Jerk Pulled “Pork” with Banana Salsa & Peach Cobbler Pudding

August 30, 2015 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

This was a bit off the cuff. I just decided to take pictures of a two course meal I cooked my friends. The pictures therefore aren’t amazing, nor is there enough of them showing different elements. I’d like to apologise for that now. However, I couldn’t deny you this recipe because it was so damn good.

Ingredients

Salt

300 g brown sugar

4 cans of braised tofu

4 tbsp of jerk seasoning or hot fajita spice

A small glass of pineapple juice

50 g golden syrup

2 cans of black beans or pinto beans (Or a mix of both)

Lots of soft flour tortillas

Natural soya yoghurt (I just used one small pot)

3 medium bananas, not quite ripe, peeled and chopped

1 red onion, peeled and chopped

2 just ripe avocados

Juice of half a lemon

Juice of half a lime

Fresh coriander leaves, roughly chopped

Method

An hour before, mix the salt, sugar and drained tofu in a large bowl and leave to marinate.

Once the hour is up, mix in the jerk seasoning, pineapple and golden syrup into the bowl.

Place in a hot pan and stir occasionally until the liquid starts to evaporate. Then turn down to a low heat whilst you break apart the tofu into pulled strips.

Leave to slowly cook off the rest of the juices whilst you make your salsa,

Put the diced banana in a bowl with onion. Peel, chop and stone the avocado and add that too. Mix in the lemon, lime and coriander and you’re done.

Reheat your beans and warm up your tortillas and your done.

Check it out.

Serve with natural yoghurt for a cooling effect.

My friends had 3 each of these bad bois. I was stuffed after two.

When this has gone down you can serve your pudding. Obviously you would have had this prepared and in the oven before hand because you’re sensible like that right?

Being me, this is a super simple pudding and not too heavy on sugar.

Ingredients

2 tins of sliced peaches in juice

The zest of one lemon

2 tbsp golden syrup

140 g plain flour

50 g porridge oats

25 g cold vegan butter (I used vitalite.)

Method

Get your oven on at about 200 degrees.

Drain the peaches and reserve the juice. Tip them into a deep baking dish. Toss with the lemon rind and 1 tbsp golden syrup.

In a bowl, combine the oats, flour and butter. Add the remaining golden syrup and peach juice.

Mix with a spoon until you have a crumbly mixture.

Scatter over the peaches and bake for 30 minutes.

Serve with any leftover natural soya yoghurt you have.

I hope the pictures weren’t too bad and you have a rough idea of what I’m on about.

Enjoy. X

Cheesy Tofu Pie

July 29, 2015July 29, 2015 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

Traditionally in the UK the summer seems to only last a couple of weeks and then we have lots of rain and a few mild days before it gets cold again. Well at least for the past ten years anyway and they tell us the climate isn’t changing yet! This means we still get to have pies in the summer to keep us warm and fill us up.

I wouldn’t say this is a particularly healthy recipe, but it’s a lot better than it’s non-vegan counterpart.

The best thing about my recipes is that you don’t need anything fancy to make them work. All the ingredients should already be in your house or easily available.

Ingredients:

2 tins of braised tofu (I got mine from Holland & Barrett.)
1 onion, diced
1 clove of garlic, diced
2 bay leaves
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon of vegetable bouillon powder
Half a carton of passata
Water as needed
2 large potatoes
Half a block of Violife original cheese, grated
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast flakes
1 tablespoon Vitalite dairy free spread
2 large carrots, peeled and chopped

Method:

Get the oven on full whack.
Have a pan of salted water heating up to boil.
Fry the onion, garlic and carrots in an oven proof pan, for about three minutes.
Empty the contents of the tofu tin into the pan, including the juices. Break up the tofu into smaller pieces and allow everything to simmer for about two minutes.
Add the bay leaves, red wine vinegar and passata and turn down the heat. Allow to bubble gently for about 10 minutes until the carrots have softened.
Taste the mixture. Add salt and pepper if desired. Turn off the heat.
Slice the potatoes thinly and boil in salted water for 2 minutes. Drain and place back in the sauce pan where you mix in the Vitalite and any extra salt and pepper you require.
Place on top of the tofu mixture, layering if you need to. Cover in grated Violife and nutritional yeast.
Put in the oven, in the oven proof pan for approximately 15 minutes or until the top has a nice crunch.

