Flan

This is an experiment I've been meaning to try for a long time.

Anyone who's ever been to Spain when they weren't a vegan will remember trying Flan, an egg custard set on a bitter caramel base so that after a while chilling the caramel melts and makes a sauce that coats the pudding when it is unmoulded.



This simple pudding is a 'custard' made from soya milk, vanilla, sugar and agar set in a ramekin containing some sugar melted to form a hard caramel. As the pudding chills the same transformation takes place and the end result is a light cool smooth pudding glazed with caramel and utterly delicious.

Student cooking

Not been feeling too well today, maybe sunstroke from yesterday's unexpected heat wave or maybe just a migraine, anyway, this evening I'm only interested in simple and starchy so student style cookery is the order of the day.

I give you Pasta Slop, a sauce of onions, peppers, tinned tomatoes, tinned red kidney beans and a big spoonful of pistou for basil seasoning. There would have been black pepper as well but I couldn't find it. Essential vegan condiment: Marigold Nutritional Yeast flakes unobtainable in France as far as I know but regularly stocked up for me by visitors. Enjoy.

Salad Day

After yesterday's heavy on the fried food list today I thought I'd better try harder to get my five-a-day fruit and veg in today.



Greek country salad, or nearly anyway as I've substituted toasted hazelnuts for the feta cheese and I'm not sure if the Greeks grow mâche. Even if they don't I'm sure they'd enjoy it as they make use of huge range of green leafy plants. To serve with it, tzatziki, soya yoghurt with cucumber, garlic and mint stirred in and some slightly stale bread for that truly nostalgic memory of holidays past.

What I ate on ... Bastille Day

For breakfast a chip butty with ketchup.



Lunch was a soya yoghurt with cherry jam.



For tea I had an open sandwich of peanut butter and banana.



My aperitif was a Pastis with a handful of pretzel sticks.



Dinner, seared tofu with blackened french beans and rice in a spicy sauce.



The day is not yet over but I'm fighting with computers, so will probably be finished with a big drink, later.

Convenience

After all the effort I made to do my chores today I had no energy left for inventive cookery. So tonight's meal is another ready made burger, saved from total disinterest by the addition of freshly picked potatoes. This burger is made by Bio Express and is their Bulgar, Quinoa and Tomato Flavoured version. It's o.k.



The potatoes are better though and I've cooked enough to make a fried breakfast with the leftovers tomorrow.

The strange stuff in the small bowl is some left over Store Cupboard Salad that I made for lunch, using some of that Ebly pre-cooked wheat, some tinned sweetcorn, beetroot, onion and chili pepper rings dressed with lemon juice and soy sauce. Rather odd but quite tasty.

Green

Green Almonds

I've never had the chance to try green almonds before so when I found these in the SuperU grabbed them quickly even though they were 4 euro a kilo and I wasn't sure what to do with them.

But it's easy enough, fight your way carefully past the furry green shell and split the case and the fresh white almond is revealed. It was hard not to eat them as they were extracted, perfect food for passing time with and every delicious morsel all the nicer for the effort expended in obtaining it.

Still, a cook's mind is always looking for ways to use new ingredients. This simple salad of freshly shelled and peeled green almonds, some slivered, some left whole and mixed with the tiniest new green beans under a light dressing of a lemon vinaigrette seemed to capture the moment perfectly.

Désastre

Tonight I tried to recreate a favourite wheat berry salad using an easy cook Ebly wheat product. It was an accomplished disaster so I draw a veil and we'll return to that one sometime later when I have the proper ingredients.

Sigh.

Soup Dragon

This doesn't look as good as it tasted, steamy and green as it is with a swirl of soya cream, some croutons and a sprinkle of soya bacon bits.

It rather fails on the appropriateness for season also, a hearty pulse soup more suited to January than July but it's cold and rainy and I'm in need of comfort so naturally I turn to my favourite form of food solace.

So easy to make that it needs no recipe, an onion, a good handful of freshly dried split green peas (and by that I mean less than a year old or they'll never cook), some thyme all simmered together until completely soft, whizzed up to a velvety smoothness, seasoned and served with garnishes of choice.

Friends for dinner.

I love people but I couldn't eat a whole one so when we had two friends stay for the weekend a good deal of food was made and consumed instead. Here are a couple of example meals:



For a late breakfast brunch we had tomato salad and ackees, fleshy arils of the plant Blighia sapida, cooked with soya rashers, served with bread and salads.

This is a close up of the ackees, a Jamaican vegetable only available in Europe in tins. It looks a little like scrambled eggs and is fairly bland in taste so is normally paired off with something a little salty and piquant. In Jamaica salt fish or bacon is used, for vegans smokey soya rashers or smoked tofu are good substitutes for these.



For dinner, we harvested the first tiny courgettes to create a courgette tart flavoured with herbs, served with a warm salad of lentils and mushrooms in a red wine vinaigrette and some of the freshly dug new potatoes from the garden. With it we had a lovely bottle of Champagne followed by an excellent Haut-Medoc, wines considerably better than those we normally drink which added to the festive nature of the meal.

Hungry?

No food blog for a while; I have still been eating, mostly tofu and aubergine but not necessarily in the same dishes.

Tonight I plan to make a meal based around baby artichoke hearts but I'm not sure what it's going to be...

Normal service will be resumed shortly.