FOOD WITH FLOSS

Recipe of the week...
... Vegan Bean Burgers!

Ingredients: 400g tin chickpeas or beans, 300g root vegetables, 2 garlic cloves, a splash of oil, 2 slices of bread, some form of herbs and seasoning, and salt and pepper.

Recipe makes: 4 burgers (quite cool – you can actually freeze these burgers uncooked and then bake them from frozen another time – so you potentially could up the quantities of ingredients here and prepare more than 4 burgers... then freeze some for another day!)

Time taken: 1 hour total (half an hour to make and half an hour to bake).

Hi readers,

How’s it going today, with this wonderful life we lead? Are you battling the Tuesday blues and powering ahead with the working week? Or are you necking wine and counting the seconds til Friday 5pm?? Either way – I hope you’re keeping your spirits up and thinking positively!

My Tuesday so far, readers, has actually been one of note. Today is the day that I passed my driving theory test. For real. After a week of patchy Highway Code revision and bleary, late night attempts at practicing hazard perception.. I passed the test and walked out with a certificate in my hand.

Yuhhhhhh!

Not exactly a fun week of my life spent prepping for the theory test.. but it’s over and done with now! I may never need to know so much about road signs or stopping distances ever again – I can just get on with learning to drive a car. That small thing. Phew.

Today, though, besides passing my theory, I’m having the kind of day where it’s possible I might be invisible. Know what I mean? People have been merrily pushing past me and the traffic lights don’t change for me anymore and my emails go unanswered. You’re familiar with this kind of day, readers, where at times you question whether you died in the night and it’s all been make believe since then? 

That kind of day.

 I want to be the swan that the police have been chasing around in Hampshire today (if you missed this gem, the news story is here). It looks like this fellow’s been having a lark. I don’t necessarily want people to be running after me.. that’s all a bit sinister, I suppose. But to bring a smile to people’s faces and be the star of their show for a day. That would be nice.

One good thing about friends and family is that, whether they love you or hate you at the time, often you’re found starring in their show. I had a fabulous friend up visiting from London this weekend and was most occupied for a couple of days, forcing her to be among squirrels at the Botanic Gardens (“rats with bushy tails”).. showing her Sheffield’s impressive waterway, the River Sheaf (entirely by accident).. taking her out for brunch at the best place in town (Tamper, of course). Was most nice.

If ever you're in Sheffield: Tamper

And we talked and talked and talked and, aside from the many tourist attractions of Sheffield, I guess I was a star in her show this weekend. She, certainly, was the star in my show. With long flowing hair which I long for, and three months of girl gossip, and tales of life living down in the Big Smoke. Sometimes, I think you just need your friends around to make you feel like the Hampshire swan you are. I hope, readers, that you’re thinking of someone now who is that friend you have that DEFINITELY brings out the swan in you. Maybe make plans to meet up with them and star in each other’s shows, sometime soon?

Anyway, readers, I feel I’ve gone off on a tangent. I’m writing to you today to share a wonderful recipe, concocted by myself and Floss this weekend, for Vegan Bean Burgers! This recipe came about totally on the fly – devised by two vegetarians with polar opposite tastes in food. Neither of us really knew what we wanted for tea on Saturday, and we definitely didn’t want anything that the other person wanted… and somehow bean burgers won out.

And we have a winner!

 Want to invite one of your fabulous friends around for tea and cook up a storm?? Here’s how to turn the most basic of ingredients (potentially, even, your moulding veg) into a healthy tea for two – enabling you to clear your cupboards and feed an amigo – in just 15 simple steps…

1.     Heat the oven to 200C.

2.     Peel and roughly chop your root vegetables.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: We used some slightly mouldy carrots that I’ve had in the fridge since December and they worked a treat! Any veg you need to use up – now is the time to do something with them and save them from going to waste. Aside from carrots, you could use butternut squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes or even parsnip in your burgers.

3.     Tip your veg into a pan and boil the kettle, then fill the pan with water and heat for around 20 minutes.

4.     While your veg are boiling, you can be using a grater to grate your slices of bread into breadcrumbs.

5.     You can also use this time to drain and rinse your tin of chickpeas or beans. Tip your chickpeas or beans into a bowl, and season with salt and pepper.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: This recipe presented the perfect opportunity for me to use up a tin of mixed beans, which have been sat in the cupboard for the best part of a year. If you’d prefer to use a specific bean, though, bigger beans such as borlotti, kidney or butterbeans work well.

