Vegetarian Chili

It's one of those days again. Parent teachers night together with the normal shuttling the kids to their normal after school activities. Added on to me wanting to finish the final book in Terry Prattchets discworld series. Well that is not happening tonight!

So I'm going for a single dish because we probably won't be able to sit down together as a family and eat it. Quick and easy mainly from cans. Not too big in the fresh veggie department although you could definitely substitute everything here with fresh stuff. It would just take longer (probably will taste better though).

Preparation time: 1/2 hour; serves 6-8 

Ingredients:

100 g	Onion
2 cloves	Garlic
360 g	Vegan soya mince
2 tbsp.	Oil
225 g	Red bell pepper (sub. w/capsicums or any other pepper)
2 cans	Tomatoes (dry weight 480 g)
1/4 can	Water
1 can	Black beans, drained (you could use kidney beans too) (dry weight 240 g)
1 can	Corn, drained (dry weight 285 g)
1 1/2 tsp.	Salt
1/2 tsp.	Pepper
1 tsp.	Chili powder
1 tsp.	Cumin, ground

Method:

This can be made very quickly and is great recipe to have when I'm stuck for time.

First dice the onion (or chop it, or cut it, or slice it!) and grate the garlic. Open up the soya mince and if it needs to be broken down, because it is all in one clump, do this now. The type I buy is in a clump and it is really difficult if you just put it in the pan and then try to break it up. The method that works best for me is to put the lump in a bowl and break it up with my fingers.

Then put a large pan on the stove on high heat. Once the pan is hot add the oil and then the onion and garlic. Stir all the time to prevent burning. 1 minute of frying should do. Next add the mince, reduce the heat to medium/high and fry it stirring occasionally.
While the mince is frying wash and dice the red bell pepper and add it to the frying pan. Keep stirring everything so that it does not burn.

While everything is cooking quickly open your tomato cans, roughly chop the tomatoes and add them to the pan. Wash the cans out with 1/4 can of water and add this to the pan too. If you don't have canned tomatoes you can substitute with regular tomatoes of an equivalent weight. You should cut them before you start cooking though else you won't be able to get them to the pan quick enough to prevent burning. The redder your tomatoes the better your chili. Don't forget to stir to prevent burning. After about 3 minutes, once the bell pepper is sufficiently cooked add the rest of the ingredients. Stir and cook. You could take it off immediately or you could let it simmer for 30 minutes or so. If you let it simmer make sure that it does not burn by stirring it every now and then and adding more water if necessary.

You can serve your chili simply with bread, flat breads, rice or potatoes. We love it as a topping for baked potatoes together with sour cream, chives, butter and cheese. Or eat it out of a bowl as is. It's also a hit at pot lucks!

Half an Hour Vegetarian Spaghetti Bolognese

After I was totally taken over by my blog I went and totally neglected it! I don't think I've been here for a week now. I haven't really cooked anything special either :( I tried making pol (coconut) toffee but that didn't work out. Everything else has been same old, same old.

Yesterday I got to pig out! I took my Asian noodle salad to the chivara pujava and got to eat an awesome Sri Lankan lunch. The salad didn't turn out too well, not something that I would try again, but the rest of the food was delicious! I don't know when I last had gotukola sambol, it tasted so good. Needless to say I am still stuffed a day later.

But this post is not about Sri Lankan food, it's about Italian food and to be specific our all time favourite spaghetti bolognese. My kids absolutely love spaghetti bolognese just like all the other kids. Mine has a bit of twist and contains some vegetables as well. This recipe is one of those keepers. We've been eating it for at least 8 years now. Unknowingly my oldest helped come up with the recipe when she was about 2 years old!

Serves 4; Preparation time: 30 mins.

Ingredients:

250 g	Spaghetti
2 tbsp.	Olive oil
100 g	Vegetarian mincemeat
1/2 cup	Corn
1/2 cup	Peas
500 ml	Pasta sauce (tomato)
1/4 cup	Whipping cream
1/2 cup	Cheese

Method:

Oh this is the simplest of recipes and it gets consumed so fast that I had to wait to post this until I could get a photo of the finished product!

