There are countless ways to make veggie burgers, and every vegetarian / vegan knows that. I just take a look in the cupboards to see what there is available and start from there. This time it was lentils and soya, next time it might be mushrooms or chickpeas.
You’ll need:
- 100 gr lentils
- 100 gr soya mince
- 2-3 tbsps oregano
- Approximately 1 litre vegetable stock
- 2-3 tbsps flour and 2-3 tbsps oil / or 2 eggs
- Salt
Cook lentils and soya mince in vegetable stock. Drain very well and put it aside to cool down.
Puree mince and lentils in blender.
Mix puree with 2 eggs and stir very well. If you don’t want eggs, substitute with oil and a little flour. Stir in oregano and salt.
Shape into burgers and place on paper parchment.
Bake at 350 F/180 C for about 20 minutes or until done. Serve with tzatziki.
My Tzatziki
- 1 ½ cup full fat yogurt
- 1 big cucumber
- 1 aubergine
- 4-5 garlic cloves
- 3-4 tbsps olive oil
- 1 tsp vinegar
- Salt
- 3-4 tbsps olive oil for the aubergine
- 1 cup Vegetable stock for the aubergine
Grate the cucumber. You shouldn’t process it in a blender as that would make it watery. We want it to have some texture. Strain the cucumber very well.
Chop garlic.
In a bowl, combine aubergine, cucumber, yogurt, garlic, vinegar, oil, salt to taste. Stir very well. Tzatziki is served cold. It is delicious with these vegetarian burgers but you can also eat it with dolmades (stuffed vine leaves) or as a dip.
Only the pure at heart can make a good soup.
Try eating it while listening to Beth Orton’s “Comfort of Strangers”.
You’ll need:
- 2 beetroots scrubbed
- 2 potatoes scrubbed
- 3 carrots scrubbed
- 6 walnuts, finely processed
- 2 tbs oil
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- Vegetable stock
- Salt – pepper
Heat olive oil, add nutmeg, vegetable puree (it’s red!) and a glass of vegetable stock and let it simmer for 5 minutes so that everything is combined. Adding more stock depends on how thick or thin you want your soup. Alternatively, you can thin it with some yogurt or milk or soy milk. Sprinkle with some walnuts.
Penny is my sister and this is her cheese pie. She makes her own pastry. Truly, it takes less time that waiting for the ready made to defrost.
The fact that my sister is on diet all the time, won’t stop her from making cheese sauce and adding it to the pie which she later gives to unsuspecting relatives.
For the pastry
- 5 cups all purpose flour
- ½ cup water
- ½ cup olive oil
- A bit of salt
For the filling
- 300 gr. Feta cheese, crumbled
- 200 gr. Gruyere cheese, grated
- 2 eggs
- Pepper
- Dill
- 2 cups cheese sauce
- 2 tbsps quality butter
- 2 heaped tbsps flour
- ½ lt milk
- 2 eggs
- 200 gr. grated gruyere cheese
To coat the pie
- Some milk
- a beaten egg
?ubergine salad is very common in Greece and there are numerous versions of it. This doesn’t mean there is no room for one more version: mine.
Blame it for losing your friends if you want, but you can’t blame it for being tasteless. I think it’s a great sandwich spread too, especially combined with mozzarella. Just stay at home, alone and contemplate for a couple of hours after you have had it.
Please, before you serve it ask people if they are allergic to walnuts. Many people are, and it just never crosses our minds to ask. But we could kill them with the walnuts before we had a chance to kill them with our garlic breath.
- 2 aubergines
- 2-3 chopped garlic cloves
- Olive oil
- One yellow capsicum pepper (red or orange is fine too)
- One tablespoon balsamic vinegar
- 10-15 walnuts
Purée the aubergines in a blender. Add one more garlic clove, 1 tablespoon olive oil, ½ tablespoon balsamic vinegar in the blender bowl. Also, add the capsicum, the walnuts, salt and pepper. Puree again and add more salt, pepper or balsamic vinegar if you want.
Serve cold with some finely chopped walnuts on top.
I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention – invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
(Agatha Christie)
I thought I could make this recipe when I have people over and am too bored to cook properly for some reason (what reason?). It looks impressive although it’s very easy to make and it is very tasty, with all the vegetables of the good lord in it. And with some white wine it goes down very well indeed.
- 700 gr puff pastry
- 300 gr.mushrooms (different kinds are okay) sliced or chopped
- 2 red or orange bell peppers sliced
- 2 zucchinis sliced
- 300 gr . pecorino peeled or grated
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped
- 100 ml white wine
- salt -
Cut the each pastry sheet in 6 oblong pieces (round are okay too). Pierce them with a fork (we don’t want them to get too puffy), place them on a baking sheet and bake them for 20 minutes or until golden, at 220°C.
In the meantime, heat half the oil and sauté the garlic and mushrooms until tender but not too tender. Add the wine, cover and let it simmer for 3 minutes.
In a frying pan pour the rest of the oil, the peppers and the zucchini and fry until tender. Mix mushrooms, peppers and zucchini and taste for seasoning.
Now the pastry is ready. On a piece of pastry layer the vegetables and sprinkle with the cheese. Top with another pastry square and again, add a layer of vegetables and cheese. Top with a third pastry square and sprinkle with cheese.
Repeat with the remaining pastry squares.
Bake the Mille Feuilles for about 5 minutes or until the cheeses have melted and serve hot with a spoonful of pesto sauce on the side.
- 1 ½ garlic clove, chopped
- 2 ½ cups fresh basil, chopped
- 120 gr. grated parmesan
- 120 gr. grated pecorino
- 1 cup good olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Magiritsa is a traditional Greek Easter soup. In fact it is the very soup that Greeks break their 40 day fast with, after they have returned from the midnight mass on Easter Saturday. This soup is traditionally made with lambs’ innards and avgolemono, an egg and lemon sauce. Some people also add rice but I don’t think it’s necessary.
I know that Easter is in April but I have already made my magiritsa for the magazine which is always a month ahead at least. So I am used to cooking Christmas food in late October and Easter food in early March.
Still, my version of the soup is fine for Lent too since it has neither innards nor eggs. It is made with oyster mushrooms -so it retains some of the texture of the traditional thing- and all the usual vegetables and herbs like dill and spring onions. It is very very tasty, a fact admitted by sworn carnivores too.
- 4 artichokes, cut and peeled
- 2 onions, chopped
- 2 spring onions, chopped
- ½ cup of chopped dill
- 1 ½ lt vegetable stock
- olive oil
- 2 tablespoons corn flour
- juice of one lemon
Chop the artichokes and put in a large pan along with vegetable stock. Bring to the boil and then reduce heat and boil for about 30 minutes.
In a bowl add ¼ cup water, corn flour, lemon juice, spring onions and dill. Stir well and add the mixture to the pan with the vegetables. Cook for another 5 minutes in moderate heat. Season to taste and add more lemon juice if you want to.
“After all the trouble you go to, you get about as much actual food out of eating an artichoke as you would from licking 30 or 40 postage stamps.” Miss Piggy
Artichokes are rich in magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, iron, calcium and have antioxidant properties. All these wouldn’t be of interest though, if they weren’t yummy.
If we don’t give a fig about calories, we can replace cottage cheese with feta.
For 2-3 servings (we need 3-4 rather large artichokes for each person)
- 8-10 artichokes
- 300 gr. Cottage cheese
- 1 big potato, boiled and mashed
- 1 cup grated parmesan
- 10 sun dried tomatoes
- 2 onions chopped
- 1 garlic clove, chopped
- 2-3 tbsp. olive oil
- 3 tbsp wholemeal breadcrumbs
- ½ cup chopped basil (dry is okay too)
- 1-2 tbsp butter
Cut the artichoke stalks so that the artichoke can stand on its back, cut the top leaves, pull the outside leaves off until you find the tender ones. With a spoon remove the inside of the artichoke. Put them in a bowl with water and lemon juice for about 15-20 minutes. This prevents them from going brown.
Leave them to dry and then put them in a pan with boiling water with some lemon juice in it and a tbs of butter and some salt.
We want them to be tender but not too tender. They must be strong enough to hold the stuffing. When they are done we let them dry.
Melt the cheese in a bowl and stir in the mashed potato. If this is too thick, add one or two tbsps of milk.
Heat the oil and add onion and garlic. Sautee for a while and then pour this into the bowl with the cheeses. Blend everything together.
