Five Delicious Vegetarian Comfort Food Dishes

I turned vegetarian when I was 13 and there’s not a lot I miss, but on a cold winter night I do sometimes hanker after the slow cooked, deep flavoured chilli my Nan used to make. Thankfully after lots of practice I’ve finally nailed the recipe and managed to make it vegetarian too.

Most of the warming comfort food dishes from my childhood were meat based – family roast dinners, my Nan’s amazing beef chilli, corned beef hash, shepherd’s pie and bubbling stews cooked so long the meat almost melted in your mouth.

There’s something about cooking up some comfort food which makes you feel like you’re showing your family some extra love. I enjoy throwing a few things in the slow cooker and knowing that by tea time there will be a delicious meal ready for my family.

Vegetarian comfort food can feel a bit hard to come by, so I’ve created and shared some of our favourite family recipes on my blog, here are five of my favourite vegetarian comfort food recipes –

Vegetarian Galletes

These are a recent addition to my comfort food repertoire. They’re really easy to make, utterly delicious and once you get the hang of it you can fill them however you want. I made a Goats Cheese, Caramelised Onion and Quince Galette and a Feta, Red Pesto & Tomato Galette. Both were absolutely bang on and real crowd pleasers.

Cauliflower Cheese Soup

Now autumn is here my soup making pot is starting to see some serious action. Cauliflowers are cheap and plentiful in the shops, so I recreated my favourite soup, but with a cheesy twist. Try my very delicious Norwegian inspired Cauliflower Cheese Soup.

Spanish Style Bravas Sausage Casserole

I’d had it in my head to make a big Spanish style bravas sausage casserole in my slow cooker for a while. This summer hadn’t been up to much and I was desperate to start rustling up comfort food dishes, and this was the first one of the season. I made my sausage casserole with Quorn sausages, but you could very easily make them with your favourite meaty sausages if you’d prefer. I made the sauce in the slow cooker and let it bubble away gently to itself for a few hours. The recipe is really simple and it’s now a firm family favourite.

Authentic Armenian style Imam Bayildi

Imam Bayildi is basically stuffed, baked aubergines. They’re simple to make, you can prepare them ahead of time and then cook them when you need them and they are melt in the mouth gorgeous. I like to use good quality ingredients in this recipe as every single mouthful zings flavour. Fresh vegetables and herbs are essential, they’re packed full of flavour and these sunshiny aubergines are a little bit of summer on a cold autumn evening.

Easy Microwave Jam Sponge

No vegetarian comfort food round-up would be complete without a pudding. This incredibly easy to make and very quick to cook microwave jam sponge is just the ticket to warm your cockles on a cold winter evening. All you need are a few store cupboard ingredients, ten minutes of your time and you’ve got a good pud that’ll make your family smile.

Voucherbox.co.uk have a great blog post about the five healthy foods that can actually save you money, and if you want even more money off your online shop they also have plenty of Sainsbury’s vouchers which you can use.

vegetarian comfort food

Recipe: Goats Cheese & Caramelised Onion Galette

Hello Autumn. This wonderful season of mellow fruitfulness and crispy crunchy leaves has arrived, and my lovely quince tree is heaving with fruit. Normally I make a big batch of quince jelly with its fruit, but this year we have so many that I thought I’d cook with them too. I made a delicious Goats Cheese & Caramelised Onion Galette topped with quince – and it was oh so good!

Quince is an unusual fruit. It looks like a hard pear and is covered in fuzz. They’re not so much an eating fruit, but one you cook with. They’re most commonly found in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cookery. Quince are perhaps most famously used in membrillo, a delicious thick paste served with cheese from Spain.

galette

I’ve never made a galette before, I had one at a French cafe in Devon and thought that it would be a good thing to try at home. It’s a bit like an informal French tart. It’s very simple and a great thing to throw together on an Autumnal evening for a warming family meal. It looks pretty too doesn’t it?

galette

It’s very simple, it’s a shortcrust pastry filled with whatever you fancy. I went for goats cheese and caramelised onion topped with finely sliced quince in a fresh thyme pastry crust. If you don’t have quince you could slice and apple or pear over the top and it would probably be just as good.

Goats Cheese & Caramelised Onion Galette

Serves 6
Try this delicious informal French tart – the perfect thing for an Autumnal supper.

