Monday: – Mushroom and Sun-dried tomato risotto

Tuesday: Eating out in Yamamories to celebrate Nick’s animatic hand-in

Wednesday: Pasta, fiery tomato sauce and bean balls.

Thursday: Aloo Shimla Mirch (Potatoes and Pepper) with Onion Pilau from Spicy Vegan

Friday: Stuffed Butternut Squash and Mushroom gravy with veg on the side

Saturday: Walnut burgers, home made cajun wedges

Sunday: Away to Sligo to get NCT done on Monday morning. I’ll bring some rice, veg soup, beans and Franks red hot for a pot-luck back home.

when we sit outside with a beer or two enjoying that great bar-b-que smell. Mmm. Nick has a great marinade that we have been using for out veggi skewers. It’s about one part oil to one part soy sauce with a half part sugar. Whisk it about with a fork and let your veggies soak for a while as you wait for the flames to die down on the charcoal.

I love puff pastry, anything light and fluffy that you can fill with gushy food and tasty sauce is awesome. This is the second time that Nick and I made these, and unfortunately we bought the teeny wee puff pastries instead of the large ones. Still, they tasted great, and I’ll defiantly make them for the next dinner party. They’re super omni-friendly and easy to make buckets of.

Ingredients:

Packet of frozen vol au vents
6 large mushrooms sliced
1 regular sized onion chopped up quite fine
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Handful of parsley chopped up fine
1 glass white wine
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup flour
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast flakes (If you have them, tastes good without)
1 teaspoon garlic salt

Directions:
Glaze your vol au vents and cook according to package directions. It usually takes about 15 minutes which should give you time to make the filling. In a frying pan heat up some olive oil and add the onions. Once translucent, add the mushrooms and leave to sweat out the moisture tossing occasionally. Meanwhile, whisk the flour, water, nutritional yeast flakes and garlic salt in a pot. Turn on the heat and keep stirring until it starts to thicken. Add in the wine, stir until your mushrooms are starting to golden. Mix in the mushrooms and onions . Finally add the parsley, and ladle generously into your vol au vents. Best served with some big home made chips and a crispy salad, but that’s up to you

Ingredients:

• 2 large ripe bananas
  The best bananas to use are those that have gone completely black on the outside but are still nice and yellow inside with no visible bruising.
• 1 cup loosely chopped dried apricots
• 1 cup flour
• 1/4 cup rapeseed oil
• 1/4 cup soy milk
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

Directions:

Make sure to heat up your oven to gas mark 4 and put some muffin cases in tins first. Mash up the bananas in a large bowl. Once mashed, move to the sides so there is a hold in the center. Toss in some apple cider vinegar and the soy milk. Add the rest of the wet ingredients and mix well. Then sift in the dry, and add the apricots. Mix until “just done”. Fill the cases just over half way an put in the oven for about 25 minutes. Make sure that you poke the muffins with a knife at the 25 min mark to see if it comes out clean. If not, give them a few minutes longer.

For the rhubarb and sugar filling, I added some flour as I made a peach crumble from La Dolce Vegan a while ago, and the flour/sugar seemed to form a wonderful syrup. The rhubarb came from my fathers garden, so now I have tonnes of the stuff. It’s immense, particularly the leaf which he stripped off for me, it’s was pretty much as big as me!

Anyone have any suggestion of how else to eat it other than tart, and stewed rhubarb with custard (I have yet to try the vegan custard I found in Tescos)?

Directions:

Filling:
4 large stalks of Rhubarb
3/4 cup regular sugar
1/4 cup flour
3 tablespoons lemon juice

Chop up the rhubarb into 1/2 inch pieces and mix with the rest of the filling. Leave it to sweat.

Pastry:
2 cups plain flour
Pinch of salt
1/2 cup margarine
1/5 cup water

Mix the flour and margarine with your hands until crumbly. Gradually add water (you may not need it all) until the dough sticks together when you squish it together. Roll out roughly and put in cling film. Leave in the fridge for about a half hour before rolling out two circular pieces. Place one in your pie dish, add the filling, then place the other on top. Crimp the edges and poke a few holes into the top. You can then glaze the top with a little bit of soy milk. I cooked my tart for about 75 minutes at gas mark 4 (Thats 350 degrees folks) but cooking times vary from oven to oven. Leave to sit for a few minutes before cutting a big slice to have with a large mug of tea. The tart was lovely, it left the house smelling great for a few hours and our tummy’s nicely satiated with a good combination of bitter and sweet.

