Onion bhajis

4 medium onions
Mixed spices - garam masala, turmeric, coriander, cumin, chili powder, etc
6 tbsp chickpea/gram flour
1 1/2 tbsp mango chutney
1 tbsp tomato purée

 - Chop the onions - most should be very finely chopped (I use a blender) but leave some thin strips for texture.
 - Fry the onion gently in a little olive oil so it softens, start cooking the larger bits first so they cook through. Once it's started to cook add the spices and stir now and then until cooked.
 - Mix the mango chutney and tomato purée together with a splash of hot water.
 - Gradually mix the chickpea flour into the mango chutney and tomato purée, adding a little extra water until you get a thick batter.
 - Stir in the cooked onion and a little extra spice.
 - Fry a little at a time in batches, flattening the bhajis as they cook to ensure they cook through.

Tofu and orange pepper noodles

I keep making this, because it's so tasty, but I always forget to write it up, and therefore always seem to forget an ingredient. So I'll write it up, but will probably have forgotten an ingredient! If so, I'll update it when I think of it! Quantities are approximate, I tend to just do it by eye.

Noodles (cook them first if they're the dried sort)
Marinated tofu (I use Cauldron brand, but you could marinate some tofu yourself, just make sure its firm and dry)
Spring onions (chopped)
Orange pepper (capsicum, chopped)
Good sprinkling of oregano
Smaller sprinkling of cayenne pepper
Cashew nuts
Dark soy sauce
Tomato puree

-Start by stir frying the pepper, add the spring onions and tofu, plus the oregano and cayenne, once it's had a couple of minutes to cook, depending on how thinly you've sliced it.
-Add the noodles, and then the soy sauce and tomato puree, don't use too much of these as they have quite a strong flavour.
-Stir well, then add the cashew nuts once the rest looks pretty much ready, they only need to get warm, and maybe brown a little bit.

Aubergine pesto

When I made this I left some of the garlic raw, but I think it's best to cook it all. It also occurred to me that replacing basil with rosemary could be really nice, or maybe just some of it. It makes it less like traditional pesto but sounds tasty!

Gas mark 6

1 medium aubergine

3 cloves of garlic

2 large handfuls of pine nuts

Bunch of fresh basil (about 30g)

Olive oil

Salt

Sprinkling of dried basil

-Put the pine nuts in a pan with NO OIL and fry for just a couple of minutes until they start to brown.

-Slice the aubergine, sprinkle it with salt and leave in a colander for 30 minutes or so, rinse off the salt then squeeze out the excess moisture and pat dry (this isn't 100% necessary, but most like to do it to reduce bitterness).

-Roughly chop the aubergine into chunks, chop the garlic, and roast together mixed with dried basil until the aubergine has softened.

-Once cool, put the aubergine and garlic in a blender, adding the pine nuts and basil.

-Blend and add oil until the desired consistency is reached.

Sun-dried Tomato Pesto

Pesto is great, you can switch ingredients about according to what you like. I didn't use any cheese, because it's really nice without, and you can always add cheese to whatever you're having the pesto with. This recipe makes quite a lot, enough to go with about 6 portions of pasta, depending on tastes. Or it can be used in salads, paninis, as a dip... anything really.

1 jar of sun-dried tomatoes in oil

4 cloves of garlic

2 large handfuls of pine nuts

Bunch of fresh basil (about 30g)

Olive oil

Sprinkling of dried basil

-Put the pine nuts in a pan with NO OIL and fry for just a couple of minutes until they start to brown.

-Roughly slice the garlic, and fry it with the sun-dried tomatoes and the dried basil. Use oil from the sun-dried tomato jar.

-Allow the pine nuts, garlic and sun-dried tomatoes to cool, then put in a blender with the fresh basil and the remaining oil from the sun-dried tomato jar.

-Blend and add olive oil until desired consistency is reached.

Simple Stuffed Mushrooms

Really easy to make, but very tasty!

Gas mark 6

Large flat portobello mushrooms
Olive oil
Marge/butter
Garlic (crushed)
Breadcrumbs
Cheddar cheese (grated)
Pine nuts

-Rub the outer side of the mushrooms with olive oil and marge/butter. Place tinfoil in the bottom of the grill to catch the liquid the mushrooms will release then grill them outer side up until just browned.
-Rub the inner side of the mushrooms with olive oil and marge/butter, and also the crushed garlic. Grill as before.
-Lightly toast the pine nuts (to do this, heat them in a frying pan with NO OIL, moving about lots until brown marks appear.)
-Mix together the breadcrumbs, cheese and pine nuts, use this mixture to top the mushrooms (inner side up) pressing down slightly to prevent the mixture falling out.
-Bake for about 15 minutes, until browned. The best way to bake these is to put them directly onto a rack, with a tray underneath to catch drips, as mushrooms release a lot of liquid when cooking!