Ingredients
For the shortcrust pastry –
100g butter
225g plain flour
1 teaspoon of thyme leaves – I used fresh but dry would be fine
tepid water
pinch of salt
For the filling –
150g of goats cheese
1 large onion
knob of butter
1 teaspoon of sugar
1 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar
salt & pepper
1 quince, cored and finely sliced
1 egg

Instructions
1. Make your pastry. Rub the butter and flour together in a bowl until they are like breadcrumbs. Add your thyme and salt and combine. Gradually add the tepid water a couple of spoons at a time into your bowl until you have a ball of dough that isn’t too sticky and wet or too dry. Wrap in clingfilm and put in the fridge to rest for half an hour or so.
2. Finely slice your onion and fry gently until soft and golden in the knob of butter. Once soft, season and add the sugar and balsamic vinegar and cook through. Set aside to cool a little.
3. Roll out your dough until it’s about the thickness of a pound coin and roughly the shape of a circle approximately 30cm in diameter. Place on baking paper on a baking tray.
4. Slice or crumble your goats cheese (whichever works best with the cheese you’ve chosen) and place it in the middle of the pastry, leave an edge around the sides of about 6 or 7cms so you can fold the pastry up to make the classic galette shape later.
5. Top the cheese with your caramelised onions and then fan your finely sliced quince (or apple or pear) in an artistic circle on top of the onion.
6. Take a pastry brush and brush beaten egg around the visible edge of your galette. Now take a look at my picture of the finished galette. You will need to bring the sides of your galette over the sides and covering the top, leaving the middle of the galette open. Fold the sides in sections, working anti-clockwise so they roughly overlap. Gently press the folds together. It is meant to look rustic.
7. Brush with the beaten egg and dot the quince slices on the top with some butter.
8. Bake in a pre-heated oven 200°c for 45-50 minutes until golden brown.
9. Once baked, remove from the oven and leave to rest for 10 minutes, and then serve.

Notes
This serves 6 for lunch, or 4 hungry people. I served my galette with new potatoes and salad.

My goats cheese and caramelised onion galette was delicious and easy to make. I really liked how rustic and hearty it looked, and it’s always good to bring something to the table which makes everyone’s tummy rumble. The French often make sweet galettes with plums and such like, I have a feeling we’ll be eating a lot of these versatile galettes this year.

galette

Healthy Lunch: Spinach & Goats Cheese Pesto Pasta

As the only veggie in the house, I am rubbish at feeding myself, the boys eat healthy, nutritious meaty meals and I might have some cereal, or toast. I’ve tried to avoid pasta because I thought that it wasn’t that great for you, that was until I read this article which contains actual science and shows that if you re-heat your pasta, it digests as a fibre rather than a carbohydrate. Which is brilliant because that means it releases energy differently and it is healthy, or pretty healthy. Whichever, it means it’s back on my menu at last.

Because pasta is now healthy when it’s cold, or better still, re-heated, it makes a pretty perfect lunch box staple. So for my lunches this week I made a big batch of spinach and goats cheese pesto pasta. I can take it out and about with me, it can be eaten cold, or if I’m near a microwave I can quickly reheat it. It’s incredibly simple to make, healthy-ish to eat and just delicious.

Healthy Lunch: Spinach & Goats Cheese Pesto Pasta

Spinach & Goats Cheese Pesto Pasta

Ingredients:
One bag of fresh baby spinach, ready washed
One garlic clove, crushed
100g of toasted pine nuts
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper
Zest of one lemon
Juice of half a lemon
1 and a half teaspoons of honey
200g goats cheese (grated if you can be bothered, cut into pieces if you can’t
Roasted tomatoes
Pasta – I used twirls

Method:
Set up your blender and tip in your fresh spinach, blend for a minute or so until it’s all starting to turn into a paste. Add the garlic, toasted pine nuts, lemon zest, lemon juice, honey and generous amounts of salt & pepper. Blend until it’s all combined and it’s looking like a paste.
Add your goats cheese and then add olive oil until it is the pesto type consistency you need, you’re probably looking at maybe around 100ml of olive oil. Blend until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning if need be.
Bring a large pot of water to the boil and tip in your pasta, when it’s cooked (instructions should be on the packet), drain and stir the pesto through. You probably won’t need to use all the pesto which can be stored in the fridge for another day.

I topped mine with some thyme roasted tomatoes which are one of my favourite things in the world. It’s a delicious lunch (or evening meal) for all the family, contains at least one of your five a day, it’s easy to make and a great healthy lunch box for when you’re on the go.

What do you pack in your lunch box?

