Vegan Mofo Roundup

Well, its the last day of vegan mofo and I thought I would end with a round up of everything bean like that I have created during the month.

I've thoroughly enjoyed taking part in my first vegan mofo even if it has left me a little shattered creating a new recipe every day for the last 29 days! I will admit some days it was the last thing on my mind especially if it had been a long stressful day at work, but I'm so pleased I stuck to it, it has been an enjoyable experience on the whole. 

I believe that I have got more creative in the kitchen especially with beans! I have now grown to love food that I have previously hated and will continue to use in my cooking. Most of my creations have been a success story and it was only yesterday that I had my first disaster, but one out of 29 can't be too bad can it?

OK, so what have I been up to this month then, all my recipes have been created with beans as an ingredient and I have created recipes which have included the following beans:

• Adzuki
• Bean Sprouts
• Black Bean
• Black Eyed Beans
• Borlotti Beans
• Broad Beans
• Butter Beans
• Cannellini Beans
• Green Beans
• Haricot Beans
• Mung Beans
• Pinto Beans
• Purple Beans
• Red Kidney Beans
• Refried Beans
• Runner Beans
• Soya Bean Curd
• Yellow Beans

Eighteen beans in 29 days is not bad going especially when you consider the amount of runner beans and green beans that my very small veggie garden has produced. They both featured a lot in my recipes, but it was great as none went to waste. Although I'm pretty beaned out to say the least and looking out the window I can see at least another 2 kilograms of runner beans that are ready to harvest!

During Mac 'n' Cheese Mondays I've created 4 very different Mac 'n' Cheese recipes:

• Mac 'n' Cheese - Simple
• Mac 'n' Cheese - Spicy
• Mac 'n' Cheese - Yellow Peppers
• Mac 'n' Cheese - Sweet Potato

My favourite out of the above has to be without doubt the Yellow Pepper version and I will make this again and again. In fact I'm already considering making it for a Cauliflower Cheese as I bought a wonderful Romanesco Cauliflower the other day, it's almost too pretty to eat!

TV Tuesdays involved replicating a meal from your favourite TV show or movie, vegan of course and I chose 4 of my favourite films and created the following:

• Mystic Pizza - Bean Pizza
• The Breakfast Club - Bean Maki Rolls
• Julie & Julia - Green Beans in a Mushroom Sauce
• Bridget Jones Diary - Leek, Butter Bean & Runner Bean Soup

My favourite recreation was the Green Beans in Mushroom Sauce and it's where my love affair started with the partnering of green beans and mushrooms. They went so well together and something that I will continue to experiment with in the future.

Work With It Wednesdays was a hard one for me, how can you create recipes that you enjoy using foods that you dislike? The foods I disliked (past tense as I now like them) were peanut butter, cannellini beans, butter beans and aubergines and I made the following:

• Bean and Noodle Salad
• Butter Bean and Cauliflower Mash
• Aubergine and Cannellini Bean Cassoulet
• Aubergine and Butter Bean Rolls

My favourite dish was the aubergine and butter bean rolls, but a very close second was the butter bean and cauliflower mash, both dishes using butter beans. I will be using this ingredient far more in the future. I'm thinking a butter bean mash atop a shepherdless pie?

Thankful Thursdays was all about giving to others, which in my case was making a meal for a camping holiday with friends, a homemade Christmas present and a big thank you to my hubby for putting up with me during vegan mofo! I also managed to write about the vegan swap box which to happy vegans organise every month. Food wise I made the following:

• Five Bean Tacos
• Runner Bean Chutney
• Bean Dhal
• Aubergine and Butter Bean Moussaka

The Five Bean Tacos were a great hit, and you can make them as spicy or as mild as you want. The aubergine and butter bean moussaka was a dish made from left overs from the aubergine and butter bean rolls and was surprisingly delicious. I also received a great vegan swap box from Heather too, which made my day.

Fry-Days are pretty self explanatory and involved dishes of the fried variety. We always have a treat for a Friday meal and anything fried is a treat - wouldn't you agree? Sometimes we enjoy a take away but I've not had a take away now for over a month! Perhaps one day this week, probably Friday we will treat ourselves. The dishes I created for Fry-Days were:

• 4 Bean Stir Fry
• 3 Bean Black Bean
• Bean Fajitas
• Bean Tempura

It was hard to choose a favourite from these four dishes, fajitas are a standard Friday dish and I use whatever is in the fridge that needs using up for the filling. Stir frys are another standard dish in our house as is a black bean sauce dish. Last Friday was the first time ever I made my own tempura as its normally too much hassle to get out the deep fat fryer and the mammoth task of cleaning up after, but on this occasion I was glad I went to the trouble as the bean tempura was lovely. Note to self though, it doesn't keep! It goes soggy after it has cooled so my compost bin had the leftovers ha ha ha.

Retro Saturdays in my eyes are all about the old favourites, the nostalgic culinary classics, a throwback dish from the 1970's. I've really enjoyed all these dishes and they were:

• Bean Risotto
• Bean and Mushroom Pasta
• Bean Stroganoff
• Bean and Mushroom Wellington

I love risottos and I have made a few, a lot of people say they are so time consuming but really is 20 minutes cooking, time consuming? OK so you have to keep stirring the rice and adding more stock but in doing so, I say to myself I'm adding in love, care and attention to detail, which in my book is worth the effort. I am a massive fan of Mushroom Stroganoff and I think it has to be my all time favourite dish, the bean stroganoff was good, but in my eyes nothing beats a mushroom stroganoff. So, my favourite of these four dishes has to be the bean and mushroom wellington which not only did I enjoy on Saturday but on Sunday too and I've got it for lunch tomorrow!

