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Spicy Sweet and Sour Pizza #vegan

Spicy Sweet and Sour Pizza. Vegan!
With a salad of lettuce, orange and pinto beans…

This is a totally delicious sweet and sour pizza, made spicy by the inclusion of a chilli in the sauce. And it’s all about the sauce. You can put it on any base you like. We used homemade sourdough (see how we do it here) but you could use ready made bases or even pitta breads.

The quantities below made enough for a large, full roasting tin size pizza, serving four.

Sweet and Sour Pizza Sauce Ingredients

  • a little olive oil
  • one onion, finely chopped
  • a few cloves of garlic, really finely chopped or crushed
  • one small sweet potato, peeled and finely diced
  • one chilli pepper, deseeded and finely chopped
  • about a quarter cup of pineapple juice (handy if putting tinned pineapple on pizza, as you can use the juice from the can)
  • about a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
  • half a tube or a small jar of tomato puree
  • a few sprigs of parsley, very finely chopped
  • salt to taste (doesn’t need much)
  • Toppings of choice: we used tinned pineapple, tinned mushrooms (they don’t dry up on a pizza like fresh) and Asda Free From Grated Mozzarella (Asda have the cheapest free from cheese we’ve seen).

Method

  • Prepare your base as desired. In our case, we made sourdough bread dough and left it rising in the tin all day!
  • Fry the onion, garlic, sweet potato and chilli in the oil for a few minutes.
  • Add the juice, vinegar, parsley and puree
  • Mix well, adding more juice if too thick.
  • Season with salt
  • Spread it over your pizza base and add toppings!
  • How long you need to bake depends on the base. Our thick homemade one needed half an hour at 200C/400F. Pittas would need much less as they’re already cooked. In fact you could just grill them.
vegan tattie soup

Other recent food and posts elsewhere from us:

Cocoa Loco have some gorgeous new organic and fairtrade Christmas chocolate in, see their large vegan range here.

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Vegan Toad in the Hole

toad in the hole, vegan

Our vegan toad in the hole turned out soft and light and delicious and filling and tasty. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

Partly cook sausages in oven at 200C for about 10 minutes:toad1

Batter made thus: mix 5 tablespoons of self raising flour with 3 tablespoons of gram (chick pea) flour, a pinch of salt and a pinch of bicarb. Beat in enough soya milk to make a creamy pouring batter. This quantity was to cover 12 sausages, adjust as needed. It would be far less ‘spongy’ if you used plain flour, but we like it like this 🙂

Pour over hot sausages:
toad2

Then it’s back in the oven for another 20-30 minutes until nice and solid:
vegan toad in the hole

Serve with gravy, roast potatoes and veg. Yum, yum, yum.

If you enjoyed this vegan toad in the hole, check out all our other main dishes here.

Sign up to our occasional mailing list to be sent new recipes as we invent them 🙂

Lucy’s traditionally published books – THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR (witches!) and FIREFLIES AND CHOCOLATE (kidnap and adventure on the high seas) – are available on Amazon UK  and Amazon worldwide, and also at Waterstones or see Author website for more details.

Ailish Sinclair's novels
TheVeganKind Supermarket

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Vegan Lentil Bacon Soup #plantbased

vegan lentil bacon soup
this isn't bacon: great in vegan lentil bacon soup

This isn’t bacon + lentil soup = vegan lentil bacon soup, and it is wonderful! Just chop the vegan bacon finely and cook it in the soup. Other products work too: see the range at GreenBay Vegan Supermarket.

vegan lentil bacon soup

Useful or seasonal recipes: lentil soup; this tip also works well for pea soup, turning it into pea and ham, and then we have to give a mention to a great seasonal dish for autumn: Roast Pumpkin and Garlic Pasta.

If you liked this vegan lentil bacon soup see all our soup recipes here

The Mermaid and the Bear

The perfect read for Halloween, THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR, set in a fictional castle in Aberdeenshire, features the 1597 Aberdeen witchcraft panic and a love story.

From Amazon UK or Amazon Worldwide or Waterstones

See Author website for more details.

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Vegan Chocolate Mint Squares & White Mousse

mint squares
vegan chocolate mint squares

Vegan Chocolate Mint Squares made by a clever friend who is generally good at making things 🙂 (recipe now in the comments below)

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White chocolate mousse with red berries. Made by us. Sometimes good at making things…

Melt about 100g of cocoa butter and blend into a block of silken tofu with some icing sugar and vanilla.

And here’s a flower:

vegan mint chocolate squares

If you liked these vegan chocolate mint squares, check out our other cake recipes here.

The Mermaid and the Bear

Set in a fictional castle in Aberdeenshire, Ailish Sinclair’s debut novel, THE MERMAID AND THE BEAR, blends an often overlooked period of history, the Scottish witchcraft accusations, in particular the 1597 Aberdeen panic, with a love story. 