The first thing you need to do is to boil the water for the spaghetti. If you want to speed up the process then boil the water in the kettle and then transfer it to the pot. Another way I speed up this recipe is to use super fine spaghetti (called capellini) that cooks in 3 minutes. With both of these tricks I can actually get the dinner on the table in 20 minutes.

Once the water boils put in the spaghetti, give it a stir to make sure all the past is covered with water, bring water back to the boil and set a timer according to the instructions on the packet.

Now comes the tedious job of making the sauce. Put a heavy bottomed saucepan on the stove and put it on medium high. Once the pot is hot add the olive oil and then the vegetarian mincemeat.

Just a note about the vegetarian mincemeat: There are many types of such "fake" meats out there. Some are fine and some are not. I prefer the fine fake meat because you don't notice the texture so much. In Germany I've found two types. The first is produced by Eyckeler Malt and I'm not a fan of their "granules".

Basically they rot too quickly and frequently grow mold before their expiry date. But once upon a time that was all I could get. Now I buy this type:

The granules are much finer and it's much better packed. The only deal with this one is that it is so tightly vacuum packed that I have to first break up the "meat" with my fingers. And no it doesn't make it any easier when the stuff is warm. I thought that it might fall apart once it was in the pan and heating up, but it doesn't.


Now back to the pot! The vegetarian mince does not have to cook for long. 2 - 3 minutes should do the trick. Next add in the corn, peas and pasta sauce and stir everything up. Bring the sauce to the boil and add in the cream.

The cheese can either be added to the pasta sauce or saved to sprinkle on top. I usually sprinkle Parmesan and any other cheese I put in the pot. If you have any herbs you could add them now. I usually have basil growing near by so I throw a bit of that in, or maybe some dried oregano.  But herbs are not a necessity.


By now the spaghetti is done so drain it, wash it under cold water and then put it into the pot with the sauce and mix it all up. Heat it through and it's ready to be served.

Now I'm really sorry about the lack of pictures but it got consumed to fast and I haven't made it again since.

Half an Hour Vegetarian Pumpkin and Potato Soup

Well this one was never truly meant to be! My shopping schedule is all off due to the kids vacations and as usual I forgot that on Sunday the shops are closed. Something that I have never quite been able to get used to. The fridge was almost bare except for some butternut squash and a few potatoes. So I decided to throw them "all" together and make a soup. I happened to have half a loaf of bread left over from yesterday and a few cheeses so I figured we could manage.

Oh and I forgot to mention it was day 2 of the girls musical performance so I only had ... yes, you guessed it, 30 minutes to prepare dinner. When we picked up the girls their first question (as always) was "what are we having for dinner?". They were not too happy when I said soup and bread.

I pretty much grew up eating soup. My mum's soup is famous! I remember my aunt, uncle and cousins coming to visit one evening and they joined us for dinner quite sporadically. My mum made soup and my aunt asked my mum what she put in it because it was delicious. The reason that this stuck in my mind was that my mum made the soup from the beans left over from lunch! Actually whatever was left over from lunch went into the pot together with onions, garlic, water and a vegetable cube. It was then boiled, put in the liquidizer and served with bread and butter. Hmmm delicious... if you only knew! Okay that's not to say that my mum didn't make soups from scratch. She did that all the time, with spinach soup being our all time favourite. Always made with organically grown spinach, freshly plucked from the back garden. And in case you are wondering left over soups really do taste good, depending on what was left over of course!

Serves 4; Preparation time 30 mins.

Ingredients:

3 tbsp.	Olive Oil
1 small	Onion
2 cloves	Garlic
500 g	Butternut squash or Pumpkin
250 g	Potatoes
750 ml	Water
1	Vegetable cube
12 stems	Thyme
	Salt & Pepper

Method:

Soup is ultra easy to make. First peel the pumpkin and potatoes and then cube them. The smaller the better because they will cook quicker and be easier to pulverize at the end. Also dice the onion and the garlic.

