Vegan Breakfast Roll

I'm not sure how widespread this is, but in Ireland breakfast rolls are quite popular. There was even a song about it that was somewhat popular. Normally they're filled with bacon, sausages and pudding. Maybe eggs. So it's a hash brown and ketchup roll for anyone following a vegan diet. That's nothing to turn your nose at, it's actually pretty good. But I thought I'd try a fancier one.

 

This is beautiful! It consists of; Fried Cabbage (with Frank's Hot Sauce & Nutritional Yeast), Linda McCartney Veggie Sausages, Sliced Cooked Beetroot, Tomato Relish, and Lovage, served in a baguette. A great way to start a day. If you're not in a rush.

- Dara

Spinach and Sun-dried Tomato Pancakes

I'm not sure what the tradition is in non-Catholic countries, but in Ireland people traditionally give up things for Lent (the 40-days before Easter) usually food products they enjoy. And so I assume that's where Pancake Tuesday comes from - people using up all their nice cupboard items the day before Lent (butter, eggs, sugar), and coming up with pancakes. Of course, in our consumer age, people go out and buy new ingredients or ready-made pancake mixtures, forgetting that such inventions originally came out of necessity or practicality.

When making vegan pancakes, there isn't really a whole lot to use up. No butter or eggs, and since I'm avoiding refined sugar there's none of that either. I did have a whole bag of baby spinach to use up though. And some white cabbage and stray bits of veg. So, I decided I'd make Spinach Pancakes.

First I blended the spinach with some sun-dried tomatoes and oat milk in a bowl (water is also fine - I used oat milk I made by blending oats and water - simple!). Then I added some wholemeal flour and some solid oats for texture. You want a nice sloppy consistency, so it'll spread on the pan. I fried up my pancakes and kept them warm in the oven, then served them with a sort of creamy topping, made thusly:

I fried up some cabbage, garlic, a bit of onion and some capers. As I went along I threw in some spinach I had left, as well as a bucket-load of nutritional yeast and Frank's Hot Sauce. Also, more sun-dried tomatoes and the oil that they come in. The nutritional yeast makes a nice creamy sauce with the oil (I normally add it late in the cooking process as heating it too high can kill off some of the vitamins it contains). I also threw in good few spoonfuls of soy yoghurt and grated a small amount of carrot in, but that's just what I had at hand. Any small amounts of tasty veg will go nicely in this. Throw a generous helping of the sauce on top of the pancakes and dress with some grated carrot, capers, spring onion and a sun-dried tomato.

Get it into ya.

- Dara

Caramelised Onion, Cabbage and Mushroom on Toast

An excellent brunch!

Thinly sliced onions were fried in a bit of sunflower oil, with a teaspoon of molasses sugar and a pinch of salt. When they were caramelised I added thinly sliced cabbage, then when that was cooked I added sliced mushrooms. That's really all there was to it. Well worth trying, and an excellent way of using up the ubiquitous cabbage in the veg box.

Cabbage Bake

That Christmas Eve skipping haul I posted a while ago went a long way. I made some nice dishes from it, though I think I've had enough of dairy again for a while (then again I may skip a wheel of cheese next, so who knows). This recipe has some superfluous cheese, but apart from that it's delicious and vegan and entirely from the skip (condiments and seeds aside).

So, I chopped up the entire head, steamed it for a bit, then fried it up in a pot with some chopped garlic and oil. I added lots of sesame seeds, some Frank's Hot sauce (we don't work for them, really), tomato puree, and black pepper. The mixture was delicious and vegan just like that, but I went one step further, as I had cheese to use.

I put the mixture in a baking dish, used my last few slices of (at this stage extra mature) cheese, and stuck it in the oven. I served it with some garlic bread and (purchased!) veggie sausages. It was one of the nicest things I've created in a while, and I sort of regretted using the cheese as it would have been just lovely without it. But I don't regret it that much.

- Dara

Skipping Christmas

I've been doing a good bit of skipping these days, or dumpster-diving as the Americans call it, somewhat less pleasantly. To those who have not tried it, I would highly recommend it. It's essentially reclaiming often-perfect food from going to waste, usually from a skip out the back of a supermarket or shop. I'm at home in Ireland currently and haven't really done much since I came home for Christmas. So, at 11pm on Christmas Eve I decided I must go and see what my hometown had to offer. I dragged my brother (and his car) along with me and soon hit the jackpot out the back of the big, evil, British supermarket chain. You know, the blue one, starts with a T. Anyway, this is what we took home, but we could have taken twenty times this amount and fed the entire town for Christmas dinner. But we didn't, we just took what we could use and carry.

      (I even found a chocolate bunny, but that didn't make it into the picture. )

Skipping is my favorite way to scavenge for food. It sure beats shopping, which I really hate and need money for. You don't have to queue, worry about prices, fair trade, ethics, animal treatment, the carbon footprint of your food - it's all rotting in a bin, so anything you take and use can only be positive. You're not supporting any unsustainable or cruel industries, in fact you're feeding off the waste they're causing. It's beautiful.

Though there is a stigma when people first hear about skipping. Like my brother said, 'You imagine someone eating a half-eaten pizza from a dirty bin,' like in those (American) movies. But it's really not like that at all. Often supermarkets are quite meticulous in their binning of foods, double- and triple-bagging goods. Heaven forbid, even the bin should be a mess. And everything's wrapped in plastic these days, which is quite convenient. Even if you don't eat the food you take from the skip, you can compost it and recycle the packaging.

My favorite bit of it all is probably creatively using up the food. It's like 'Ready, Steady, Cook'. Work with the ingredients you've got. In fact, I'm sure that could be a good show: 'Ready, Steady, Skip'. Someone may have suggested that to me before (Webby, was it you?). If no one claims it I'll take full credit for the idea.

My next few entries will concern using these ingredients to make some creative veggie dishes (and even the Christmas hams were used up on the day by the non-veggies in the house). More to come!

- Dara