tofu, mushroom and spinach pot pie

Earlier this week, Danni was inspired to cook some pot pies. Neither of us have a huge amount of pot pie experience, but this was gooooood. The gravy that developed was so thick and mushroomy and super delicious. OH YEAH. And it was a lot easier than I expected it to be! Not that I contributed at all to this, except to the eatering, and the checking of it in the oven.



tofu, mushroom and spinach pot pie

ingredients
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbl olive oil
some dried basil, oregano, marjoram and paprika, about half a teaspoon of each
1 tomato (diced)
300 grams firm tofu (diced)
1 dash light soy sauce
1 tbl tomato sauce
half a teaspoon of vegie stock powder
1 bunch spinach
half a dozen button mushrooms, sliced
150g golden boy mushrooms, halved
some squares of puff pastry

method
In the olive oil, fry the garlic, basil, oregano, marjoram, and paprika for a minute or two, then add the tomato and the tofu, and push it around a little bit before leaving it to simmer in the pot with the vegie stock powder, soy sauce and tomato sauce. After about six or seven minutes, add the mushrooms, stir it around some more, put the lid back on and simmer for a while, about fifteen or so minutes. You want the mushrooms to start releasing liquid.

Prep spinach (wash and chop roughly), then chuck it in, let it wilt through. Simmer with the lid off for another ten minutes.

Scoop the mixture into ramekins, put puff pastry on top (I trim to size), brush with soy milk and poppy seeds.

Bake 15 minutes at 190C.

lasagne mix leftovers pot pies

So after making the super awesome tempeh and quinoa lasagne, I had heaps of leftover filling, and as is well documented Danni and I have a love of puff pastry, so we decided to make pot pies.



It's very easy, and something we enjoy doing with our leftovers: fill ramekins with filling of your choice. Cut a square of puff pastry in to four smaller squares, and tuck one square onto the top of each ramekin. Bake in the oven at 180C for about twenty minutes, or until warmed through and crispy on top.

Sometimes I wish I had a pie maker, but that is not to say anything bad about pot pies, which I love.

dahl pies

On Saturday, we ended up with a lot of extra lentils at FoE. A LOT of extra lentils. So I brought some home, and Danni (with assistance from Jo) made some pie. The lentils were a bit runny, so Jo thickened them up, and then there was some potato cooking to coat the lentils in sweet potatoes and garlic and nutritional yeast. And then the pies went in the oven.

And then they were DELICIOUS.

This is just one thing that we sometimes do with leftovers (also I put the rest of these leftovers in a very tasty lasagna, but more on that later).

la panella bakery, preston

I had the most delicious doughnut ever this weekend. It was a chocolate coated doughnut with jam in the middle. It was amazing!



Other goodies included an apple pie, jam tarts, an apple scroll, and jam doughnuts. Have yet to try the apple scroll but everything else: AMAZING.



Also: pies from la panella. Eerily meaty in consistency, best eaten as a take-home and heated up to a crisp in the oven. OH YEAH.



Everything that is vegan says 'vegan' on the label, so it's easy to spot what's suitable for vegans. Not gluten-free in the slightest.

La Panella Bakery
465 High St
Preston
(open seven days)

(disclaimer: these photos are of a previous visit to la panella)

d's nan's lentil pie

D's Nan makes this really delicious lentil pie, which I've blogged about previously after she provided it at Christmas. Then she wrote up the recipe so I could try it at home (though deciphering whilst trying to cook was a bit difficult). It is very delicious, and great in this cooling weather - in Perth at least it's 'is it winter? is it not?' weather, and that's okay for beautiful warm ovens filled with delicious warm pies.



d's nan's lentil pies

ingredients
800gm potatoes
2 tbs nuttelex
1 med brown onion finely chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
4 or 5 chopped tomatoes
1 cup veg stock
2 tbl tomato paste
1 medium carrot finely chopped
1 heaped cup dried lentils
1/2 cup peas thawed
1 tbs dark soy sauce
1 tbl mushroom oyster sauce
1 tbl strong vegestock

method
Soak lentils in hot water, cook and mash potatoes (with a little bit of milk or nuttelex). In a little oil, fry the onions, then as they soften add the garlic. Add tomatoes, as well as tomato paste, drained lentils and carrot. Fry for a few minutes, then add stock and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Combine soy sauce, oyster sauce, and one tablespoon of vege stock. Add combined sauce and peas to the pot and cook for a further five minutes.

