My Vegan Kitchen

This is a great festive dish, especially if you’re leaning in an Italian direction!

I made the tomato sauce the day before (use your usual Italian tomato sauce recipe), and fortified it with a good dose of the Romesco paste from a few days ago (it always pays to make a big batch). So it was a really rich sauce.

Recipe:

20 conchiglione pasta shells (you may only need 16 but allow for breakages), cooked in well salted water

I used a large stock pot for these so they would have plenty of space and be less likely to break

Cook your pasta shells, drain well, and lay out on a tray ready for the filling

A rich homemade Italian tomato sauce

Tofu/pesto filling.

Half of 1 large onion, finely diced

half a bunch of spring onions, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped 

350gm tofu

at least 300gm vegan basil pesto

Sautée the onion, spring onions and garlic till soft and translucent. Put the onion mixture along with the pesto and tofu into a food processor and blitz till amalgamated.

Line the pasta shells with the tofu filling and place the stuffed shells in a pan on top of the home-made sauce.

Bake at 180 degrees Celsius for 35 to 40 minutes.

Serve with fresh Italian parsley, and olives. And a good dose of freshly ground black pepper!

I have made a promise to myself to start recording quantities, when I put together a new recipe.

If I am pleased with a dish, I usually scribble down the ingredients and a few notes on “method”, or at least the order in which I used the ingredients, so i can remember how to reconstruct the dish. But the recording of quantities is on a whole other level; which I have yet to pull off!

So keep an eye out for better and more thorough recipes on this site! (Says she, hoping she’ll have the necessary discipline)! 😜

I am also trying to go back through old dishes and put measurements to them. (No small feat)..

This Blueberry parfait is made with fresh fruits, home-made granola, and yoghurt made with cashew nuts, fresh flesh of a coconut, water, and a probiotic capsule to start the fermentation process. Then add lemon or lime  juice, vanilla extract, and maple syrup (my preferred sweetener).

I'll come back to you with the quantities

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

This is a joyous lunchtime dish, or great for a light dinner. If you make up the romesco sauce in advance; a quick and tasty meal is at your fingertips whenever you require..

You will need:

cooked pasta of your choice 

baby tomatoes of various colours, halved

courgettes, sliced and sauteed in minimal oil with a little dash of balsamic vinegar.

spinach leaves, rinsed

basil for garnish

salt and pepper

Toss the pasta through the romesco sauce while the pasta is still hot. Add the remaining ingredients and gently stir through.

Romesco sauce recipe.

    
20gm yesterday’s artisan bread (preservative and additive free)
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
1 tbsp filtered water

1 large tomato, quartered
1 tbsp almonds
1 tbsp hazelnuts
2 cloves garlic

300gm roasted and marinated red peppers (aka capsicums)
2 tbsp sundried tomatoes, (don’t drain too much of the oil away)..
A pinch of mineral-rich salt
1 heaped tsp good quality paprika
1 heaped tsp bell pepper flakes (if available)

Method: 

Soak the sliced up bread in the water and sherry vinegar till soaked through.

Into a 200 degree Celsius oven, place 1 tomato, quartered, the almonds and hazelnuts, plus the crushed garlic cloves.
Bake for 20 minutes till “aromatic “, (you will detect the smell of the nuts toasting)..

Place the marinated peppers, the soaked bread, sundried tomatoes, roasted nuts, garlic and tomato in a food processor and blitz till smooth.
Add the salt and spices and blitz again.

This makes an extremely tasty Romesco paste. Alot of the yummy "tang" is down to the vinegar that the red peppers are marinated in.

Fabulous for adding extra flavour to a pasta sauce, or use as a dip!

You could even call this a capsicum and sun-dried tomato pesto, if that helps to better inflame your culinary imagination!

Apologies again for the over-sized photos. The website seems to have lost the facility for diminishing them!

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

I don’t often cook Asian dishes; I tend to go the Italian, Indian or Mexican route as a default “line of least resistance “. These are the cooking styles I am most familiar with.

 

Serve and devour while piping hot!

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

Okay, so I'm obsessed with cabbage steaks currently! I've served this on herbed rice with a chipotle mayonnaise or you could call it a spicy, nut-based "Crema"..

Recipe for the Chipotle Mayo

1 cup cashews, soaked for 2 hours

1 lime (or a lemon will do)

1 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 tsp Maple syrup, or to personal taste

a pinch of salt

1 clove garlic, optional..

1 or more chipotle chiles in adobo (these are the canned chiles in a thick spicy paste, that you can find in most supermarkets these days).

Method

Soak 1 cup of cashews in water for 2 hours before rinsing and draining.

Blitz the cashews combined with 1 cup filtered water till the mixture is smooth. Add the juice of 1 lemon, nutritional yeast, a squirt of maple syrup and a pinch of salt, and blitz again till the mixture is smooth.