Today’s recipe was last nights dinner – Paella. We had made this once before, so this recipe is pretty much ad lib. There are several places where you can find vegetarian paella recipes on the net,and they all tend to be vegan. I think of it as similar to cooking risotto, except you just add all the stock at once. This is probably going to feature largely in my kitchen this summer as it’s a light and amazingly full of flavor dish. That and it’s super easy to do, especially because you should have most of the ingredients on hand. Nick and I threw together a large pot of Sangria to go with our Paella that kept us going all night. It’s amazing how good a cheep bottle of wine can taste when mixed right. Sooo good. omm.

On to the Ingredients:

• 250g / Half a bag of Paella Rice (You can use other types of rice if you can’t find paella rice)
• 1 cup vegetable stock
• 1/4 cup Olive Oil
• 1 large onion diced
• 4/5 cloves garlic loosely chopped
• 1 red and 1 yellow Bell Pepper sliced
• 1 courgette chopped
• 6 large Mushrooms sliced
• 1 cup frozen peas
• 1 tin Chopped Tomatoes
• A pinch of Saffron (You may substitute Turmeric if you don’t have any saffron)
• Salt and Pepper to Taste
• 1 lemon
• Optional. You can get a tin of artichokes to garnish, but I wouldn’t eat enough of them to make it work buying the tin so didn’t bother.

Directions:

In a large pot heat up the olive oil and then add the onions and garlic. You can of course do all this in a large frying pan and serve the pan to the table. Just make sure you don’t loose many ingredients when you stir! Cook these until the onions are translucent. Add the rest of the vegetables, and cook for about 5 minutes then add the peas. Cook for a further 5 minutes.
Add the tin of tomatoes, rice and safron and mix well. Then add the stock. Cook for about 15/20 minutes stirring often and adding small amounts of water if necessary. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve with lemon slices and a large glass of Sangria

Some of you have probably already seen my first attempt at these cupcakes. I made these as a birthday present for one of my friends who has is obsessed with Jager Bombs. He even introduced me to the concept about a year ago, and ever since, we always have one if we’re out in a night club (Which is not that often anymore, I guess I’m getting old. That, or because I’m broke most of the time ^_^).

The first time around: I though that the cupcake bun was too sweet, because I used the regular amount of sugar even though I swopped milk for Red Bull (packed with sugar). I also thought that the goo was rather dull, I used a green agar agar and found that it didn’t look too apatising against the dark cupcake. Finally, the creamy goo seperated when I added some red bull, giving it a shiny quality. With those aspects in mind, here are my
Ingredients:

Cupcake:
1 can Red Bull
1/4 cup of milk
1 1/4 cup plain Flour
1/3 cup sugar
Red and Black Food color

Jager Cream:
1/4 cup Jagermeisger
4 tablespoons Agar Agar
2/3 cup Soya Milk
1 tablespoon Cornflour
Green Fool Coloring

Butter Cream Frosting:
1/2 cup Margarine
1 1/2 cups Icing Sugar
Yellow Food Coloring

Directions:
Turn on the oven to Gas mark 3, and line bun tin with cases.
Pour the Red Bull into a cup and then top off with the soya milk. Whisk briskly in a large bowl. Add the sugar, then sift in the flour. Whisk until creamy. Split up the mixture into two separate bowls and add either red or black to each. Pour a bit of the red and black mixes into each case until it is half full. Put into the oven for 25 minutes or until a knife comes out clean

While the cupcakes are in the oven, you can make the Jager Cream. Put the milk into a pan and let the agar flakes soak for about 5 minutes. Turn on the heat at a low temperature and stir the mixture at intervals until the agar is nearly dissolved. Mix the cornflour with a small amount of soya milk until it forms a paste. Add this to the agar, and mix in well. Add the Jagermeister. At this stage you may wish to taste the Jager Cream to see if you want to add more Jagermeister. Mix well with the green food coloring and leave aside to cool. I found that there were usually a few bits of undissolved cornflour when I made this, so I sifted it into a second bowl to cool.

