [the carnivore] the committed meat meister, rated it a whopping 9/10.

"There might just be a future in this lark" he remarked.

*Speechless!*

But, it IS tasty.

I would note that there is a fair amount of fiddle-faddle involved in the preparation of this dish, but it is worth the result which is not only heartwarming and delicious, but makes quite an entrance when you put it on the table, too. Could be useful as a casual dinner party dish, with all the preparation done in advance and just the topping part to do last minute.

Serves 4-6 people.

Ingredients:

1 tbsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
4 medium onions, quartered
2 sticks of celery, sliced
225g (8oz) swede, diced
2 carrots, cut into coins
Half of a small cauliflower, cut into florets
200g (7oz) button mushrooms, sliced
400g (14oz) can plum tomatoes
55g (2 oz) red lentils rinsed under tap
2 tbsp cornflour dissolved in 4 tbsp water
Stock cube dissolved in 300ml (10 fl oz) water
1 tsp Tabasco sauce
2 tsp finely chopped fresh oregano

Scone topping:

225g (8 oz) SR flour
pinch of salt
4 tbsp butter
115g (4 oz) mature cheddar cheese, grated
2 tsp finely chopped fresh oregano
1 egg, beaten into 150ml (5 fl oz) milk

METHOD:

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C (350 F / Gas Mark 4). In a huge frying pan, over a low heat, fry the onions and garlic in the oil until they start to soften. Add the swede, carrots, celery and cauliflower and cook for a few minutes, before stirring in the mushrooms, tomatoes and lentils and cooking for a few more minutes.

Mix the cornflour into the water, and stir into the frying pan, together with the Tabasco and oregano. Pour in the stock and stir well, then transfer the whole lot into an large ovenproof dish, cover with tin foil and place in the oven for 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, make the topping. Sieve the flour and salt into a large bowl. Rub the butter into the flour and stir in the oregano and about two thirds of the grated cheese. Beat the egg into the milk and then gradually add just enough of this to the dry ingredients to make a soft dough. On a floured surface, knead a few times then roll out to 1cm thick and using a pastry cutter cut out as many 'scones' as you can get from the pastry.

After the 25 minutes has elapsed, take the dish from the oven, remove the foil and place the scones, overlapping them slightly, around the edge of the dish. Brush the scones with the remaining egg and milk mixture and scatter them with the remaining cheese. Return to the oven for a further 15 minutes.

Enjoy! :)

Vegetarian Bolognese Sauce

Serves 4, or one plus enough sauce to use tomorrow to make a lasagne!Ingredients:
1 tablespoon olive oil plus 1 tablespoon butter

1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 pepper (yellow for preference) finely diced
1/2 courgette, finely diced
1/2 large carrot, peeled then grated
1/2 stick celery, finely diced
1 large fresh tomato, chopped
1 large clove garlic, crushed

250g (9 oz) (half a bag) frozen Quorn mince

1 x tsp dried basil
1 x tsp dried parsley
2 x tsp dried oregano
1 x pinch dried chili flakes

1 x 400g (14 oz) tin plum tomatoes
2 x heaped tablespoons tomato puree
1 x tablespoon tomato ketchup
1 x vegetable stock cube dissolved in 100ml (3.5 fl oz) boiling water


To serve:
75g (3 oz) per person dried spaghetti (I used wholewheat spaghetti)
Bowl grated vegetarian cheese
Garlic bread if liked

METHOD:

In a heavy bottomed frying pan, melt the butter in the olive oil and add the first seven ingredients (i.e. all the chopped veg.) and cook gently over a medium high heat until softened.

Make a large well in the centre of the veg and pour in the Quorn mince. Cook for a few minutes until well defrosted and then stir into the surrounding veg. Add the herbs and spices and stir well.

Next, add the tin of tomatoes, chopping them in, plus the puree, ketchup, and finally the stock cube in water. Season with salt and pepper to taste, then reduce the heat to very low and simmer gently for about 20 minutes.

Whilst the sauce is simmering, cook your spaghetti per the packet instructions.

Serve with grated vegetarian cheese and garlic bread, if liked.

Note: If you have fresh herbs, use those instead. They are much more potent and delicious.

Inflicting my taste on the world at large

Hi.

I recently joined a community on Livejournal where vegetarians share their recipes with each other and shoot the breeze, and I have been thinking about sharing some of my culinary forays with my fellows there. I have also been meaning to commit to paper some of my efforts for my own reference, but since I can type much faster than I can write longhand, it seemed like a good idea to set up a blog for the purpose.

I am extremely busy, I work most days and I have an almost two year old, so my entries will probably be sporadic.

I have been a vegetarian for almost 20 years, I made the switch for mainly fluffy animal reasons, but also for health reasons, and if I am honest, I made a bet with my then boyfriend that I couldn't do it. (Obviously, I could...!)

I am a BIG fan of Quorn products, and use a lot of them in my cooking. I know some people are averse to using meat replacement products for their own ethical reasons, but here's why I like them:

- They make it easy for people transitioning to a vegetarian diet to grow accustomed to life without meat
- They make it possible to enjoy in a sentimental way foods that a vegetarian might have enjoyed when they were a meat eater, and subsequently lusted after, without falling off the vegetarian wagon.
- They make it simple to keep up the protein levels.
- I like the taste of them.
- I am quite lazy when cooking, as I am often trying to cook for my meat eating partner and child at the same time as preparing something vegetarian for myself, and the 'ready meal' versions are sometimes just the ticket.

Many of the dishes I post here will be of the basic week night dinner type. Some of them will most likely be the kind of thing that you could wing by yourself, if you had even the smallest knowledge of cookery. But you can be sure that if it makes it here, it has been tried and eaten (probably lots of times!) and it's a reliable recipe.

So, here we go, eh?