Vegetarian Recipes

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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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 […]

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This is a bit like a kedgeree … but with potatoes instead of rice… and smoked mackerel instead of haddock … and horseradish instead of curry powder… In fact now I think about it, nothing like a kedgeree. In that case, consider this a Salade Niçoise with mackerel replacing the tuna and an absence of […]

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The arrival of Granny and an aunty to celebrate Yumblog Junior’s second birthday had the added advantage of the potential for babysitting and therefore a rare evening out for the parents. Searching for tasty and cheesy ballast with which to fortify ourselves before what was inevitably going to be a multi-pint boozy night out, we […]

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Sorry about the irregular nature of recent posts but I have recently started a new job in Manchester and feel it would be considerate to my new employer to wait a few weeks before I spend all my working day writing up posts for yumblog. On the plus side I have discovered a superb fishmonger […]

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A while back we bought a bumper pack of frozen sweetcorn for Yumblog Junior hoping this might make a healthy addition to her somewhat restricted and monotonous diet. As is invariably the case she gave our offering a glance of contempt, shook her head and returned to her preferred menu of bananas, Marmite and toothpaste. […]

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If any of you dodgy lot were to break into Yumblog Cottage, you would probably notice (apart from how bloody cold it is) that despite several shelf loads of cookbooks, there was virtually nothing ‘written’ by TV chefs. No matter how frantically you rummaged, you’d find no Jamie, Nigella, Gordon, Heston, Sophie, Ainsley, Gino, Levi, […]

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…or goat’s cheese pancakes.

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We like a bargain here at Yumblog Cottage, so when we spied the veg stall at Todmorden Market selling large boxes of portobello mushrooms for the VERY reasonable price of two quid, we couldn’t resist. They proved to be the frugal basis of three meals – this, a tasty cream of mushroom soup (recipe in […]

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Aubergine Sauce (with tomato and chilli) Well this is as close to perfection as you are likely to get in this increasingly imperfect world. As with all the other sauces in this occasional series, I turned to the ever reliable Marcella Hazan for inspiration and guidance, and once again she delivered the goods with this […]

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Our recent move to dwellings considerably larger (and colder and damper) than our old lair at Yumblog Towers has meant our cookbooks can now be displayed in a more prominent position and as a result this long forgotten book on Alsatian cookery … I’ll pause for a moment while you insert your own dog joke.… […]

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Lately crabs have become very much the decapodic crustacean of choice here at Yumblog Towers. This is a preference very much aided by the fish stall at Roman Road Market which sells big brown locally caught (Mile End Road at low tide) specimens for under four (s)quid. Having recently made this magnificently delicious crab tart […]

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Trawling through the dusty archives in the Fanny Craddock Wing of the Great Library here at Yumblog Towers, it seems that in all our years as honoured custodians of this esteemed and venerable blog, we have never written up a recipe for pizza. A possible explanation for this (should your legal department require one) is […]

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It was Saturday so we took our now routine trip across the wasteland to Victoria Park ‘Village’ for provisions. Wallet out. A score in the fishmonger, a Paul McKenna each at the offy and greengrocer, a few sharpeners at an impressive £4.40 a pint… where did that fifty quid go? Well, most of it went […]

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This is essentially a simpler version of the ‘Spicy Seafood Stew‘ which can be found a few posts below, although none the inferior for it. It is based on a recipe from the excellent ‘Rick Stein’s Spain’ which is itself based on a trad Spanish dish called ‘All-i-pebre’. Feel free to continue the process of […]

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Here’s a quick and tasty meal to enjoy as the earth’s crust inexplicably crumbles and spews forth molten drivel*.

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Again, inverted commas as the viscosity gradient of this dish leans very much more towards the stewy than the soupy. However, let’s not get bogged down with culinary thixotropics, pull up a chair, grab yourself a spoon and tuck in.

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It was Saturday morning and so the evening meal needed to be planned. She wanted something seafoody (but not with mussels). He wanted something spicy (but not Asian). They both wanted something tasty (not the usual slop they serve up). Cook books are leafed and websites consulted (but not food blogs as these are written […]

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A traditional Italian (Puglia) one pot dish of mussels, potato and rice.

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If you fancy two of your five-a-day smothered in cheese sauce then this is the recipe for you.