Once the cupcakes are done, take them out of the oven and leave them to cool. They must be completely cool before you top them with the butter cream.

To make the butter cream, mix the icing sugar and margarine until it forms a stiff consistency. You may add more sugar or margarine to suit your own taste. Mix well with the food coloring.

When the cupcakes are cool, poke a small hole in the top of each and use a teaspoon to fill with Jager Cream. Then pipe the icing on top. Try not to start your icing right over the Cream, because it will not stick correctly to the cupcake.

Ingredients:

• 1/2c flour
• 1/2c nutritional yeast
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 2 cup water
• 1 teaspoon mustard
• 4 tablespoon margarine
  • Or soya butter
• 10 tortillas
  • The Old el Passo Salsa Tortillas are perfect for this
• 2 small cans enchilada sauce
  • I use the 10 minute enchilada sauce from AllRecipies.com
• 3 cans beans (white kidney, pinto, black), drained
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 1 can olives, chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped cilantro, 1/2 cup salsa (optional)
  • Tried this once, don’t bother adding these now

Directions:

In medium-large saucepan, combine flour, nutritional yeast, salt and garlic powder. Add water and mix thoroughly. Heat on medium heat until bubbling and thick. Remove from heat and add mustard and margarine. Set aside 1/2 cup of cheese sauce in separate container. Add onion, beans, olives, cilantro and salsa to sauce. Mix it up.

Pour a 1/2 cup of enchilada sauce in the bottom of a 9×13 pan. Place a tortilla in pan and cover in enchilada sauce. Spoon in filling. Roll and push to one end of pan. Continue until all tortillas filled. Pour the rest of the enchilada sauce on top and then spread reserved cheese sauce on as last step. Bake at 350 until brown, 30-45 minutes.

Serves: 6

Preparation time: 45 min

For the base:

• 1 and a half cups of whole wheat flour
• Quarter cup of nice olive oil
• A few tablespoons of soya milk
• Salt and pepper to season

Filling:

• Half a cup of tofu
• 2 teaspoons wholegrain mustard
• 3 tablespoons Nutritional Yeast Flakes
• 1 teaspoon white wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• Salt and pepper to season
• 2 tablespoons soya milk

Top:

• 2 large tomatoes
• 2 peppers
• 2 onions
• 1 courgette
• 6 large mushrooms
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 teaspoon celery seed
• 1 teaspoon rosemary
• 1 teaspoon thyme
• 1 tablespoon nice olive oil

Directions:

• Roughly chop up the vegetables
• Mix with the herbs and oil in a container suitable for the oven
• Roast for an hour on a very low heat (About gas mark 3)

In the mean time, make your base:

• In a large bowl, add the flour to oil with your hands until crumbly in texture
• Add the soya milk bit by bit until the mixture is damp
• Pat into the bottom of the casserole dish
• Put this into the oven after 20 minutes. Increase the temperature to 5 and put the vegetables on the bottom shelf.

Next make your filling:

• Blend the lot
• You may wish to add more soya milk to ensure a creamy texture
• After another 20 minutes, add a thin layer of this filling to the crust

Cook for another 20 minutes, then add the layer of veg

Serve with potatoes or salad.

Ingredients:

• 1 bar dark cooking chocolate
• 1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
• 1/2 cup sifted icing sugar
• 4 teaspoons soya butter
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence

Directions:
Melt the chocolate in the microwave or in a bowl over a pot of boiling water
Meanwhile, mix the rest of the ingredients in a large bowl. It should form a stiff texture that is mailable with your hands, and doesn’t leave them sticky.

I recently bought some silicone bun cases in Dunnes Stores. They’re a great product, suitable for the oven, microwave and freezer.

• Line these with a teaspoon or two of the melted chocolate
• Roll a ball of the peanut butter mix in your hand, and smooth it out into a cylindrical shape that will fit into your case
• Pop it into the case, and top with more melted chocolate.
• Put into the freezer until nice and hard
• Serve with a cup of tea, you’ll need it to wash down the chocolaty peanuty goodness