Amazon UK

Amazon

Waterstones

Author website

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Roasted Beetroot Cream Sauce for Pasta

roasted beetroot cream sauce on spaghetti
With garlic bread and broccoli…

This roasted beetroot cream sauce is earthy and easy, and so delicious and vibrant in colour.

We roasted a bunch of beets the night before when the oven was on for another meal, and then popped them in the fridge until needed. We used beautiful stripey Chioggia beetroot from the garden but any beets will do.

Beetroot Cream Sauce

  • Pour the beets and roasting oil into a saucepan.
  • Add: 1 chopped onion, a few cloves of garlic, a small bunch of parsley and a little chopped celery.
  • Fry up for a few minutes until the veg is softened.
  • Pop into a blender with a small box of vegan cream and a little salt. We used Oatly.
  • Blend!
  • Stir into pasta of your choice. It worked very well with spaghetti, coating a 500g packet perfectly.

If you liked this beetroot cream sauce, check out our other main dishes here.

Book of the Moment

Creating a Forest Garden: Forest gardening is a novel way of growing edible crops – with nature doing most of the work for you. A forest garden is modelled on young natural woodland, with a wide range of crops growing in different vertical layers. Unlike in a conventional garden, there is little need for digging, weeding or pest control. Buy UK

Olio

Active in many countries across the world, Olio is an app that you can download to your phone to share food in your local area. It does have a desktop version too. People share things that they can’t use up in time from their fridge, or cupboard items that they no longer want. Food Waste Heroes (which you can volunteer to be) collect yellow stickered or surplus food from businesses and then share it for free on the app.

sunflower in the garden and a beetroot cream sauce
Sunflower in the garden
GreenBay 100% vegan supermarket
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paprika pumpkin soup, a vegan recipe

paprika pumpkin soup

This recipe makes a LOT of paprika pumpkin soup (serving at least 6), but the quantity all depends on the size of the pumpkin.

Ingredients:
flesh of one culinary pumpkin
3 red peppers
4 carrots
water and soya milk to cook up in (does not have to cover veg, will be too runny)
handful of cashew nuts
seasalt and paprika to taste

Peel and de-seed the pumpkin and chop into chunks. Place in a pan with chopped peppers, carrots and liquids. Bring to boil and simmer until veg is tender. Add salt and paprika – we used about a teaspoon for a big pan but you could go hotter. Blend up with the cashews, check for seasoning and serve with paprika sprinkle.

If you liked this paprika pumpkin soup recipe, see all our soup recipes here

TheVeganKind Supermarket


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A Very Simple Vegan Chilli Recipe

n chilli recipe
Soya mince based chilli 🌶 rice, tortilla chips, olive and jalapeño sourdough, courgette ribbons.

A very simple and very good vegan chilli recipe.

Method and Ingredients

  • Fry off some finely chopped onion and garlic and add a selection of roughly chopped – chunky – vegetables. We used: courgettes; red, green and yellow peppers and celery.  Mushrooms would be great too.
  • Add chilli of choice, either finely chopped fresh chillis, dried chilli or a chilli powder mix, or maybe a mixture of these.
  • Stir well.
  • Bung in a box of passata or chopped tomatoes and add a little water to the mix.
  • Bring to boil and turn down to simmer.
  • Once veg is tender add a tin or two of cooked red kidney beans and salt to taste.
  • Nice served with rice, a baked potato or quinoa or, if you’re feeling a bit trashy, chips.
  • Cucumber is a good cooling accompaniment. Other optional additions: a teaspoon of sugar stirred into the sauce really brings out the flavours in a different, sweet, way; a few squares of dark chocolate melted through it turn the dish into a darker, richer mole.
  • Pictured above is a soya mince based chilli, below a vegetable one.
vegan chilli recipe
Vegetable based chilli

Don’t eat  when you’ve been talked into watching a scary fast moving zombie film that will make you consume the hot chilli far too fast and overheat in a bad way.

Books

Unconnected, book related advice: reading Very British Problems: Making Life Awkward for Ourselves, One Rainy Day at a Time will stave off the depression caused by reading certain parts of the new Bridget Jones book.

And, books again: now is the time to get a copy of Rose Elliot’s Vegetarian Christmas for 1 pence or 1 cent. The price will inflate hugely through November and December and it’s a lovely collection of recipes. See our review here or visit Amazon in the UK

The Works is a fantastic sources of discounted books, often selling sets of books for the price you normally pay for one. The Works also has great deals on stationery, toys & games, and art & craft supplies.

The Works - Britain's Leading Discount Book Store

If you liked this vegan chilli recipe, be sure to check out our other vegan fare!

crunchy 007 (550x413)
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Roast Butternut Soup with Lemon Thyme

butternut squash soup

This roast butternut soup is perfect for autumn. Season of beautiful leaves, mushrooms in the grass and an abundance of apples. And squashes, let’s not forget them.

