Recipe: Veggie Carbonara

Góðan dagin! Today I’ve got a quick and simple recipe for a delicious vegetarian Spaghetti Carbonara.  I used VBites Meat-Free Streaky Rashers, but you could use Quorn or any other brand.

Ingredients (serves 2-3 people)

125g of spaghetti or your preferred pasta

1 small onion

2-3 cloves of garlic

2 eggs, lightly beaten

4 tbs of double cream

55g of hard vegetarian cheese, grates

4-6 rashers of facon

Handful of chopped mushrooms

Olive oil for frying

Salt, pepper and herbs for seasoning

Method (takes 15-20 mins)

First get a pan of water boiling for the spaghetti.  A good trick for cooking this is to take the pasta in your hand and twist so that it falls in the pot in a spiral shape.  This way it will naturally slip into the water as it cooks so you don’t have to wait for it to soften. Jamie Olive taught me that trick.  Well, he didn’t teach me personally.  I saw him do it on’t telly. Shame Jamie Oliver is a twatty prick or voted for UKIP.

Wah, I voted for Brexit and now my businesses are failing 😥

While the pasta is cooking, slice the onion very finely and fry it for a few minutes until it begins to soften.  Add the garlic and cook for a few minutes more.

Add the mushrooms to the onion and garlic and cook for a further five minutes.  Slice up the facon into strips and add to the pan, frying for a few minutes more.

While this is cooking, beat together the eggs, cheese and cream in a jug.  Add any seasoning to taste.  Take facon mixture off the heat (so the egg doesn’t scramble too quickly) and stir in the cream mixture.  Let the heat of the pan cook this through for a few minutes.  When the pasta is cooked, drain it and add to the creamy facon mixture.

Full disclosure: When I cooked this up for the blog I forgot to a) add the cheese to my cream and b) take my pan off the heat.  So mine looks like more of sticky mess than yours will!

 *blog reader’s voice* But why didn’t you just cook it again?

Pff, you think I’m that professional? Plus, look at that thing! You think my arteries would stand me cooking it more than once every few months? Chegg on!

Anyway, when you’ve stirred the pasta into the mixture in a much less terrible way than I did, it will be ready to eat! I served mine with some garlic bread for extra anti-vampiric protection.

A quick and delicious pasta dish for a chilly February night 🙂 I’ll be back soon with some exciting product reviews and some seasonal bakes! Good night and don’t let the Jamie Olivers bite x x x

Recipe Challenge: Coq au Vin

Bonsoir mes petite choux fleurs!  So, a little while ago, I was contacted on this blog and challenged to try and create a veggie Coq au Vin.  I’m never one to back down from a challenge, so I gave it my best shot, and my recipe is below.  I based the dish on this recipe from the BBC (true fact: James Martin once bumped into my Dad and said, “don’t you know who I am?”) and I think it turned out pretty well!  It also takes much less time to cook than the meaty version, huzzah! Unfortunately, although I have a nice shiny smart phone at the moment, I accidentally deleted all the pictures I took, which is probably for the best anyway, ‘cos I’m a pretty rubbish food photographer.  Onwards!

Serves Two

Cooking Time: 30-40 mins

Ingredients:

25g butter
100g shallots, peeled and quartered
4 garlic cloves, crushed
100g facon, thoroughly defrosted (I used Quorn Bacon Style Slices)
A large pinch of dried thyme
200g button mushrooms
400ml red wine
400ml veg.stock (I used Marigold Swiss Vegetable Bouillon Powder)
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 tbsp tomato purée
2 tbsp Henderson’s Relish (optional)
200g Quorn Chicken Style Pieces (or similar alternative)
Handful fresh, chopped parsley
Salt and pepper to season

Method
Gently melt 20g of butter in a large pan.  Add the the shallots and cook until just browned, then stir in the garlic. Add the facon and thyme and cook for 2-3 minutes.

Add the mushrooms, turn up the heat and add the red wine, veg. stock, tomato purée, vinegar (and relish, if using). Add the Quorn chicken pieces, bring the sauce to the boil and then simmer gently for about 15 minutes.

Bring the pan back to the boil and cook for a few minutes more until the sauce has thickened slightly.

Add the parsley and the last of the butter.  Season to taste and serve with crusty bread.

And there you have it! Quick and easy veggie Coq au Vin!  Let me know if you try it out, and I’ll see you in my next blog post.  It’s Veg Fest in Bristol this weekend, so I hope to have lots of new products and recipe idea’s to share with you all soon!

