Vegan Moussaka

Tom here,

This is a recipe from one of the rare times that I manage to persuade my housemates to cook vegan for an evening, and is actually gluten free as well, but sadly Jess wasn't there to appreciate it.

My family have a very obscure relative that none of us have ever met who has an apartment in Bulgaria, and for the last few summers they've been kind enough to let us go out there and use it. It's in the little seaside town of Ravda. Lots of amazing fresh fish and beaches and sun, I'd probably struggle to eat as a vegan now but at the time it was great. One of our favourite dishes was the moussaka at the nearest restaurant called cremi (spelled cvemi of you're ever in the area - near the luki apartments on the sea front, very nice and even better they have good service!)

Anyway hunger induced ramblings aside - here's my attempt at recreating this dish. I didn't use any lentils or meat substitute but these could be easily added and (green particularly I think) would make a nice addition.

Ingredients:

3 Aubergines
2 Courgettes
1 Pepper
1 1/2 cans Chopped Tomatoes
1 medium Red Onion
2 cloves Garlic
1 small glass Red Wine
1 tbsp fresh Thyme
1 tbsp Tomato Paste
Salt and Pepper to taste
1 pack of Clearspring Firm Silken Tofu
120g Pine Nuts
1 clove Garlic
1 tbsp Arrowroot (or cornflour)
More Salt and Pepper

Method:

First off cut the aubergines into slices a centimetre thick, rub with salt and the place in a colander with a weight on top
Leave theme for a couple of hours (This is to remove the bitterness from the aubergines)
Halve the pepper and grill or bake until soft
Next slice the courgettes lengthways onto strips and place on a grill tray
Rub the aubergines slices with garlic and then coat thinly with flour
Place the aubergines next to the courgettes on a grill tray
Grill on either side until browned, then heat your oven to 180 degrees celsius
Now for the sauce, chop the red onion into slices and fry in a little oil until soft
Crush the garlic and add, and fry for another minute or so
Add the tomato paste, wine and thyme and reduce for a minute or two
Add the chopped tomatoes
Chop up the pepper finely and add
Stir through, season and simmer for 15-20 minutes
For the topping, toast and crush the pine nuts using a pestle and mortar
Blend the tofu, garlic, seasoning, flour and pine nuts together with a hand blender
Once everything is ready, start to assemble the moussaka in a baking tray
Place a layer of aubergines, then courgettes, then cover with the tomato sauce
Repeat until you run out of ingredients or you are an inch from the top of the tray
Cover with the tofu mixture
Bake until the tofu is set and golden around the edges, around 30-40 minutes
Serve and enjoy! We made some wedges and salad to go with it

Hope you enjoy the recipe, let us know any comments at twocooksoneblog@gmail.com

Vegan Pesto Boursin

Tom again,

This is part two of the vegan cheese and wine evening. Boursin is one thing I really miss, especially around christmas time. It was a tradition of mine to try and make it through an entire wheel in one sitting with a pack of Tuc biscuits at some point over the chrismas period. Always regretted it, always did it again the next year. This is an attempt to recreate that using tofu as a base

Ingredients:

50g Pine Nuts
50g Cashew Nuts
1 pack (/carton) Clearspring Firm Silken Tofu
4 medium cloves Garlic
1 tbsp Butter
1 1/2 tsp Sea Salt Flakes
1 tsp Black Pepper
25g Chives
A large handful of Basil Leaves (remove the stalks)
Juice of 1/2 a Lemon

Method:

This recipe is very simple -
Toast the pine nuts and cashews, then crush with a pestle and mortar
Blend everything together in a jug
Leave in the fridge for a few hours
Serve on crackers or baguette as you like

I didn't mean to make this so much like pesto originally, recipes I'd seen used varying amounts of cashews and tofu so I decided to add some, and though a few toasted pine nuts would go well, not realising that of course the basic flavours of pesto are basil, garlic and pine nuts. This combined with my rather heavy handed basil tendencies meant that this ended up being quite like a pesto dip, but still tasty nonetheless! As I blended in everything with a hand blender at the party this was referred too by the generic 'green stuff', but people still seemed to enjoy it! I certainly did, and with garlic and basil and toasted pine nuts it's pretty difficult to make anything taste bad (I could happily eat pesto forever!).

Gluten Free Christmas Stuffing

Hi, Jess again.

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blogging recently. Since the beginning of December, a truly horrific amount of food and wine has been consumed, leaving me very little time to do anything other than eat and drink (and pass out at 8pm). Oh, aside from working, having exams and assignments and travelling up and down the country for interviews. All of which I have definitely not been hungover for.

So anyway, my flat had a christmas dinner this week. I'm not going to patronise you with instructions of how to cook a christmas dinner, we all do it differently. We had seasoned roast chicken and potatoes and roasted the carrots and parsnips in agave nectar - amazing. And all gluten free. But my biggest issue with roast dinners is stuffing, I love the stuff but obviously it's not gluten free. So this year I decided I would make it myself, rather than cheat with one of the gluten free packet mixes (which I'm sure are nice, but I can't blog about a packet mix). The following recipe is adapted from the dietary specials website, and uses their gluten free brown ciabatta rolls (fellow gluten free people will understand that these are the best). It makes 8-10 stuffing balls so perfect for 3-5 people.

100g gluten free bread/2 gluten free brown ciabatta rolls
1 onion, chopped
1 apple, chopped
50g ready to eat apricots, chopped
2 tbsp cranberry sauce
10-15g butter, melted
50ml (or more or less, whatever you need) orange or cranberry juice
Sprinkling of nuts (I used pine kernels)
Mixed herbs to season

Crumble the bread/rolls until they resemble breadcrumbs. Chop the onion and apple, and fry until soft and slightly browned. Add the butter, onion and apple to the breadcrumbs and mix. Add the apricots, cranberry sauce, nuts and seasoning, followed by the fruit juice. Mix together, ensuring everything is evenly spread and you have the right consistency. Use the amount of juice you need, I didn't really measure it out, I just added what looked right (wine's fault, sorry). Use the herbs you want to use - I didn't want a particularly strong taste so went for mixed herbs but some fresh sage or parsley would go nicely too. Roll the stuffing into small balls, place on a baking tray and bake at 180C for about 15-20 minutes or until golden.

This recipe is so easy and goes really well with christmas dinner. The different fruits make it quite sweet, which makes a nice addition when you roast the veggies in agave or honey. You can substitute different juice or nuts depending on your tastes, but less us know how it goes and what you change when you make it!

Christmas dinner, served on a plastic plate, student style.

The most important part of any meal.