Now add 1 chipotle chile in adobo. Add some of the paste also for extra flavour! And extra chiles if you want it especially "picante"!

Blitz again till thoroughly amalgamated. Adjust as you see fit. Serve with the rice and the roasted cabbage 🌱

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

Surely the best thing about a cold Winter’s day is the comfort food we turn to to lift our spirits? It is uber-cold here in Melbourne right now, coinciding with our second Covid Lockdown. So cooking is the order of the day!

This is home-made broccoli, kale, lentil and mushroom soup (Oh, and sweet potato)..

And you know I have some spices in there!

In this soup I have used my Chermoula Spice Blend. This is one of the blends from the range I developed in New Zealand after the big 2010 earthquake when I lost my shop.

You will also need:

half a head of broccoli, cut into pices and steamed

1 generous glug of extra virgin olive oil

1 good size onion, finely diced

2 cloves of garlic (or less; up to you), crushed and chopped

1 heaped tbsp Chermoula (you can buy this in specialty grocery stores)

1 litre vegetable stock (I like to use Rapunzel veggie stock cubes, or Massel’s are also good)

1 sweet potato, oven roasted (or you could boil it if you don’t want to use the oven for such a small cook)

half the contents of 1 tin lentils. Leave a smattering of lentils aside for garnish

1 medium-sized bunch kale

For Garnish

sliced and sauteed mushrooms

fresh coriander

Chapattis for accompaniment

Method:

1. Steam the broccoli quickly till it is ever so slightly cooked. Run under cold water and put aside.

2. Sear the onions and garlic in the oil, till soft and translucent. Add the Chermoula blend and stir gently, allowing the spices to release their magic, then add the broccoli and sweet potato. Stir the vegetables around in the onion mixture till well coated with the spices.

3. Heat the vegetable stock and add to the pot. Cook for a further 5 to 10 minutes till all the ingredients are "holding hands" (if you know what I mean)? Allow the soup to reduce somewhat. This is how the flavours really develop..

4. Add the kale right at the end before putting the soup in a blender to puree. You may need to add more stock at this point, if the soup is too thick.

5. Pour the soup back into the pot to cook a little further, adding the lentils right at the end, so they hold their shape.

6. Add your various garnishes and serve with chapattis..

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

 My Raw pizza/cracker Recipe:

In this instance, I left the mixture intact without scoring it so that the crackers came out as large dehydrated sheets, which I have snapped into random pieces. More fun this way! 

Dip into hummus, chimi-churri (recipe up next), or eat with avocado and kassundi/chutney.

But seriously, they are wonderful just as they are. I love this style of un-cooking! Clean. Healthy. Exciting! 🤓

 @thegastronomicalworkshop

the delicate wafers...

This galette used a spelt flour and vegan butter recipe. (Tweaked from my last effort).

Why is pie-making such a happy craft?!  (that’s vegan cheese on the top)..

@thegastronomicalworkshop

For the filling:

quater of a pumpkin, cut into pieces and roasted

roasted sweet potato (cut into cubes of some description before roasting)

sliced leeks, sauteed on both sides till caramelised.

freshly ground black pepper

Once the pastry is rolled out, spread the vegetables over the pastry and sprinkle liberally with the pepper. Leave a small area free on the outside so that you can roll the pastry inwards towards the centre to form your galette. Transfer your pie onto a baking tray or baking dish that fits size-wise.

Bake at 200 degrees Celcius for 15 to 20 minutes. Keep an eye on it to check that the pastry is browning.

Have you tried baking wedges of red cabbage? - it’s a revelation! They are very “steaky”, (move over cauliflower 🤓). This is round 3 of my experiment with red cabbage cooked this way. I have served it on a cashew-based chipotle cream, with the celery/caper/currant and parsley salsa from last time. I omitted the olives this time as I found them to be too dominant in the previous trial..

Method: bake the cabbage wedges in the oven after quickly searing them in a pan with a little olive oil. The cabbage goes a really silky texture when cooked. 

For the salsa:

1 stalk of Celery

1 clove of Garlic

1 dessertspoon Capers

1 tablespoon Currants

a half bunch of Parsley, finely chopped 

Sherry vinegar

Slivered almonds, dry roasted in a pan to get some colour (and crunch) on them 

Shichimi togarashi (Japanese seven spice)   

Sautée the celery and garlic till soft, then add a splash of sherry vinegar. Add the capers, currants and a good volume of parsley and stir to combine, allowing the parsley to wilt and the ingredients to marry..

Drape the salsa over the “steak” and garnish with the slivered almonds and a sprinkle of shichimi togarashi.

@thegastronomicalworkshop