St Helen’s Farm Hamper of Goaty Goodness

A couple of weeks ago there was a knock at the door and a nice young man handed me a large box, a large box of goaty goodness from St Helen’s Farm.

I’d met some nice people from St Helen’s Farm at Blog On MOSI, I’d nibbled on their samples and expressed my deep affection for goats cheese. They told me how goats milk products had been shown to be better for people with eczema; my ears immediately pricked up, I have a variety of skin problems including eczema and psoriasis, as well as that deep, almost primal yearning for goats cheese I mentioned earlier.

The hamper arrived and was immediately set upon by the small boy. Clearly he was half starved, having not eaten for at least an hour, and was soon face first in one of the yoghurts, the lovely stuffed goat toy we were sent tucked under his arm.

The following night I made tagliatelle with goats cheese and courgettes using goats butter, goats milk and goats cheese from the hamper. It was utterly delicious, not at all too “goaty” and not a scrap was left on plates.

I know one of the common concerns about goats milk products is that they’ll taste of goat. We were sent skimmed, semi-skimmed and whole goats milk, I’m not a milk drinker but I tried it and it just tasted of milk. I used it in cooking and the boys had it in cereal. I’d happily give the St Helen’s farm goats milk fridge space again.

We tried the goats cheese and the mature goats cheese and they were predictably delicious. We tried this cheddar style cheese on toast, with tagliatelle (see above) and on a veggie burger. I love goats cheese and it hit the spot, the mature cheese was especially good with a hint of nuttiness.

The only thing I was less keen on was the goats butter, which I found absolutely fine to cook with, but I didn’t like it on its own on toast, though the boys had no complaints.

I was really glad to have been given the chance to try pretty much the full range of goaty goodness from St Helen’s Farm. I will definitely be buying their delicious cheddar style cheeses and creamy yoghurts again. I’m pleased that they’re so easy to cook with and so delicious to eat.

St Helen’s Farm products are available from all major supermarkets including Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Waitrose, Ocado, Waitrose and Co-op.

Disclaimer: St Helen’s Farm sent me the hamper to try free of charge, this has not had any impact on my opinion. All words and images are mine.

Tagliatelle with Goats Cheese & Courgettes

Yesterday, we received a lovely hamper from St Helen’s Farm. A lovely goaty hamper, which I will blog about properly at a later date. Right now we’ve got a fridge full of goats cheese, milk, butter and yoghurt and largely empty cupboards. The boys were due home and I had to think quickly about what to feed them. So I made this, tagliatelle with goats cheese sauce, courgettes and roasted cherry tomatoes. It took no more than 30 minutes to throw together and everyone cleaned their plates.

I’m a bit rubbish at weighing and measuring, I’m a dollop of this and a dash of that kind of girl, so I’ve tried my best to recreate the recipe for goaty goodness below.

Ingredients: (feeds around four people)

Tagliatelle – I use two nests of tagliatelle per person
One medium courgette per person
One punnet of cherry tomatoes
2 teaspoons of St Helen’s Farm Goats butter
Seasoning – salt, pepper & dried chilli flakes

For the sauce
40g St Helen’s Farm Goats butter
20g plain flour
425ml St Helen’s Farm Goats milk (I used skimmed)
120g St Helen’s Farm Mature Goats Cheese, grated
Seasoning – salt, pepper & dried chilli flakes

Method:
Slice the courgettes, melt the butter in a frying pan and sauté until they start to go soft. Meanwhile halve the tomatoes and place on an oven tray and season a little, roast for 15 minutes (check regularly) at 220c. Once the courgettes have taken on some colour and are starting to soften, transfer to an oven proof dish and put in the oven, but keep an eye on them.

While the courgettes and tomatoes are cooking, cook the pasta as per instructions on the packet.

In another pan melt the butter and add the flour, stir vigorously, then start to slowly add the milk, adding a little at a time and beating to ensure the sauce is smooth. Once all the milk has been added, season to taste and add the grated goats cheese and stir until melted.

Drain the pasta and combine with the sauce, add in most of the courgettes and stir. Serve on warmed plates, garnish with the remaining courgette slices and a pile of the unctuous roasted tomatoes.

Simple and delicious. This is going to be a family favourite this summer I think.

I didn’t quite have enough pasta in the cupboard so my picture looks a little on the saucy side.

Disclaimer: I was sent a free hamper of goaty goodies by St Helen’s Farm to try and see what I thought, that review will follow, but the clean plates mean my family genuinely loved it.