Grease an ovenproof dish with some butter and arrange the artichokes neatly in. Sprinkle them with some oil. Stuff them with the cheese-onions mixture and sprinkle with the parmesan and then breadcrumbs.
If there is any cheese left, pour it among the artichokes.
Bake in moderate oven for 15 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and they look golden.
Serve with a sun dried tomato on each artichoke and chopped basil.
In essence, this salad is made with whatever vegetables you may find in the fridge. The only thing to follow is to prepare a green base of -let’s say- spinach or rocket and add other vegetables that may be in season. I could add beets or even baked aubergine. What we cannot add is cabbage, cucumber and other vegetables with lots of water because they are just going to weaken the taste.
You may sprinkle sesame seeds if you like because it becomes crunchier.
You will notice this salad tastes better if you eat it while listening to The Time is Now, by Moloko.
For 2-3 servings
- 2 cups spinach, chopped
- 1 cup rocket, chopped
- 2 cups red bell peppers, or orange or yellow or green
- 3-4 sun dried tomatoes chopped
- 2 spring onions chopped
- 2 tbsps dill, chopped
- 2 tbsps parsley, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- some sesame seeds (one handful)
For the dressing
- 4 tbsps olive oil
- 2 teaspoons balsamic vinegar
- ½ garlic clove, pounded
- Salt, pepper
Mix all the vegetables together in a big salad bowl. Mix all the dressing ingredients together in another bowl. Just before serving, pour the dressing on the salad.
These are really yummy and very easy to make. If you want to tease kids into eating soya try them, preferably with some rice or if you are really bold, some chips on the side.
There are three secrets you have to know:
-Don’t over boil them because then, they won’t be able to absorb all the nice spices you are going to season them with.
-They do need lots of spices and you may experiment with them. You can try cumin or curry (but not at the same time) and serve them with basmati rice or oregano and garlic like I did.
-Don’t tell anyone these are substitutes for meat. They might look like meat but they taste nothing like it.
For the kebabs
- 1 bag of soya kebabs (about 250 gr/8 oz)
- 1 clove of garlic, finely chopped
- half cup of oil
- 1 tablespoon grated ginger
- 1 tablespoon coriander
- at least 3 glasses of vegetable broth (if you use ready made don’t add salt)
- salt-pepper
- skewers for the kebabs
- 2 big red peppers deseeded and cut in squares (well not real squares!)
- 2 big yellow peppers as above
- 500-600 gr. button mushrooms or any other kind you like
Mix together:
- 2 cups olive oil
- juice of two lemons
- 2 garlic cloves finely chopped
- 2 tablespoons oregano
- 1 tablespoon mustard
In another pan heat some oil and add peppers and mushrooms. Stir fry them until they become tender. Now we thread the kebabs, peppers and mushrooms on to wooden skewers (or metal ones). That’s the difficult part, so ask for help at this point. It is not really difficult, it’s just that it takes a lot of time to thread all of these kebabs.
To make the marinade, we mix together oil, lemon juice, garlic, oregano, mustard, and spoon the marinade over the kebabs.
I served these with some spinach salad with guacamole and they were great. And you can eat hundreds of them because they are much lighter than meat kebabs.
Stir a pancake,
Pop it in the pan.
Fry the pancake,
Toss the pancake,
Catch it if you can.
Christina Rossetti
My English, Australian, Canadian and American friends talked to me about Pancake Tuesday, or Shrove Tuesday. Apparently they eat lots of pancakes on that day which is a wonderful custom to observe, if you ask me. And they say they even eat crepes, which are really pancakes in disguise. So, I listened to that song, Pancake, by Tori Amos and made those savoury pancakes for breakfast.
- 500 gr all purpose flour
- 1/2 tsp. salt
- 1 tbs butter
- oil (for frying)
- 2 cups grated (or crumbled) cheese: feta, parmesan, whatever we like but preferably a salty cheese
- milk
- 1 tbs parsley or oregano especially if your cheese is feta
Fry them one by one in hot oil until they are golden. Place them on kitchen paper to get rid of the oil.
Serve warm with cheese and parsley.
You can really top it with whatever suits your fancy. You can even break it and add it to salads instead of croutons.
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