Enjoy on it’s own or with some steamed vegetables. It’s very filling!

Vegan Poached Egg

April 14, 2015April 14, 2015 / Frankie Mouche / 2 Comments

As someone who has been vegan for near on a decade, I’ve never really missed eggs. It’s only because a newbie vegan said they were missing them, that I even considered making them.

I can’t take all the credit for this. I got a lot of inspiration from the internet on ways to make this actually happen.

Also because of where I live, lots of fancy ingredients just aren’t available here. I wanted to make a poached egg any one, anywhere could make. I’m also unable to eat the Vegg due to production methods. (Made in the same factory as crustacean products which I am allergic to.) With that in mind, here are the ingredients for the yolk:

120 ml water

1 teaspoon of vegetable stock powder

1 teaspoon of cornflour

1/2 a teaspoon of turmeric

2 tablespoons of nutritional yeast

1/2 a teaspoon of English mustard

1/2 a teaspoon American mustard

1 tablespoon of vegan butter (I used Vitalite.)

Blend everything in a food processor, except the butter and pour into a hot pan. Turn the heat off and melt the butter into the mix straight away. Drain into a small bowl and leave to cool.

Ingredients for the white:

600 g of firm silken tofu

3.5 tablespoons of arrowroot powder

2 teaspoons of vegan gelatine powder (I used vegan non-sweetened powder.)

1/4 teaspoon of salt. (If you can get black salt, even better.)

Blend all the ingredients until entirely smooth. Now get your poaching device and fill it with the white mixture. Make a well in the middle and fill with yolk. Depending on the size of your device, 1 or 2 heaped teaspoons. Cover the yolk with white until it isn’t visible and drop device into boiling water.

Cover the pan with a lid so the top is also cooked. (For about 15 minutes.)

The first egg was actually crap. Why? I put the yolk in whilst it was still warm.

The second one I thought I’d cracked (no pun intended) so I served it on spinach, maple bacon and an English muffin. It fell apart because I only cooked it for 8 minutes.

Then I made this little diamond. 15 minutes, gently simmered and lovingly turned onto a plate without breaking.

The yolk is thick and mustardy, just like a chicken’s egg. The white is soft but bouncy. It’s also not as fatty as an egg because you are not adding much fat, but it is still high in protein and B12.

I left some of the 6 I made, in the fridge and heated one up for later. Although it fell apart a bit, it was very tasty with a home grown herby freekah salad.

I hope this helps anyone craving chicken’s eggs as a new vegan and changes the lives of those of us long term vegans who never dreamed this would be possible.

(N.B I know it doesn’t look pretty. What do you want? A perfect vegan egg? Hahahahhaaha! 😛 )

Baked Lime Cheesecake

March 9, 2015 / Frankie Mouche / 3 Comments

Anyone who reads this blog will know there aren’t many sweet recipes on here. Why? I am simply rubbish at baking. Occasionally I hit a good recipe though and this is one of them. This is my take on a baked lime cheesecake.

As normal my adventures in baking are never pretty, but this one tastes amazing!

Ingredients:

1 pot of plain vegan cream cheese (I used Toffuti.)

The juice and zest of one lime.

Half a pack Hob Knob biscuits.

Half a mug of sugar (More if it’s to your taste.)

It’s that easy!