Fancy submitting me a recipe challenge? Want to rant about your soggy facon or why only certain types of Haribo are veggie (WHY???) Check us out on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/500ThingsToDoWithFacon and Twitter https://twitter.com/500FaconThings

Blog: Veggie Valentine’s Baking

Bonsoir my little Cosmonauts!  In today’s blog post I’m going to be sharing with you the veggie treats I cooked up for Valentine’s Day, with two adapted recipes and one brand new recipe of my own in the offing! As they say in la belle Iceland þurfum við að tala um það? I didn’t think so.

I started off with some cheese straws.  I find quite often the store bought ones use Gruyère, which normally isn’t veggie.  I used Red Leicester in mine instead, but you can use any strongish tasting cheese, provided it’s rennet free!  This is a recipe I adapted from The Veggie Student Cookbook (Hamlyn), which I highly recommend, regardless of your academic status and dietary preferences.  It’s chock full of good recipes, even if it is a little patronising at the beginning telling you how to fit in with your horrible, obviously carnivorous house-mates, and you can grab it on Amazon for a PENNY. Blimey.

For Twenty-Five Cheese Straws:

150g plain flour

50g butter, softened and cut into cubes

2 eggs

75g of your preferred veggie cheese

Optional: a sprinkling of herbs or sesame seeds on top, for an extra burst of flavour

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 200C (400F/ Gas Mark 6)

Rub the flour and butter together in a large bowl until it resembles breadcrumbs.  Separate one of the eggs.  Add one whole egg and the yolk of the other to the mixture, along with the cheese.  Mix until it forms a dough.

Knead the dough lightly on a floured surface, then roll it out to about 1 cm (1/2 inch) thickness.  Cut into strips and place on a greased baking sheet or, if you’re lucky and got a silicon baking mat from John Lewis in a Secret Santa once, you can use that.

Brush with the remain egg white and, if you like, sprinkle with herbs or sesame seeds.  Pop in the oven for fifteen minutes or until golden and crispy.

Perfect with a nice tub of hummus!

I also made up a batch of my Veggie Sausage Rolls, the recipe for which can be read here.

My third recipe is an adaptation from The Cookie and Biscuit Bible (Herne House) which is a great buy if you’re into baking, although you will have to be wary of some of the American measurements, if you’re a Blighty lass like myself. They’re called Savoury Cheese Whirls in the book, but I prefers to call them Cheese and Marmite Pinwheels, cos that’s what they are.  Although I actually buy store-brand “Yeast Extract” whenever I can because Marmite is owned by Unilever and Unilever test on animals, but that’s up to you of course! Likewise whether or not you use store-bought or home-made puff pastry.  I made my own, but that’s cos I’m a glutton for punishment.

Makes 12 Pinwheels:

250g puff pastry

1 tbsp Marmite

1 egg, beaten

50g of your preferred veggie cheese (I used cheddar this time)

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 220C (425F/Gas Mark 7)

On a lightly floured surface, roll the pastry out into a square approx 30 cm/14 inches each way.  Well, not diagonally, that’s not how shapes work.  You know what I mean.  Spread the pastry with Marmite leaving a 1 cm border around the edges.  Sprinkle the Marmitey pastry with cheese, then brush the edges of the pastry with the egg.  Roll the pastry up tightly into a spiral, Swiss-Roll style.  Cut into thick slices and lay on a greased baking tray.  Brush each slice with the remaining egg and bake for 12-15 minutes.

Honestly, they don’t photograph well, but they do taste great.  And they’re super-easy and quick to do too! If you have your pastry ready you can have pin-wheels in just twenty minutes! Bonus.

My fourth and final recipe was an attempt to re-create something I sell at work, veggie style.  For those of you that don’t know anything about my personal life, I work in a coffee shop that also sells baked goods.  Probably our most popular product is a Cheese and Bacon Wrap and obviously this being 500 Things to do with Facon, I had to make my own version, just to see what the fuss is all about.  They’re quick and easy to make too!

