Suma Bloggers Network - Adzuki & Beluga Chili

I hope you celebrated New Years Eve in style and thanked 2015 for everything that it gave you or celebrated all that it threw at you which made you stronger? I trust 2016 is already being kind to you, have you made plans how you are going to follow your passions?

I've been busy with my aromatherapy assignments about the cardiovascular and lymphatic systems and the associated pathologies. I must admit I am finding being a student rather demanding but it has been a few years since I was last at University! It is proving very interesting learning about all the horrible pathologies that are out there. Reading about these just strengthens my views about healthy living, in mind, body and spirit.

I have yet another chilli recipe for you today, using the ingredients from Suma. 

I have lots of chilli recipes on this blog and have realised that it is one of my all time favourite dishes. All recipes are a little different and this one is too.

Click on the links below for all the different chilli recipes here:

• Adzuki and Sweetcorn Chilli
• Black Bean and Spinach Chilli
• Chilli Non-Carne
• Hodmedod Bean Chilli
• Winter Wellness Chilli

Adzuki Bean and Beluga Lentil Chilli - 4 Servings

Ingredients
1 Dessert spoon coconut oil 
1 Onion, finely diced
1 Orange/Red pepper, finely diced
4 Garlic cloves, minced
1 Tin Suma organic chopped tomatoes
1 Tbsp Tomato puree
1 Tsp Vegetable bouillon powder
150ml Water
1 Tsp Balsamic vinegar
1 Tin Suma organic beluga lentils
1 Tin Suma organic adzuki beans
4 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast
Spice Blend
2 Tsp Ground cumin
1 Tsp Smoked garlic
1 Tsp Smoked paprika
1 Tsp Chilli powder
1 Tsp Coriander
1 Tsp Cocoa powder
1 Tsp Dried parsley
1 Tsp Crushed chilli flakes
1 Tsp Onion granules
½ Tsp Turmeric
½ Tsp Salt
½ Tsp Black pepper

Method

1) Prepare your spice blend, combine all ingredients in a small bowl.

2) Melt the coconut oil in a large pan over a low heat.

3) Sauté the onion until translucent, about 10 minutes, then add the diced pepper and cook for another 5 minutes.

4) Add the minced garlic and cook for another minute stirring all the time so the garlic doesn't catch.

5) Add the spice blend and keep stirring and cook for 30 seconds.

6)  Mix the vegetable bouillon powder with the water to make your stock.

7) Add the chopped tomatoes to the pan and stir to combine. Add the vegetable stock and cook until bubbling. Turn down the heat and cook for 10 minutes or until the sauce has thickened.

8) Add the tomato purée and balsamic vinegar and give everything a good stir.

9) Drain and wash the beluga lentils and adzuki beans and add to the chilli sauce and  stir to combine. Cook for another 10 minutes until the beans and lentils have warmed through and taken on the flavours of the chilli sauce.

10) Add the nutritional yeast and stir to dissolve into the sauce.

11) Serve in bowls topped with guacamole or on top of cooked quinoa or a mixture of wholegrain rice and wild rice.

Remember to follow your passions and live the life you've always dreamed of!

Jasmine x

Asparagus Pea & New Potato Pakoras

Asparagus Pea & New Potato Pakoras & Vegan Mofo Day 11

Day 11 of Vegan Mofo and today I have harvested some asparagus peas, which have rather a unique and delicate flavour. Their flavour is between asparagus and pea hence the name, but they're also known as the winged bean due to their appearance. My little plants have been chucking these beauties out all summer and I have been eating them raw in salads or sauteed as a side vegetable. Today, however I fancied doing something a little different with them as between me and you I was getting fed up with eating them! Even though they are delicious. You don't need many plants; they just don't stop producing. 

Asparagus Pea Seedling

Asparagus Pea Plant Fully Grown

The winged bean

The asparagus pea needs to be harvested young, when the pods are small. If you let them grow longer than about 2-2½ cm they get tough! The fibres in the pod toughen as they get older and they are not very pleasant to eat like that, trust me! This vegetable is extremely popular in hot and humid countries and is abundant across Asia. The pods should be sliced thinly to help break down the fibres in the pods and of course to look their most attractive.

In this recipe they do lose their delicate flavour due to the spices but they retain that all needed crunch! When I came to make this recipe I went to my cupboards only to find out I had run out of gram flour! Arghhh, what is a girl to do! Thinking on my feet so I could get this recipe up and running for vegan mofo I used ordinary plain flour but also threw in some ground up chick peas for flavour! If you have got gram flour, I'd use about 100g-120g of gram flour and don't use normal flour and the cooked chickpeas in the ingredient list.