Method:

Get the oven on to heat up. About 200 degrees should do it.
Empty half a pack of hob knobs into a plastic food bag and tie up. Beat with a rolling pin until they form a fine crumb.
Spread your crumb in the dish you want to bake your cheesecake in. I used a small Victoria sponge tin.
Pour the remaining ingredients in your food processor and mix until a sweet paste has formed. Add more sugar and lime to taste. A drop of vanilla essence could also do wonders here.
Spread thickly over the biscuit base.
Bake for 45 minutes checking regularly to ensure it doesn’t burn.
Leave to cool then place in the fridge to set before serving.
Take to your newbie vegan friend’s house and show them that they can still have cheesecake. 😉

Serve with vegan ice cream to be extra naughty. 😉

Tomato Spaghetti With Smoky Bacon Tofu

January 27, 2015January 27, 2015 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

If you get this recipe right, it will literally be one of the best things you’ll ever eat. The sauce has been in the making for several years. I use it in all Italian dishes now. The smoky bacon tofu is spot on. It actually tastes like bacon when warm and ham when cold. I destroyed my kitchen in a hurricane of destruction getting the recipe right.

First of all I was just going to do the sauce recipe for you and totally cop out on the bacon by using chorizo.

I decided against it. I used chilled smoked tofu to make some seriously awesome bacon. 🙂

Ingredients:

2 white onions, peeled and chopped

1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped

1 tbsp red wine vinegar

1 tbsp sugar

2 tins of chopped tomatoes

1 tsp of chilli paste

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp oregano

Half a pack of wholewheat spaghetti

1 block of smoked, chilled tofu

Half a pot of paprika

1 tbsp salt (separate from previous salt.)

1 tbsp yeast extract

Method:

First of all get your pan on for the spaghetti. I am lucky enough to have a spaghetti pan. Fill with water and a dash of salt. Allow water to boil first if you don’t have a spaghetti pan. Otherwise throw it straight in.

Press the tofu. I’m not fancy. I use a large pot of sesame seeds and a sieve. Leave that pressing whilst you prepare the sauce.

Get the sauce going now. Fry off the onions, garlic and chilli for a few minutes until soft. Add the chopped tomatoes, red wine vinegar, salt, sugar and oregano mixing frequently and keeping on a low heat.

(A good tip for chilli is to go to the supermarket late at night and pick up a big bag that has been reduced to 9p. Blend and then pickle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar to get a lovely big jar of chilli paste you can spoon into multiple dishes.)

Get a frying pan on with a good amount of oil in it and your stove should look something similar to this.

Cut your drained tofu into pieces the size and thickness of your little finger. Pour the paprika and salt onto a chopping board and mix together with your hands. Place your yeast extract as a dollop on the side. One piece at a time, cover the tofu in salt and paprika. Then using your finger, smear yeast extract on both sides. Stick this in the pan and allow to brown for 2 minutes on each large side. Taste it as soon as it’s cool enough to put in your mouth. Does it taste like bacon? If the answer is yes, do the same with the rest. If the answer is no, add more yeast extract each time until the answer is yes. I went through quite a lot of tofu before I got this right. It’s not really an exact science unfortunately. One thing is true though, it bloody well tastes more like bacon than anything I have ever tasted since becoming vegan.

They should come out like this:

Not pretty I know, but don’t worry. Taste is what this dish is all about.

Drain your pasta and mix in with the sauce straight away. Sprinkle the top with your tofu bacon that you’ve now cut into cubes. (Do not mix the bacon through.)

Serve straight away or eat cold for lunch the next day.

The sweetness of the sauce should balance the smoky, salty flavour of the bacon.

I hope you enjoy this. I know it’s not the prettiest or the most comprehensive recipe in the world, but do you know what? The best ones never are.

Amy’s Breakfast Sandwich: A Product Review

October 2, 2014 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

I was scrolling through Facebook as you do and I came across a picture of this breakfast sandwich. Hallelujah! A lovely big juicy breakfast muffin with tons of flavour and certainly enough to fill you up. It turns out that I was deceived by clever marketing. The box is very well designed and about the size you’d expect a breakfast muffin box to be.

We don’t have a microwave in our house because we have no need for one so I followed the oven cooking instructions to the letter on the reverse of the pack. It came out like this:

It was absolutely tiny! I think my little sister might even struggle with that as a snack let alone a full breakfast. So it tasted amazing right? Nope!