For Eight Cheese and Facon Wraps:

150g puff pastry

Eight slices of facon (I used Quorn Meat Free Bacon Rashers-fresh, not frozen)

50g cheddar cheese, cut into thin slices

One egg, beaten

Method

Pre-heat oven to 200C (400F/ Gas Mark 6).  Roll out your pastry onto a lightly floured surface to about 1 cm (1/2 inch) thickness.  Cut into eight squares of approximately equal size and attempt to fold in a slice of facon in a classy elegant way as demonstrated by the second set of pictures on this website. Fail and instead manage to insert some facon in between some flaccid triangles of pastry like this:

Place on a greased baking tray and brush with the beaten egg.  Bake in the oven for eleven minutes.  Remove from the oven and add a few slices of cheese to each wrap, then bake for a further three minutes until the cheese is melted and golden.

Eat while still warm from the oven, all the time nodding sagely and going, “yeah, now I see what the fuss is all about,” because they might look a little pants but honestly they taste great and for a first attempt, I was pretty pleased with how they turned out!

That’s my little smorgasboard of baked delights there.  Can anyone top that for a bit of Valentine’s Day veggie bakery? Let me know and I’ll see you soon with some more facon themed rambling.  Takk takk!

Fancy submitting me a recipe challenge? Want to rant about your soggy facon or why only certain types of Haribo are veggie (WHY???) Check us out on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/500ThingsToDoWithFacon and Twitter https://twitter.com/500FaconThings

Recipe Challenge: Gatherer’s Chicken

So there we were, me and my droogs, wandering round the Southville Deli for the veggie marshmallows and Boullion powder and along comes a query.  Is there a vegetarian alternative to Hunter’s Chicken?  I’ll be honest, I’d never even heard of Hunter’s Chicken before that, turns out it’s chicken wrapped in bacon with cheese and barbecue sauce, who knew? Not this intrepid blogger.  But now the challenge had been laid down.  Could I, in fact, create such a dish? What would it be called? Would the combination of facon and fricken be too much for me and my ridiculous oven to handle? Read on, and find out the answers to none of these questions.

Gatherer’s Chicken with spinach, carrots and sweet potato (Serves 2)

Ingredients

4 Quorn Chicken Fillets

8 Cheatin’ Rashers

100g vegetarian cheddar cheese, grated

For the sauce:

4 tbsps pasata

4 tbsps tomato puree

2 tbsps honey

2 tbsps brown sugar

2 tbsps soy sauce

2 tbsps garlic paste

4 tsps cider vinegar

2 tsps red wine vinegar

1 tsp chilli powder

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 small onion, grated

To serve with:

300g frozen spinach

2 carrots

1/2 sweet potato

A knob of butter and oil for frying

(Oh, and in case you hadn’t realised yet, we decided to go with Gatherer’s Chicken for a name.  Seemed appropriate.  For some reason.  Anyway.)

Method

Heat oven to 200C.  Fry the grated onion in a little oil for around three minutes or until soft.  Peel and dice the carrots and sweet potato, saute with butter and a little oil.  Cover them and stir occasionally for about twenty minutes or until tender.

While the veg is cooking make a start on the sauce.  Add the spices, sugar, honey, tomato and garlic purees and soy sauce to the onions and bring to the boil.  Cook for three minutes.  Add the vinegar and passata and simmer gently for about ten minutes, until it’s thick and gloopy, then cover and keep warm.

Cook the chicken fillets according to packet instructions.  I fried mine, because I find that microwaving Quorn fillets can make them go really dry and gross.  When they’re done wrap each one in two slices of facon, pop them in an ovenproof dish and cover with the grated cheese.

Sans fromage

Con queso

Stick in the oven until the cheese has melted and gone crispy.  Cook the spinach according to packet instructions.  Serve the Gatherer’s Chicken with a large dollop of sauce, carrots and sweet potatoes, and spinach. Et voila!

So it turns out you can make veggie Hunter’s Chicken; not only is it meat-free and delicious, I invented an awesome barbecue sauce to boot! Until next time my little lemon-cakes!

Recipe challenge submitted by the delightful Ru Harris.  She runs this amazing sustainability blog http://sustainabilitythoughtbubble.wordpress.com/ and even dedicated a special dehumidifier post to me http://sustainabilitythoughtbubble.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/salt-dehydrator/ Because seriously, the damp in my house is unreal. And I think it’s only fair I dedicate this post straight back at her!

