This recipe is great for a working day lunch, you can prepare it on a Sunday and box it up ready to grab on your way out the door on Monday. Too easy! Its great hot or cold so if you don't have a microwave at work its no problem.
I also prepare a green salad and box that up too, both will last in the fridge for 3 days or more. All you need to do at lunch is heat the couscous salad up (if you want) and serve with a green salad, sometimes I push the boat out and have a dollop of houmous too. I like to drizzle tahini sauce or a vegan mayonnaise & balsamic dressing on the top. Perfect!
Ingredients (Serves 4)
1 Onion, cut into half moons
1 Red pepper, cut into strips
1 Green pepper, cut into strips
150g Mushrooms, quartered
1 Tsp Paprika
1Tsp Garlic granules
1 Tsp Ground cumin
1 Tsp Chilli flakes
¼ Tsp Ground coriander
¼ Tsp Turmeric
1Tbsp Tomato purée
160g couscous
8 Cherry tomatoes, quartered
1 Small tin sweetcorn, drained
Method
Add the onion, peppers and mushrooms to a roasting tin and spritz with a little oil.
Add ½ a teaspoon of the paprika, garlic granules, cumin, chilli flakes and add the remainder of these herbs to a jug along with the coriander and turmeric.
Stir the vegetables so that they are all coated with the spices and roast in a moderate heated oven for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are starting to char on the edges.
Meanwhile add the tomato purée to the spices in the jug and fill with boiling water so you have 200ml of liquid. Stir so that everything is combined.
Add the couscous to a glass bowl and add the spiced tomato purée liquid, give everything a quick stir and leave to stand for 5 minutes.
Fork the couscous to separate the grains and add to a large bowl. Add the cherry tomatoes and sweetcorn and mix so the sweetcorn is evenly distributed.
Once the vegetables have roasted add to the couscous mixture and give everything one last stir.
Serve with salad leaves and a tahini dressing, houmous or vegan mayonnaise and balsamic dressing.
Today is my Dad's birthday, so its a true celebratory day for our family. I'm looking forward to going out for a meal later today with the folks and my sister & her fiancee and of course hubby! Roll on the good times, but until then.........................
Happy Birthday Dad
But did you also know that it is "Corn Fritters Day" & "Fresh Spinach Day" so what other recipe could I share with you all but Sweetcorn & Spinach fritters?
Ingredients
100g Plain flour
1 Tsp Baking powder
20g Polenta
150ml Water
200g Fresh sweetcorn kernels
40g Spinash, shredded
3 Tbsp Olive oil
Method
Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl.
Add the polenta and mix to combine.
Slowly add the water stirring continuously until you have a thick paste.
Add the fresh corn kernels and shredded spinach and give everything a really good mix, so the batter coats the vegetables.
Heat the oil in a frying pan and once hot add a heaped tablespoon of the batter, fry for 3 minutes then turn over and fry for 2 minutes or until both sides are golden brown. You won't be able to cook all the fritters in one go so you'll need to do them in batches.
Once fried, remove the fritters with a slotted spoon and place on kitchen towel to soak up the excess oil. keep warm in a low oven until you have cooked all the fritters.
Serve with a dip of your choice, mango & chilli was the dip of my choice!
Well, it's been a whole week since I last posted, I can't believe how time flies and I can't believe that I managed to post everyday during September. Some bloggers say it was easy and have carried on posting every day but I was glad of the rest. But I'm back and with another 'cheese' sauce recipe but this time for cauliflower cheese.
I had fun creating 'cheese' sauces for the Mac 'n' Cheese Mondays throughout Vegan Mofo that I will carry on experimenting with vegetable 'cheese' sauces for a while.
I had bought a beautiful romanesco cauliflower from the local green grocers in town a few days ago now and it had been sitting in my fridge waiting for me to create a dish worthy of its beauty. These cauliflowers are so pretty it's actually quite hard to face cutting it up!
I wanted to keep to a yellow colour for the 'cheese' sauce so the vegetable base was limited and after scanning my kitchen cupboards I decided on sweetcorn. Here's what I did:
Ingredients (Serves 4 as a side dish or 2 as a main)
1 Cauliflower, cut into florets
1 Onion, chopped
340g Tin of sweetcorn (drained weight 285g)
1 Tsp English mustard
200ml Almond milk
6 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast
Salt and Black pepepr
40g Vegan cheese, grated
Method
Boil or steam the cauliflower until al dente and transfer to an oven proof dish.
Fry the onion in a little olive oil until translucent about 5 minutes. Add the drained sweetcorn and stir to combine, fry for another couple of minutes and transfer to a liquidizer.
Add the mustard, milk, nutritional yeast, salt and pepper and blend until smooth. My liquidizer isn't powerful enough to make a completely smooth sauce it leaves the outer skins of the sweetcorn kernels, so I pushed the liquid through a fine mesh sieve into a saucepan.
Heat gently to a simmer, turn off the heat and add half the grated cheese and stir until melted.
Pour the sauce over the cauliflower florets and top with the remaining grated cheese. Bake in a moderate oven for 20 minutes.
And not a bean in sight! But not too worry there will be more beans eaten this year as I harvested another 2kg of runner beans from my 6 plants yesterday!
