The weather has been horrid today, rain wind and more wind! I work on the top floor of a 6 floor building and around 3pm today the building wobbled! Yes wobbled! My heart goes out to the areas that have been hit the hardest.
With all this horrid weather I needed cheering up and fancied a bit of sunshine. No I didn't book a holiday, I created a sunshine meal! Using summertime ingredients thanks to frozen peas and the gorgeous amazing basil tofu I purchased at Waitrose at the weekend I could do just that.
I've been meaning to try the Vegusto Cheese that was included in my vegan swap box for ages too, so that also needed to be included in my creation. So what can you do with basil tofu, garden peas and vegan cheese? Something Italian - cannelloni.
Ingredients
200g Basil tofu
185g Frozen peas, cooked and drained
½ Bunch spring onions, finely sliced
1 Red onion, finely chopped
1 Garlic clove, minced
500g Tomato passata
2 Tsp Paprika
2 Tsp Mixed herbs
½ Tsp Sugar
½ Tsp Salt
1 Tbsp Tomato puree
12 Cannelloni tubes
60g Vegan cheese, grated
Method
First cut the basil tofu into cubes and add to your food processor, next add the cooked frozen peas and the spring onions. If you don't have a food processor you can mash the tofu then add the peas and finely shredded spring onions and mash again.
Next make your tomato sauce, fry the red onion and garlic in a little olive for 3-4 minutes. Pour in the tomato passata and stir through. Next add the paprika, mixed herbs, sugar, salt and tomato puree and slowly bring to the boil.
Stuff the cannelloni tubes with the basil tofu, garden peas and spring onion mixture.
Spread a little tomato sauce in the bottom of an oven dish and place the stuffed cannelloni tubes on top. Pour the remaining sauce over the top and sprinkle over the grated cheese.
Bake in a moderate oven for around 30-40 minutes, until the cheese has 'melted' and the food is piping hot.
This is becoming a regular feature of my blog, no not vegetable pie, but the fact that I haven't shopped! I really need to get more organised. In fact in a conversation with my sister yesterday I was saying just that. I used to be the most organised person I knew, but this has lapsed a little.
I need to start with going shopping and buy some fresh fruit and vegetables of all colours and then I will be in heaven cooking up some vegan magic!
Anyhow, enough waffle, back to what I managed to magic up for tea. I'd told Hubby to pick something up for his dinner on the way home, so at least I hadn't got to magic up two dinners. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw in his shopping bag was a small bag of frozen peas and some mushrooms!
After a quick check of my cupboards and fridge this is what I had.
As you can see the courgette and red pepper were a little worse for wear and needed eating up! The pastry suggested that tonight's dinner would either be a tart, a puff or a pie. I went with the pie. First I chopped up all the vegetables and measured out half the bag of frozen peas, after all I needed to leave some for Hubby!
Next, saute the vegetables in a little olive oil, onions first, then peppers, mushrooms and courgettes. I added a clove of minced garlic too. I also added 4 shredded sage leaves, a rosemary sprig finely chopped and some thyme from my garden.
Whilst the vegetables were cooking, I quickly made up a sauce. In a pan add soy milk, plain flour and vitalite (sorry didn't measure, just threw it in). As it thickens add 3 tablespoons of nutritional yeast, a teaspoon of herbamare (a herbal seasoning salt), half a teaspoon of vegetable bouillon powder, freshly ground black pepper and about 10 chive stalks finely chopped. Add the sauce to the vegetables and stir through.
Next, pour this mixture into an oven proof dish and top with the pastry. I only used half of the pastry so there's some more left for another day. Bake in a moderate oven for 20 minutes or until the pastry is golden.
This made three good sized portions, if you were serving it with potato or chips you could easily make four servings. I ate my portion as it is, on its own.
Today I wanted something simple for lunch and after doing the rounds of some of my favourite vegan bloggers I came across Maple Spice's recipe for Mushroom Pasta. Her photographs wanted me to cook and eat it straight away. I just wish she had been in my kitchen making it for me herself! I still feel pretty lousy and having my own personal chef would have been perfect, but no such luck!
After checking my cupboards for the ingredients, I soon realised that to make her recipe would have been impossible, I had no soy, rice, coconut or almond milk! But what I did find lurking in my cupboards was a packet of vegan cheese sauce powder,which I bought when I first tried veganism 3 years ago!
My mind was set on mushroom pasta, so I boiled up some wholewheat pasta and made up some cheese sauce according to the instructions on the packet, which just required water. But I also added garlic granules, nutritional yeast and parsley to the sauce, as per Maple Spice recipe. I also added some garlic puree to the sauce too for that extra garlicky loveliness. Meanwhile I fried 2 field mushrooms in a little vitalite and once cooked added some cooked frozen peas. Once the pasta was cooked I added to the mushrooms and poured over the cheese sauce. The cheese sauce was extremely thick (even though I added the recommended amount of water) so I also added about half of the pasta water to loosen everything up.
The verdict: it wasn't the greatest cheese sauce in the world but the added parsley and garlic made it edible! As soon as I've been shopping I will try the recipe of Maple Spice, because it does look so tasty.
½ Bunch spring onions, finely sliced
