Vegan food - what is your favourite meal.

[MrsNacho]

This is inspired by the vegan wedding thread, it got me wondering what kind of things you eat if you are vegan.

I already cook meat free a few times a week but it usually involves cheese so not vegan.

Inspire me with lovely meals I can serve up please if I was to make the switch. Not full time but every little helps I hope?

I don’t eat meat, do eat fish about once a week, and aim for a couple of vegan days s week too.

I cook a lot of falafel, roast veg and cous cous.

Curries are easy to make vegan and delicious.

My current favourite food is buffalo cauliflower “wings” with ranch dressing made with cashews from the Bosh cookbook.

I don't call myself vegan but try to make the majority of my diet plant-based. Last night I cooked the Thai yellow curry from the Deliciously Ella cookbook and it was really delicious - first time I've cooked a curry from scratch, without using a paste or curry powder and I was impressed!
Bean chilli is a nice easy switch to make, I used a couple of tins of mixed beans and I blend up half a tin of the beans with a stick blender before adding them as it thickens up the sauce and gives it a better texture. You could try making some vegan sour cream from cashews to go with it.

Curry is interesting because at the moment when I make curry I make chicken curry but I don't have any of the chicken chunks because I don't like eating chicken so I just have the sauce with the rice.

What do you put into your curry instead of the meat?

Bean chilli is a great idea. I can defomitley get on board with that!

The Thai yellow curry just had veg in it - aubergine, red peppers, mushrooms and baby corn. Chickpeas are good in curries if you want something with more protein.

My friend eat a lot of vegan food. We made a curry together with chickpeas and sweet potato and spinach and coconut milk (plus onion, garlic etc) was very nice!

Easiest and most popular curries in our house are chickpea and kidney bean. Both from a tin. I also buy frozen paratha from the Indian shop with are also vegan and much nicer than bought naan but easier than making your own.

I am not vegan but I make a gorgeous butternut squash and sweet potato curry. I also love a spicy bean casserole

What sorts of things do you usually eat or like to eat?

Another note for vegetable curry here! My SIL is vegan and cooks lovely food. She makes sausage casserole with Linda McCartney sausages- apparently beef gravy granules are vegan but chicken ones are not 🤷‍♀️
She also makes a bean casserole type thing with pastry on top which is delicious (not sure what kind of pastry to be honest) x

I am dying to try pulled jackfruit next time She comes to ours for dinner it's supposed to be a good dupe of pulled pork- there's some fab recipes for it online

It’s ok magic but don’t get too excited. It doesn’t really taste like pulled pork.

Themagictorch I tried Jack fruit last week - I bought it from Sainsbury's. They had two types, plain and smoky barbecue. I bought the smoky barbecue, but it was very spicy, the chilli taste overwhelmed everything, I did like the texture though and would buy the plain version next time and do my own spice/sauce to my own taste.

I’m not vegan or even vegetarian but would eat a vegetarian diet for 5 days per week . It’s because I like it and not for ethical reasons. Could never eat a fully plant based diet as I just love cheese. My favourite meal is chick pea curry using the Happy Pear Recipe though I cook it for at least 1.5 hrs instead of the 20 mins in recipe .

I'm not vegan (I'm vegetarian) but I think my favourite vegan meal would be chilli made with veggies and beans. So full of flavour and comforting.

Tonight we had fried polenta with a tomato based canellini bean sauce and basil. DD is vegan and it's taken me a while to work out a good way to do a dairy free polenta.

We also all enjoy homemade vegan pizzas with eggplant, tomato, caramelised onion, basil, spinach, and sautéed mushrooms.

Other good vegan things include:

+various pasta dishes like pesto made without parmesan or lentil bolognese

• Middle eastern vege dishes with large couscous +Indian dals and veg kofta curry made with cashew nut cream sauce +Japanese eggplants cooked with miso sauce served with soba noodle salad. +Chinese braised eggplant & tofu with rice. +DP sometimes makes an amazing seitan dish, time consuming but yum

The internet is your friend for vegan recipes, there are so many fanastic bloggers and Pinterest is a gold mine.

And I almost forgot, Mexican style meals with rice & beans, tortillas, guacamole, refried beans

Ooh, another favourite is Greek Baked Gigantes (lima bean) stew with Greek style lemon baked potatoes.

I tried the Sainsbury's pulled jackfruit the other week and it was quite nice. Not amazing.

Not vegan but eat vegetarian/vegan s couple of times a week.

Two faves are a grilled large flat mushroom in a burger bun with gherkins, humous, tomato and avocado - delish. The other dish is vegetable curry with chunky cut courgettes, carrots, baby sweet corn, onions etc with a tin of coconut milk and spices plus blended tin of tomatoes and a tin of butter beans.
So yummy 😋

Some recent vegan meals I’ve cooked

Put lentil and mushroom stew
Veg stir fry with tofu and noodles
Veg stir fried rice
Cauliflower and coconut curry
Beetroot curry
Spinach dal
Roasted veg with pasta
Fennel and spicy tomato sauce with pasta
Courgetti with spicy tomato sauce
Sticky aubergine and tofu
Spicy veg and bean chilli

I make a Shepherds pie using Puy lentils, and veg in a rich tomatoey, herby, garlicky stock, which is very popular with meat eaters.

Also cubed tofu and a few veg with the Japanese curry sauce you find in the supermarkets with rice is lovely

Wraps/pitas with shop bought falafels with homemade hummus and tzatziki very popular

Chickpea,veg and apricot stew flavoured with harissa and served with couscous

My favourite vegan meal would be a combination of dishes from Madhur Jafferies World Vegetarian to share...so a nice Dahl, a squash curry, carrot raita, some basmati boiled with cardamom and some chapattis. Yum.

Roasted cauliflower and houmous is one of my faves - it sounds so dull but is just delish. I make an amazing roast veg lasagne but it takes ages!