Then take a large saucepan and heat it on high. Throw in the oil, onions and garlic and stir fry until soft. Around 1-2 minutes. Then add the pumpkin and potatoes and mix it well. Let it fry for 5 minutes or so, stirring to make sure it doesn't stick to the bottom of the pan and burn. 

Add the water, vegetable cube, salt and pepper stir it all up, put the lid on and let it boil. Reduce the heat as necessary. 

Now I have this thyme plant left over from making the caramelized leek quiche so I decided to put some of that in too. But I really could not be bothered with picking the leaves off so I just took around 12 stems of about 7 - 8 cm length and chopped them up. I picked out a few of the harder stems once I was done chopping and threw the rest of the leaves into the bubbling pot.

The vegetables didn't have to boil for more than 10 minutes and they were done. I then pulled out my Kenwood stick mixer (Stab or Bamix depending on where you live and your age!), stuck it in the pot and mashed everything up. If you want a lumpy soup you can just use a potato masher. If you only have a liquidizer your in for bad luck because you can't put hot liquid in a traditional liquidizer. Actually there is a way around it. If you prepare the vegetables with a minimum amount of water you can then add cold water to them once they are cooked. This is usually cool enough to use in a liquidizer. However, afterwards you have to heat it up again. 

The girls just looked at the soup and said "what is it?" After I explained what was in it our oldest agreed to having one soup spoon full and the youngest demanded half a spoon. But half spoons don't exist (according to my husband) so she had to make do with a whole spoon. Then they tried it and couldn't get enough of it! I had to fight to have some left over so that I could pack it up as a school lunch for the next day!!! So it was successful (otherwise I would not be sharing it here, no?).

Half an Hour Vegetarian Linguini in Creamy Mushroom Sauce

I was not planning on cooking so many quick meals in a row. After all it was the weekend. Weekends usually equal a quick lunch and an elaborate dinner. But I totally forgot that the girls were performing this weekend and would be out of the house from 1 to 4.30 pm. This meant that us adults got some time together. And what a wonderful weekend it turned out to be with bright sunshine and warm air. On Saturday we visited a flea market and picked up some CD's, puzzles and books for the kids. Then we had a huge ice-cream and went shopping. But all this meant that there was only half an hour to get the dinner on the table by 5:30 pm! Good for you :)

So this was Saturday's dish. One I have not made for ages because the spaghetti is so cheap here and the linguini, which is called Tagliatelle here (and might be different), is so expensive (comparatively). If pasta is not readily available or extremely expensive then stay tuned and I'll post my favourite pasta recipe. It's easy to make but it increases the time needed to make this dish exponentially.

Serves 4 (if you have a hungry lot you might want to serve a quick green salad with it); Preparation time 30 mins.

Ingredients:

250 g	Linguini
2 tbsp.	Butter
1 small/medium	Onion
2 large cloves	Garlic
500 g	Mushrooms
1	Red bell pepper
2 tbsp.	White wine
250 ml	Whipping cream
1/2 cup	Grated parmesan
	Salt & Pepper

Method: 

I first put a large pot of water on the stove to boil. If you want to speed up the process put a little bit of water in the pot on the stove and while this is heating up boil the rest of the water in a kettle. Once the water boils add it to the pot. I use this method when I'm in a real hurry!

After putting the water to boil I peeled the onion and sliced it and then peeled and finely chopped the garlic. 

Then I washed the mushrooms and sliced them rather thin (<1 cm). 

For the red pepper I used some frozen char broiled peppers, but you can use a regular red pepper instead or leave it out altogether. If you are using fresh pepper now is the time to wash and cut it. Next I took a large wok and melted the butter on medium heat. Once it was melted I put in the onion and the garlic and fried it for about 1 minute. Then I added the mushrooms (add the bell pepper if you are using a fresh one) and fried them until they were fully cooked. 

At some point during all this the water for the pasta boiled and I threw the Linguini into the boiling water. I then brought the water back to boiling point, stirred the noodles so that they didn't stick to each other and then set the timer according to the recommendations on the packet. I always use a timer with pasta. Hubby does not like over cooked pasta it has to be just right! 