Timely then that Oatly sent us some of their products and a recipe for roast butternut squash soup with lemon thyme. The apples really add a seasonal fruitiness to this dish, don’t miss them out!

Roast Butternut Soup Ingredients

mushrooms
  • 250 ml Oatly Organic Creamy Oat
  • 1 butternut squash
  • 2 tbsp. olive oil
  • a couple of onions, diced
  • 2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
  • 1 tbsp. minced ginger
  • 1 minced red chilli
  • 2 sprigs of lemon thyme
  • 2 green apples, diced
  • 800 ml vegetable stock
  • 1 lemon
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • Toasted pumpkin seeds to serve

Method

  • Preheat the oven to 240C/475F
  • Halve the butternut squash and scoop out the seeds using a large spoon. Place the halves on a large baking sheet with flech side up. Drizzle over the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast in the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until the squash is tender.
  • Heat a large pot over a medium high heat and add the oil. Add the onions, chilli, ginger and apple and cook gently until soft.
  • Using a large spoon, scoop out the flesh from the butternut squash and add it with the thyme to the pot.
  • Pour over the vegetable stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes.
  • Remove from the heat and blend using a hand-blender to desired consistency.
  • Add the Oatly Organic Creamy Oat and squeeze over lemon. Let it simmer for another 10 minutes and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper.
  • Serve with toasted pumpkin seeds. We didn’t have those but we did have homemade potato wedges which made up for it.

Recipe credit: this recipe was made with Oatly Creamy Oat – a great dairy free, healthy alternative to single cream. For more delicious recipes and further information about the Oatly way of life, visit facebook.com/oatlyab

Creamy Oat is also great with puddings such as apple pie, it comes out of the fridge with the consistency of double cream. Pie recipe over on frugal.org uk

apple pie
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Vegan Macaroni Cheese Recipe Using Miso

vegan macaroni cheese

This vegan macaroni cheese recipe uses sweet white miso paste for some of its cheesiness! If you want to make it more yellow you can add turmeric to it, but we quite like it in this paler form.

Vegan Macaroni Cheese Ingredients

  • 1 bag (500g) macaroni – we favour the Scottish brand of Marshalls, it has a nice curl to it and good texture for this recipe.
  • a tablespoon vegan margarine
  • 1 onion or leek, finely chopped
  • 2 tablespoons of plain white flour
  • 1 litre of unsweetened soya milk
  • a stock cube (we used Kallo organic)
  • 1 teaspoon of smooth yellow mustard
  • 2 heaped tablespoons of sweet white miso
  • seasalt to taste
  • 2 or 3 large tomatoes, thinly sliced
  • Grated vegan cheese (in the UK GreenBay have a huge range of cheeses, including many artisan small batch varieties.)

Method

Cook the macaroni as per packet instructions. While the water is coming to the boil/pasta cooking, prepare the sauce. Melt the marg and cook the onion in it for a few minutes. Add the flour and stir thoroughly. Gradually add the milk, stirring all the time to avoid lumps (but don’t worry too much, they seem to be un-noticed in the final mix anyway). Add in the stock, mustard and salt, still stirring away. Once the sauce has thickened, remove from heat and stir in the miso.

Put your grill on to heat on high. Drain your pasta (once cooked) and mix in the sauce. Place in a large oven proof dish and top with the tomatoes and then cheese on top. Place under the grill for a few minutes until it goes a little squidgy (a very specific and precise term)… yum.

Catkins by the loch:

vegan macaroni cheese


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Carrot Turmeric Soup: golden and nutritious

carrot and turmeric soup

This carrot and turmeric soup is rich and nutritious and golden, perfect for the start of Autumn! Turmeric is rich in iron and also anti-inflammatory. The olive oil and black pepper in the recipe are there to make the most of these properties.

Carrot Turmeric Soup Ingredients

  • 1 thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled
  • 4 or 5 small new potatoes, skins on, chopped small
  • 5 large carrots or equivalent, scraped and chopped
  • 1 large onion, peeled and chopped
  • 5 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • a handful of cashew nuts
  • 1 to 2 heaped teaspoons of turmeric (we used this one)
  • about 1 teaspoon of black pepper, freshly ground if possible
  • 1 tablespoon of olive oil
  • water to cover ingredients well
  • seasalt to taste

Method

Place the ginger, potatoes, carrots and onion in a large pan and cover well with boiling water. Bring back to boil and add the cashew nuts and garlic. While the vegetables are cooking mix the turmeric in the olive oil with the black pepper and leave to stand.

Once the vegetables are tender, add salt to taste and place everything – veg, liquid, nuts, turmeric/oil mix – into a blender and blitz until smooth.

Pour into bowls and squeeze some lime juice over the top. Yum!

See all our vegan recipes here

Montbretia by the pond: