Roasted Cauliflower Salad

We've had a lot of cauliflowers in our vegie box lately, and they're not a vegetable I usually enjoy cooking... it's been so hot, so I decided to do a bit of a salad.

Basically, I chucked all this in a roasting pan:
1 cauliflower, chopped into florets
1 tbspn olive oil
1 tspn coriander seeds
1/2 tspn cumin seeds
1/2 tspn ras el hanout
1/2 tbspn soy sauce
1/2 tbspn pomegranate molasses

Roasted for 30 mins (or until the cauli looks golden-ish and cooked)

Then, I squeezed on the juice of half an orange, some torn mint, and let it cool for a bit. Mmm!

Moroccan Pumpkin Couscous Salad

I'm not the world's biggest pumpkin fan, so when one happens to arrive on my doorstep as part of my Green Line delivery, I usually try and make something super-delicious. This week I was having a little browse through the Where's the Beef blog and found this recipe, which I adapted slightly. Yum!

Moroccan Spiced Pumpkin
1 small-ish pumpkin (about 1.5kg)
2 tbspn olive oil
1 tbspn soy sauce / tamari
1 tbspn pomegranate molasses*
1 tbspn coriander seeds
1 tspn cumin seeds
2 tspn ras el hanout
1 orange (or some orange juice)

Peel, deseed and chop the pumpkin into largish chunks.
Toss the rest of the ingredients (excluding the orange) together with the pumpkin in a baking dish.
Bake, uncovered at about 180 degrees C for 45 mins.

As you're baking, you'll see that the pumpkin is starting to get dry - you can squeeze over the juice of half an orange after 15 mins of baking, and the other half an orange again after 30 mins.

Hooray! That's it!

Serve with some a little couscous salad of mint, tomato, onion, sultanas & spinach.


*Pomegranate molasses is a tangy sweet syrup - if you don't have any you could use a bit of maple syrup or sugar and some lemon juice.

Aloo Gobi

The other day the only veggies we had left were cauliflower and potatoes. So - Aloo Gobi. I did a Google search for the recipe, and Bend it Like Beckham kept coming up, which I thought was a bit racist. I chose this recipe because it had 70 5-star ratings! Awesome! And, apparently it's the recipe from the Bend it Like Beckham DVD extras. Google search results explained. I quite enjoyed that movie, but I don't really like having to type out Beckham over and over, because let's face it, he's not the awesomest dude in the cosmos.

So anyway. Delicious curry (feel free to omit the coriander as I did), don't let the Beckham reference turn you off.

Vegan Bento 4

Last night's bento was a bit of a mish-mash of some random veggies. This week in our Vegie Box from The Green Line we had (amongst the usual amazing organic fruit & veg) some rather sad looking & very tough green beans. I did a Google search to see what to make with tough green beans - the first result came back with roasting, which according to the website (will try and find the link) would take the green beans back to their fresh & young, pre-tough state. And... it kind of did?

In my bento:
Inari, salad with lemon & spring onion dressing, roasted potato, roasted green beans, sushi & onigiri.



I watched this super cute video on Youtube before making the onigiri - it was sort of helpful and very fun to watch!

Spaghetti & (Vegan) Meatballs

I know I've posted a very similar recipe before, but this was so delicious!

Again using the lentil & hazelnut mixture from my last post, I just fried up some onion on a flat non-stick pan, added some lentil & hazelnut balls and cooked until they were fried all over (just keep turning them every minute or so). Then I whacked in some asparagus and tomatoes, and that's it! Yum!

Vegan Bento 3

Another day, another Bento box. This one is quite similar to the last...

In my bento:
Lentil beanballs with tomato/red pepper paste sauce, steamed cauliflower, apple & rocket salad, sliced tomato, silverbeet sushi (yum!), carrot/cucumber/pickle sushi, more inari.

I've found it's easier to do everything in batches, which lasts a few days... the rice I cook fresh every day, but the bean ball mix I made a big batch of. I have more beanball recipes coming!

The mix contains:
Whole red lentils,
Ground hazelnut,
Polenta,
Celery,
Potato,
Spring onions,
Salt & pepper

Basically I just soaked the lentils for a few hours, then boiled them with the potato & celery. Then chucked it in a food processor with some hazelnut, polenta, chopped spring onions, salt & pepper and whizzed until mushy.

Vegan Bento

This week I've been totally inspired by the vegetarian Bento on We're Rabbits - they always look so delicious! I usually cook the same sort of things for a week at a time - this week is officially Bento week at my house.

I noticed that the We're Rabbits bentos often had yummy looking hazelnut & lentil balls, so I cooked a loose interpretation of this recipe.

In my bento:
Lentil bean balls, sliced tomato, inari with cucumber loveheart, cucumber & pickles sushi, apple/dijon salad. And on the side is a yummy okonomiyake Chris made.