gajumaru

Another oats-based post! I made vegan flapjack yesterday. I based it on this recipe, more or less, but I'm not sure the changes I made worked. I put more nuts in than this, and I ground the almonds and cashews into small bits in the food processor, which made quite a lot of nut flour, so I decided to leave out the flour. Then I changed my mind and added flaxmeal, figuring it would do for flour-a-like and nutrition. I also put in pumpkin seeds (lots), cinnamon and raisins.

I left out the sugar, cos baking recipes often have soooo much more sugar than they need, and when I was younger flapjack just had three ingredients, oats, butter and syrup, plus whatever flavourings you wanted. Sugar was never one of the ingredients! 

I used coconut oil instead of margarine - about 3/4 of the amount since coconut oil is higher in fat. I don't know if I used the same amount of syrup as the recipe - I used all the syrup we had, and after I'd stirred it, it seemed like a consistency that would stick together, so I went for it. It's delicious, but it's very crumbly and isn't stuck together very well.

Clearly it needed either more golden syrup, or I needed to melt some sugar into the fat after all. I don't know if the flour was essential to the sticking together process. Dairy butter definitely makes things stick together better than coconut oil, so I think with vegan flapjack you do need to make it stickier somehow, but I wanted to make it lower GL. Hrrrrrm. I have added nut butter for stickiness in the past, but I found myself unsure how much this actually contributes to holding the thing together once it's baked. 

More experimentation required, which is a bit tricky when I didn't measure how much syrup I used this time. But I did it based on vibes/consistency last time, so next time I'll just aim for 'stickier' and see what happens!

Cookies

On Sunday I enlisted E to help me make toddler-friendly four ingredient cookies: 1.5 ripe mashed bananas, 1.5 cups porridge oats, 4 tbsps crunchy peanut butter and two shakes of cinnamon, all mushed together and squidged into cookie shapes. They were delicious. I baked them for 15 minutes at 200c and I think they'd have been even better taken out a couple of minutes earlier. We ate two each straight away. (E also ate several handfuls of raw cookie mix, which is always a good sign.) If you weren't baking for a toddler you could add honey or sugar, but they were yum without. There were five left, I'm not sure if E has eaten them or if they're hiding.

Pesto

We get a weekly Riverford veg box and they often give us carrots with the tops attached. Their cool little recipe leaflet/newsletter that accompanies each box often suggests using the carrot tops to make pesto. So far we've mostly been throwing them away due to lack of pesto-making mojo, although one time we added them to stirfry (not a success: simultaneously wilty and fibrous with an astringent taste). At the weekend however, flush with delight after harvesting an armful of chard (and several slugs) from the veg patch, I decided to give it a try.

I used the magimix to blend 1 bunch carrot tops, 2 garlic bulbs cloves, juice of half a lemon, 30g walnuts, 50g cashews, and salt and pepper. I needed to give it a bit of a stir halfway through mixing to make sure everything got processed. Once the nuts were in small bits I started glugging in olive oil. It took a LOT of olive oil, which luckily we buy in bulk. Eventually it was pesto consistency and oh wow, that is a million times nicer than shop bought vegan pesto (which contains stealth potato, so Leo can't eat it).

I chucked chard (more veg patch crop) and peas in a wok with a generous scoop of coconut oil and 2 sliced garlic cloves, and stirfried them til they were coated in the oil, then added a couple of handfuls frozen peas and braised in their own steam with the lid on. Added a squeeze of lemon juice and a bit of tamari.

With a portion of gluten free pasta for Leo and a portion of wholewheat pasta for me and E, it came together into a surprisingly perfect summer dinner. We both had radiatori, an excellent pasta shape for collecting large quantities of pesto. It was very decadent to be able to serve pesto by the tablespoon rather than the teaspoon. The pesto was rich and savoury and complex, the chard (picked half an hour before eating) was buttery and bright, and the whole meal felt fresh and delicious, the sort of thing you could serve at a dinner party to show off how well you're coping.

Fish with coconut

I want to call this "fish pie" cos it uses fish pie mix, but there's really nothing pie-like about it. Quick weeknight dinner when I was craving Much Nutrition. 