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Being a puritan and a snob, I wouldn’t normally condone any recipe for pesto which strayed away from the traditional holy trinity of basil, pine nuts and parmesan. Profane variations such as ‘Rocket and walnut’ or ‘Spinach and sun-dried tomatoes’ have a desperate and makeshift ‘Ready Steady Cook’ feel about them, which in my experience […]

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In an attempt to escape the hysterical media build up to ‘the wedding’, not to mention the event itself with its stupid street parties, stupid bunting, stupid flag waving and general unseemly national deference to our ‘betters’, we left the country and spent Easter in the relaxed sun-drenched (republic) of Berlin. Fortunately for us the […]

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A few weekends back the Yumblog family boarding a cramped Virgin train and sped uncomfortably northwards to West Yorkshire in what could be referred to as Phase Two of their cunning plan for a bright and exciting new future. A few days later they returned to Yumblog Towers refreshed and excited and carrying a modest […]

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This is less of a recipe and more of a reminder to shove a Camembert in the oven once in a while for a fast fatty indulgent treat … and do it soon before this world inexorably unravels to a lawless (and cheeseless) wasteland.

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The starting point of this recipe was a forgotten and up until now unused bargain basement cookbook called something along the lines of ‘A Zillion and One Easy To Make Risottos’. I should have been forewarned, for even after the most cursory of scans it was obvious the editor had struggled to fulfil the ambitious […]

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2. Creamed onion and cider soup with Stilton A quarter of the way into our sack of onions, time to try another soup… Featuring as it does cider and Stilton, this could probably be called an English Onion Soup.

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1. Vegetarian(ish) French(ish) Onion Soup Around our way virtually every shop sells these 4kg sacks of onions for a very reasonable £2, so we thought we’d buy one and see if we could eat the entire contents in sufficiently varied ways that we didn’t slump into an Allium ennui induced coma. This onion soup is […]

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I couldn’t think of an introduction to this recipe so I ran it back and forth through BabelFish a few times until I ended up with ‘Muntachtige pea fries in oil the pie of meat [s] in order to fumigate the salmon of the friend’. Incidentally, apologies to Gordon Ramsay for our childish reference to […]

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Despite heroic efforts on our part, post-Christmas still found us with a substantial wedge of a 3 tonne wheel of Stilton left uneaten. This tart was one of several tasty ways we found to remedy the problem.

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Porcini are very much in vogue here at Yumblog Towers. Along with late Sunday roasts. And baked potatoes with cheese and beans and coleslaw. And spending Saturday morning watching 5Live on the red button. And Sophie the teething giraffe. And Friday night beer and pizza after swimming. Lots of things in fact. But not duck […]

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…which makes this three times better than a mono cheesed risotto.

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If you take nothing else from this recipe, you will at least leave with an unusual and delicious new way of cooking potatoes. Not bad. Consider it an early Christmas present.

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…or Seafood Spaghetti baked in paper parcels. To be honest, this method doesn’t particularly impart any more flavour than if cooked in the more traditional way, however there is something satisfying and vaguely theatrical about peeling open the paper and wafting aside the aromatic steam to reveal a hearty mound of spaghetti and seafood.

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The last six months have seen many changes here at Yumblog Towers. Saturday nights are no longer a time of cage fighting (for her) or pole dancing (for him) but instead spent indoors looking after our increasingly fidgety but exponentially lovely offspring. Although compensation is not necessary, we do like to remunerate our parental devotion […]

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Pesto Although I’ve made pesto many times before, I’ve generally haphazardly chucked the ingredients into the food processor and left it to chance. Despite the results usually being good, I thought it was about time I consulted the mama of authentic Italian home cooking, Marcella Hazan and see if she had an angle on this […]

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A recent trawling of the recipe archive of the excellent Australian Gourmet Traveller Magazine website, produced among other things, this simple ‘one-pot’ fish dish. Instead of cod we opted to use the (considerably) cheaper and (coincidentally) sustainable whiting and spend the money we saved on an impressive quantity of prawns.

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There are some recipes you can taste just by reading them. This was one such recipe and it read delicious.

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As soon as I saw this recipe with it’s unusual ‘Boil in the Bag’ cooking technique, I knew I had to take it to our experimental kitchen here at Yumblog Towers and see if it was worthy of a place on the menu of our amusingly post-modern and knowingly ironic restaurant ‘The Yummy Duck’.

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In theory you could arrive home from work after an exhausting day Ice Road Trucking, and 10 minutes later be sitting at the dining table sipping a chilled white Rioja and tucking into this tasty treat… quicker than it takes to microwave a bowl of Batchelors UnSavoury Rice.

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In the spirit of Dandruff Dave’s Big Society we here at Yumblog have served each other redundancy notices so that you, dear reader, can volunteer and write this blog yourself.  So come on Dirk, Tony, Helen, Scooter McKenzie, Mimsy Swallows, Zucchini Breath, Briony Bob et al, step forward and become part of this radical new […]

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