Quick meals and some sauce ideas

I have to confess something: I watch Jamie Oliver 30 Minute Meals TV show. I hate when he cooks meat (and this happens like always) but he has some good vegetarian (and even vegan) dishes and excellent tips for those who want to cook at home and don't want to spend too much time in the kitchen.

Because I cook everyday (well, not everyday cause me and Matteo divide the "shifts" in the kitchen) I'm not always in the mood to spend too much time in the kitchen too. And some people wouldn't believe but there are a lot of meals that you can prepare in less than 30 minutes. One tip by Jamie Oliver that I totally agree is that people should learn to use and keep using their kitchen appliances. I think I use my mixer and blender everyday and there's nothing wrong with that!

This week we got another vegetables and fruit bag from Home Organics and we're making a great use of everything. Besides carrots, beets, potatoes, broccoli, spinach, we got fungi and butternut squash. Matteo made an amazing soup with one butternut squash and potatoes. Today I used half of the other one to make the sauce for our "pasta al forno" and saved the other half to a dish from Veganize This!, by Jenn Shagrin, that I'm excited to try.

Back to the quick meals, one important thing to make them great is to vary with the sauces. Sauce is an amazing element cause it can change your meal completely sometimes just with one small variation.

Broccoli & fungi sauce
(served with spaghetti)

2 big fungi (or 4 small ones)
1 big broccoli (or 4 small ones)
2 full hands of spinach leaves
1 small onion
1 or 2 garlic clove
1/2 cup soy cream
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Put the fungi, broccoli, garlic cloves and onion in the food processor and mix it until have everything cut in very small pieces. Add the spinach leaves and mix it a little bit more. Heat the oil in a cook pan, add the vegetable mix and start adding the soy cream while stirring. Let it cook in a low temperature for 1 or 2 minutes. Add a little bit of water if you think it's necessary.

Carrot, butternut squash & soy mince sauce
(used in this amazing "pasta al forno" made
with a gluten-free penne)

1 big carrot (or 2 small ones)
1/2 butternut squash
1 onion
1 or 2 garlic clove
1 1/2 cup TVP (textured vegetable protein)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 vegetable stock cube
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Put the TVP in a boll with hot water (it's important to leave the TVP in the hot water before cooking it) and stock cube. Set it aside and leave it for 10/15 minutes. Use your fine shred/slice disc of your food processor to cut the carrot and butternut squash. Chop the onion and garlic. Heat the oil in a cook pan. Add the chopped garlic and onion and let it fry for 1 minute or until the onion turn golden. Add the TVP and let if fry for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring it. Add the carrot and butternut squash and keep stirring for 1 or 2 minutes. Add the chopped tomatoes and let everything cook for other 3 or 4 minutes. Add a little bit of water if you think it's necessary.

This sauce is also great to fill crepes.

All about... puff pastry!

salty pie with broccoli and leek

After one year living in Dublin I still don't know where to find many things, so sometimes I stay months without eating something or using some ingredient I like. That happened with puff pastry. It is not easy to find a vegan one in Brazil too, but in Italy it is, so during the 3 months that we spent there last year we had eaten this a lot.

Last week we found a vegan option at Marks & Spencer so I decided to make a lot of food using it. We had salty pies, some snacks and some special twists. There are so many things you can do using this amazing pastry! And the best thing, it comes ready to cook! Sometimes is great to have this option close to you.

little snacks with pesto + tofu and tomato + vegan cheddar

One thing that I wanted to try were some "garlic puff twist" that I saw in the amazing blog Just The Food during the Vegan MoFo! Mines weren't garlic ones. I used extra olive oil instead of Earth Balance with basil, parsley and black pepper and we had them with some gnocchi. Easy, fast and delicious!

Vegan Mofo III - Day 12 - Comfort food

We had some great food this weekend, besides the vegan cheese cake. We had time to go out to buy some stuff for the new apartment and walk around on Sunday night! And we decided to cook some fast, comfort food.

I'll post the tips to make this bread these days! It's the easiest thing ever :)


And this was just a cuscus with leek and seitan. Ready in 5 minutes and delicious!

I have some other tips about fast food here, here and here. Enjoy it!

Run, Glauce, run!

These last days I'm doing a lot of things here. New ideas, great stuff on HUP and life goes on, faster and faster. Because of that I'm not experimenting too much in the kitchen.

Today I decided too cook a recipe that I love to eat and haven't cook here in Dublin yet: vegan strogonoff! It's so easy to cook it (one more fast and delicious recipe). We ate it with white rice, salad and roasted potatoes.

Vegan Strogonoff (serves 2 people)

100g soya protein chunks
250g tomato sauce
1 vegetable stock cube
½ cup soya cream
1 teaspoon vegetable oil

Hydrate the soya in warm water for 20 minutes. Put the oil and the vegetable cube and let it fry for 1 minute. Drain the soya protein chunks and add them. Let fry for 5 minutes and add some herbs during this process. Add the tomato sauce and let for more 6/7 minutes, mixing with the spoon from time to time (if you think you need more tomato sauce, just add it or add a little bit of water). Finally, add the soya cream and mix for more 3 minutes. That's it!

Fast and delicious III

It seems that this week is all about fast food. Today I cooked a lasagne with eggplant and it's delicious. No need to say how much I love lasagne and all the Italian food! You can use the eggplant instead of the lasagne pasta, but this time I used both and I liked it more.

So, here we go, with one more recipe:

- lasagne pasta (that one that comes ready to cook)
- 1 eggplant
- tomato sauce
- vegetable stock cube
- soya cream
- vegan cheese (I used the cheddar one)
- dairy free parmezano

This recipe takes between 5 and 10 minutes to be prepared! Cut the eggplant in small circular slices. Let it fry a little bit in the pan. Add the tomato sauce and the vegetable stock cube. Use a little bit of tomato sauce to make the first layer in a glass pan. Add the eggplant sauce. Add the lasagne pasta. Do alternate layers like that (three or four, depends of how much eggplant sauce you have).

Topping: add the last layer of eggplant sauce, than the soy cream and the vegan cheese.

Final touch: add the dairy free parmezano (you can use breadcrumbs too, it works).

Put in the oven for 30/35 minutes (180ºC). That's it!

Fast and delicious II

Some times all we want is something easy and fast to cook to eat. This is a delicious food, that seems to be something between a pizza and a bruschetta!


And all you need is:

- bread (if you have an Italian one, better!)
- spinach
- tomatoes
- garlic
- tomato sauce (optional)
- herbs
- extra virgin olive oil

Put everything over the bread (if you decide to use the tomatoe sauce, add it first with small slices of garlic). Bake it for 5 minutes and it's done ;o)