Fancy submitting me a recipe challenge? Want to rant about your soggy facon or why only certain brands of Haribo are veggie (WHY???) Check us out on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/500ThingsToDoWithFacon and Twitter https://twitter.com/500FaconThings

The Southville Deli can be found in Southville! And right here, online http://www.southvilledeli.com/

The Perfect Veggie Breakfast

Well.  It might not be your idea the perfect veggie breakfast, but it did the manchap and me okay last Sunday morning.  Also, hai, hello, yes it’s been a while since I updated the website, apologies.  Since we last met I lost my job, then I thought someone had tried to steal three thousand pounds from me, but I also got to perform at the Colston Hall and Peter Capaldi is gonna be the next doctor.  So it’s not all bad! Anyway, I promise to update more frequently in the future.  Allons’y!

Ingredients: Serves 2-3 

For the hash browns:

5 new potatoes

1/2 onion

1 egg, beaten (if you’d rather use shop bought hash browns, ignore that part of the method and cook according to packet instructions)

For the scrambled eggs:

3 eggs (I always say, one per person, one for the pot)

100ml milk

4 Closed Cup Mushrooms, or any medium sized mushroom

1/2 can of baked beans.  You can, of course, choose not to use Heinz, but Beanz Meanz Heinz and you know it.

1/2 can whole tinned tomatoes

2 veggie sausages.  I used Cauldron Lincolnshire-style

4 rashers veggie bacon.  I used Quorn frozen bacon-style rashers

4 slices bread

Oil for frying

Salt and Pepper for seasoning

Method

Hoo hah! First up, some prep. Preheat the oven for the sausages and if you’re grilling the bacon, the grill.  If you’re frying the bacon you can just pop it in the pan with the hash browns.  Put the tomato and beans in separate microwavable containers or bowls.  Peel and slice the mushrooms.  Grate the potatoes and put them in a large bowl.  Finely chop the onion and add to the grated potato with the beaten egg and plenty of seasoning.  If you’re me you’ll realise at this point that both your bread and milk are frozen and you’ll have to madly defrost them while Lindisfarne plays softly in the background.  You are not me though, so doubtless this will not happen.  And your potato may look like this.

Pop your sausages in the oven to cook. Next, heat up some oil in two pans, a smaller one for the bread and a larger one for the hash browns.  If you don’t own a large saucepan, put down down whatever you’re doing, go to Ikea and get one, come back and start cooking again.  Good, now we’re ready. You’ll also need a small saucepan for your scrambly eggs. Beat your eggs (I always do it in the pan to save dirtying extra bowls) add the milk and any seasoning you prefer.  Keep it on a low heat and stir it frequently until it begins to solidfy. Whilst this is cooking add your mushrooms to the larger pan.  I like to add a sprinkle of cumin seeds to mine. After a few minutes add small heaps of the grated potato mixture, and flatten in the pan slightly so they resemble little patties.  Cook for a few minutes until each side is brown and crispy.  In the mean time keep stirring your scrambly egg.  When the oil in the small pan is hot add the bread, one slice at a time, and fry for a few minutes each side until golden and crispy.

When the scrambled egg has almost cooked through your mushrooms, hash browns and fried bread should be done.  Pop your bacon on the grill for a few minutes each side until crispy (lawks, everything in this meal is crispy) or in the pan with your hash browns if you’re frying it.  Put the beans and tomatoes in the microwave and cook on full power for three minutes.  Stir when the microwave has dinged to make sure they’re heated through.  Take your sausages out of the oven and serve with the mushrooms, tomatoes, fried bread, bacon, scrambly eggs, beans and hash browns on a massive plate.  And then fill yer face with it.  Hurrah!

If you want any advice on where to buy the best veggie products, cooking tips or just to rant at me that you burnt your facon, feel free to drop me a line at facon500@gmail.com or via facebook.com/500thingstodowithfacon and @500faconthings on Twitter. 

Review: Veggie Breakfasts at Glastonbury Festival

Guten abend meine freunde! Last week I partied hearty at Glastonbury festival, so I thought I’d do a little review blog about some of the lovely veggie food I had there, namely at breakfast time!

There’s no shortage of vegetarian and vegan food at Glastonbury, and there’s so many different stalls and cafes to choose from, you’ll end up sampling food from half a dozen cuisines by the end. But breakfast is probably the most important one, for me, because after a heavy night’s drinking and boogieing and getting eyed up by Bez off of the Happy Mondays (it happened, true story) you want a really good brekky!

