Quick and Healthy Snacks: Tapas

Vegan Tapas make great snacking material. They're quick, easy, and packed full of veggies. Best of all, they're delicious.

If you're keen to get your day's vegetables all at once, Gazpacho is the soup for you. It's a thick, velvety cold soup bursting with ripe tomatoes and refreshing cucumber and seasoned with vinegar, garlic and olive oil. My favourite recipe is this one.

If you're looking for something comforting and a little more filling, try Pan con Tomate, thick slabs of baguette toasted and topped with grated tomato, salt and olive oil. I love to pile them up with more grated tomato and drizzle extra olive oil on top. So good!

 

What are your favourite Tapas? Do you know of any other Spanish dishes that adapt themselves well to vegans? I would love tips!

Custard Rolls

As these rich custard rolls rise and bake, the wonderful smell of yeast will fill your house. Try baking them on a Sunday: in the down time, you can laze around reading a book or watching your favourite TV series - for me, it's Gossip Girl or The Good Wife (a legal drama, not a show about housewives), or a re-run of Black Books or Miranda.

Custard Rolls

Makes 9 rolls
Dough based on this recipe

Ingredients

dough
120 ml soy milk 
1/2 tsp corn starch
1/2 tsp rice flour
2 tbsp water 
30 ml lukewarm water
1 tsp vanilla essence
4 tbsp margarine
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp sugar
600 ml flour
1 1/2 tsp yeast

filling
vanilla pudding or custard mix (many brands in the supermarket are vegan)
soy milk as needed
sugar as needed

Method

1. Heat the soy milk until warm but not hot. Mix together the corn starch, rice flour and 2 tbsp water. Combine all dough ingredients in a bowl and mix well. Turn out onto a lightly-oiled surface and knead for 10 minutes. Put back in the bowl, cover, and let rise until doubled in size (about an hour).

2. Prepare pudding/custard with soy milk and sugar according to directions.

4. Cover a large baking pan with baking paper. Stretch the dough into a 20 by 30 cm rectangle. Spread the filling thickly over the dough. Starting with the long side of the rectangle, roll up into a log and pinch the edge of the dough to seal.

5. Cut with a sharp knife into 4 cm slices. Place them in the pan with plenty of space between each slice. Cover and let rise again until doubled in size (about an hour). Bake at 180 C for 20-25 minutes, until a light golden brown.

Tomato Toast

This has been my favourite breakfast lately. It's not really a recipe: just spread some nice toasted bread with margarine, top with sliced tomatoes and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Tomatoes taste amazing like this, and it's a great way to get some vegetables first thing in the morning.

Variations:
1. If you like it with a little more pep, add a few drops of tabasco sauce.
2. If you're not so into margarine, skip it and drizzle with good olive oil.
3. Use cucumbers instead of tomatoes.

Balsamic Mushroom Bruschetta

These juicy mushroom bruschetta make a great vegan starter. The sharp and sweet vinegar plays well with the fresh parsley and savoury mushrooms. And they only take a few minutes to put together!

Balsamic Mushroom Bruschetta

Makes 4 slices

Ingredients

1/2 onion
250 g button mushrooms
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
salt
4 slices of nice bread
flat-leaf parsley (optional)

Method

1. Dice the onion, slice the mushrooms, and mince the garlic. Heat some olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onion and cook until glassy. Add the garlic and cook for a minute.

2. Add the mushrooms and fry until they release their liquid. Then add the balsamic vinegar, and cook until the liquid is gone. Salt to taste. Top slices of toasted bread with the mushrooms and a generous amount of chopped parsley.

Zwiebelmett (Mince with Onions)

Zwiebelmett is basically mince with onions and spices, which people often eat spread on buns. I've never tried real Zwiebelmett, since I had already been vegan for some years before I came to Germany. I'm not sure who first thought of the idea of making it out of rice cakes, but there are many versions of this recipe online in German.

While I was researching this, I found out that Germans sometimes shape Mett into a "Mettigel" (a mince hedgehog) for parties, and decorate it with onions for spikes. Definitely going to have to try that for my next party!

A Mettigel (Picture from Wikipedia)

Zwiebelmett (Mince with Onions)

Makes 600 ml - enough for a small Mettigel!

Ingredients

18 thin or 9 thick rice cakes (100 g)
1 onion
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp salt
pepper

Method

1. Crumble the rice cakes. Add 300 ml water and mix well. Mince the onion. Mix the onion, tomato paste, salt and pepper with the rice cakes.

2. Check the consistency. If it's too dry, add 50 ml more water. Refrigerate for several hours or overnight. When you're ready to serve, taste and add a bit more salt and pepper if you like. This is nice on buns by itself or with some chives or a few slices of cucumber on top.

Buffalo Chickpea Pita Pizzas

I've been looking forwards to making this recipe for buffalo chickpea soft tacos for a long time, but I don't have easy access to tacos at the moment. And so, buffalo chickpea pita pizzas were born.

Buffalo Chickpea Pita Pizzas

Closely based on this recipe
Serves 6, as a snack

Ingredients

1 onion
1 green capsicum
2 cloves garlic
2 cans chickpeas (ca. 750 ml drained)
60 ml sriracha
250 ml vegetable broth
1 bunch spring onions
3 pita breads
1 avocado
a lemon (optional)
vegan sour cream (optional)

Method

1. Chop the onion and capsicum and mince the garlic. Fry the onion in oil until softened. Add garlic and capsicum and fry for a minute. Drain and rinse the chickpeas. Add the chickpeas, sriracha and broth to the pan and bring to a boil. Boil until the sauce is reduced into a thick coating for the chickpeas. Chop the spring onions and stir them into the chickpeas. Add salt to taste.

2. Cut pita breads in half and top with chickpeas and avocado. Bake at 180 C for five minutes. Serve with a squeeze of lemon juice and a dollop of vegan sour cream, if you have any.

Churro French Toast

This churro french toast is an easy way to get the taste of churros without making them by scratch. So if you want something greasy and sugary for breakfast, make this! If you have cinnamon sugar left over afterwards, you can pop it in a jar and then sprinkle it on buttered toast later. If you don't want to use as much oil, you can definitely use less, they just won't have quite the same deep fried flavour.

Churro French Toast

Inspired by this recipe
Serves 4

Ingredients

1 small loaf white bread
3 tbsp cinnamon
6 tbsp sugar
vegetable oil
350 ml soy milk
2 tbsp flour
1 tsp nutritional yeast (optional)
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Method

1. Remove the crusts from the bread and cut into thick fingers. Mix the 3 tbsp cinnamon and 6 tbsp sugar together on a plate.

2. Heat 120 ml of oil in a pan over medium heat. Combine the soy milk, flour, nutritional yeast, sugar and vanilla extract in a large bowl.

3. Dip a few of the fingers in the soy milk mixture using tongs or chopsticks. Add them to the pan and fry until browned on all sides, then drain on paper towels and roll in cinnamon sugar. Repeat for the remaining fingers in batches. Enjoy with fruit, chocolate or caramel sauce, cream, or whatever else takes your fancy.