Moorish Vegan Moussaka

One of my favourite dishes is Vegetarian Moussaka, with its savoury morrocon aromas, juicy layered vegetables, soft potato and thick creamy topping making it a satisfying comfort-feast that even the most voracious carnivore wouldn't turn their nose up at on a cold winter's night.

The challenge I set myself today was to recreate the classic Moussaka using only Vegan ingredients, meaning no yoghurt, cheese or milk - i.e. everything that makes the Moussaka different and more than just a simple vegetable bake!

Moorish Vegan Moussaka

Ingredients:

• 1 Medium or 1/2 a large Onion (50g), chopped
• 1 Aubergine (275g), sliced lengthways
• 3-4 Cloves of Garlic, minced
• 3 Medium Potatoes (250g) - I used organic ones
• (125g Green Bell Pepper - I put this in but it didn't really add anything so will probably leave it out next time)
• 75g Baby Button Mushrooms
• 400g Chopped Tomatoes
• 2 Fresh Tomatoes
• 150g Vegan Mince (I used Granose, 25g soaked for 1 min in boiling water, but think Frozen Quorn Mince would actually be better for this dish)
• 600g Vegan 'Cheese' Sauce or White Sauce (I made 300g using 3 tsp 'Cheese' Sauce Powder reconstituted using 250 ml Unsweetened Soya Milk, which worked fine, but there wasn't enough to cover the Moussaka!)
• 200g Soya Plain 'Yoghurt' Substitute (I used 150g Alpro Plain Yoghurt, mixed with a bit of fresh Coriander to neutralise the vanilla taste, but again there wasn't enough!)
• 10g Vegan 'Parmesan' or sprinkly 'cheese' - optional (I would actually leave this off next time as the sauce was delicious enough anyway)
• 1 dried chilli
• 1 tsp/ 5ml Ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp/ 2.5ml Ground Nutmeg + another tsp/ 5ml for the Sauce
• Sprig of fresh Mint (or dried mint if you don't have any)
• Sprig of fresh Coriander (dried if you must)
• 1 tablespoon of salt (to salt the Aubergine and Courgette, rinsed off again before baking)

Method:

1. Put potatoes on to boil in a pan.
2. Cut the Aubergine and Courgette lengthwise into strips and layer them in a bowl with salt springled between each strip. Put to one side.
3. Put the Onion and Chilli in a frying pan on a low heat with a little oil or frying spray.
4. Mince the Garlic and Slice the Mushrooms, and add to the frying pan along with the Mince once the Onion has softened a bit. Stir and continue to cook on a low heat until the Mushrooms are a bit soft.
5. Add the Chopped Tomatoes, Cinammon and 1/2 tsp Nutmeg to the frying pan. Turn the heat up to medium and keep simmering and stirring.
6. Take the potatoes off the boil and drain. Slice them into strips and line them up in the bottom of a square baking tin or casserole dish.
7. Rinse the courgette and aubergine under cold water to get rid of the salt. Drain.
8. Layer the aubergine strips over the potato in the baking tin.
9. Take the Mince/Tomato in the frying pan off the heat and spread half over the aubergine.
10. Layer the courgette over the top.
11. Slice the two tomatoes and distribute over the courgette.
12. Cover with the rest of the Tomato/Mince mixture.
13. In a bowl, mix the Soya Plain Yoghurt substitute with the fresh Coriander and Mint. Dollop or spoon evenly over the Moussaka, depending on your preference.
14. In a thick-bottomed pan, make a Vegan white sauce, adding the rest of the ground Nutmeg. I used a ready-made 'cheese' sauce mix, but you could just use some flour, Vegan marg and Unsweetened Soya Milk.
15. Pour over the top of the Moussaka.
16. Bake for 40-50 mins (I cooked mine for 30-35 mins but I don't think it was long enough as the vegetables were a bit chewy - but the topping was perfect, and I have a feeling it might get a little bit too crispy if it was left longer. Because of this I think next time I will experiment with baking the Moussaka without the sauce for 10-20 mins and then adding it later.)

Hand-Baked Wholewheat Vegan Pretzels

My biggest triumph so far in the world of Vegan cookery, I made these today for lunch using inspiration from two recipes I found on the internet: Divya Dil Se's Pretzels and Kathy Roy's Vegan Soft Pretzels.

