Winter warmer - celeriac

It's that time of year when comfort food is a must. The end of January means we're ploughing our way through winter but the weather is still grey and cold, the nights long and Spring seems a long way off. I treated myself to some sneaky winter sun by nipping back to India for a week; the winter weather in Bangalore is near perfect for me - bright blue skies, high 20s in the day, cooler in the mornings. Coming back to a fresh north wind, snow showers and minus 0 temperatures is my penance!

Having left the family home alone, I was expecting the fridge to be bare yesterday lunchtime - fortunately the Riverford vegetable box had arrived so there was lots of fresh produce to play with. Soup was definitely in order, and there on the shelf waiting for me was one of my favourite veggies - celeriac.
A member of the same family as celery, the bulbous roots are cultivated rather then the stems and leaves. I feel a bit sorry for celeriac as it just a bit bobbly and ugly - it reminds me of The Ood on Dr Who! But as the saying goes, true beauty lies within, and underneath the cracks and bumps lies clear, creamy flesh that tastes rich and satisfying when cooked. Of course, it can be finely sliced and used in salads or remoulade, but that's another blog post.
Celeriac is under-rated as a winter root vegetable - nutritionally it's packed full of fibre, essential for a healthy gut, as well as potassium, vitamin C, K and B, some magnesium and manganese. If you want a potato substitute, it works brilliantly as a mash and has a lower GI as it releases it's sugars more slowly, great if you are diabetic or pre-diabetic. It also has minimal fat content, and of course no cholesterol, so combined with the high fibre levels, works brilliantly to help reduce your LDL cholesterol levels (the bad stuff!).
As the oven was on for a long time at Christmas, I baked a celeriac whole and served it up as a whole so everyone could help themselves, spooning out the creamy flesh straight from the foil. It was delicious. If you want to do that, it takes about 2 hours 20minutes, depending on the size of your root. Clean the outside skin as much as possible and rub with salt and a little olive oil. Drop a couple of garlic cloves on the top and then wrap up in tin foil. Place in an oven on a baking dish at 180oC and bake for 2 hours, then open up the foil and cook for another 20 minutes. The celeriac should be soft to the touch. Take out of the oven and cut open, add some non-dairy butter if you so desire and serve as it is.
But that is not the recipe for today - now you have two for the price of one! This celeriac and apple soup is fabulous and really quick and easy to make. It's comforting, warming and filling - all the things you need on a winters day - packed with minerals, vitamins and phytonutrients to keep you healthy, low in fat and simple carbs, so it won't make you fat (unlike so many winter comforts!). Serve with some chopped almonds, chives and a good sprinkle of black pepper. Serious comfort, dairy free and delicious!
Celeriac and apple soup

1 onion, chopped
1 stick celery, chopped
1 medium celeriac
2 apples
1 teaspoon thyme
1 litre vegetable stock
1 teaspoon olive oil
salt and pepper
toasted sliced almonds and chives (optional)
Heat the olive oil in a large pan and sauté the onion and celery. Whilst this is cooking, peel the celeriac and apple and chop into small chunks - both start to oxidise when open to the air, so you want to work fast so they don't get too discoloured. Add both to the pan with the thyme and continue to sauté for a few minutes on a low heat to caramelise a little. Add the stock, season and simmer for 20 minutes or so until all the veggies and apple are soft. Leave to cool for a few minutes, then blitz with a hand blender until smooth. If the soup is too thick for you, add more stock or some non-dairy milk. Reheat and serve, garnished with almonds and chives if you so desire. Enjoy!

A wee bit of vegan haggis

It's this time of year that anyone you know who is Scottish, or has some Scottish heritage, or just fancies a mighty fine feast on a cold winters night, celebrates Burn's night. Held in memory of the poet, Robbie Burns, the evening has many traditions, including piping in the diners (if you happen to know anyone who plays the bagpipes of course!), drinking lots of whiskey and eating haggis.

When I was young, I used to think that haggis was a small furry animal, but actually its a mix of sheep offal mixed with onion, oats and spices, then stuffed in a sheep stomach and simmered in a pot for 3 hours. I have eaten it a couple of times in the past and its rich and seriously filling.
These days, however, being a plant based eater, haggis is generally off the menu, although vegetarian ones are sometimes available in the supermarket. On a recent trip to Edinburgh, however, we stopped at a fabulous vegetarian restaurant called Henderson's and my husband chose a delicious haggis dish. In fact it was so good, he decided to recreate it at home for a birthday dinner party the other week. Served with mashed tatties and neeps, it was our own little plant based Burns night supper, super tasty and super healthy.

Once made up, the haggis mix does look a little grey and unappealing, despite it's amazing flavour, and not having any plant versions of sausage skins to hand (are there any?) we decided to wrap it up in some filo pastry to create a haggis parcel. The contrast of the thin, crisp pastry and the soft, slightly claggy texture of the haggis worked fabulously. 

The combination of lentils, kidney beans, mushrooms and oatmeal means this dish is packed with protein and fibre, as well as magnesium, manganese and folate amongst other minerals and vitamins. Serve with mashed potatoes and swede for a nearly authentic plant based Burns night supper.