Once the mushrooms were cooked I added the char broiled peppers and increased the heat to high. Then I added the wine. I actually don't like alcohol and that's why I increased the temperature to high. This way the alcohol will all burn off leaving just the taste of the white wine. I'm always careful not to inhale the fumes otherwise I would be drunk before dinner! 

Once the alcohol has evaporated the rest of the ingredients are added. The sauce is then done and if you are lucky your pasta will be done too. 

I always drain my pasta and wash it under cold water so that it doesn't stick together. Then I added it to the sauce and mixed it all up, tasting for salt and pepper and adding accordingly.

And I forgot to say that I happened to have spinach tagliatelle so that's why my noodles are green. 

Serve immediately! Does not reheat well.

Half an Hour Vegetarian Stir Fry (Chinese)

My husband read my previous post and came home expecting a European stir fry (although I'm not quite sure what that would look like!). Unfortunate for him it turned out to be Chinese style :( But it still hit the spot.

So I decided to do this right and I set my kitchen timer to 30 minutes to make sure that it truly took half an hour. I must admit that together with setting things up to be photographed and taking the photographs half an hour is really stressful. But at least this time I managed it!

What I love about stir frying is that the cooking is done really quickly and you can use almost any vegetable you have at home. The down side is that all the chopping and cleaning of the vegetables takes a while. In keeping with my promise to have adequate protein in these meals I went out and bought some fresh tofu. We have this awesome Asian store just down the road from us that sells super fresh tofu. The tofu sits in a big blue basin of water in the fridge and is packed in a little bag for you to take home. The stuff doesn't last more than 3 days but it sure beats the vacuum packed type. And all that for just 1 Euro 10!! My mother-in-law frequently asks me to bring a stack when I go to visit. According to her it's the cheapest tofu around (okay that was when in cost only 90 cents!).

So here goes:

Serves around 8; preparation time: 30 mins!

Ingredients:

??	Jasmine rice
2 tbsp.	Oil
1	Onion
3 cloves	Garlic
6 slices	Ginger
3	Carrots
1 small	European eggplant
250 g	Mushrooms
1 block	Tofu
1 cup	Shitake mushrooms
2 cups	Chopped napa
3 tbsp.	Soya sauce
3 tbsp.	Corn starch
1 cup	Water
1	Vegetable cube
	Salt & Pepper
2 cups	Bean Sprouts

Method:

The very first thing you need to think about is whether you are going to use dried Shitake mushrooms or fresh ones. If you are then you have to soak them ahead of time. Anywhere between 24 hours and 30 minutes would do. Wash them first and then pour boiling water over them. Make sure every one is covered and then forget about them. Of course alternatively you could use fresh Shitake mushrooms but they are way more expensive and harder to get. We use the dried ones for three reasons. The first two are above and the third one is that I don't like the taste of fresh Shitake mushrooms!!

So first of all you need to cook the rice. With a bit of luck you have a rice cooker to do this. So you just have to figure out how much rice your family will eat and then throw it in there. I think we all pretty much know how much will be consumed. My family eats between 1 to 1.5 rice cooker cups of raw rice and they all dislike reheated rice so I try to guess if it's going to be a 1 cup day or a 1.5 cup day.

Once the rice is set to cook it's time to get busy with the washing and the chopping. First peel and cut the onion into 2 cm dice. Yes, I like the onions in my stir fry to be big just like in the tacky Chinese restaurants! Then peel and mince the garlic and slice the ginger. I slice my ginger very, very thin.

Next up are the carrots which have to be washed, peeled and then sliced. The thinner the slices the quicker it will cook and the longer it will take to chop. It's a bit of a trade off. 5 mm is probably optimum. Next wash and dice (1.5 cm) the eggplant. I'm in Germany, so I get Italian eggplant. It's large and fluffy and that's why I say use a small one. If I were to use a Chinese, Japanese or Sri Lankan eggplant I would just use a regular sized one.

Finally, wash and quarter the mushrooms. As you can see I used button mushrooms. If you are in SL you can use oyster mushrooms. They need to be super fresh and you don't have to cut them too small. Just keep in mind that oyster mushrooms lose a lot more water so you should probably reduce the added water to around 1/2 cup.