The bread was chewy, the tofu flavourless and the sausage patty did not have nearly enough meatiness to it. There wasn’t even really that much sauce with it. It’s a good job I made a breakfast hash to go with it otherwise I’d have been starving!

I’ve seen some people raving about this new product and don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great that one is now on the market. It’s just a shame I think it tastes like cardboard and so will any non-vegan who tries it. Good try though Amy’s. I look forward to trying your other new products soon.

Whilst I personally didn’t enjoy it, people have different tastes. Try it and let me know what you think!

Score? 2/5

Jerk Tofu With Cucumber “Pesto” Salad

March 23, 2014 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

Sunday lunch has never really been traditionally British in the Queer Vegan household. We very rarely sit down to a plate full of roasted stuff covered in gravy and anyway, if we do it’s normally at the Toby Carvery accompanied by a beer. (We’re on quite a strict diet at the moment due to Tough Mudder training so that’s really not going to be happening.)

Today’s Sunday lunch was much more typical of what we would eat and a hell of a lot healthier too. This dish is ram packed with calcium, vitamin K, vitamin C and protein.

Ingredients:

Half a cucumber.
A large handful of baby leaf spinach.
Three cloves of garlic, crushed.
One tablespoon of pine nuts.
One tablespoon of sesame seeds.
One tablespoon of nutritional yeast.
One block of tofu, drained. (Place the tofu between two plates for about 30 minutes so that as much water as possible is pressed from the block.)
Two tablespoons jerk seasoning.
Two tablespoons breadcrumbs.
Two tablespoons vegetable oil.

Method:

Slice your drained tofu into your preferred shapes. (I like a rectangle shape personally.)
Mix the oil, breadcrumbs and jerk seasoning in a bowl. Then gently cover each piece of tofu with the mixture and place straight into a hot grill pan. (The ones with the ridges that give the tofu a char-grilled look.) Each side will take about five minutes.
In the meantime place the crushed garlic into a large bowl. Grate the cucumber and the spinach either manually (good luck) or use a food processor with the grater attachment. Place these in the bowl also.
Mix around with your hands so that the garlic infuses throughout the salad and then place onto a plate. (This amount should serve two.)
Now sprinkle the pine nuts, sesame seeds and nutritional yeast over the salad and add some dried chili flakes too. (Optional.)
By now the tofu should be cooked. Remove from the hot pan using a spatula and place on top of the salad.
GET THAT YUMMYNESS IN YOUR FACE!

What I Ate Sunday

February 16, 2014February 16, 2014 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

Today has been a really productive and non-stressful day and for the first time in what seems like forever, the sun was out. I woke up at around 07:15 but didn’t bother to get up until 08:30 due to having lots of snuggles of felines, a large white woof and a beardy man times. I left the bearded one in bed and made an epic smoothie, which subsequently I spoiled him with in bed.

This is a banana, mango, spinach, peanut butter and raw cacao powder smoothie. It tastes like a peanut butter and banana milkshake.

That did me for the whole morning because it was so filling, however on return from our 6k walk with Bailey Woof I was getting a tad hungry so I made a wholemeal spinach and pasta “cheesy” bake with a cucumber and tomato side salad.

A little while after this we hit the gym where we lifted some seriously heavy shit. I needed a protein hit after that so when we got home I rustled up some cashew nut cheese on some wholemeal sweet onion crackers. (I’ll be posting a recipe for this soon.)

For dinner Mykey made a kale, bean, mushroom, spinach and breaded tofu stir fry which totally hit the spot.

So there you have it. Simply, tasty and healthy vegan food. 🙂

Stuffed Tomatoes

September 8, 2013 / Frankie Mouche / Leave a comment

A while back I asked my friend on Facebook to come up with three cheap ingredients and I’d make a simple, healthy meal out of them. The first person to post was my friend Pete. He suggested that I make something out of twigs, leaves and water in traditional vegan style. Of course he was joking and subsequently posted tomatoes, pine nuts and tofu. What a great combination! Tofu is rammed full of protein and calcium, pine nuts have loads of vitamin E and tomatoes have loads of vitamin C. A healthy and affordable combination.

