Review: Quorn Vegan Fishless Fingers

Buena Serra my little huevos! Some of you might have seen that Quorn has recently expanded its range of products to include a vegan line, including Vegan Fishless Fingers.

I was pretty keen to try them out when I first saw them on supermarket shelves.  Because I was brought up eating fish, and occasionally get aquatic cravings, fake fish products are one of my most sought after veggie substitutes.  VBites  do a pretty good range (their Fishless Steaks are incredible) and Fry’s do a Battered Prawn-Style product which is very nice.  Unfortunately, it stops about there.  Although Linda McCartney used to do Scampi-Style and Battered Prawn-Style products they were both discontinued, which is a real shame as they were delicious.  It seems like there just isn’t the same demand for fake-fish as there is for fake-meat, maybe because a high proportion of meat substitutes are bought by meat eaters because of the health value, and fish is healthier to begin with? I’m just speculating.  On to the Quorn review!

I tried cooking the Fingers two different ways.  Firstly on the grill, as an accompaniment to chips and peas for dinner.  They tasted good dunked in some tartar sauce, although my grill left them a little squashed (I use a George Foreman. All five of George Foreman’s sons are also called George. FACT).

The second time I cooked them in the oven to use in a sarnie and the results were slightly better, although they took a little longer to cook.  They taste very similar to the VBites ones; they’re tasty but they’re not especially fishy.  However, I would choose them over VBites as the crispy coating is better and more reminiscent of actual Fish Fingers, they come frozen so are easier to keep and I think they’re slightly larger, but without both to hand I can’t make a proper comparison.  The real clincher for Quorn though is the fact you can find these on most larger supermarket shelves and VBites, particularly their fish products, are still a bit tricky to come by.

I’ll be back next time with my Valentine’s Baking Blog 🙂  In the mean time, get some fish-free goodness in your life, yo!

Review: Veg Fest Bristol 2015 and Glastonbury Festival 2015

Gott kvöld! Here’s my review of two wonderfully veggie-friendly events, Veg Fest Bristol 2015 (May 23rd to 24th) and Glastonbury Festival 2015 (June 24th to 28th) handily packaged together for your predilection and enjoyment. Travel-sized, if you will, for your convenience. If I was my real size, your cow here would die of fright! Anyway, obscure Disney references aside… VEGFEST Aaaaaah….remember last year when I had a bit of an angry rant about the ticket price and then had a bit of a mini-barney (marney?) with the organisers on Twitter? No? I do. Anyway, I do genuinely think three pounds isn’t a bad price, when you get so many free samples, entrance to lots of talks and some music to boot. I was going to grumble that you don’t get a programme included in that, but I see from the website you could have downloaded one for free before the event. If I were ever that organised.
The sun shone happily down on us this year (I attended on the Saturday) which had the unfortunate side-effect of making some of the tents unbearably humid. Sitting outside with a glass of strawberry juice from the Rejuice stand was perfect though. When I’d cooled down enough to explore the tents however, I found myself, like last year, a little disappointed that the event didn’t live up to the heady heights of the 2013 one. Once again there was a distinct lack of “fake meat” style products, an over-abundance of stalls selling cakes or chocolatey products and most of the names I’d enjoyed in previous years (Need Sweets, Goody Good Stuff, Vegusto etc.) were absent. I also feel, and this is something I’ll probably explore more fully in a later blog post, that the event has become much more of a vegan life-style fair rather that somewhere to just buy great veggie food. This would be fine, I think, if I were a vegan or looking to become one, as Vegfest undoubtedly had a great selection of talks and stalls pertaining to a vegan way of life. As a vegetarian who has no strong intentions of becoming vegan in the future, however, I felt rather pressurised by the whole affair. And if you’re reading this and thinking, “huh, well then why did you go to a vegan festival?” my point is that in the previous years I’ve been ,it never felt like there was such a heavy handed emphasis on converting all of the attendees to veganism. Having said that I did of course try and purchase some lovely items while I was there.

Yaoh Hemp

I swung past the Yaoh Hemp stall to take advantage of their two-for-one offer and picked up some blueberry and some mango lipbalm. Still one of my favourite beauty products, totally natural and some of them even have SPF 15 as well, so it moisturises while it protects.

Ananda Foods

I picked up some delicious raspberry mallows from Ananada’s, who are one of my favourite veggie mallow people. The new flavour was just as tasty as the old ones I’ve tried before (I recommend the peach in particular).

Loving Hut Express

I got hold of some amazing vegan fish and chips from these guys. It was seriously good. I’ve had veggie/vegan fish before, with varying degrees of success, my favourite being VBites’ Fishless Steaks but never freshly battered fake fish (fash?) and chips from a stall. Would definitely recommend.

Bristol Cider Shop

Always a pleasure to buy cider from these chaps, they’re super friendly and their cider is damn tasy. ’nuff said.

GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL

As always, Glasto is a sweet and sexy haven for veggies.  Although there are a few dedicated meaty food stands, most offer up a fine selection of meat and/or dairy-free goodness. Despite this, there are some calling for the festival to return to its roots by becoming purely vegetarian again.  I’m not super sure how I feel about this.  It would be fantastic for me  and thousands of other veg-heads of course, but at the same time I believe people should be able to have a choice about their diet and restricting almost 200,000 people to a week without the food they want to eat could be considered a bit controlling. Similarly the continuation of dividing food into normal/veggie camps has got to stop, it just alienates those of us who have chosen a certain diet or way of life from the rest of society.  How ’bout the festival quietly goes veggie without any promotion, and see if anyone notices? Having said that, shouting about it being a purely veggie festival would certainly deter the sort of knob-heads who think you need to eat meat with every meal.

And this is becoming a far more ranty blog than I expected. Huzzah!

Truly Crumptious

Discovered these lovely ladies last year and loved their crumpets so much we had to go back for more! Multiple times in fact! And once we even bumped into Ian off of the Bake Off, although I resisted the urge to ask if he was gonna throw his crumpets into the bin.

We had some fantastic crumpet toppings, including garlic butter, and brie with chilli jam, and the van also does cracking coffee!  They’re super green too, check out their page for more details and if you see them at a festival go tuck in!

Wide Awake Cafe

Another favourite for a couple of years now, the Wide Awake Cafe sits at the top of the Pyramid Field and has a great selection of teas, coffees, veggie breakfasts and main meals.  As well as visiting them for brekkie I tried their vegan duck wrap with home-made blueberry chutney, whilst watching Patti Smith rock out with the Dalai Lama, while Maisie “Arya Stark” Williams bought a burger nearby.  And that was a bit surreal.  But the food was just plain great.

Veggies

If you fancy an ethical sos-mix roll and a chat about local environmental campaigns, then Veggies is the stall for you! They do a great veggie BLT too!

Of course that’s just the tip of the Glasticeburg.  There were far more lovely places to eat and drink, especially in the Greenpeace fields, than I possible have time to write about here, and even more that I haven’t tried yet.  But then, there’s always next year….

So until next time mitt lítill sauðfé! 

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Fish Cakes with Cucumber Relish and Sweet Chili Sauce

Mae govannen mellon nin! I’ve got a fish free recipe for you today, courtesy of the lovely people at VBites (formerly Redwood Foods) and their Gourmet Fish-Less Cakes! You can substitute Quorn fish cakes if you fancy, they’re a little easier to find.  Or you can just make the relishes (relishi, is that a thing?) and spread ’em on toast.  I care not.  But first, a word from our sponsor…

(Ha! Like I have an actual sponsor…if you fancy giving me some money for a cup of tea though, that would be great. Anyone?)

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Now that’s a happy fish!  Well, who wouldn’t be, with a sign like that!  Fish Free Friday is a campaign to get the nation skipping fish, one day out of seven.  Just by doing that, you’ll be helping the currently unstable fishing economy to recover.  One day out of seven.  Not bad eh?  Not convinced?  Well no-one was ever converted with a banner, so here’s my delicious fish-free recipe!

Ingredients (Serves 2 as a starter or 1 as a light meal)

One pack VBites Gourmet Fish-Less Cakes (or the fish-free cakes of your choice)

For the relish

1/2 cucumber

2 tbsps  white wine vinegar

2 tbsps caster sugar

Pinch of salt

For the sauce

2 red chilies

3 cloves of garlic

5 tbsps white wine vinegar

140g caster sugar

125ml cold water

All my ingredients. They’re friends now, but wait until it all kicks off…

Method:

Pre-heat the grill or oven for your fish cakes, according to packet instructions.  I cook mine using a George Foreman grill.  A pink George Foreman Grill no less.  It’s swish.  While this is heating up, make a start on the cucumber relish. Wash and slice the cucumber in half length-ways.

Like so

Right, see that spoon in the picture?  Grab yourself a similarly sized spoon and de-seed the cucumber. Which should look a bit like this…

Here’s one I made earlier. And by earlier I don’t mean before the previous picture, cos that would mean I had MAGIC TIME TRAVELLING CUCUMBER. And I don’t.

Chop the cucumber into slices, which should look like little arches, if you’ve been following closely.  If they look like anything else, yer doing it wrong laddie! Anyhoo, stick em in a small bowl, add the vinegar, caster sugar and salt, and leave to marinade.

See, small arches!

Time for the sauce.  Chop and de-seed the chilies.  Do your best not to rub chili residue in your eyes, nose and other more out of the way places. Ahem. Pop the chili in a food processor or a container suitable for hand blending. Chop the garlic and add alongside the vinegar and sugar.  Blend until well mixed and bright red in colour. Add the water and pop on the stove to boil.

Chili sauce, a’ready for the boil!

Once boiled, bring to a simmer and cook until thickened.  This takes about ten to fifteen minutes, so now would be a good time to cook your fish cakes.  When the sauce has thickened to your liking, remove from the boil and allow to cool slightly.  Drain the cucumber pieces of the remaining liquid, and serve alongside the cooled chili sauce and cooked fish cakes.

Which may look a little like this! Ramekins optional.

Delicious!  So whether you’re going for a Fish Free Friday, or just fancy a Thai-style snack, why not give this recipe a go?

You can get hold of VBites Gourmet Fish-Less Cakes here http://shop.redwoodfoods.eu/fish-style.html as well as some health food and whole food shops.  For more info on Fish Free Friday and how to take part, visit https://www.vegsoc.org/fishfreefriday . 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.