Vegetarian Recipes

Bream steamed with celery, ginger & pickled plums

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As much as I love to cook, sometimes it’s a welcome treat to prepare a meal which requires little more effort than a nifty flip of the switch on the Magimix. Spaghetti with green tomatoes & herbs

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Obviously when I first eyed a display of Romanesco at the local veg market I mused how the inflorescence had an approximate self-similar character, with the branched meristems making a logarithmic spiral and how it approximated a natural fractal with each bud composed of a series of smaller buds, all arranged in yet another logarithmic […]

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Despite your average British tomato being a Dutch grown, prematurely picked, under-ripe, woolly, anaemic, flavourless, blemish-free and over-chilled orb of disappointment, it’s still hard to get a genuine green tomato in this country… unless of course you live in Yorkshire and grow your own, in which case they’ll ALL be green from lack of sunlight. […]

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Don’t roll your eyes, I know what you’re thinking, “Stuffed marrow? When it comes to vegetarian misery, it’s up there with the brown rice and kidney bean salad …or anything involving couscous or a that stalwart of the ‘vegetarian option’, the butternut squash”. Relax, this is like no other marrow you’ve stuffed before, and as […]

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The day started with two itinerant cows and ended with a trip back in time to 1978. In between there was a misfuelling which led to three spontaneous guests for dinner. We served them pasta with this simple and deceptively delicious roasted pepper sauce. Roasted pepper pasta sauce

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Such is the fast turnaround of this post I still have a piece of samphire lodged between my teeth and a prawn juice stain on my t-shirt. Prawns with samphire

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Sun turns to grey, grey turns to wet and wet heralds the first flood alert for, ooh days. Time to get nostalgic about those long balmy Yorkshire summer evenings sitting on the white-washed terraza under ancient gnarled trees, their branches heavy with succulent ripe Barm Cakes still warm from the day’s sun. It was on […]

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Summer has eventually arrived in the UK. It has even managed to reluctantly drag itself all the way up to Yorkshire where, tripping over Stoodley Pike and tumbling down the hill it collapsed bloody and exhausted in our very own back yard. In fact one afternoon it was so balmy I was able to pop […]

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Now that interesting looking critter below is called a brik and is essentially an egg dropped into the middle of a sheet of filo which is then wrapped up and shallow fried. It comes accompanied by a spicy chickpea curry and a refreshing cucumber and coriander salad. Service not included. Not only is this a […]

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Waiting for a post from Yumblog is a lot like waiting for a bus. Nothing for six weeks and then two come along at once. There the similarities end, so hop on board and enjoy the ride. What’s that, you don’t have the correct change? Bugger off and walk then. Got a dollar to spare? […]

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

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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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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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, […]

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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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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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