Vegetarian Borscht

I forgot I had this site until my lovely friend Seb sent me a recipe he wrote for a forum and suggested I pop it on here. So here it is, as sent to me by Seb:

Vegetarian Borscht.

Not the sort of thing you'll find on a lot of recipe sites, but a fairly authentic reproduction of my original хозяйка's борщ. Forget the Madeleines in A La Recherche du Temps Perdus, this recipe transports me straight back to a grotty little Krushchev-era flat which I really enjoyed living in, and looking out at the Gulf of Finland in the middle of a snowstorm, warmed by this soup.

Damn tasty, filling, and best enjoyed with a wine-glass of decent straight-out-of-the-freezer vodka.

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Righto, get yourself (roughly; I tend to do it by eye),
Olive/Vegetable oil.
A large onion.
A couple of fair-sized carrots.
4-6 Beetroot (I use the pre-cooked ones, just because they're easier to locate)
About half a large white cabbage. (Savoy doesn't really work.)
Red wine vinegar.
Lemon Juice.

Dice the carrots, onions, and beetroot to roughly 1cm cubes, apart from the carrot and cabbage, which ought to be into thick strips about 3-5cm long.

Whack everything (apart from the cabbage) into a frying pan with plenty of olive oil, and let it soften the vegetables for about ten-fifteen minutes.
That almost done, bring the kettle to the boil, put a couple of stock cubes in the bottom of a soup pan, and add roughly a litre of water, (Though obviously you can add more later) medium heat on the hob, and whack the cabbage in there for five-ten minutes.

That done, add the veg from the frying pan, two tablespoons of red wine vinegar, and nearly half a lemon's juice, put a lid on, and leave it for half an hour or more on a simmer, adding more water if the vegetables are noticeably protruding from the top. This is a fairly watery soup, and if you add too much, take the lid off and let a bit boil off.

In terms of serving, garnish with dill (compulsory) to taste and sour cream, (optional) similarly. But more than a heaped tablespoon is overdoing it a bit. A bit of proper black bread, or if you can't get that, toasted wholemeal, on the side.

This'll sort out about four portions. To bulk it out, just use the remaining cabbage. I've noticed that it improves slightly as leftovers, but perhaps that's just me linking the pleasure and thriftiness centres of my brain.

What was I saying? Oh yes.

Enjoy.

Cashew Nut and Tomato Pate en Croute

This is from Rose Elliot's 'The Classic Vegetarian Cookbook'. I made this for a pie party so I changed the method a bit to make it more like a pie than a bake, I'll write out the method as Rose Elliot does it and then what I did differently.

Gas mark 4/180 degrees/350 fahrenheit.

Butter to coat tin (I used baking paper instead)

2 tbsp sundried tomato or olive oil

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 large cloves of garlic, finely chopped

400g can chopped tomatoes, drained and chopped

12 sundried tomatoes in oil, finely chopped

200g cashew nuts, finely chopped

Grated rind of half a lemon

1 tbsp chopped fresh basil

1 egg, beaten (I used egg replacer, much better and it makes the pie vegan)

salt and pepper

250g frozen puff pastry OR homemade quick flaky pastry (see bottom of post)

-Preheat the oven and line the tin.

-Using the oil, fry the onion and garlic (I also added the sundried tomatoes here, though Rose Elliot says to do this after removing from the heat) in a covered pan for 5 minutes.

-Add the tinned tomatoes and cook (uncovered) until the liquid evaporates.

-Remove from the heat and stir in the cashew nuts, lemon rind, basil, the egg/replacer, salt and pepper.

-Smooth the mixture into the lined tin and smooth the top.

-Bake for about an hour, until firm. Allow to cool, remove from the tin, wrap in clingfilm/foil and cool in the fridge.

-Turn the oven up to gas 6/200 centigrade/400 fahrenheit.

-Roll the pastry out to a 30cm square and cut off the top third. Place the pate on the smaller piece of pastry and drape the larger piece over the top, sealing the larger and smaller pieces together with water. Make steam holes in the top.

-Bake for a bout 25-30 minutes, until the pastry is crisped and puffed up.

I used the homemade pastry, and basically made the filling and cooked it for an hour, but then rather than chilling it so it retained the shape, I stirred it up to make a pie filling. I blind baked the pastry case, added the filling, and covered it with a pastry lid (with steam holes). Then baked it until the pastry browned.

Homemade quick flaky pastry:

175g strong white flour

1/4 tsp salt

125g cold butter (I used Vitalite vegan margarine)

Squeeze of lemon juice

Small jug of icy water

-Sift flour and salt, refrigerate for half an hour. It's important to keep all the ingredients as cold as possible in this recipe.

-Grate the butter into the flour (margarine does not grate at all... I just pushed it through a sieve and mixed it in, maybe it would've worked better if I'd frozen the margarine in a block first).

-Add the lemon juice.

-Mix with a fork, very gradually stir in the icy water to form a lumpy dough that just holds together and leaves the sides of the bowl clean.

-Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for 30 minutes.

-Use as required.