Vegetarian Recipes

One of the meatier vegetarian dishes you’ll find here on Yumblog.

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If you were to apply the Stanford–Binet Intelligence Test to fruit-based desserts you’d find the Rhubarb fool sits somewhere between the Strawberry Simpleton and the Damson Dunce. Not the brightest confection in the bowl you understand, but possibly one of the tastiest.

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Spinach, egg & parmesan pizza is like so yesterday. This is now our Friday evening pizza of choice.

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This could possibly be the last comforting soup of the season as summer has finally reached these parts and the Pennines are roasting under 40 degrees of searing Yorkshire sunshine. Evenings are now spent sitting in the dappled shade of Hebden Bridge olive groves, drinking ice-cold Albariño, and listening to the song of the cicadas high up on the parched scrubland of the Tops. From here until September there’ll be an unbroken stretch of relentless heat only occasionally relieved by an aromatic breeze wafting down the A646 from Mytholmroyd.

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Such is the toothsomeness of this pizza, it has now become a Friday evening regular here at Yumblog Cottage – along with six hasty after-work Stellas and a punch up* with rival food bloggers in the precinct. The recipe comes from the excellent ‘Polpo – A Venetian cookbook (of Sorts)‘ by Russell Norman. If you want a copy you can buy it here at Waterstones and not here at Amazon.

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1st Prize – Luxury trip for two to Cuisinart’s Caribbean resort.
2nd – Luxury trip to Tresco Island, Scilly Isles. 3rd – Dinner and luxury B&B at Seven Park Place. 4th – Dinner and overnight stay at The Boundary. 5th – Dinner and B&B at The Manor House …and lots more.

Simply head over to Observer Food Monthly Awards and vote Yumblog for Best Food Blog. There is of course nothing stopping you from voting for any other inferior blog, but be forewarned, we will find out and hunt you down like the rabid dogs you are.

Please, please, please, vote for us.

I like Paul Hollywood, I like beer and I like bread…

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As the snow fell on Yumblog Cottage thoughts turned to sledging and comfort food.

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Click below for more from the Yumblog mixed tape.

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As a rule I tend to avoid drinks with the suffix pis, but this sounded so intriguing I had to give it a try.

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Pleasant surprise permeated through the Yumblog household when the first viewing of ‘Paul Hollywood’s Bread’ turned out to be a relatively straightforward cookery programme. There was of course the now obligatory 5 minute introduction guaranteed to elicit shouts of “Get the fuck on with it” plus the adoption of Jamie Oliver’s technique of looking just left of the camera. In Jme’s case this makes him look low spectrum autistic, whilst Paul just looks shifty, as if he’s talking to you but looking at your wife’s tits. But perhaps this is for public health reasons… perhaps Paul’s eyes are so blue and piercing no mere mortal can look directly into them without first retreating behind the safety of a welding mask.

This recipe is from the first episode and has now become the white loaf of choice here at yumblog cottage.

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Regular reader(s) will probably be aware that every year at this time we here at Yumblog experience a visitation from the son of God ‘His Royal Highness Jesus H Christ’ in the form of the appearance of his divine fizzog on various household items. Imagine how delighted we were this Easter when the King of Glory deigned to make his Princely presence known through the crayons of our very own Yumblog Junior.

Sometimes I wonder why we bother. We try our best to make this blog an edifying and sophisticated experience, but a glance at our site stats shows that the top three search queries which brought you here today were ‘Soft porn’, ‘Chicken pox’ and ‘Dairylea Lunchables’. You’re a weird and mucky bunch.

Incidentally, anyone browsing for the 12th most popular search query, ‘lawson nigella sex tape’, the link is here.

Now go away and never darken these hallowed portals again.

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This recipe does require the use of a pasta maker so you’ll need to have a rummage around in your cupboard of only-used-once things. There it is next to the Ken Hom wok set … to the left of the Jamie Oliver Flava Shaker … and behind everything you ever bought from the Lakeland catalogue.

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Look, everyone I have an iPad Mini. In fact as I write this I’m on the morming commute steaming through the Calder Valley aboard the Northern Rail Executive Express. For those of you not in the know, the Northern Rail Executive Express is a sleek luxuriously upholstered silver bullet from the future which flashes silently and smoothly between Leeds and Manchester at speeds in excess of 550 mph. It has never been delayed or cancelled, is most reasonably priced and at this time of the day the buffet car serves croissants which would put a Parisian patisserie to shame.

For those of you in the know, the Northern Rail Executive Express is a seemingly random collection of tired, cramped, mismatched rolling stock which reluctantly and tardily trundles between the two hubs of major employment in the area. At peak hours it smells of whatever is currently blocking the toilet combined with the acrid perfume pumped out to mask the smell of whatever it is currently blocking the toilet. Off peak this heady Air de Toilette is invariably accompanied by the fragrance of joylessly consumed fried food. In my experience evening passengers not dining on the train are more than likely to be engaged in some level of drunken romantic entanglement – ranging from oral slobbering to vigorous and prolonged finger-fucking. Peasants the lot of you.

So here is some peasant food. Enjoy.

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Now sit up straight, hands on desks and pay attention for what I am about to tell you is very important. This rosemary-infused oil is going to feature quite heavily in many up and coming and no doubt mouthwatering posts so it’s imperative you set aside the 10 minutes required to make it. Consider it homework.

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Strolling through the orangery here at Yumblog Hall it became clear we were going to have a glut of oranges again this season. A bumper crop no doubt thanks to both the skill of old Mr Fothergill the head gardener, and the relentless sunshine and arid terroir of West Yorkshire. We decided to use some of this surplus to make marmalade as not only would it make a welcome addition to the yumblog breakfast table, but could also be jarred up, over-packaged, branded as Mrs Bloggings Traditional Hand-Crafted Artisan Olde English Chunky Orange Country Preserve and sold in our ‘Farm’ shop for a price so shocking we only dare reveal it at the checkout.

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Stop right there ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls! Instead of going to the inconsiderable effort of making the dish below, why not pop on over to the Campbell’s website and follow one of their ‘sensational’ recipes for homemade soup. Or if you are feeling more adventurous and have a pound of  chicken slurry, a tin of their soup and some pineapple chunks at hand, give this challenging melange a go.

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Depending on the time of day, this dish makes a great brunch, brinner, brea, brupper or supfast.

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My how times have changed. When we first started this blog we had to write a post longhand on a sheet of A4 and send it in a stamped-addressed envelope to our ISP. He would in turn fax a carbon copy up to internet where a conveyor belt would take it to the code processing plant to be forged into massive cast iron HTML monoliths – some h1 tags could be up to 10 foot tall and weigh nigh on 70 tons. Once annealed, polished and elaborately engraved they were taken by locomotive to the website there to be hoisted by steam crane onto their respective concrete foundations. A speech, the smash of a Champagne bottle, an uproarious ‘Huzzah’ from the crowd, and the new web page was launched.

These days we simply think a post to the inboard computer of our hover-car and before you can say ‘protein pill’ it’s published on every web page in the universe.

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The plan was to make these with yumblog junior as part of a constructive and educational day of middle class parent/toddler fun. Despite initial enthusiasm and impatient requests of ‘cam i make cakes now?’, once the ingredients were assembled and all sharp objects removed from easy reach, the sprog decided she had more important things to do and her time would be better spent fidgeting on the sofa half watching ‘Stewart Little’. So I made these all on my tod.

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So tasty is this pasta dish it has taken over from the mighty ‘La pasta col tocca d’arrosto’ as THE quick and reliable midweek regular here at yumblog cottage. Originally an Angela Hartnett recipe which came to our attention as the result of a surplus of kale and google search, it has, over the months, transmuted, transformed and transmogrified into the dish you see posted below.

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I know, it’s the middle of January so it’s unlikely any of you lot (dear readers) are going to want to digest anything referring back to Christmas, Christmas dinner or any of its associated trimmings. But trust me, in 344 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes and 55 seconds (at time of writing) you’ll be desperately thumbing through books, magazines and websites in search of tasty new ways to add to your Yuletide calorie intake. So hit Apple-D and see you back here in 344 days, 2 hours, 37 minutes and 54 seconds.

Happy New Year by the way.

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Smoked salmon scotch (quail) egg

You can tell you’re at the Ocado end of the middle-class spectrum when your 2.5 year old asks for smoked salmon and quails eggs for breakfast. Soon she’ll be insisting on Jo Malone bum wipes. Anyway, if you manage to wrestle the ingredients away from your toddler why not make these lush smoked salmon scotch (quail) eggs?

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Our new best friends over at Tropical Sun sent us some delicious freebies so it’s only fair we pay them back by publicising their latest vending machine promotion. Get over there early enough in the day (9:30) and you could collect some freebies yourself. There are also money-off coupons and the chance to win a hamper.

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In lieu of having anything (interesting) to write about baked beans, here are a few words/phrases and accompanying definitions from Yumblog Junior’s ever increasing personal lexicon:

Circle ham – German sausage
Rainbrella – Umbrella
Yellow people – The Simpsons
Oop sake – For fuck’s sake!

Ah, the things they say!

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If you don’t have access to the rendered fatty juices which have oozed from the roasting flesh of a recently slaughtered animal, making a decent gravy can be quite a challenge. A vegetarian gravy requires time and attention to build up a sufficient depth of flavour, so I suggest you make this in advance and/or multiply the quantities and freeze the surplus.

By the way, here’s wishing a slightly belated happy Christmas to all our reader(s).

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Kohlrabo, Kohlrabmas, Kohlrabat, Kohlrabamus, Kohlrabatis, Kohlrabant. Or for those of you who were’t fortunate enough to go to Sir Joseph Williamson Mathematical Grammar School for Boys* and can’t speak Latin**, I Kohlrabi, You (singular) Kohlrabi, He, She or It Kohlrabi, We Kohlrabi, You (plural) Kohlrabi, They Kohlrabi.

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This is a recipe based on one found on the BBC GoodFood website and is a great way to use up that half cabbage which has been sitting at the bottom of the veg box all week. Regrettably the bendy parsnip and sprouting carrot remain untouched.

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Obviously you don’t really need to be told how to mull cider as like us you’ll just explore the deeper regions of your spice cupboard and gather together whatever seems to conjure up memories of Christmas. Then you’ll discard anything that is more than a year out of date, guess how much of the remaining you’ll need to conjure up a Yuletide twang and tip it into the awaiting vat of Cider. Think of this as more of a reminder and a nudge to expand your mulling horizons above and beyond the traditional sub-four quid bottle of red plonk.

WARNING: This posting has not been edited by my educated co-blogger and so may contain all sorts of grammmatical errers.

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Here is a recipe for toothsome* yuletide tipple which if you start now will be ready to sip on 28th December. Technically still Christmas.

WARNING: This posting has not been edited by my educated co-blogger and so may contain all sorts of grammaticle erors.

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As most foraged food is either unpalatable, bitter, or tastes ‘a bit like spinach’, our advice to you is to smother it with refined sugar and alcohol and transform it into a cheeky little apéritif and/or digestif. First up, Sloe gin.

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A few miles up the road from Yumblog Mansion in the beautiful unspoilt Lancashire town of Bacup there is the last fully operational commercial Granola quarry left in the country. We are lucky to have a source of such quality Granola right on our doorstep as these days most people have to make do with the imported low grade variety from the fracking fields of Canada.

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When the Spanish cook octopus they like to ‘scare’ it first by dunking it in and out of boiling water a couple of times before the final plunge…this being an Italian dish we decided to refrain from terrorising our poor dead eight-legged cephalopodic friend and just plop it straight in the pot.

