Chopped salad with Ginger Dressing

This is a delicious salad which is great on his own or as a side dish.  

Crunchy, healthy and delicious.  Great vegetarian food or a side dish with spicy grilled prawns.

Edible Flower Salad

This light savoury salad was inspired by the beautiful flowers responding to the sunshine in my garden.  I combined three different types of edible flowers into a really light early summer salad.  This was great as a really light meal or starter / appetizer on its own but would also be great as an impressive looking side dish.

The cucumber gives a lovely texture and removing the skin helps the flavour of the herb flowers sing out.

I wouldn't use commercially sold flowers for this as you don't know if they're ok to eat or if they've been sprayed with pesticides, only use ones you've grown yourself and know haven't been sprayed.

Cauliflower and Pea curry

Pulses are great in curries, I often make them with chickpeas which are great but I wanted to make something different.  I have to admit the substitution of carbs and meat for cauliflower somewhat passed me by.  I tried cauliflower rice and it was disappointing.  The idea of "cauliflower steak" also doesn't appeal so it was with some trepidation I made a curry with no meat, no pulses and as cauliflower with the main ingredient.

I needn't have worried.  This is delicious.  The great thing about cauliflower is it's like a flavour sponge, it just sucked in all the gorgeous flavours from the sauce.  Did I care or even notice this dish is vegan?  Nope.  Did I miss the meat?  Not at all.

Edamame Bean Salad

I love edamame (or soy) beans.  I had a delicious dish recently of some edamame beans in chilli sauce at a Japanese restaurant, they were utterly addictive.

This salad is less messy but no less tasty.  What's great as well is despite being all vegetables, the dressing brings it all together to make it taste like more than it is.  Super healthy.

Mixed Bean Chilli

I love chilli, I particularly love vegetarian chilli, slow cooked meat chillis, frankly I just love the heat.  What is great about this chilli though is as well as being vegan, it also contains mostly store cupboard and "likely to be in your fridge" ingredients.  It's so cheap as well and freezes brilliantly making it the ideal recipe for when the month is nearly up and your bank balance doesn't look quite so healthy.

You could mix up the beans in this; I would have used pinto beans if I'd been organised enough to soak and cook them (I couldn't find any in cans in my local supermarket.)  Of course you can use dried beans here which would make this even cheaper, just soak and cook them first as I find cooking them with something acidic like tomato if they're not already cooked through makes them a little tough.

Chestnut and Mushroom Soup

I'd recently bought some cooked vacuum packed chestnuts and I had some chestnut mushrooms in my increasingly dwindling fridge stocks so an idea came to life to combine these most seasonal of ingredients.

The flavour of mushrooms is great but the slippery texture in a soup isn't ideal unless you combine it with something starchy.  I'm not a fan of potato in soups but I love using other vegetables to thicken soups and stews and why not chestnuts?

Chestnuts are a bit of a faff to prepare from raw which is why I used pre cooked ones here but they are bang in season and make this delicious, filling and thick soup which is a delight of wintery flavours and also smooth as silk.

Roasted Parsnips

I'd always found roasting parsnips a bit hit and miss.  The problem is parsnips have a higher sugar content than potatoes so tend to burn a little more easily.  I've come up with a few ways to help reduce the risk of that happening and have lovely golden parsnips for your tea or Sunday Lunch.

Chickpea and Spinach Curry

I make no claims to be an authentic Indian chef, but this is going to university time of year and it's also coming to the end of the month.  All of us could do with a decent curry recipe which costs pence and tastes great whether you're a meat eater, a vegetarian, a vegan, gluten free etc.

Day 7 of 7 a day

My last day of eating 7 fruits and vegetables in a day.  It's been a journey.  I am thoroughly bored of my kitchen scales and the crushing realisation that, (a rare situation in modern life), my portion sizes were normally too small.

Still it's been a journey.

Vietnamese Summer Rolls

Summer rolls are funny, healthy, lovely things.  A spring roll may seem like a fatty, unhealthy thing but these Vietnamese style vegan summer rolls are almost embarrassingly healthy.

What makes them for me is that mix of textures from the crunchy peanuts and vegetables, the softer noodles still with bite and the sticky sauce.

The ultimate fruit filled breakfast

I love filling up with fruit at breakfast, it's a fantastic burst of energy when I'm feeling a bit sluggish.  This is my latest idea and it went down pretty well.

Here's what's great about this breakfast; bags of vitamin C, lycopene, vitamin K, manganese, some folate, fibre and the pumpkin seeds also bag a reasonable amount of iron along with lots of other lovely nutrients.

4 of your 5 a day and you've not even got dressed yet!

Buddha Bowl

I was scooting around the internet and came across the concept of a Buddha bowl recently.  Honestly?  I had no idea what it was or why it was meant to be good (being named after a famously overweight individual, it didn't seem great) but this is the basic idea...

You have a base of the bowl, this is normally a healthy grain like quinoa, brown rice, pearl barley or pulses which can be warm or cold but I have to admit I liked the idea of the warm and the cold coming together.  Then you add your ingredients which could be:

Greens
Beans
Raw vegetables
Roasted vegetables
Seeds
Dressing

There you go.  Well the idea of it got my juices flowing, in no way because it's meant to be healthy but because it sounded delicious.