Ingredients (makes 16-20 pakoras)

70g Asparagus peas

120g New potatoes

60g Cooked chickpeas

65g Flour

½ Tsp Ground cumin

½ Tsp Ground cor

¼ Tsp Chilli powder

¼ Tsp Turmeric

¼ Tsp Asafoetida

11 Tbsp water 

Salt & Pepper

Method

Cook the potato in boiling water until tender, around 10-15 minutes depending on the size of the potatoes. Drain and leave till cool enough to handle. Dice into small pieces.

Pulse the chick peas in a blender until you have a coarse breadcrumb texture.

Slice the asparagus peas thinly.

Sieve the flour into a bowl and add the spices and salt and pepper. Stir to combine everything together. Add the water a little bit at a time until you have a paste like consistency, you might need more or less water, go with your gut.

Add the chickpea 'breadcrumbs' and stir through. Next add the potatoes and asparagus peas and stir again to incorporate everything and ensure the vegetables are covered in the paste.

Shallow fry a table spoon of mixture for each pakora in light olive oil or oil of your preference for about 5 minutes turning once so that both sides are golden brown. Drain on kitchen roll and serve straight away.

We dunked ours into soup!

Spicy Pumpkin Soup

Do you remember the amazing eight ball courgette that turned into a pumpkin in a sunny windowsill? Well tonight I decided to make soup out of the little beauty.

When I cut it open it looked as if it needed to 'ripen' a little more as the flesh was green just underneath the skin turning to orange nearer the centre. The centre cavity was full with stringy flesh and seeds.When this vegetable was a courgette there was no cavity-go figure?

As the 'pumpkin' looked under ripe and because in real terms it was an old courgette, I thought that the taste would be fairly bland. So the best thing to do in the case of a bland vegetable is spice it up!

I was torn between roasting the flesh or boiling it, but in the end time got the better of me and boil it was, along with all the other ingredients too!

The result, the 'pumpkin' produced a tasty soup thanks to the spices, it wasn't like a true pumpkin which gives you thick velvety soup, instead it gave a thinner soup due to the water content within the vegetable itself. Next year I will definitely be growing these again, as I need to do some more experimenting, perhaps roasting it would provide more flavour. Thank you gardening angel for introducing me to the wonders of the eight ball courgette/pumpkin.

Ingredients
1 Tbsp Rapeseed Oil
2 Small onions
2 Cloves of garlic
1 Jalapeno chilli
1 Knob of ginger
2 Tsp Coriander
1 Tsp Garam Masala
1 Tsp Cumin
½ Tsp Black pepper, ground
1 Eight ball courgette/pumpkin (mine weighed around 900g before peeling and chopping and around 500g after).

700ml Vegetable stock*250ml Coconut milk*

* If I were to make this again, I would use 500ml vegetable stock and 400ml coconut milk.

Method
Chop the onions, finely dice the jalapeno chilli and grate the garlic and ginger. Add to a pan with the rapeseed oil. Fry until the onions are starting to go brown, do not let them burn though as this will give a bitter taste to the soup.

Add the spices to the onions and stir to combine, cook over a low heat for a minute being careful not to let the spices burn.

Add the 'pumpkin' and stir to coat with the spice and onion mixture. Add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Let the mixture simmer until the 'pumpkin' is soft and can easily be pierced with a knife tip. 

Add the coconut milk and stir to combine thoroughly, this will also help the mixture cool down before you blend.

Once the mixture has cooled, transfer to a liquidiser and blend to a smooth consistency, you may need to do this in a couple of batches. Transfer to a clean saucepan and gently heat through before serving.

This would also work with a standard pumpkin but you may need to add more vegetable stock or coconut milk.

Spicy Sweet Dumpling Squash Pots

A couple of days ago, I shared my stuffed squash recipe with you, using a carnival squash. I still have, courtesy of my gardening angel, 2 sweet dumpling squash and believe it or not an Eight-Ball courgette which has turned into a pumpkin!

I never knew that this could happen but after a few Google searches other people were saying the same thing! 


I find it fascinating to know that a summer squash, a courgette, when left, will turn into a winter squash, a pumpkin. Isn't nature truly amazing? 