Spoon mix into a large dish, and cover with mashed potatoes, and brush with nuttelex. Bake uncovered at about 200C for 20 minutes. Leave to stand for five minutes before serving.

spinach and mushroom pie

I am quite excited about this pie, because it's sort of like eating spanakopita! This recipe was inspired by one I found at vegan visitor, which looked good but was not quite what I was after. I served this with a side of smashed potatoes, roughly following a recipe I found at vegan yum yum.



spinach and mushroom pie

ingredients
lots of mushrooms, about three giant handfuls, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
one and a half packs of baby spinach (two bunches normal spinach, shredded, will also be okay)
half a dozen basil leaves
shake of dried rosemary
salt and pepper
small handful of pinenuts
some black olives (sliced)
some silken firm tofu (that's one block if you're buying it in a 375gish pack from Coles/IGA/Woolies, or two thirds of the whole box if you're buying it from your local Chinese grocer in a takeaway container)
ten long sheets of filo pastry

method
In a little olive oil, fry the mushrooms and the garlic until the mushrooms are soft and delicious looking. Add the spinach, olives and pine nuts, and stir around until the spinach has wilted. Remove from heat. Attempt to drain any excess liquid without losing anything important. After it has cooled a bit, mash in the tofu with the basil leaves, a tiny bit of rosemary, and some salt and pepper. Leave to cool a little bit more.

Grease a suitably sized baking tin. I used a square 20cm x 20cm (ish) cake tin. Take five sheets, fold together in half, and line the bottom and sides of the tin with the pastry. Scoop the filling in to the centre, and cover with the remaining five pieces of pastry, also folded over. Tuck the sides as appropriate. Score the top, through to the filling, with a knife three or four times, and brush with a little nuttelex or soy milk.

Bake 175C for about 40 minutes. Leave to cool in the tin for five minutes before serving.

naked espresso, newtown (sydney)

Wandering back from Green Palace the previous night, D spotted the Basil Pizza / Naked Espresso sign, and on Saturday morning, after an excellent sleep in, we walked up to Naked Espresso to partake of vegan breakfast. It was amazing, I cannot recommend Naked Espresso highly enough. The food was fantastic. The service was excellent. The owner(?) Charles was delightful, chatty and friendly and helpful, weaving the King St traffic to show us across to Vegan Choice (a delicatessen with tofu icecream and vegan cheesecake, which I was sadly too full to consume) and making us try the delicious soy milk Naked Espresso uses in their coffee machine.

Naked Espresso shares premises with Basil Pizza, making it vegan breakfast bar by morning, and vegan-friendly pizza bar by night. I wish I'd had an opportunity to try the pizza, if the delights of the morning were anything to go by.



Tempted by the pancakes, I was nonetheless swayed by the scrambled tofu, simply because I've never before tried scrambled tofu. It was delicious, slightly curried and served with a hashbrown, a tomato, baked beans and two slices of sour dough bread. The tofu wasn't great cold but it was fantastic hot, and I cleaned up my whole plate. D ordered the vegan Aussie brekkie (mushies, tomatoes, baked tofu, spinach, hashbrowns, baked beans and sourdough toast), not even noticing that the entire menu was vegan!



Later, incredibly stuffed but happy to sit around, we chatted with Charles' five year old daughter ("What are you made of?" "I'm made of vegetables!") and overheard very interesting vegan-related things, like why we might have to stop drinking Vitasoy and the availability of vegan marshmallows.



Finally, we purchased two pies, the outer shells of which were definitely not gluten-free but whose insides apparently were, even though they were made from fake meat. We ate these much later in the day, after going to see Top Gear, and they were delicious.

The menu prices were average for breakfast (at least average for a Perth breakfast!), $10-$15 for a serve. Several gluten-free items were on the menu. Definitely A++ would nom again (and I recommend it to all of your friends) - if it had been closer to the hotel, I would have nommed again before we left. Thanks to everyone who mentioned Naked Espresso, it was totally worth the walk. ZB also reviewed it on a visit in January here, if you need more convincing.



Naked Espresso
126 King Street
Newtown

aloo masala pies

Aloo Masala is often the filling in a dosa. Using it as the filling for a puff pastry pie was tasty, though nothing like eating dosa. But now that I'm happy with my aloo masala, the next step is of course to attempt making my own dosa.



Aloo Masala Pies

ingredients
4 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 onion, diced
2 green chillis, deseeded and sliced width-ways
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon tumeric
some coriander
2 tablespoons desiccated coconut
1 tablespoon red chilli flakes
1 tomato, diced
2 tablespoons mustard seeds
1 large sheet of puff pastry

method
Boil the potato until half cooked, then drain. Fry the green chilli, onion and garlic, until the onion is golden and soft. Add cumin, tumeric, coriander, mustard seeds and chilli flakes, then tomato. Allow to simmer for a few minutes, then add potato, and mix through until covered. Leave to simmer until potato is cooked through and all liquid has rendered down, stirring occasionally. Stir in the coconut.

