Sausage Jambalaya 

Pre-vegan life I loved to make a sausage jambalaya from the My Daddy Cooks cook book, it’s a delicious filling dish and I’ve recreated it with vegan ingredients. I don’t have the book myself (I’m a library lending cook book junkie), but the recipe can be found online here.

The first ingredient I’d recommend is using Linda McCartney’s sausages – either the above version or the extra yummy red onion and rosemary ones. I stock up on these when I see them for £1 as they are tasty, cheap, nearly 18g protein per 100g and they don’t dissolve in sauces like some veggie saucisson.


This is super cheap dish and I make it to use up the least nice pepper (green, duh), and it’s the ONLY reason I ever buy celery (yuk), but trust me in this they melt down to taste amazing! I even double the celery that the original recipe calls for.


Ingredients;

  • 1 T olive oil
  • 6 sausages
  • 1 onion
  • 4 celery ribs
  • 2/3 cloves of garlic
  • 1 pepper
  • 2 T paprika
  • 1 t cumin
  • 1 t oregano
  • 1/2 t garlic powder or garlic salt
  • 300g rice
  • 400g tin of tomatoes (plus tin filled 3/4 times with water)
  • 1 stock cube
  • 1 T Bragg’s liquid aminos
  • 1 T hot sauce (omit if this scares ya)

Method;

Add the oil and sausages to a medium heat large pan. Chop your veg and add to pan, by now the sausages should be getting soft so chop into 4/5 pieces with your stirring utensil.

Cook the veg for five or so mins and add your dry spices and rice, stir for a minute to coat rice in the spices then add all of your liquids.

Pop on a lid and bubble on low for half an hour, checking every ten minutes that it’s not sticking to the pan – you can also add more water if needed.


This recipe is endlessly adaptable so feel free to chuck in any veg you want to like mushrooms, sundried tomatoes, artichokes or green beans, other herbs (fennel seeds or fresh parsley would be great), and try with another grain such as quinoa or millet or even half rice and half buckwheat.

That’s a big ol’bowl of tasty

Freekeh Stuffed Peppers and Baba Ganoush

Could you think up a more hippy-vegan-new age recipe? We’ve had a bag of Freekeh in the back of the cupboard since buying it at a food market in Sheffield last summer. I didn’t know what it tasted like, so have totally experimented with flavours here – buy chucking in what I see as I go 😜

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It cooks just like rice and you have to rinse it before cooking too. It also expands like rice – so there’s bloody loads of it!

One it was cooked (simmer for 30 mins), I added frozen sweetcorn, chopped coriander, Cauldron marinated tofu, oregano, paprika, ketchup and salt and pepper. These were all chuck it in quantities.

I then used this mix to stuff two peppers and put them in the oven with the Linda McCartney sausages – they were on offer in Morrisons for £1 a pack, so I bought a lot.

As per usual this week today’s meal has also been brought to you by the letters M and S and the number 2. As I used two bags of Marks and Spencer ready prepped potatoes.

These were tasty, but they needed salt. I think I could make them better TBH, but they are good for a corner cut.

To make the baba ganoush I flame grilled an aubergine for ten minutes over a gas hob.

In a bowl I added 1 tablespoon of oil, a teaspoon of syrup, a tablespoon of tahini and a finely chopped clove of garlic.

Then I added a tablespoon of cumin, 1/4 lemon rind and 1/2 a lemons juice, a few shredded mint leaves, a tin of tomatoes and the flesh from the aubergine.

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Looks gross, but tastes really good! This is a version of Jack Monroe’s baba from her blog – https://cookingonabootstrap.com/2014/06/02/baba-ghanoush/ her doesn’t have tahini or mint, but is very similar and good.

Fun fact – I dropped my week old iPhone in this baba and now the microphone doesn’t work. I. Could. Cry!

The finished product!

Quick Friday Night Dinner

Sausage rolls, made with Linda McCartney sausages, Jus-Rol (which my brain pronounces Just Roll), M&S red onion jam and poppy seeds.

I rolled the pastry out on the poppy seeds, then dolloped jam on and rolled the sausages in the pastry. FYI I microwaved the sausages for 5 mins before assembly, just incase they stayed frozen inside the pastry.

What a cheat – frozen french fries with three teaspoons of oregano and one teaspoon of salt chucked over them. Delicious!

I served this up with the rest of a chilli I made yesterday, and some Chippa vegan mayo.