Sleepy Sundays are everything related to breakfast, brunch or lazin' in bed snacks. Most of my creations fall under the category of brunch and included these 5 (yes there were 5 Sundays in vegan mofo), creations.

• Broad Bean Pate
• Bean stuffed Mushrooms
• Bean Hash
• Green Bean, Mushroom and Cherry Tomato Pancakes
• Bean Potato Cakes

My favourite without a doubt has to be the bean stuffed mushrooms, where I partnered up adzuki beans and white miso, another match made in heaven. I loved the taste experiments I have undergone throughout vegan mofo but this combination was the winner for me. The least successful dish was my disaster yesterday! The Bean Potato Cakes, although I reheated one up this morning for breakfast and it was OK, quite tasty in fact.

All in all I have thoroughly enjoyed being part of vegan mofo and creating recipes that I will come back to over and over again. Yes it has been a little stressful at times especially when I've cooked late and I am frantically typing up my creation before midnight dawns on us! But I am so pleased that I have managed to create and post a new recipe every day!

I'm going to have a well earned rest, just a couple of days, while I recharge my batteries and my creativity levels increase. So I'll be back soon with more recipes in a few days.

Many thanks to all of you who have left lovely comments, become members, subscribed to emails or just browsed through my blog. I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.

See you all very very soon

Jasmine x

Sleepy Sunday - Bean Potato Cakes

Today, I've had my first vegan mofo disaster in the kitchen! It had to happen today of all days too! I only had a small window of opportunity this morning to create another 'Sleepy Sunday' dish and I was all up for it. But I only had an hour tops to create something. We were going to Mum & Dads to celebrate my sisters birthday with a family meal, which I was really looking forward to it. But more about that later.

After checking my cupboards and fridge I came up with what needed using up more than anything and then figured out what I was going to do with it. I had some potatoes that had started sprouting and some runner beans which I'd picked earlier in the week that needed using up. I knew that the dish would have to be potato based and decided on a bean and potato cake. Easy heh?

This morning was a cold one and although the weather report was better for later in the day I needed warming up and what better way than to use some heat in your food. 

After mixing all my ingredients together I had a quick taste before the 'cakes' were formed and put in the oven, it tasted good and I had high hopes. That, my friends, was too good to be true and as soon as I opened the oven door my heart sank. I just had a tray full of gloop!

After re-forming the cakes, turning them over and returning to the oven I kept my fingers crossed. When I next opened the oven door I didn't have a tray of gloop just 5 blobs of gloop!

I will remake these again as they tasted so darn good but next time I might try adding a flax egg, adding flour, replacing the cheese with nutritional yeast or baking them in metal rings. The vegan cheese had melted causing the 'cake' to be a soggy mess. Here is what NOT to do!

Ingredients - Serves 5-6
400g potatoes
215g Spicy refried beans
180g Runner beans
80g Vegan cheese
2 Tsp Balsamic Glaze
Salt & Pepper

Method
Peel the potatoes and cut into cubes, the smaller the cube the quicker the cooking time. One cooked, drain and mash.

Add the tin of refried beans and mash again.

Whilst the potatoes are cooking, top and tail the runner beans and cut into small pieces. Add to boiling water and cook for 3-4 minutes, until a knife can pierce them but still leaves a bit of 'bite'. Drain the beans and add to the bean and potato mash along with the cheese.

Fold the mixture so everything is combined, then add salt and pepper to taste, and add the balsamic glaze. I'm using this quite a bit in my cooking recently but I find that it just perks up a dish and gives a tangy like flavour. Give the mixture another good stir so that everything is well combined.

With wet hands (maybe I should have used flour hands) form the mixture into 'cakes' I made 5 fairly big cakes but you could easily make bigger or smaller 'cakes'. Bake in a moderate oven for 15 minutes and flip the 'cakes' over before returning to the oven for a further 15 minutes.

I didn't take a photograph of the tray of gloop, I was frantically trying to recover the dish to worry about taking photos! But after reforming the 'cakes' they looked like this.

Bake for a further 15 minutes and after the second bake in the oven the 'cake' didn't look too bad.

Serve with baked beans or fried mushrooms. I served mine with beans as I'd used all the mushrooms up in yesterdays dish. But they would have tasted good with fried mushrooms.

After the 'cakes' had cooled the vegan cheese had solidified and you could pick them up as the were fairly solid. I'm guessing that once heated up they will return to gloop, ha ha ha. Must try harder.

I ran out of time to post this 'not to be tried recipe' this morning, so it's a little late in the day. We had a fantastic time round Mum & Dad's celebrating my sisters birthday and I was spoilt rotten. My sister had made me sweet potato balls (similar to falafels but no chick peas in sight) which were mighty tasty especially with a sprinkling of mint sauce on them. Hopefully my sister will give me the recipe, but like me she cooks from the heart and doesn't tend to write everything down. Perhaps she should start a blog to record her recipes, it's worked for me. For dessert my sister had made two apple and black current tarts, one vegan just for me. She tells me she made the pastry out of olive oil and I must say it was the shortest shortcrust pastry I've ever had. I was stuffed after my main meal so I only had a little bit, but I've brought some home to enjoy and she is going to freeze the rest for me.

Tune in tomorrow for the last day of vegan mofo, till then bye for now...................