Katie Reeves gets involved, and Vegan Baking: attempt #1

I'll warn you now - Vegan Baking: attempt #1 is not a success story. It all starts with the desire to molly-coddle my exam/revision-riddled friend, Rhiannon, with baked goods, whilst she spends a bit of the weekend revising at my house. I've heard legends of vegan baking being, at its height....well, better than regular baking (or at least, as good). It probably is, when done right, but all I managed was the creation of an incredibly powerful, soya-based adhesive. Don't get me wrong, this is, I'm sure, a fairly susbstantial achievement in itself. But it probably would've been better if I hadn't then tried to eat the resulting cookies (and feed them to Rhiannon...)

It was a real shame, though. I got SO excited whilst shopping for the ingredients. Ok, maybe not THAT excited. I was very, very, hungry and managed to keep bumping into many-layered caramel cakes and rows of half-price galaxy bars, like awkward old friends that you haven't seen for ages and you've been trying to avoid. However, there was a joyous moment when, after 10 minutes of searching, I FINALLY found dairy free chocolate chips (apply same story to dairy free margerine).

To be fair, the cookie mix was actually quite nice (which maybe made it even worse when the baked results turned out like they did). The cookies themselves tasted like chocolate-flavoured cereal....Weetos, perhaps; you know, not actually that good, and not actually that chocolatey, but sugary enough that you continue absentmindedly and pointlessly eating them. Needless to say, I won't be giving you the recipe for them, unless anyone has a particular need for a potent vegan glue.

Luckily, the evening wasn't a complete wipe out, thanks to the intervention of Katie Reeves. A few days previously, I'd been talking to her about the whole 'Vegan January' idea, and the fact that I'd done more cooking in the last week than I probably did in the entirety of December. Katie is a good person to talk to about food - she's one of those people who likes to feed her friends well, and cares deeply about good food. One of my favourite Reevesy memories is from an Archaeology trip we went on together with our sixth form, about five years ago. The group was on a really tight budget, but this resulted in a comically irrate Reeves, standing over a pan of boiling water and Tesco's value pasta, ranting 'good pasta is important - AND THE WATER ISN'T EVEN SALTED'. So, yes she understands the importance of good food. Anyways, a few hours after talking, Katie sent me a vast array of vegan recipes over email (a couple of which featured seafood and egg, but we'll move past that). I loved the idea of cooking something that I hadn't found on the BBC website, so I decided to try her mum's curry recipe (which I'm pleased to say, featured neither egg nor seafood). This was a wonderful success - the best vegan recipe I've cooked so far. It involved transferring the curry into a casserole dish and oven baking the whole thing for about 1 1/2hrs. Oven baking a curry is something I'd never done before, but it meant that the potatoes and sweet potatoes cooked and tenderised in the curry sauce, and thus took on the curry flavour. It's also quite an ad-hoc recipe. You can use whatever veg you happen to have lying around, so it's a very good end-of-the-week, use-up-what's-left kind of dish. This was good for me, as most of my veg had frozen in our crisper drawer, so anything requiring specific ingredients would've been a bit tricky to achieve.We still have loads of the curry left, and will hopefully be devouring that later today. The recipe, as supplied by Ms Reeves, is below...

(NB I used Madras, instead of Rogan Josh paste, for a slightly spicer taste)

Caroles’ Curry with Spinach and Red Lentils
 
This is a really easy one, it only uses curry paste so requires very little effort

with a 100% success rate. I reckon these quantities would make enough for 4 easily.
 
Ingredients
 
Pataks Rogan Josh Paste
1 lge Onion, finely chopped
1 bag Baby Leaf Spinach
Handful of Red Lentils
Mushrooms (halved or thickly sliced)
Carrots, diced
Potatoes, diced
Frozen peas
Sweet potato
Cauliflour/Brocolli
Mange tout/Green beans
1 400g tin Chopped tomatoes
300 ml Water
Cashew Nuts
 
Method.
Put some oil in the dish and fry the onions until translucent. Add any vegetables 

that you fancy.
Spoon in about half the jar of Rogan Josh paste.
Add the chopped tomatoes and stir.
Add 1 tin (use the tomato can) of water.
Bring to the boil and then place in a preheated oven at 180C for 1 hour.
Add a handful of red lentils and put back in the oven until the veg and lentils 

are tender
Remove the casserole from the oven and stir in handfuls of the spinach to taste. 

(the spinach wilts to almost nothing so add plenty).
Serve with Naan bread, Onion Bhajis ad/or Samosas.
 
Any leftover curry can be safely frozen.