So I've had a go at an different interpretation on this basic idea and I'm sure it's something I will come back to again and again...  In fact this may well become my new lunch option of choice because it just seems joyous.

I have an image in my head of a buddha bar with big steaming bowls of grains, delicious bowls of roasted and raw vegetables and stunning dressings for you to make up your own creation.  If only my work's canteen was like that I'd eat there every day!

Kaleidoslaw

My colourful chopped salad (or kaleidoslaw if you will) was an attempt to get the rainbow of foods into one dish.  Winter is such a tough old time on the body and no need to ignore salads at this time of year, especially for lunch.  Have something heartier in the evening if you like.

This is very simple to make and adaptable to what you have in.  Why not give it a go?

Tempura

I love tempura, it's not healthy, it's not good for you (all that frying) but after a morning run, what could be better for Friday?  Let's make it Fry-day this week!  This can either be a great fish dish or vegan depending on your preferences.  Both are great.

Shallot Tarte Tatin

Traditional Tarte Tatin contains apples but the combination of the caramelisation with the puff pastry is something which can apply to lots of different dishes and shallots are a lovely way of bringing this together in a savoury way.

This could be a great vegetarian (or vegan) Christmas lunch or a lovely starter.  It's a piece of cake to make and is fine (even better) served warm rather than hot.

Jewelled Quinoa Salad

I had another pomegranate in my shopping this week.  There is something I love about their combination of sweet and bitter which is lovely in a savoury salad.  Little ruby jewels nestled with all of the other ingredients.  The dried cranberries take it straight into festive territory so this might be quite special for a pot luck or buffet meal with cold meats if you are a meat eater.

You can either serve this with warm quinoa or allow the quinoa to cool (or rinse under a tap) and then use.  Would be a great lunch box dish to make your colleagues go "ooooh!"

As I'm sure all vegans know, quinoa is a complete protein source meaning that if you are choosing to cut down on meat, it's a great food to eat without missing out on essential nutrients.

Roast Vegetable Pasta

I am a meat eater but I am welcome to eating vegetarian and vegan food.  In my book, it's just tasty food.  I think everyone should be open to eating something a bit different and a bit less meat.

This is also handily 3 of your 5 a day.  More than half!  But most of all, it's delicious.  The pepper goes really sweet, the tomato adds a slight amount of sauciness, the courgette absorbs the flavours, the roasted garlic is stunning, the herbs... You won't miss the meat.

Although this is one of my longer cooking time recipes, it's a sling it in the oven job.  Great if you're a parent because you could put this in the oven and with only one stir, have it ready by the time you've got your little darlings in bed.

80g might seem an odd amount to suggest but the quantities aren't vital and the reason why is that 80g is considered by the UK government to constitute 1 of your 5 a day.  Recent research indicates that 7 a day may be more healthful and today I actually managed 7!  I had raspberries and blueberries on my breakfast bowl in the morning.  I had a tomato salad and some grapes as part of my lunch and then this for my evening meal.

If you like a more substantial portion, just have more pasta.

Autumn Bircher Muesli

I posted a very fruity Bircher muesli back in May but the seasons have moved on and berries are not so plentiful in the shops.  My Braeburn apple tree is laden with fruit begging to be picked and eaten.  This year has been a fantastic year for apples and there is something about autumn which just makes me crave the flavours of cinnamon.

Perhaps not quite as healthy as my previous version but certainly seasonal.  Nothing makes you feel better than eating fruit within minutes of picking it.

Vegetable Biriyani

I had a day off this week and so went to one of my favourite thrift second hand shops.  I know, it's a bit sad having a favourite shop for this kind of thing but this has all kinds of furniture and bric a brac. When you're a food blogger, however much you tell yourself you don't need any more props, there is part of you that uses the blog as an excuse because you love kitchen stuff.  Oh yes (and I have a small kitchen.  I may need to rationalise although I also have the unhappy habit of being clumsy so a dish doesn't always last long.)

The reason I digress into my obsession with baking dishes is I came across a small oven proof dish with a lid and it got me thinking.  I had always wanted to cook a proper biriyani in the dum method where you seal the lid with a simple flour and water dough.  I once had such a dish in Leicester town centre with melt in the mouth mutton but I also wanted to try it as a vegan dish.

And do you know what?  I have no idea as to the authenticity of this, I made this dish to my taste and I loved it.  I hope you love it too.  The saffron is a pricey addition but does add more to the flavour than you'd imagine but no problem if you miss it out.

The curry made double the amount of sauce I could fit into my pot, if you have a larger pot you could use more or freeze the other half to use for a delicious mid week biriyani or as a simple chickpea curry as part of a thali.  The recipe is also easy to double for two, just cook more rice.

Apologies for the presentation of this, it tasted and smelled great, I wanted to get straight to eating.

Quick noodle salad for a work lunch

This is not so much a recipe as an assembly but it tastes great, it's filling and depending on the noodles you use, can be gluten free or vegan.  You want to use a firm noodle for this, nothing too mushy.