A few months ago I bought Diana Henry’s A Change of Appetite on a whim; I saw a tweet from Leite’s Culinaria about this white bean purée piled high with beautiful purple radicchio and red onions and it looked good enough that I went straight onto Amazon and bought the cookbook. I have not been disappointed.
Light and fresh, crispy and vibrant, vegetable tempura is the perfect supper for a week night or a special weekend treat accompanied by spring onion pancakes (I use this recipe) or teriyaki tofu. The key to crispy, light tempura batter is ice cold sparkling water and mixing the batter at the very last moment before frying.
After my trip to California, I came back to England craving vegetables. Usually I would have been so packed full of vegetables after a trip home that I would come back here craving junk, but this was such a whistle-stop tour that there was very little eating at home and when we did it was what was quick and satisfying − cheese, bread and wine. So I came back wanting vegetables of all colors, all at once and right now! These tacos were the perfect antidote to a week of gout-inducing luxury.
I know I seem to be banging on about Jerusalem a lot lately, but if you have flicked through its beautifully photographed pages, enjoyed its history and relished its ‘foreignness’ like I have, you find it hard to think of much else when dinner time rolls around. This risotto is another complete cracker of a recipe; utterly beautiful in its simplicity.
One of my newest acquisitions, Tom Kerridge’s Proper Pub Food, has been eyeing me up since I unwrapped it Christmas morning. And knowing as I do of the treasures within, it has taken all my strength to not go methodically through it, cooking tomato salad with beef dripping dressing, then smoked haddock and créme fraîche omelette, then barbecued cake.
Over the past six months or so, I’ve tried to post one vegetarian recipe a week to encourage people to think outside the meat and potatoes box when it comes to dinner. All of the recipes are listed under the Meatless Monday section on the Food page, but below are some of my favorites and ones that we come back to again and again.
I hope that 2014 will bring even more inspiring vegetarian recipes for me to share with you as I try to be even more creative with vegetables. Happy New Year!
I had a cold last week. And I don’t get sick. Like ever. So although you might expect the infrequency of illness to rouse some sympathy from the hungry belly party of this get-up (aka Rhys), it doesn’t. I still had to cook dinner. All week. Even though he had the week off and I had to work. And I was sick. Did I mention that I was sick?
In this, the season of pumpkins, it would be a shame not to post at least one pumpkin recipe. But why we only seem to be able to appreciate the gastronomic clout of these orange beauties for one month a year is beyond me.
What better to do when you have a surplus of summer veg than make soup au pistou? Freshness is the key here. In fact, there isn’t even any chicken stock in this recipe, just water added to bring out every last drop of the vegetables’ summer essence.
This past week has been a bit of a washout cooking wise. We had the big birthday party and with it overnight guests and the obligatory sore heads the next day and then a wedding which seems to have eaten up the entire weekend − although I can’t think of many better ways to lose a weekend than in celebrating the union of two very special people. The result of all this is that I didn’t make any meatless dishes this week worthy of the blog, so I’m rehashing a previous vegetarian dish that I posted before I started the weekly Meatless Monday series.