Spoon mixture into four ramekins, and cover with one quarter of the puff pastry. Brush with buttery thing, and bake at 190C for 15 – 20 minutes.

a new lentil pie recipe

Every four weeks or so I have to trot on out to uni for a three hour lecture that finishes about 20:30. By the time I get home I'm usually quite hungry, so D is left to prepare a hearty dinner that's going to be filling but won't weigh me down two hours before bedtime.

Last night's lecture ended spectacularly early, it being the last of the semester, so when I get home D was still admist the preparations and somehow I ended up finishing cooking dinner, which was very tricky on D's part!

It was an adaption of this recipe, but I think ours was probably more awesome, or certainly more to D's taste (D dislikes parsnips and celery). I think what makes this pie really tasty is cooking the lentils in stock, they soak up that extra delicious flavour.

I've posted a lentil pie recipe here before, but where that one was more like a dahl lentil pie, this is more like a lentil shepherd's pie.

Lentil Pie

ingredients:
two or three sweet potatoes
1 cup lentils (I think D used a combination of red and yellow)
1 onion (diced)
a dozen mushrooms (sliced)
1 carrot (diced)
1 tbl tomato paste
2 bay leaves
some stock
rosemary
garlic (minced)
pepper
3 tomatoes (diced)
1 tbl light soy sauce
2 or 3 tbl pumpkin seeds


method

Simmer the lentils in a few cups of stock for about half an hour, forty-five minutes.

Fry the carrots and the onion until carrot starts to soften. Add garlic, followed by mushrooms. Fry until looking delicious, then add tomatoes and cook until the tomatoes just start to go mushy. Drain the lentils and add, along with pepper, soy sauce, pumpkin seeds, bay leaves, tomato paste and rosemary. Leave to simmer for five minutes.

In the meantime boil and mash the potatoes in whatever is your preferred method.

Divide in to four ramekins, top with sweet potato, bake at 200C for 20 minutes.

shepherd's pie

I posted the recipe for this pie some years ago in my old food blog, but I made it again last night and thought I’d post it up here.


Shepherd's Pie



This is a great pie for hiding things in. It’s so chunky, an extra ingredient is easy to slip in. It’s not necessarily going to hide the shape of the mushrooms, since mushrooms are pretty obvious, but it helps to hide the flavour and texture, if your aversion to mushrooms is, like mine was, solely texture based.

When we first went vegetarian, D declared that I had to learn to eat a lot of the dreaded mushrooms, and having recipes that made it easy to disguise the flavour really helped. And now I really like mushrooms!


ingredients

1 can kidney beans (drained)
handful of mushrooms
one tomato
half cup stock or wine
one carrot
half cup of peas
half capsicum
half an onion
chives
parsley
chilli flakes
pepper
one garlic clove
tomato sauce
four potatoes


method

Dice the carrot, onion, tomato and capsicum. Fry the onion in some olive oil with the chilli flakes, pepper, parsley, chives and a squirt of tomato sauce until the onion is translucent. Mince the garlic and fry, then add the carrot, capsicum and tomato, as well as the stock or wine. You may not need the whole half cup, though. After the tomato renders down a bit, add the mushrooms (diced or cut small) and the kidney beans. Allow the liquid to evaporate a little, then add the peas and heat through. Spoon filling into an oven dish.

In the meantime, prepare the potatoes for mashing. I like to boil them with some garlic, and mash with a little nuttelex. Spread the mashed potatoes over the top of the filling, then brush or drizzle a little olive oil.

Bake for ten minutes at 190C.

lentil pie

I had some lentils on to soak, but dinner guests fell through, so I decided to get more adventuresome than just a tasty dahl.



lentil pie with sweet potato topping

I tend to be fairly non-specific with the lentils - I most often use a combination of red and brown, but other sorts are good, too.

ingredients:
one and a half cups of lentils
1 onion (chopped fine)
some ginger (minced)
clove of garlic (minced)
1 chilli (chopped)
3 tomatoes (diced)
2 cups vege stock
1 tablespoon ground coriander
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon tumeric
2 sweet potatoes

method:

Soak the lentils for about six to eight hours, rinse and drain.

Fry the onion, garlic and ginger. After two or three minutes, add the chilli and spices. Add the tomatoes, fry, then add the lentils. Slowly add the stock about a half cup at a time, letting the stock soak in, simmering on low and stirring occasionally, for about twenty minutes. I liken this to cooking a risotto.

Cook and mash the sweet potatoes.

Divide lentil mixture into four ramekins. Add mash potato to top, ensuring that all of the lentils are covered. Bake at 180C for about ten minutes.


Total time: 50 minutes