Fractured Dreams

I haven’t posted about food for a while, so let’s do something about that. I recently “discovered” quinoa. As a gluten-free vegan I don’t know why I’d never crossed paths with it before (aside from a carton of quinoa milk a friend gave me once to try, which made gluten-free cereal bearable), but one day it caught my eye in the supermarket and I decided it was time to try it. (A similar thing happened with the polenta I bought the other day, though have yet to do anything with. My eye is on something like this, without the cheese, obvi.)

Now, I’m sure I’ve said this before, but I am a firm adherent to the throw-stuff-in-a-saucepan-bring-to-boil-and-simmer-for-half-an-hour style of “cooking”. I’m also big on substituting recipe ingredients. (Sometimes beyond recognition. That’s how I got coconut Nutella cupcakes from an orange cake recipe). So that’s what I did with quinoa. (Random digression #568: I can’t think about quinoa without thinking of Gillian McKeith on You Are What You Eat pushing “keen-wah” for breakfast, lunch and dinner…it may be wrong, but the fellow veggies in my life agree that “kwi-no-ah” feels more natural — read less pretentious — to say.)

Health factoid: Quinoa is high in protein — who knew it contains all 8 essential amino acids — which is a good comeback for all those meat-eaters who are so unnaturally fixated on whether vegans are getting enough protein. It also contains fiber, folate, magnesium, iron, phosphorous and phytochemicals.

Given the idea by a recipe for prawn and butter bean rice, I sauteed some onion in a large saucepan then threw in the following:

• 100g of rinsed quinoa
  
• 1 sliced courgette
  
• some diced bell pepper – half or whole, I can’t remember
  
• half a cup (about 125ml) of spicy red pepper pasta sauce (a staple in my cupboard that I throw in everything — tastes better than tinned tomatoes)
  
• 1 tsp of tumeric
  
• salt and black pepper to taste
  
• veggie stock (two cubes dissolved in 800ml boiling water).

After the required boil-and-simmer for 10 mins, I added a tin of butter beans, cooking for another five.
And it was done, and tasty. I’ll make it again this week — throwing in a few handfuls of fresh spinach with the beans — and divide it into containers for lunch at work.

Yesterday I did a similar thing with wholegrain brown basmati rice, red lentils and whatever was in the fridge — some leftover salsa, pasta sauce, onion, garlic, yellow pepper, courgette and mushrooms. This time it was a tin of mixed beans added in the last 5 minutes. So flavourful and so filling that I wasn’t craving sugar at 3 and 5pm like I usually do — sitting at my desk I constantly get the munchies.

Time for a food post.

Lately I’ve been fixated on lasagne, which has always been one of my favourite dishes. Now, you might ask, how can you possibly make an endometriosis-diet-friendly wheat-free, vegan, soya-free lasagne (that’s edible)? The answer is you can’t…not quite. What you can do if you’re up for the occasional treat is this: skip the lumpy fake cheese sauce and simply layer in grated goat’s cheese.

This takes a while to prepare, but I promise it’s worth it.

• Peel and dice some butternut squash, aubergine, carrots, and an onion. Add a chopped bell pepper, some courgette, and throw in a few peeled garlic cloves.

• Toss the lot in a large bowl with plenty of olive oil, dried mixed herbs, paprika, salt, black pepper, and whatever other seasoning you like.
• Spread the veggies out on a baking tray and/or roasting tin (in my teeny oven I use two shelves) and roast on a moderate heat for 35 mins.
• Savour the delicious smell.
• With about 10 mins to go, grate a block of hard goat’s cheese (e.g. 240g St Helen’s Farm), put aside, and boil several handfuls of fresh spinach until the leaves are wilted, 2 or 3 mins.
• Remove the veggies from the oven and assemble the lasagne in your preferred baking tin or dish — cover the base with pasta sauce (Tesco’s Spicy Pepper Pasta Sauce is a staple in my cupboard) to prevent sticking. Then layer on gluten-free pasta sheets, spread sauce on the pasta, followed by the roasted veg, spinach and grated cheese. Repeat the layers until all the veg is used. Top with another layer of pasta, sauce and sprinkle on the last of the cheese.

  Because there’s no cheese sauce, be generous with the tomato sauce and make sure the pasta is well covered.

