Tag: dinner

12 Days of Christmas: Nigerian Party Rice

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No celebration or holiday meal in Nigeria, or amongst Nigerians, is complete without one or two of these party rice dishes. Jollof Rice and Nigerian Fried Rice are easy-to-make, yet absolutely delicious rice dishes that everyone will enjoy eating. These dishes are usually never served alone. Most of the time, they are served with sides of fried plantains, a salad/coleslaw and some meat. In order to keep your Christmas meal plant-based, you can substitute the meat with your preferred vegan alternative, tofu or tempeh.

We should mention that our jollof rice is made following an Igbo (Nigerian tribe) recipe which tend to feature visible bell peppers in the final dish. Our fried rice is also a bit paler than that which is more common due to the colour intensity of the stock we used (as we’re not using meat stock or Nigerian chicken seasoning cubes which tend to be a relatively yellow). However, our fried rice tasted like and authentic Nigerian fried rice.

We hope you enjoy our vegan jollof rice and fried rice recipes!

Bon Appétit!

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12 Days of Christmas: Mashed Potatoes with a Creamy Mushroom Gravy

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American Christmas dinners usually consist of roasted root vegetables, some roast meat, mashed potatoes and gravy. Today, we’re sharing our delicious mashed potato and gravy recipe with you. These are not your ordinary mash and gravy as we have infused the mash with the flavours of onions and garlic and thickened the gravy using a mixture of mushrooms and rice which have been added to a vegetable stock seasoned to perfection.

Although we are just sharing the mash and gravy recipes with you today, we will be sharing our flavoursome roast seitan recipe with you tomorrow followed by a British Christmas dinner which will feature other elements found in American Christmas dinners alongside those solely found in British Christmas dinners.

Let us know your thoughts if you try any of these recipes.

Bon Appétit!

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Pad Thai Ramen Soup by Plantifully Based

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This Pad Thai Ramen Soup recipe is a featured recipe developed by Francesca of Plantifully Based and PlantifullyBasedBlog.com.

This soup is a fusion dish that plays off the flavours of Pad Thai. Traditionally, Pad Thai contains fish sauce. As this dish is vegan, in its place, soy sauce is used in order to provide a nice umami flavour. However, you can always substitute that with a vegan fish sauce.

In relation to heat levels, authentically, Thai chillies would be used. However, for this recipe, sriracha was used to make the process of cooking and controlling the heat level this easier.

As for common allergens, in order to make this dish soy-free, replace the soy sauce with coconut aminos and exclude the tofu. To make the dish gluten-free, substitute the soy sauce for tamari or coconut aminos and use gluten-free ramen. With regards to making the dish nut-free, just leave out the peanuts.

Without further ado, here’s Francesca’s Pad Thai Soup recipe!

Bon Appétit!

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Veganising Gordon Ramsay – Meatballs

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Gordon Ramsay is the chef vegans love to hate. Actually, he’s more like the chef vegans love to laugh at. Why? Well, he’s an incredible chef who is great at what he does, but he’s also not a fan of vegans. Due to this….abhorrence of vegans, he publically makes some….interesting remarks mocking vegans or vegan dishes without even tasting them, but then…..BUT THEN, he goes on to add a vegan roast to his Bread St. Kitchen menu and tells the ever-outspoken vegan-hating Piers Morgan to “get with the times,” with some cussing, of course, when Mr. Morgan described the look of his new roast as utterly revolting.

ANYWAY, we are digressing. This post is to share a vegan version of Gordon Ramsay’s meatballs with you. We are just replacing the non-vegan ingredients in his meatballs with vegan substitutes (which we will suggest or provide recipes for). As we’re not actually using meat, the taste of the final product will be a bit different. However, it’s still really delicious, soft and full of texture. As you will notice when making these meatballs, the binder will be the breadcrumbs mixed with milk as opposed to a traditional egg binder or more common vegan flax/chia “egg” binder. This allows for a lighter meatball that still holds its shape.

‘Veganising Gordon Ramsay’ is be a series in which we will veganise a number of Gordon Ramsay’s recipes so those who enjoy(ed) watching him cook could try out his recipes without non-vegan ingredients or, if they haven’t completely eliminated animal (by-)products from their diet, in a way that that they feel more comfortable occasionally eating it.

So, without further ado, here’s our vegan version of Gordon’s Meatballs!

Bon appétit!

p.s He says they’re freezable and he defrosts them to cook with! His words, not ours. He’s promoting freezer-use for meals. There’s video evidence!

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Colombian Black Bean Stew

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Colombian black bean stew is an easy-to-make delicious protein-rich stew. It is also very affordable and all its ingredients are relatively easy to source. This dish is traditionally non-vegan and is served as part of a bandeja paisa, which is a platter dish featuring a variety of foods – beans cooked with meats, white rice, plantains, avocado slices, chilli sauce or flakes,  fried eggs and a variety of other meats.

Although this stew is traditionally non-vegan. We are sharing our vegan version of it with you. Trust us, it is very flavoursome and it will become a go-to meal for you on both the days you have the time and energy to cook and when you don’t.

Without further ado, here’s our recipe.

¡Buen Provecho!

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Mamma Mehta’s Channa Masala

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We did not develop this recipe, but we have tried making it and can assure you that it was delicious! It was sent to our founder, Samantha, by her friend’s mother who we have been dubbed as ‘Mamma Mehta’. So all credits for this recipe go to her.

This channa masala is easy to make, takes just about 30mins to cook, and tastes absolutely delightful. It is both nutritious and comforting. As expected on this site, all the ingredients are easy to source at conventional supermarkets and at smaller international food shops.

Without further ado, here’s Mamma Mehta’s Channa Masala recipe!

Bon Appétit!

Bhojan kaa aanand lijiye!

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Vegan Tteokbokki

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Tteokbokki is a delicious Korean rice cake dish. Traditionally, it contains an anchovy stock and fish sauce. However, for this recipe, we will be using vegetable stock with the optional seaweed stock which provides a slight fishy/oceany taste. Additional non-vegan ingredient traditionally, but not always, found in tteokbokki are fish cakes and boiled eggs. For obvious reasons, we will not be including these ingredients. In place of them, we suggest serving the dish with some kimchi and/or spring (green) onions/scallions.

Unlike our other recipes, for this recipe, you might be unable to find every ingredient in your local supermarket. Some of the ingredients would require you to go an East Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Japanese….) supermarket or to order the ingredients from Amazon. By clicking on the hyperlinked (coloured) ingredients, you will be directed straight to an Amazon page for the exact ingredients we used in making this dish.

This dish is on the spicier side. So, if you can’t handle spicy food, this might not be the tteokbokki recipe for you. If you can handle spicy food or you still want to give this dish a try, it’s extremely easy to prepare, results in very little to clean up, it takes less than 15mins to cook and it’s absolutely delicious.

Without further ado, here’s our recipe!

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Vegan Bigos – Polish Hunter’s Stew

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Bigos, also known as ‘Hunter’s Stew,’ is a traditional Polish dish consisting of sauerkraut, fresh cabbage and a smoked Polish sausage known as “kiełbasa” and, occasionally, some other forms of meat. You can find this beloved dish at various Polish events and always made slightly different (depending on who made it) but still enjoyed by the general public.

Our bigos recipe is greatly influenced by that of Samantha’s (our founder’s) aunt who lived in Poland from her mid-teens and into adulthood. It is also influenced by recipes she’s read and those told to her by Polish friends.

We can attest that, although the recipe is different, this vegan bigos smells and tastes like the traditional (non-vegan) bigos and is both nutritious and delicious!

We hope you enjoy our recipe and, if you are Polish, please share the differences between this recipe and yours in the comments section under this post or on our Instagram page.

Bon Appétit!

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Pulled “Pork” Pasta

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Pulled ‘pork’ pasta is both an aesthetically pleasing and delicious meal. By tweaking our recipe for the pulled “pork,” you can make vegan versions of shredded chicken and shredded duck.

The question on your mind right now is probably, “what could have been used to make the pulled pork?” Initially, you might have thought of tofu or seitan, but for this recipe, that’s not the case. Today, we are going to introduce you to a new pantry ingredient – jackfruit!

Whenever we’ve mentioned jackfruit to people, we receive comments like, “a fruit named jack?” or “how can you make something so savoury with a fruit which is sweet?” Well, although jackfruit is a bright yellow-orange, bubblegum tasting fruit, when it’s young/unripe it’s a rather beige colour and savoury, although it might be possible to get a hint of a sweet undertone to its flavour when eaten uncooked. Young jackfruit is excellent at holding the flavour of whatever it is seasoned/cooked with and is so fibrous that it can easily be pulled or shredded to mimic the texture and consistency of pulled and shredded meats.

Jackfruit contains good amounts of vitamin A, vitamin C, thiamine (vitamin B-1), riboflavin (vitamin B-2), niacin (vitamin B-3), pyridoxamine (vitamin B-6,) folate (vitamin B-9), fibre, calcium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese phosphorus, potassium, selenium, sodium zinc, omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids and even protein. You can find more information on the roles of these nutrients in the body in our Nutrient Index.

So, without further ado, here’s our pulled “pork” pasta recipe!

Bon Appétit!

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Buddha Bowl (“Balanced Meals In A Bowl”)

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fBuddha bowls are a collection of various, usually vegan or vegetarian, meals foods served together in a wide pasta bowl or high-rimmed plate. They usually consist of grains, a protein source, a fat source, cooked vegetables and raw vegetables. Some times, they also include a bit of a sauce. Basically, they are balanced meals in a bowl.

Buddha bowls are not something we created. They have been growing in popularity, especially in the plant-based community, since 2013. According to the author of Buddha’s Diet, Zen priest, Dan Zigmond, the name is derived from the act of Buddha walking through the streets with his bowl and eating whatever the local people would place in his bowl as alms.

We would like to share a simple, yet very nutritious recipe for a Buddha bowl with you today. No measurements are given as it’s expected to be made to taste and with as much or as little of each ingredient as you would like.

Bon Appétit! Continue reading “Buddha Bowl (“Balanced Meals In A Bowl”)” →