Easy Vegan Recipes: Oat Cookies, Fried Capsicums with Tomato Sauce, and Stewed Leeks, Carrots and Kidney Beans

This week I'm focussing on easy vegan recipes. First we have something sweet, and then two recipes for quick lunches or dinners.

Looking for something to snack on? The recipe for these great oat cookies originally comes from Food Not Bombs and is available through the Vegan Cuisine Cookbook on Wikibooks. This is the simplest cookie recipe I've ever made, but the results are delicious. I don't like my cookies very sweet, so I halved the sugar.

This Turkish side of fried capsicums with tomato sauce from Twins in Kitchen is extremely easy. It's done in 15 minutes and goes well with any Mediterranean dinner. I also like to eat at as a quick snack with some bread.

Last but not least, we have this dish of stewed leeks, carrots and kidney beans in tahini sauce. It makes a good pairing for the capsicums, but can also stand alone. It's simple to prepare but complexly flavoured and delicious.

What are your favourite quick and easy vegan recipes? What do you make when you feel uninspired but want something good to eat?

Garlic Spinach

This garlic spinach is healthy and super easy to throw together. It's also delicious!

Garlic Spinach

Serves 2

Ingredients

120 g spinach (1200 ml chopped)
3 cloves of garlic

Method

1. Chop spinach and mince garlic. Heat an oiled pan over medium-high heat. Fry garlic for one minute. Add a handful of spinach and fry until wilted. Add the rest of the spinach, handful by handful. Season with salt and pepper.

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!

Avocado and Sundried Tomato Pasta

Avocado pasta sauce sounds good, but for a long time we weren't friends. My boyfriend came up with this meal, and it had a long development cycle. We tried many different avocado sauces. But they were all a bit boring, and, well, too avocado-y.

Then he came up with the excellent idea of adding nutritional yeast, and I suggested adding sundried tomatoes. Combined, they take it to another level. This is my kind of avocado pasta: creamy and rich avocado sauce with a hint of cheesiness and bites of savoury flavour from the sundried tomatoes.

This recipe could be your new weeknight dinner staple. It's super easy; the sauce is made in less time than it takes to cook the pasta.

Avocado and Sundried Tomato Pasta

Serves 4

Ingredients

500 g pasta (gluten-free if you like)
1 avocado
150 ml sundried tomatoes
1 clove garlic
1 tsp nutritional yeast
25 ml olive oil
1-2 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper

Method 

1. Cook the pasta. While it's cooking, make the sauce. Mash the avocado. Rinse and slice the sundried tomatoes and mince the garlic. Mix with all remaining ingredients and toss with the pasta.

New Zealand Sweetcorn Fritters

Fritters have been popular in New Zealand for some time. Their fame was probably helped by their inclusion in the "Edmonds Cookery Book", New Zealand's most popular cook book. The book was originally published in 1908 to market baking powder, hence the slogan "sure to rise" that still stands on the cover.

You can sometimes buy seafood fritters at fish and chips shops, but corn fritters are normally made at home. They can easily be dressed up or down. I remember my dad cooking corn fritters made with creamed corn for me and my sisters a lot when I was a child. I've also eaten them on a date.

If you want fancier fritters, use fresh corn and chilli and throw some minced herbs into the batter.

New Zealand Sweetcorn Fritters

Makes 18 fritters
Serves 2 as a meal or 6 as a snack

Ingredients

1/4 onion
660 g canned corn (ca. 900 ml)
300 ml flour
1 tsp baking powder
350 ml soy milk
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp salt

Method

1. Chop the onion finely. Drain and rinse the corn. Combine all ingredients. Heat an oiled pan over medium heat.

2. Spoon in a few fritters. Cook until browned, turn and brown the second side. Drain on paper towels. Cook remaining fritters, adding oil between batches as needed. Serve with sweet chilli sauce.

Broccoli Fried Rice

This fried rice is delicious. The crunchy broccoli slips you your vitamins, while the garlic, chili oil and soy sauce provide a flavour hit. I can remember having great trouble learning to cook fried rice when I was a child. My first experiment turned out like congee, and even once I had learned to cook the rice first, it always stuck to the bottom The trick is simple but requires some planning: you have to cook the rice on the previous day.

Broccoli Fried Rice

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 onion
1 head broccoli
3 cloves garlic
2 dried chilies
3 cups day-old rice
3 tbsp chili oil
1 tbsp sugar
soy sauce or tamari
sweet chili sauce

Method

1. Dice the onion, mince the broccoli and crush the garlic. Crumble or chop the chilies into small pieces. Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Fry garlic and chili over medium heat for a few minutes until golden. Add onion and fry until softened. Add broccoli and fry until softened.