6.     Either press or finely chop your 2 cloves of garlic, and add to the bowl along with some herbs (such as coriander or Herbes de Provence) and seasoning (such as ground cumin, paprika or chilli flakes).

7.     Use a fork to mash the contents of your bowl into a flavoursome bean paste.

8.     Then, once a stab test show your root veg have softened, take them off the heat and drain away the water.

9.     Leave to cool for a few minutes and then use either a fork or a proper masher, depending on the force required, to mash your vegetables into a pulp.

10.  Add your mashed bean mix to the mashed veg mix, and combine everything together into one big burger mix.

11.  Then, use your spoon to roughly divide the mix into quarters, and roll up your sleeves! Use your hands to roll the mix into four burger-sized balls.

Like so

ChefBeHere Top Tip: After this step, as were feeling quite hungry, me and Floss went off-recipe and decided to fry our burgers in a pan to speed up the cooking process. This was an awful decision. They stuck, they burned, they came apart.. and so then we decided to grill them! What you need to do, readers, is just put them in the oven like the recipe says to do. That is all.

12.  For those of you not careering off-recipe, prepare a baking tray by brushing the tray lightly with cooking oil, to cover.

13.  Roll your burger balls in the breadcrumbs, until they’re evenly coated with crumbs, and then place them on your baking tray and flatten the balls slightly.

14.  Brush the top of each burger with a light coating of cooking oil, and then safely transport your bean burgers into the oven to cook for cook for 20-30 minutes.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Assess the chaos around you – time to get those dishes done!! Remember to turn your burgers over midway through cooking, so that both sides will brown in the oven. Pour yourself a glass of wine.. you’re almost there now.

15.  Once your burgers are cooked through, smelling great and browned on both sides, then you can carefully remove them from the oven and turn the oven off. Serve them up and tuck in!

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Myself and Floss served our burgers with sweet potato fries and salad – a very tasty combination. Alternatively, you could serve them in burger buns perhaps, with fried onions and houmous to top? Or you could serve your burgers with a rice salad and corn on the cob, and pretend they’ve come straight from the barbecue in summertime?? Anything goes!

Adapted from a BBC Good Food recipe found here.

Floss with food

And that, readers, is all there is to it. A fun, messy, low-skill recipe. One that you can sort on the night while chatting away (glugging wine) – without the need for any preparation in advance and possibly without you even needing to buy ingredients in. What do you think?? If you’ve tried out the recipe – how did it turn out? Did you like these beautiful bean burgers, readers? If you haven’t had a go yet, does this recipe tempt you to try out homemade vegan burgers? Let me know! All your thoughts – fire away with them, readers!

I, for one, thought that these burgers tasted lush. Things were a little stressful in the kitchen, when we (the wine) decided to veer off-recipe and change things up a bit – I wouldn’t advocate doing that at all – but it all came good in the end! We sat down to a really tasty, colourful and healthy tea. And a real plateful! There was no skimping on portions.

There certainly was not

I had a wonderful weekend with Floss, readers, and whether or not you feature vegan bean burgers I do hope that you get to have an equally fab time with one of your friends soon. Don’t hesitate! Anytime now you could be the swan that doesn’t make it to the other side of the motorway.. just saying. Live for the day, every damn day.

Hang in there with the rest of your working week, readers, and high five to anyone that gives this recipe a whirl – wishing you major good luck in the kitchen!!

Mash safely,

Hayley

Go swan! Run free!

SPARE A THOUGHT FOR A COBBLER

Recipe of the week... Root vegetable cobbler!

Time taken: About an hour prepping veg. Then 45 minutes getting it all together. Then half an hour to bake and serve. 2 hours and 15 minutes in total… but it’s so worth it!!