Ingredients:

• 3 Cups/ 275g Plain Wholewheat Flour (I used Allinson’s)
• 2 tsp/ 10 ml Dry Active Yeast (I used Allinson’s Dry Active Yeast Granules, designed for hand baking)
• 2 tsp/ 10 ml sugar
• 1 ½ tsp/ 7.5 ml salt
• 1 Cup/ 100 ml Luke-warm Water + another 1/4 Cup
• 1/2 Cup/ 50 ml Hot Water
• 1 ½ tsp/ 7.5 ml Baking Soda

Method:

1. Dissolve the 2 tsp Dry Active Yeast and 2 tsp Sugar in a small bowl with 1 Cup of Luke-warm Water and leave for a little longer than 10 mins, or until it starts to go a bit foamy.
2. Put the Flour in a large mixing bowl, and gradually pour in the foamy yeast mixture, while stirring.
3. If the mixture seems a bit dry, you can add a bit more warm water - but make sure it's not too sticky! Bear in mind it will naturally become a bit moister once the yeast gets to work.
4. Knead the dough for about 7 minutes. There's no great technique to this, just get stuck in and scrunch and stretch the dough in your hands while turning it around. You'll notice the dough getting stretchier and smoother.
5. Lightly oil the surface of another mixing bowl and transfer the dough across in a ball, turning it around so that it gets competely coated. (You can use whichever oil you prefer for this, but I just spray the bowl with "Fry Light" - how I love that stuff! It's so versatile and cuts out needless hydrogenated fat).
6. Cover the bowl with celophane and leave for an hour or until the dough ball has grown to twice its size.











7. Preheat the oven to 230°C/ 450°F/ Gas Mark 8.
8. Prepare a safe, floured surface to one side. Then remove the celophane from the bowl of dough and pull off small chunks  about the size of your palm, stretching them one by one into long thin snakes. The best way I found of doing this was to flour my hands and squidge and pull the dough alternately until it was long enough. Line the thin pieces of dough up on the floured surface to one side.
9. Boil 1/2 a cup's worth or 50 ml of hot water and pour into a bowl with the 1 1/2 tsp/ 7.5 ml of baking soda, stirring to make a Soda Bath.
10. Grease two baking trays ready to put the pretzels on (again, I use a sheet of foil sprayed with "Fry Light").
11. Shape each long piece of dough into a pretzel shape, dip into the Soda Bath and let the water drip off a bit while reshaping, and place on the baking tray.
12. Sprinkle pretzels with salt and bake for around 8-10 mins.

Mmmmmmm!

Took a while to get the hang of the shape!

Even the malformed ones tasted yummy :)

Herb Scones

As promised, here is the recipe for my Herb Scones, which I made to go with the Chick Pea Curry - although actually, they'd probably go better with soup.

I adapted these from a recipe I found in the Mornflake Oat Cookbook. By the way, you will notice that a lot of books I reference are from the '80s - this is because I am raiding my Mum's recipe library from when my parents were vegetarian! Aside from the blandness and terrible pictures (they had really odd ideas about food presentation then, like wrapping cabbage leaves around things and serving soup inside carved-out melons) there are the seeds of some amazing dishes just waiting to be reinvented with a bit of modern zest - not to mention products like Quorn and dairy substitutes like that weren't around then. Oh yes, veganism has come a long way since the days when you'd just chuck a few chunks of tofu into a salad and call it 'feta'...

Anyway, despite the good-looking recipe, which uses oats as well as wholemeal flour, I wasn't that impressed with these scones. I tried making them twice, and although both times they were quite nice in a plain, homely sort of way to have on the side of your plate, they weren't anything special. I did discover afterwards that I had accidentally used baking powder instead of baking soda, so that may have had something to do with it, but I'm skeptical that this could have made such a significant difference to the taste.

But I promised I would post and document my experiments, so here goes:

Herb Scone Recipe

Ingredients:

• 75g Wholewheat Flour
• 25g Oat Flour (I made this myself by whizzing up some Scottish Porridge Oats in the blender. Not sure if this was the right method or the right kind of oats though!)
• 1 tsp/ 5ml Baking Soda
• 1 tsp/ 5ml Salt
• 1 tablespoon Fresh Chopped Herbs of your choice (I used Coriander) - or you could use dried herbs if you're stuck. Dried chives or mustard seeds might also be good.
• 40g Vegan Margarine Substitute (I use Vitalite)
• 75 ml Unsweetened Soya Milk (I used Sainsbury's)

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 230°C/ 450°F/ Gas Mark 8.
2. Put the Wholewheat Flour, Oat Flour, Baking Soda and Salt in a bowl and mix.
3. Add the Vegan Marg and rub into the flour mixture until it resembles breadcrumbs (if you don't like getting marg all over your fingers and the feeling of the pastry going under your nails, you might want to use the 'two-fork' method - where instead of using your hands, you 'chop' the margerine into the flour using the forks).
4. Add the herbs and mix them lightly into the breadcrumb-like mixture.
5. Measure out the soya milk into a small jug or cup, and start to add it slowly while stirring until a soft dough is formed. Try to stop before the dough starts getting sticky - you don't have to use it all up!
6. On a lightly-floured surface, roll out the dough until it's about 1.5 cm thick and cut into rounds using a 5-cm pastry cutter - or you can just pull blobs off and flatten them into scone-ish shapes.
7. Place the scones onto a greased baking tray (I use a piece of tin foil sprayed with 'Fry Light'), brush them with the remaining soya milk or some extra marg and bake for around 10 mins. 