2. Add the rice, chili oil and sugar. Mix well, breaking up the clumps of rice. Cook for around five minutes more, stirring well with a spatula to stop the rice from sticking. Add soy sauce to taste and cook for a minute more. Taste and add more chili oil or soy sauce if you like. Serve with sweet chili sauce.

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.

Simple Tomato Soup

One of the things I really enjoyed eating in my childhood was canned tomato soup. It was a rare treat since my mother didn't like to buy foods that were processed or high in salt. So, this is a recreation of canned soup, but it does taste better and is lower in salt than the original.

Simple Tomato Soup

Serves 4

Ingredients

2 onions
2 cloves garlic
2 400 g cans chopped tomatoes
375 ml vegetable stock

Method

1. Dice onion and mince garlic. Heat a soup pot over medium heat. Fry the onion in oil until soft, then add the garlic and fry for a few more minutes. Add the stock and tomatoes. Simmer for 20 minutes, add salt to taste, and blend.

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.

Kimchi Jeon

I've been very busy with university in the last few weeks. It's a good thing I have to write blog posts; testing recipes, taking photos and putting together posts gives me a break. Not that I'm complaining, what could be more fun than trying to work out what, exactly, Adorno is trying to say when he pops out something like this: "Though discursive knowledge is adequate to reality, and even to its irrationalities, which originate in the laws of motion, something in reality rebuffs rational knowledge"?

Anyway, onwards to the most important thing, the food. Kimchi jeon are fritters overflowing with tangy kimchi. They make a great snack or dinner with a side or two. In my opinion, they'd also go really with a barbecue or as snacks for a party. They're very easy to put together - just mix everything in a bowl and fry them up. On the evening I took this picture I had them with hobak namul (stir-fried zucchini) and rice for dinner.

Kimchi Jeon

Makes 6 jeon

Ingredients

500 ml vegan mak kimchi
6 tbsp kimchi juice
6 tbsp soy milk
4 tbsp flour
4 tbsp rice flour
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt

Method

1. Drain the kimchi, saving the juice. Combine kimchi with all remaining ingredients.

2. Heat an oiled pan over medium heat. Spoon in 1/6th of the batter and spread evenly into a thick fritter. Fry until browned, turn, and brown the other side.

3. Cook remaining fritters, adding more oil between batches as necessary. Enjoy! You can have the jeon with soy or dipping sauce, but I find them flavourful enough just as they are.

Variation: You can make two large jeon instead of six small ones, and then cut them into wedges or tear them up with your chopsticks to eat them.

Tofu with Black Vinegar

I had this tofu drizzled with black vinegar in a restaurant while stopping over in Hong Kong airport. It was simple but tasty, and hit the spot perfectly. We then had some snacks and beer while watching the sun "setting" into the smog above the horizon... It started out orange, melted into a deep red, and then disappeared.

You can find black vinegar, which is also called Chinkiang vinegar, at an Asian supermarket. I really like to eat this with red-cooked eggplant and some rice: it's an impressive combination and everything is done in less than half an hour.

Tofu with Black Vinegar

Serves 2

Ingredients

450 g tofu
2 tbsp black vinegar
1 tbsp soy sauce or tamari

Method

1. Cut the tofu into slabs. Heat a generous amount of oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Fry tofu for a few minutes on one side, until deep golden brown, then turn and brown the other side. Drain on paper towels.

2. Mix together soy sauce and vinegar. Lay the pieces of tofu on a plate and drizzle sauce over them. Eat with your favourite Chinese vegetable side, or just with rice.

Spring Eats: Simple Pea Soup with Sauteed Radishes

The spring has come to Berlin! We are enjoying sunny weather and the first delicate green leaves. And some spring meals full of vegetables. This colourful pairing of pea soup and sauteed radishes makes a lovely fast dinner that comes together in about 10 minutes.

The radishes lose their pungency through the cooking and become wonderfully mild. The recipe for the radishes is here - just substitute oil or vegan margarine for the butter. Now, the soup.

Simple Pea Soup

Serves 2

Ingredients

1 small onion
300 ml vegetable broth
800 ml frozen peas
salt and pepper

Method

1. Finely mince the onion. Combine with the broth and peas. Bring to the boil and cook for a few minutes, until peas are done.

2. Remove from the heat and puree. Add salt and pepper to taste.