Serves: 4 (or double all the quantities – like I did – if you’re feeding 8 hungry friends)

Ingredients:

For your hotpot… A couple of splashes of olive oil, 2 red onions, ½ a butternut squash, 300g swede, 300g carrots, 2 leeks, 300g parsnips, 200g long-life beetroot, 2 celery stalks, 1 teaspoon caraway seeds, 2 cloves garlic, 3 tablespoons tomato purée, 1 stock cube, 400g can chopped tomatoes, 1 tablespoon vegetable gravy granules

For the cobblers… 175g self-raising flour, ½ a teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1 teaspoon dried rosemary, 25g butter, 50g grated Parmesan cheese, 1 large egg, 6 tablespoons milk (plus a little extra for glazing).

Good evening readers,

And with this… we reach the end… of another week.

As I write, curled up on the settee with a glass of red, it’s an extremely cold Friday night in January. We’ve had clear skies all day in Sheffield, with a gorgeous pink sunrise this morning and then a sky full of stars this evening. I hope, readers, that you got to look up today and saw a sensational sky.

I hope, too, that you got to stretch your legs and breathe fresh air. That you laughed, even if you don’t remember why. That you achieved something you set out to do. That you ate delicious food, and spent time in great company. Perhaps you helped someone out, or was it that they helped you? Maybe you understood something you didn’t before, remembered something you’d forgotten, realised something that made you stop in your tracks.

I hope, readers, that today might be a day you will remember. And remember not only as at the days of President Trump’s inauguration… but instead as the day that something far more fun occurred! Do you reckon you will? Think hard! What’s been ace about your day today? Or what could still be ace yet?? There’s time left! Do something memorable with it!

Today, readers, I somehow managed to get an evening doctors appointment (these are as rare and unobtainable as the gold dust found in unicorn tears on a full moon). I was tired and heading into work early but then I saw the incredible pink sunrise and was cheered up. And my phone shuffled me a song I didn’t know I had and have DEFS never listened to before – my new favourite song!

Then, when I was leaving work I found one of my boss’s lost Bluetooth headsets just lying on the floor outside. So he’s missing one less now. And I took a taxi driven by a man named Bash and we didn’t crash (though I worried). Then, this evening, I made it to Friday yoga and held some killlller stretches. And now wine!

You know what… to some, maybe that is not a remarkable day. I’m tired. Full of cold. Have a large workload. Had to pay for a taxi just to make it to a weekday doctors appointment, as the doctors don’t open on weekends. And I work every weekday. I ate soggy cucumber as my eccentric fridge had frozen it. And then when it thawed it wasn’t the same, but was already on its way to my work.

Giving zero shits… I thought my day today was great!! Take this attitude, readers. I hope your day was funtastic, too! Hope you’ve had a terrific week this week – with plentiful, memorable fun times. Any bad times – just dance them off. Find a new song that you can play on repeat and groove around to and reeeeeally appreciate every time you hear it. Own that song.

My jam this week, you ask? It’s ‘Be Right Back, Moving House’ by Ghostpoet. Give it a listen.

And a quote that’s really stuck with me through the week: “When your past calls… don’t answer. It has nothing new to say.” I like that sentiment.

AND… my recipe of the week?? Root vegetable cobbler ahhhh! You’re going to love it, readers. You’re going to love it like a restaurant plate of food. Or like a takeaway in your pyjamas. Or like chocolate – aaaany damn time.

Root vegetable cobbler is the recipe I cooked, on Wednesday night, for a bunch of friends I had over for tea. There were eight of us, in total, to feed. And I’d been at work all day, so didn’t have a lot of time to prep before people arrived. LUCKILY… I had a plan in action and that plan was root vegetable cobbler. I shopped for veg on Saturday; I spend two hours chopping veg on Sunday. I read and reread the recipe while commuting in the week.

You’re cooking for 5+ people? Some are on January health kicks (including you)? One has a serious allergy? All expect a lot from you in the kitchen? And every single one needs further evidence – that vegetarian food is real food? THIS RECIPE IS YOUR LLAMA.

If you have the budget to buy all these veg, the time to source them (go to M&S), the will to prep them, and the strength to spend a focused hour in the kitchen on the night before you start drinking… then this recipe is for you, readers. I’m telling you. And it tastes great! Such a colourful dish. Your friends will be really wowed and rave reviews. Many of your 5-a-day. No presentation skill needed. Very filling. Lots of vitamins… just doooo it.