Diced a big chunk fresh ginger and set it sizzling with a lot of coconut oil. Added two packets of frozen fish pie mix to start defrosting in the pan. Sliced garlic (about half a bulb) and diced a white onion and added them both. Cut half a pack of chestnut mushrooms into quarters, added those. Gave it a stir and turned the frozen fish chunks over periodically to help them defrost. Put the lid on in between so the steam would help them along. Detached E from my leg and gave them cream cheese on a cracker to tide them over while the fish was cooking.

Ground and added whole spices: cumin seeds, coriander seeds (about 1tbsp each), black pepper and mustard seeds (about 1/2tsp each). Also added a shake of turmeric, a couple of cardamom pods and a couple of shakes of black onion seeds. Gave it all a stir.

Once the fish was defrosted and the mushrooms looking cooked, added 1 tin of coconut milk and put the lid on. Defrosted 3 homemade stock cubes from the freezer in the microwave and added two of them to the pan; used the third to make a slurry with 1tsp of cornflour, and added that to thicken it.

Served the fish with microwaved leftover brown rice, and very simple 'buttered' greens (chard with sliced garlic fried in a wok then braised until soft). Very popular with hungry toddlers, and hungry parents too!

This is low glycaemic index, super tasty and incredibly filling. The key is the edamame noodles, which are high protein (a whopping 45g/100g dry weight) and have a firm, toothsome consistency which is a massive improvement on the easily-dissolved, gelatinous quality of a lot of other gluten free noodles (for instance, rice noodles). With the noodles providing as much protein per serving as high quality meat, you don't really need to add an additional protein source - so adding the tempeh and the peanuts makes this incredibly filling and sustaining.

As with all our recipes, this is gluten free, dairy free, and nightshade free. It's also mostly vegan, apart from the fish sauce; which we're both happy to eat, but which could be left out if you were serving it to someone else.

Ingredients (makes 8 portions)

Edamame noodles - 200g
Tempeh - 200g
Broccoli - 1/2 head, chopped fine
Chestnut mushroooms - 1 punnet, chunked
Red cabbage - 1/6 of a cabbage, chopped fine
Red onions - 4 small ones, chopped
Garlic - 5 cloves, chopped into little sticks
Ginger - 2 thumbs, chopped into little sticks
Peanuts - 1 handful, coarse chopped
Fresh coriander - 1 handful, coarse chopped
Lime or lemon - 1/2, quartered
Sesame oil - 4 tbsp
Coconut oil - 1 tbsp
Fish sauce - 2 generous sloshes
Chinese rice wine - 1 slosh
Tamari - 2 tsps ish
Star anise - 4 whole
Black onion seed - 1 tsp
Black pepper - 1 tsp, coarse ground
Coriander seeds - 4 tsps, cracked
Szechuan pepper - 1 tsp, cracked (optional)

Method

Grind the spices as specified, and slowly heat them with the ginger and garlic in the sesame and coconut oil in a large wok on a low heat while prepping the other veg.

Chop the tempeh into small cubes, turn up the heat and hot fry the tempeh in the fragrant oil for 3 minutes, until it's just starting to golden. Add the mushrooms to the fry, coat them in the oil and fry until they're just starting to darken. Add 2 tsps of fish sauce, and throw in the broccoli. Continue to fry and stir, keeping the wok on a high heat. Add another 2 tsps fish sauce.

Boil a kettle, add to a saucepan and cook the noodles, keeping them on a boil until they start to foam, then cooking for another 1 or 2 minutes until they are the right consistency. Drain the noodles.

Add the cabbage to the wok. After the cabbage has been stirfried for a minute or two, add the red onion. Give everything a good stir. Add a generous slosh of rice wine, the peanuts and tamari to taste.

Add the noodles to the wok and toss until they're well coated with flavour.

Serve with freshly chopped coriander and quartered limes.

Several of our friends have offered to bring us meals after we're newborn-enabled, which is very wonderful. I'm going to post recipes we like to make it easier. These are also good for feeding us on other occasions, or indeed if you have any other need for vegan, gluten free, nightshade free cooking!



( Moroccan chickpea, squash & cavolo nero stew )