Vegeree

After a small break from the blog due to moving house, work-related madness, going on holiday and then returning to more work-related madness (it's been an overwhelming three weeks), I present to you: Vegeree. Since becoming vegetarian nearly 5 years ago, I often get asked by my meat eating friends what I miss the most, and I always answer that I don't really miss anything (which often gets a raised eyebrow and a look of disbelief, but there you go). Whilst I don't really miss meat or fish, there are certain dishes which it took me some time to make good 'substitutes' for. I was never a big fan of fish, and kedgeree was pretty much the only fish dish I used to eat, so when I became vegetarian I just assumed there was no substitute and left it at that. Until I got hold of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'Veg Everyday' book that is, which I'm sure I've banged on about in previous blog posts. 

He uses aubergines in his recipe, but they happen to be the one vegetable I cannot stand. I will eat aubergine if necessary (i.e. somebody has cooked it for me), but will never cook it for myself. He suggested complementing the aubergines with courgettes, one of my favourite vegetables, so I just used that instead. I imagine peas would work well too. I also added in the tomatoes because when I used to cook kedgeree I always garnished it with tomatoes and they give a nice contrasting coolness to the spicy rice. The egg is ideally almost hard boiled, but with just a touch of soft yoke - though you can of course do the eggs however you prefer.

A lack of photos in this post I'm afraid, as it was dark in my kitchen and I struggled to get any decent ones. This recipe is very wordy and sounds complicated, but actually it's very straightforward and I'm simply giving you very detailed instructions on how I cook it - you can play around with this recipe how you want until you get the timings right for however you like to do things.

Beetroot Granola Cake

Me and Pete are moving house and as a result need to use up as much of our food as possible, to save on carrying half opened packets of food 150 miles across the country. This has led to some interesting food over the past week or so (stir fry vegetable curry with peanut butter and mustard anyone? ... surprisingly alright tasting if a bit bizarre), and this cake is the result of having several young-ish beetroot from the garden which needed eating up.

I also had some granola lurking in the back of the cupboard which I put in. If you don't have granola, just use oats and dried fruits, or omit it altogether, and leave out the milk. This recipe was cobbled together from a variety of online ones, and then modified a bit more...  it could have been a disaster but it turned out pretty nice. It's very easy to make, and pretty quick, with one caveat: the beetroot is a bit of a nightmare to grate, so be careful as you will definitely have pink fingers afterwards and will look like you've gone on some kind of murder spree. A final tip: I've found that glass chopping boards don't stain with beetroot, whilst plastic or wooden ones are more likely to.