I went to Asda and brought two pack of beef tomatoes. They are currently out of season so they cost more than I was hoping. I also brought just one pack of silken tofu. I already had a bag of pine nuts at home. They are the expensive part, but once you buy some you will find many uses for them and they last for ages. Total basic ingredient cost approximately £6.80 and that will feed two people for lunch or four people for a starter.

Turn on your oven and heat to 200 degrees.

Now the problem i have is that on it’s own, tofu tastes of NOTHING. I figured most people would have garlic, onions and turmeric in the house, so I’m allowing them as ingredients because they are store cupboard staples. (If you don’t have them, they are pretty damn cheap from any local corner shop.)

First things first; chop the onion and a couple of cloves of garlic and place in a hot pan with oil of your choice. I used sesame seed oil for some extra flavour.

Stir lots and then place about half of the bag of pine nuts into the pan.

Stir some more and then turn the heat off.

Next job is to prepare the tomatoes. Slice the tops off quite thinly and place to one side. (You’ll need them later.)

Now slice a deep circle around the center of the tomato and scoop out with a knife or a spoon. (I used a bit of both.)

Once you have completed this, place on a baking tray upside down to allow any extra fluid to drain away.

Place any leftover tomato center that isn’t part of the hard core, into the pan with the pine nuts etc and turn the heat back on.

Cut open the pack of silken tofu and squeeze into the hot pan. Mix well and then add a good sprinkle of turmeric. You can also add any other condiments that you have laying around here. Soy sauce, salt or black pepper would go really well and give it some extra flavour.

Mix everything really well. Then turn your beef tomatoes over and fill with the warm tofu mix. Then place the lids you chopped off earlier on top.

I also sprinkled a bit of olive oil over the top here so they would bake more quickly, but this is optional too.

Place in the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Serve as a starter with some rocket salad or as a lunch on it’s own. Two will most certainly fill you up.

Enjoy! 🙂

What the hell do you do with tofu?

March 21, 2013March 21, 2013 / Frankie Mouche / 1 Comment

First of all, let’s get something straight: you say it toefu not toffu. Get it? Got it? GOOD! Now we can move on.

I’ve been vegan for 8 years in September and when I first made that step I had no idea what to do with tofu. It was just a big white sloppy mess that I couldn’t get to taste of anything. I had an email from a friend at the weekend saying that it was too soft for him and it was the first time he had cooked with it and that has inspired me to write this post.

First of all, let us talk about the health benefits of tofu.

In 100g there is 17.9g of protein. This makes it a high protein food.
It contains isoflavones which can neutralise free radicals i.e. cancer causing particles.
Yes tofu does contain phytoestrogen, not oestrogen as the beef industry would have you believe. These phytoestrogens help neutralise the effects of human oestrogen which can cause bone density loss in later life.
It’s also full of calcium, manganese, iron, omega3 fats and it’s relatively low in calories and fat or what we would call a lean protein.

Now what can you do to make it super tasty? Here are some ideas:

Scrambled http://www.theppk.com/2009/10/tof-u-and-tof-me-scrambled-tofu-revisited/
Ginger sweet http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/412629/ginger-sweet-tofu-with-pak-choi
BBQ steaks http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/13183/bbq-tofu-steaks.aspx
Asian Slaw http://www.eatingwell.com/recipes/asian_slaw_with_tofu_shiitake_mushrooms.html
Ravioli http://www.savvyvegetarian.com/vegetarian-recipes/easy-vegan-tofu-ravioli.php
Cheese cake http://allrecipes.com/recipe/tofu-cheesecake/
Omelette http://lowfatveganchef.com/the-best-low-fat-vegan-silken-tofu-omelette-recipe/

When my recipe section gets a little larger there will be plenty of tofu recipes. I eat it quite a lot because of the protein vs. fat content. It really helps my training. In the meantime, enjoy and get some tofu down your necks!