The skin turns from green to gold and becomes hard. It's magic! As you can tell I am so excited about this, but I have not yet tried the amazing turning courgette, so I will treat as an ordinary pumpkin and for my first recipe I will make spicy pumpkin soup. I'll let you know what this turns out like later in the week. If the recipe is a success I shall grow more of these beauties next year and not worry about using them all up when I have a glut, but leave them to turn into pumpkins.

But for now what shall I do with my two very lovely sweet dumpling squashes? Turn them into spicy pots, of course!

My recipe is a take on a Jamie Oliver recipe called Whole roasted cricket ball squash, which uses gem squash, sun-dried tomatoes and spices. You can view Jamie making this dish here or you'll find it in his cookbook "Jamie at home". My version omits the oregano and cinnamon and uses Porcini powder instead, to give it an earthy mushroom flavour, if I'd had some chestnut mushrooms I would have added those too.

Mac & Cheese Monday - Spicy

Gosh, this month is flying by, I can't believe we're on the second Mac 'n' Cheese Monday already!

As you know by now my theme throughout mofo is everything bean like and I wanted to create a 'cheese' sauce based on beans, so off to the kitchen I went to do some experimenting.

I needed something spicy to warm me up, I've been trying to fight off a bug for a couple of weeks now and I'm a bit fed up with feeling like this for so long.

In my cupboards I had quite a few tins of different varieties of beans and it took me some time to decide which one I wanted to use.

I finally decided that my 'cheese' sauce was going to be based on spicy refried beans. If you have time you can always make your own refried beans but tonight I couldn't be bothered so I settled for the tin. This sauce has got an underlying cheesy flavour due to the nutritional yeast but its got a little kick to it to which warms the cockles of your heart.

Ingredients

215g Spicy refried beans

35g Nutritional Yeast
1 Tbsp White miso
1 Tbsp Vitalite or other vegan margarine
250ml Almond milk
Pasta of choice*

* Sorry I forgot to weigh my pasta so I don't actually know how much I used!

Method - serves 2-3 people

Put the first 4 ingredients into your food processor and process until smooth and creamy.

Transfer the mixture to a pan and slowly add the almond milk a little at a time, using a whisk to incorporate the milk with the bean puree.

Heat up the sauce slowly, do not boil. Whilst the sauce is warming up cook your favourite pasta shapes as per packet instructions.

Drain the pasta and add the sauce, stir to coat the pasta evenly and serve straight away. Dinner is served in 15 minutes tops!

Vegan food review - Sainsbury's Spicy Bean Quarterpounders

It's time for another food review and this time I cooked  Sainsbury's Spicy Bean Quarterpounders. Once again Sainsbury's have created another vegan friendly food which is labelled suitable for vegans. The product description states "with red kidney beans and vegetables, mildly spiced and covered in a crispy crumb." Now you all know by now, that hubby is an avid meat eater and would NEVER EVER consider turning vegetarian let alone vegan, but even he ate and enjoyed these!

As you can see from the photo I served mine on a bun with cherry tomatoes, spring onion and mixed leaves on the bottom and tomato sauce on the top. Hubby doesn't take kindly to anything green (unless its hidden!) so he ate his on baps with sweet chilli sauce. Both of us thoroughly enjoyed them. The quarterpounders had a good crumb on the outside and were 'beany' and full of texture on the inside. The only downside they crumbled ☹

Would we eat them again - most definately! ☺

Refried Bean Lunch Wrap

For the first time in ages I had not prepared my lunch and snacks to take to work today and as luck would have it I overslept too! Normally in the morning I have just enough time to walk Marco, get showered and dressed and pick up my work lunch and snacks before heading off out the door. If I'm lucky I manage to grab some marmite on toast but more times than not my breakfast is prepared the night before and eaten when I first get to work.

Today I had not prepared my lunch, snacks or breakfast and I had got up late! What is a girl to do apart from panic as we all know how hard it is to find vegan food on the go. Especially in my home town, you have to be super organised.

Thankfully I had prepared a big bowl of fruit salad a couple of days ago and some of that was left so that was packed up for breakfast. I had a couple of tortilla wraps that needed using up so they were an obvious choice. I had no houmous, pesto, falafels or ready to heat filing for the wraps so my trusty food cupboard was raided. Woohoo! I had a small tin of refried beans. I spread this over the tortillas and topped with salad leaves, sliced cherry tomatoes and cucumber. Before folding in the sides and wrapping I drizzled some sweet chilli sauce over the top. I didn't have time to photograph the finished result before leaving for work so I took a photo at work at my desk, my colleague wondered what I was doing!