Vegan haggis (Henderson's of Edinburgh recipe)

75g chopped mushrooms
75g brown lentils
50g porridge oats
50g cooked kidney beans, chopped
25g non-dairy spread (Vitalite/Pure)
150g grated carrots
150g onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon tamari
1 tablespoon garam masala
salt and pepper
1 packet of filo pastry sheets.
First, soak the brown lentils for 2-3 hours to soften them and soak the oats for 1 hour before you start. When you're ready, heat the oil in a pan and sauté the onion until soft, followed by the garlic, garam masala and tamari. Season with salt and pepper.
Drain the lentils and add to the pan along with the grated carrot. Simmer on a low heat until the lentils are soft, stirring regularly to prevent sticking. You may need to add a little water to stop the mix drying out. Next add the mushrooms and cook until soft, followed with the kidney beans, the non-dairy spread and some more black pepper. Stir well to combine.
Finally, rinse and drain the oats and stir into the mix. This gives body to the haggis. If you are going to wrap your haggis in filo pastry, leave to cool. Otherwise, you can eat as it is.
Once the mixture is ready, lay out a sheet of filo pastry, leaving the rest covered with a damp tea towel so it doesn't dry out. Pop a couple of spoonfuls of the haggis mix at one of the short ends of the pastry, fold up the sides and roll into a parcel, sealing the end with a bit of water. You could make square parcels if you prefer - it will still taste delicious! Repeat the process until all the pastry sheets are used up, lay out on lightly greased baking trays and brush the top with some non-dairy milk to help them brown. Pop into a pre-heated oven at 180oC and bake for 15-20 minutes until the pastry is golden and crisp.
Serve with mashed potatoes and turnips or swede and enjoy a great imitation of "the great chieftain o' the puddin' race"!

Curry comfort

Our time living in Indian widened our horizons in many ways. Food wise, we discovered a cornucopia of different South Indian 'curries' most of which we had never come across before in the UK. Most curry houses in the UK serve North Indian, Bangladeshi or Pakistani routed food, adapted to the British taste (lots of sauce!). These dishes tend to be rich, tomato based, heavy with cream and featuring meat. South Indian food consists of a huge amount of vegetarian dishes, many enhanced with coconut, either milk or freshly ground, making them rich but not heavy.
Coconut is a regular ingredient on my blog - I love it, not only for it's wonderful creamy taste, but it's amazing health benefits. Coconut meat and milk are high in fat, there's no getting away from it, but the fat is medium-chain saturated fats which research shows is actually health promoting rather than detrimental like many saturated animal fats. And of course, being plant based, it contains no cholesterol, a fact my friend was surprised about when I told her. Placed on a cholesterol reducing diet by her GP (better than being given statins that's for sure), it was on the list of food to avoid due to  it's high cholesterol content. In fact the oil in coconut helps improve a person's cholesterol, increasing healthy HDL cholesterol.
Lauric acid is one of the main fatty acids in coconut; this converts to other compounds in the body and had an array of beneficial effects including acting as an anti-viral, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal and if eaten as coconut meat, the fibre promotes these properties, contributing to a healthy gut.
I love to make vegetable Malabar curry on a cold and windy day as there's just something so warming and comforting about it. Rich and flavoursome, I feel wrapped in a soothing warmth. Malabar curries come from the Kerala area, often as a fish curry. Although truly Indian, it has Chinese roots and developed along the coast. The warm, comforting element comes from the inclusion of a mixture of cinnamon, cloves and cardamom, all medicinal herbs in their own right. Cloves have an anti-inflammatory effect as well as a mild anaesthetic (oil of cloves for toothache), cinnamon has compounds that aid digestion and help reduce muscle spasm (amongst other effects) and cardamon is sometimes used as an anti-depressant.
Make this super healthy by using red, orange and green vegetables, packed full of nutrients and anti-oxidants to keep the winter bugs at bay. And of course by using coconut, it's completely dairy free.
Although there is a long list of ingredients in this recipe, it's actually pretty easy to make. You can buy a malabar curry mix from your local Indian store, but be careful, as these can contain a large amount of salt. It's pretty easy to make your own, so I make it fresh each time. Serve this up on a blustery evening with a warm roti or pile of steamed rice (brown of course!) and let yourself be enveloped with a soothing warmth which, with any luck, will transport your mind, if not your body, to warmer climes.
Vegetable Malabar Curry

Spice mix:
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 whole cloves
4 cardamon pods
Vegetable mix:
1 teaspoon olive oil
1/4 teaspoon black mustard seeds
1 spring curry leaves
Asafoetida - pinch (miss if you can't find it)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
2 onions chopped
2 fresh tomatoes, pureed
1 cup chopped carrot or sweet potato
1 cup green veg (beans, broccoli)
couple of handfuls sweetcorn or peas
1 tin coconut milk
up to 1 cup warm water
fresh coriander to garnish
First, make your spice mix. Bash the cardamon pods in a pestle and mortar to release the seeds. Grind seeds with the cloves until fine and mix in the cinnamon.
Heat the oil in a large pan and cook the mustard seed, asafoetida and curry leaves until the seeds splutter. Add the onion and ginger and cook until the onion is soft. Pour in the pureed tomatoes and a pinch of salt, and cook for 10 minutes. Stir in the chilli powder, turmeric, spice mix, vegetables and mix well to coat. Pour in the water and simmer with the lid on until the vegetables are cooked.
Turn off the heat and pour in the coconut milk. Stir well and heat on a low flame for a few minutes. Season with salt and pepper as needed, sprinkle the fresh coriander over the top, and enjoy!