To begin with, this was my meal prepping last week, which I didn’t manage to upload.
Allotment Cottage Pie
I made Jamie Oliver’s Allotment Cottage Pie, which is a brilliant recipe – full of goodness and flavour, and another of those great recipes that you can bung in whatever you happen to have. As is often the case, I forgot to photograph the finished result. The trouble is, I plate up, call my hubby, and then we go through to eat, and I’m anxious to start before it gets cold. There’s always a lot to do at the end of preparing a meal and I’ve got my mind on other things than photography! I must try and get into the habit of remembering…
Anyway, on to this week’s meal prep.
Ultimate Vegan Winter Stew
Now the weather is getting really cold and damp and Novemberish even though we’re still in October, we both feel the need for winter warmers, and Jamie Oliver’s Allotment Cottage Pie certainly qualifies – as does my main adventure in the kitchen this week – a truly wonderful recipe, Ultimate Vegan Winter Stew! You can see quite a few of the ingredients in the picture above. The recipe on the website is unfortunately devoid of instructions, so I noted these down from the YouTube video.
I made a few amendments. I cooked it in the slow cooker but the root vegetables and onions were still hard, despite my having parboiled the former before sautéing. Next time I cook this, I shall simmer it on the hob. I used my large sauté pan which easily held everything, even though I added more root vegetables (some turnip left over from Jamie’s Allotment Cottage Pie, some celeriac and butternut squash).
This dish was absolutely delicious, despite the onions remaining a bit hard. It will be even better tomorrow after a few more hours in the slow cooker. A true winter warmer. I served it with a baked potato and some broccoli florets and frozen peas.
Mauritian Roti and White Bean Curry
Yesterday I tried another new recipe, Mauritian Roti and Fillings 2/3: White Bean Curry. This link is for the bean curry. Here is the link for the sweet potato roti recipe.
The combination of these two recipes was a little disappointing. You can see the finished curry in the above photo – it was quite nice, but in future I think I would prefer another curry to go in the wraps, and thin this one down a bit with some stock and serve it with the traditional rice – definitely something to try.
The rotis were very good – quite sweet, from the sweet potatoes, and contained only two ingredients (sweet potato and flour), and no oil or yeast. They were a bit of a faff to make, but worth it in the end. I used strong wholemeal bread flour instead of the plain flour specified in the recipe, because this is all I had. I found that when I put the rotis in a bowl wrapped in a tea towel while I was cooking the first ones, the remaining ones tended to stick together, and I lost a couple which tore when I tried to separate them, rendering them useless as wraps. I cooked them nonetheless and they were very good.
Next time I shall try flouring them well to prevent them sticking together, but the problem may have been caused by the flour itself. Bread flour contains a lot of gluten which is quite sticky. Plain flour may not cause this problem.
Again, I forgot to photograph the two wraps containing the curry, served on a bed of romaine lettuce and garnished with cherry tomatoes. It looked very good.
Creamy Garlic Mushrooms
Finally, I cooked one of my favourite recipes for a light lunch or supper, Creamy Garlic Mushrooms. When I wrote this up on my blog, I didn’t add a photo, but this time I did remember to photograph it. Here it is, served with some home-made seeded bread.
It had been under the grill keeping warm so the surface looks a little bit dried up, but it was delicious to eat.
I am gradually getting a nice collection of favourite recipes as I explore the mostly plant-based whole-food world. I love trying new recipes, but there are some I find I am always coming back to. I think I shall file them all in the same folder.