For this stir fry I used the largest wok that I own. Okay, it's not humongous but it's pretty big. There are a lot of vegetables here and before they are fully cooked they take up a lot of space. So the wok gets heated up and then the oil goes in. I used to put the oil in the wok and then heat the pan, but my father-in-law does it this way and he owned his own Chinese restaurant so... go figure! I later found out that the cold oil prevents things from sticking to the pan!

Put the oil in the wok and then the onions, garlic and ginger and stir fry for around 1 minute. [While it's frying take out your tofu and dice it into 2 cm pieces]. Then add the carrots to the onion mix and stir it well. Carrots take the longest so they go in first. Make sure you stir it and cook for 1-2 minutes during which time you can finish off chopping the tofu.

Next in go the eggplant and the mushrooms and that gets stir fried too. While you are stir frying you can cut up your shitake mushrooms. Since I use the dried variety I had to remove the stems and cut the caps into halves. How you cut the caps will depend on how large they are. Mine were really, really small. Taking the stems off takes forever but luckily the vegetables now need to cook a bit.

Once you are done with the shitake mushrooms then chop and wash the nappa, which is also known as Chinese cabbage. Throw this, the tofu and the mushrooms into the pan and stir it all up.

Now comes the sauce. Well I'm a bit lazy when it comes to sauces. I don't like to dirty an extra bowl to mix the sauce unless it is really necessary. So I just pour the sauces into the saucepan. I was running out of time because my vegetables were on the verge of being over cooked so there was no time to mix and photograph, so the sauces went directly into the pan. Pour in the soya sauce and then mix the corn starch with the cold water and pour this into the pan. Crush up the vegetable cube and sprinkle it on top. Then mix it all up. Now my family likes it's gravy so you'll find that this is a bit of a gravy heavy stir fry. The amount of gravy is adjustable, you just have to add less water. If you want a thicker gravy then once the water and corn starch has boiled take out a bit of the gravy from the pan, mix in some more corn starch and add it back into the pan. Make sure you allow it to boil because only then will the starch thicken the sauce.

Finally, while you let all the juices absorb and the tastes combine, quickly wash the bean sprouts and throw them in. I like to add them right at the end so that they are still crunchy when they are served. Oh and don't forget to season with salt and pepper. I almost always don't have enough salt in my cooking!! Generally I just forget about it. I've been trying really hard lately to remember to put enough salt but unless my recipe says "1 tsp. salt" I just sprinkle some in and hope for the best. I guess less salt is better than too much!

Serve pipping hot with the rice.

Vegetarian meals in half an hour

Germany is definitely a meat eating country if ever there was one. Even today, you will be hard pressed to find a decent vegetarian meal in a traditional German restaurant. Around 10 years ago it was hard to find ANY vegetarian food here, but things have changed radically since then. So much so that people seem to feel bad when I tell them that we are vegetarian. The typical response I get is "we don't eat that much meat either, only twice or thrice a week. My husband is a heavy meat eater so we have to have some meat". Well I don't expect everyone else to be vegetarian and I certainly don't judge you differently if you eat meat. For our family the choice is personal and not dependent on health or religion. 

A full vegetarian meal: Not cooked in half an hour!

Another common response that I get is that it just takes so long to cook vegetarian food. And it is this statement that inspired me to write a series of posts with vegetarian meals you can cook in half an hour, that are protein rich and taste good. 

Peanut dip with toast and deep fried tofu

As you can imagine these are not going to be gourmet meals. They can't be. Any quick meal, even if it contains meat, cannot be gourmet if it's been cooked in half an hour. Meat has to be marinaded and you still have to cook some starch to accompany it. 

Hummus: A firm favourite!

Don't expect these meals to be vegan! We eat eggs over here and depend a lot on cream and cheese. In my view the best vegan food in the world is Sri Lankan food!

Lumpreis: No it's not supposed to be cooked in half an hour but it is vegan!

Happy vegetarian cooking and stay tuned to discover how easy it is to cook vegetarian food. I'll see you tomorrow with a vegetarian stir fry.