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Ever wished you could enjoy your Fish Supper in one convenient, portable, pastry-encased handful? Of course you have. Then rejoice for your days of yearning are over as we here at the Laboratoires Yumblog have developed the Cod, Chips & Mushy Peas Pasty. Now you can scoff the nations favourite health food whilst out and about and on the go, such as commuting to the office, up West with the girls or working out at the gym. Anywhere in fact you can stuff your face, you can stuff it with the Yumblog Cod, Chips & Mushy Peas Pasty.

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I had a rare yen for something sweet the other day, so I commissioned my fellow blogger (the tart) ( …pie, cake and dessert specialist) to make a honey cake. After the initial face-to-face where we defined objectives, budgets, timelines and composed the all important mission statement*, we set about building the team who would take the project forward. As there were tight constraints on both time and finance (and I was hungry) we put together a bare-bones team under a ‘work smarter, not harder’ strategic umbrella. Just one account handler, two project managers, four line managers (each answerable to the other in a perpetual loop of indecision), several specialists who, despite having ‘architect’ or ‘engineer’ in their job title, have never touched a blueprint or a lathe in their lives, an ‘awesome’ young designer whose cultural references begin and end with Star Wars, a Creative Director imprisoned in the 90s zeitgeist, an ambitious little prick, a posh twat whose only function is to talk to other posh twats (and is therefore on a six-figure salary), a bloke in a suit who despite initially seeming friendly turns out to be a cunt, a woman who is either off sick or crying, an ex-employee now working as a consultant**, and finally an apprentice on below minimum wage to do the actual work.

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We had some lovely irregular muddy carrots in our latest Abel & Cole box, so we thought we’d break with tradition and instead of ignoring them for a week until they were as limp as a Young Conservative’s handshake, we’d use them right away …

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Pity the green pepper, no wonder it’s a little bitter, here in the UK its sole function is to ‘add a bit of colour’ to that dull and unwanted guest at every barbecue, picnic or family gathering* – the rice and sweetcorn salad. Not so in Spain where the pimiento verde is treated with the respect it deserves and makes an appearance in many a tasty tapas, such as…

* No not uncle Stuart.

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Forget the mapping of the human genome, the discovery of the Higgs Boson God particle, or the invention of L’Oreal’s age defying Boswelox™, I think we here at Laboratoires Yumblog can humbly announce we have made the single greatest scientific breakthrough since our prehistoric ancestors rubbed two dinosaurs together and conjured up fire. Like many of humanity’s greatest achievements it was the result of luck, circumstance, genius, 80s post-punk pop and six pints of Warsteiner.

We (being me, my co-blogger, and a friend up from that there London 2012) were sitting drunkenly around the kitchen table having just returned from a Scritti Politti gig and pondering what to eat to soak up the lager and send us off to bed to slumber like lions and dream wholesome dreams of Green Gartside. I am in do doubt that what happened next will replace the national curriculum and be the sole subject taught in schools and universities the length and width of the country. Cunningly we combined lightly toasted sourdough, left-over cold potato, olive oil and simple seasoning to produce the greatest ever post-pub, pre-bed, hangover-defying snack of ALL time.

The one thing to remember is NEVER deviate from this recipe in any way. So no substituting extra Virgin olive oil with Flora Lite, Maldon salt with Saxa, and definitely use no bread other than the finest sourdough baked to this recipe.

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Perhaps it’s the imminent collapse of free-market capitalism, the melting of the polar ice caps, the influence of our reptilian Illuminati shapeshifting overlords, the demise of the bumble bee, or just our shameful lack of regular posts, but of late freebies have been few and far between here at Yumblog. So when our new best friends at Elizabeth Shaw got in touch and asked if we’d like a hamper of chocolate-based goodies to review, we literally (or is that metaphorically) bit off their hands.

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