The first one I tried was from a van (I’m terrible, I cannot remember the name and Google is not helping me…to my credit it was over a week ago and there wasn’t room in my rucksack for a dictaphone…). It consisted of two sausages, scrambled eggs,  beans….and a dry bread roll. Bread with breakfast, yes. Preferably fried, toasted is good, I’ll take it straight from the bag if there’s butter to go with it, but a dry bread roll is a big no-no. Don’t ask me why there wasn’t any butter. Poor show. The sausages were Glamorgan types, which I do like, but for breakfast I definitely prefer a fake meat type. The beans and mushrooms were so-so, the only real stand out was the scrambled eggs, which were absolutely delicious. Shame about the rest of it really. The meal came with tea, coffee or juice, I went for juice and off-setted the meal with a lovely cup of tea from the Rare Tea Company instead.  Silver Tip tea with Jasmine (naturally :p) and I even had a quick chat with the company’s founder, Henrietta Lovell, who told me all about the collection process. I got a free refill as well! Reasonably priced, beautiful tea, highly recommended!

Our second breakfast came courtesy of Goodness Gracious Healthy Foods. I was pretty excited about these guys because they were Vegetarian Society approved and according to their sign they used Fry’s Family Foods products! Well…the veggie breakfast I got certainly didn’t. It consisted of a roll (with butter this time at least) with a fried egg, cheese and two Glamorgan sausages. Again. And a hash brown, which I had to pay extra for. It was pretty expensive, although given this was Glastonbury where everything is pretty expensive, I can’t really quibble. It was tasty, but not really very breakfasty. And there were no delicious Fry’s sausages. Plus, according to their website, their veggie breakfast consists of “2 veggie sausages, scrambled eggs, baked beans, wholemeal roll and tea or coffee – mushrooms optional.” Now admittedly it was very busy there that morning so….maybe they’d run out of baked beans and mushrooms? And tea. And coffee. Who knows…

The best breakfast of festival came courtesy of the amazing Wide Awake Cafe. How we didn’t stumble on these guys until Sunday morning, considering we were camped in the same field, I have no idea, but they were great 🙂 My veggie breakfast included two fake meat sausage, spinach, mushrooms, hash browns, beans, tinned tomatoes and bread and butter. It was delicious. The beans were gently spicy, the sausages were really well cooked and seeing spinach in a breakfast always makes me happy! I also ordered a hot almond milk drink with cinnamon, perfect for a groggy festival morning, but may be too sweet for some people. Tasted a lot like white hot chocolate, if that gives you any idea. But these guys get ten out of ten from me.

I’m also going to give a shout out to the Glastonbury Badger Action Cafe, run by Veggies Catering. I had my first ever BLT from these guys (I know, with facon! I was in hypothetical heaven!) which used Cheatin’ products. They also did a fantastic sosmix sausage roll, which brought myself and the manchap trailing past the Green Fields on more than one occasion :p Oh, and I don’t care what Michael Eavis says, the badger cull is disgusting and pointless. So nyah. Nyah to you Eavis! Thanks for the festival though….

Another of my festival favourites were the lovely ladies of Truly Crumptious! Home-made crumpets made while you wait? Yes please! Brie and sweet chili sauce went down well, but their veggie pizza crumpet with cheese, tomato and spicy veggie sausage was even better! They had vegan cheese on hand as well 🙂 Couldn’t be faulted.

So there we go, that was my veggie breakfast review of Glastonbury festival! And now I have a wee question for ye! (Don’t panic, it’s not hard.  Well, not that hard). I’m going to put together what I think is the perfect veggie breakfast recipe for this website, and I want to know what you think makes the ultimate wake-up meal. Is it nothing without hash-browns and fried bread? Or are you all about the mushrooms and tomatoes? Let me know via Facebook, Twitter or semaphore, and I’ll see what I can do with the results next week! Sayonara!

The Rare Tea Company:

http://www.rareteacompany.com/

https://twitter.com/RareTeaCompany

https://www.facebook.com/RareTeaCo

Goodness Gracious Healthy Foods:

http://www.mobileveggiefood.co.uk/index.php

https://www.facebook.com/GoodnessGraciousHealthyFoodsLtd

Wide Awake Cafe: 

http://www.wide-awake-cafe.com/Site/home-wide-awake-cafe.html

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wide-Awake-Cafe

Veggies Catering: 

http://www.veggies.org.uk/

https://twitter.com/veggiesnottm

Truly Crumptious:

https://www.facebook.com/truly.crumptious

If you want any advice on where to buy the best veggie products, cooking tips or just to rant at me that you burnt your facon, feel free to drop me a line at facon500@gmail.com or via facebook.com/500thingstodowithfacon and @500faconthings on Twitter.