Chick Pea Curry

For my first conscious attempt at preparing a fully Vegan supper, I decided to try a Chick Pea Curry adapted from an old Sainsbury Cookbook by Wendy Godfrey. I had around 8 oz dried Chick Peas already in the cupboard that I wanted to use up, so I soaked these for 3 hours in boiling water left to cool (I know it says you're supposed to soak them overnight but I guessed if I used boiling water and then cooked them for longer later on they'd be ok). Because this didn't really give enough Chick Peas for the recipe, I supplemented them later with a 410g can (drained weight 240g) of Waitrose Essential Chick Peas in Water. Anyway, to make it simpler for others to follow I've just put it down in the recipe as 2 cans of Chick Peas, or 400g/16 oz dried Chick Peas - either should work fine!

The original recipe also didn't seem to have enough stuff in it to make a really satisfying main meal, so I improvised a bit by adding some fried courgette and mushrooms to the mix.

Unfortunately I didn't take pictures, so you'll just have to imagine or wait until you make your own to see!:


Chick Pea Curry Recipe

Ingredients:

• 2 Cans of Chick Peas in Water (drained), or 400g/16 oz dried Chick Peas (don't worry if you don't have exactly this amount, it will still work fine)

• 400g/ 16oz Chopped Tomatoes

• 50g/ 2oz Closed Cap Mushrooms (just to give a bit of extra flavour)

• 150g/ 5oz Courgettes (2 Small/Medium or 1 Large one), Sliced

• Juice of 1 Lemon

• 1 Large Onion (150g/ 5oz), Peeled and Quartered

• 3-4 Cloves of Garlic, Peeled

• 1 Small Chilli - dried or fresh - Chopped
  

• 1 tsp/ 5ml Paprika

• 1 tsp/ 5ml Ground Coriander

• 1 tsp/ 5ml Oregano

• A few Cardamoms (I used 5)

• Very small amount of Oil/Vegan Marg/Spray for frying (I use 'Fry Light')
  

• If you're feeling fancy, a sprig of fresh coriander to garnish wouldn't go amis!

Method:

First of all, if using dried Chick Peas, you will need to soak these overnight in a bowl of water (just enough to cover) with a tsp/ 5ml of Baking Soda (you can miss out the soda if you want).

1. Drain and rinse the Chick Peas using a collander, and put them in a large pan with a kettle-full of boiling water (I always use the kettle to boil water for cooking as it's quicker and more efficient).


2. Hard boil the Chick Peas for 10 mins, then turn down the heat to simmer. Put a lid on the pan to keep the heat in and stop the water evapourating too fast.


3. Meanwhile, put the Onion, Garlic, Chopped Tomatoes, Lemon Juice, Ground Coriander, Paprika, Oregano and Cardamoms in a blender. You can blend them straight away or leave that till after the next step.


4. In a non-stick frying pan, put the Chili, sliced Courgette and Mushrooms with a little Vegan marg substitute or spray (I use 'Fry Light') and turn onto a low heat. Meanwhile remember to give the Chick Peas a stir and check they have enough water! I almost burnt mine to the bottom of the pan because I forgot...


5. When the mushrooms and courgette have started to soften, add the blended ingredients to the frying pan and stir in. Leave to bubble on a low heat, maybe with a lid over the pan. (This is a good point to consider throwing together a quick salad or putting on some other veggies to boil as a side-dish - I just steamed some spinach to go with mine). You can switch off the hob under the Chick Peas, as the residual heat of the water should be enough to finish cooking them.


6. Keep stiring the Tomato Sauce/Mushroom/Courgette mix in the frying pan every so often. Then after about 10 - 15 minutes, drain the Chick Peas in a collander over the sink. Return the drained Chick Peas to the saucepan and pour over the Tomato Sauce and veggies from the frying pan, then put back onto a low heat and mix for a couple more minutes. Et Voila!


7. Serve and garnish with sprigs of fresh coriander if so desired.
   

The original recipe said it served 6 but ours went down among 3 with no problem! Although we were pretty stuffed afterwards, so on balance I'd say this makes around 4 good-sized servings. Also bear in mind I served the curry as the main component of a meal with only some spinach, a salad and homemade Herb Scones (recipe to follow) as accompaniments, but if you served it more traditionally with rice it would probably go round a lot more plates!

The whole recipe as given above minus any side-dishes or accompaniments comes in at around 800-900 calories, is very nutritions and full of protein and, depending on which oil/marg you use to fry the veggies, is very low in saturated fat if not practically fat free! Divide by 4 and it gives around 200-250 calories per serving.

Enjoy :)