Feeling brave, readers? Feeling like root vegetables are just what’s been missing from your January health kick?? Here’s how to rustle up one mighty root vegetable cobbler in (I shit you not) just 27 easy steps…

1.     Find something decent on TV and settle in with a hot drink and your largest knife… for some serious veg prep!

2.     Peel your red onions and cut them into wedges.

3.     Peel your butternut squash and dice into bite-sized chunks.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Unless you’re a total squash head and want to go wild and throw it all in, set half your squash aside to use in another recipe.

4.     Peel your swede and dice into bit-sized chunks.

5.     Peel your carrots and thickly slice.

6.     Trim the ends off your leeks and then thickly slice.

7.     Peel your parsnips and – you guessed it – thickly slice.

8.     Cut your beetroot up into quarters.

9.     Trim the ends off your celery stalks and then, yes, thickly slice.

10.  Peel your cloves of garlic and crush them into smithereens.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: This is the end of the veg prep and if you’ve made it this far you’re probably like… I FUCKING HATE VEGETABLES ARRGGGH. So, I recommend taking a little time away from the veg at this point, to get the fury out of your system. Open a window and dance around a while?

11.  When you’re feeling up to it, heat your oven to 200°C.

12.  Look at your pile of vegetables, look at your pots and pans. You need either a giant pan or a large casserole dish – anything that looks big enough to hold all those veg.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: If, like I did, you’ve doubled your quantities and are now dealing with a real shitload of veg, you’re going to need 2 (maybe even 3) veg vessels. And some luck.

13.  Heat a couple of splashes of oil in your pan/dish monster and add the onions, butternut squash, swede, carrots, leeks, parsnips, beetroot, celery, caraway seeds and garlic.

14.  Fry all this over a high heat, stirring throughout, for 5 minutes. Keep it moving.

15.  Boil the kettle meanwhile and make up your veggie stock, by mixing your stock cube with 300ml boiling water.

16.  Then add the purée, stock and chopped tomatoes to the pan/dish.

17.  Stir in the gravy granules and cook, stirring, until the liquid thickens a little.

18.  Bring it all to the boil, put the lid on the pan/dish, and leave to simmer for half an hour.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Take some deep breaths now. Notice how you’re breathing and try to slow that down a little. Pour yourself a cold drink and take a few minutes out of the kitchen.

19.  When you feel well enough to return, it’s time to make the cobblers! First, sift the flour into a mixing bowl, and stir in the pepper and the rosemary.

20.  Use your fingertips to rub in the butter, until the mix resembles crumbs.

21.  Stir in the Parmesan. Inhale its cheesy, foot-like aroma!

22.  In a mug, use a fork to beat together the egg and milk.

23.  Next, gradually add your milky mix to the dry ingredients, and use your fingers or a wooden spoon to bring it all together into a soft dough.

24.  Dust a clean kitchen surface with flour, and roll out your dough til it’s 2cm-ish thick.

ChefBeHere Top Tip: Don’t go too thin with your dough! You want to make good chunky cobblers, not flimsy fancy ones. Man cobblers. Sumos! With girth.

25.  Use a glass or a round pastry cutter to stamp out 8 to 9 rounds.

26.  Take the lid off your hotpot and arrange the scones on the top, around the edge of the casserole, and brush the top of each with milk.

27.  Carefully transport into the oven (my tired arms were wobbling!) and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the scones have risen and turned golden. Then serve immediately to your horde of hungry guests, and sit yourself down my dear. The dishes can wait.

Based on a Morrisons recipe found here. 

And BOOM! Readers, that’s how you make a root vegetable cobbler. The one and only. What do you think?? Is anyone going to give this recipe a go? Because it’s got so much good stuff in it! So many wonderful vitamins to power you on, through January! Really, if you think you can do this, then definitely do it, readers! Do it. Root vegetable cobbler is a taste sensation.

Has anyone tried this before, maybe? Or tried cooking this recipe before? Or – if you’ve read my blog and decided to have a go – how did it work out?? Did it go well? Any thoughts you have at all, readers, on the wonderful root vegetable cobbler – share them here! Let me know your recipe reaction / give feedback / any tips to make this even better… fire away!

And have a cracking weekend, readers. Look up at the sky. Dream big.

Veg safely,

Hayley

So yummy I only got a pic of the leftovers!