• Cook for 40 mins at 180C or according to the pasta directions.
• Savour the even more delicious smell and find a distraction so the time passes faster (a watched pot never boils and all that…).

Enjoy with a simple side salad or all on it’s own!

Here’s another recipe I’ve been enjoying this week:

Vegan rice pudding

Ingredients

• 2 cups water
  
• 1 cup brown rice, rinsed
  
• 1 1/4 cups rice milk
  
• 1/3 cup raisins
  
• 1/3 cup syrup
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
  
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
  
• 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Directions

1. In a medium saucepan, place the water, and bring to a boil. Add the rice, cover, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for 35 minutes or until all of the water has been absorbed.

2. Add the remaining ingredients, stir well to combine, and continue to cook the mixture over low heat until all of the liquid has been absorbed.

3. Transfer the mixture to a bowl and place the pudding in the refrigerator to chill. Top individual servings with a little additional cinnamon before serving, if desired.

This cured me of my hankerings after the creamy Ambrosia stuff. I prefer rice pudding hot and it smells amazing with the vanilla and spices. Sadly I didn’t have any raisins, but I’m sure I’ll be coming back to this one again.

In my recent malaise I had no interest in cooking anything that required more effort than boiling gluten-free pasta (aka corn paste) and dumping on some stir-in sauce. On a good day I might’ve opened a tin of sweetcorn too. On a bad day I ate half a jar of Nutella with a teaspoon.

But over the past week or so I’ve started scouring wheat-free vegan recipes again, and regained some enthusiasm for experimenting. I even bought this cute recipe binder from Paperchase with mini aubergines on the cover. It has divider cards for starters, meat (sadly extraneous…what I wouldn’t give for some szechuan pork), fish, veggies, baking, and desserts, and means I can stop running from the laptop to the kitchen and back again or writing recipes on pieces of paper that invariably disappear down the side of the cooker.

I was looking to a buy an actual cookbook, but the gluten- and dairy-free books had meat recipes and the vegan books had wheat and soya/tofu recipes so I went with the binder instead. This way I can just include recipes I actually use and waste spend more time drooling over recipe sites and blogs.

The first recipe I added to the binder was one that I tried for the first time over the weekend and will definitely be going into rotation: Moroccan Lentil and Chickpea Soup from Recipe Zaar. It’s actually more like a stew, and great with a couple of slices of non-wheat bread. Here’s my adapted version (because I despise celery):

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil*
  
• 1 onion, chopped
  
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
  
• 1/2 teaspoon cumin
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt (or more to taste)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon ground pepper (or to taste)
  
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
  
• 1/4 teaspoon chilli sauce
  
• 1 large pinch saffron, crumbled
  
• 1 tin diced tomatoes
  
• 1 cup red lentils
  
• 1 tin chickpeas, drained
  
• 4 cups (1 litre) vegetable broth
  
• 1 bundle Sharwoods rice noodles, broken
  
• 2 tablespoons flour
  
• 1/2 cup fresh parsley (or 1/2 teaspoon dried)
  
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro
  
• 1/4 cup lemon juice (roughly equiv. to 1 fresh lemon)

Directions

1. In a large heavy saucepan, heat oil, stir in onion and cook, covered, for 7-10 minutes or until onion is tender, stirring occasionally.
2. Add cinnamon, turmeric, cumin, salt, pepper, ginger, sauce, and saffron. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add tomatoes, lentils, chickpeas, and broth. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer, covered, for about 40 minutes or until lentils are tender.
3. Stir in noodles and simmer, covered, about 7 minutes longer or until noodles are just tender.
In a bowl, whisk flour, and 1 cup of water until smooth. Whisk the flour mixture into the soup and simmer, stirring often, for 2-4 minutes or until the soup is thickened and no raw flour taste remains. [I skipped this step because it was thick enough and I didn't want to use gluten-free flour.]
4. Stir in half of the parsley and cilantro, and all of the lemon juice. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding up to 1/2 tsp more salt if needed. Garnish with remaining parsley and cilantro.

I didn’t have any saffron or cilantro, but maybe next time. It tasted great as it was — I love the infusion of lemon juice at the end, it’s a delicious touch.

*I found this handy butter-to-olive oil conversion list that I might actually add to the binder. A quick, easy way to make recipes vegan-friendly.