Vegetarian / Vegan what's for dinner

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Morning!

Keen for some veg/vegan ideas for a What's for dinner thread. DH is vegetarian, I am keen to bring more vegetarian and vegan meals into our diet. I have 1 DC who has food issues so finding food he will tolerate can be a challenge.

Tonight we are having borscht with sour cream and dill (DCs will have macaroni cheese with courgettes and murhrooms).

This week I am planning to make vegetarian lasagne using tofu and probably butternut squash. I use oat milk for bechemel nowadays as I honestly can't tell the difference.

But would love some RL meal ideas.

Whole steamed artichokes dipped in vegan butter & lemon are popular as a starter in my family of mixed eaters. Roasted khol rabi in olive oil as a side and chopped fresh tomatoes with salt, black and white pepper and olive oil on toast rubbed with a raw garlic clove.

I recommend getting The Green Roasting Tin by Rukmini Iyer, lots of really good stuff in there.

https://meerasodha.com/recipes/aubergine-and-pea-curry/

this is delicious- I use her recipes a lot. Also her butter paneer masala but I swap the paneer for tofu and used plant based cream as I am vegan.

We’ve got some slightly ageing Portobello mushrooms - the idea was to do them grilled with cheese, but we haven’t been feeling that, I might chop them and fry them with butter, lemon and parsley and have them with pasta.

My favourite veggie dish of recent years is the Simple mushroom curry from the BBC good food website. You can tell we are mushroom fans here. It uses fennel seeds, the first time we made it without as we didn’t have them and it was good, but once we splashed out, it really makes a difference. We buy them just for that recipe.

The BBC site also has a lovely bean pie made with cannellini beans, kale, pesto and topped with filo pastry. Just delicious. We happened to have nigella seeds and again they really add something.

If you google ‘Ottolenghi black rice’ there is a spectacular recipe of his online in a Guardian article using butternut squash, black rice and a ton of other things. I have wowed multiple groups with that and although there are a lot of steps and ingredients involved, it’s not actually complicated cooking, just a bit time-consuming.

This is the squash and black rice recipe

Oh lovely thanks. DS1 and I are both devotees of tofu, so I love anything I can put tofu in.

lunch is “orak arik” - it’s Turkish and it’s scrambled eggs with cabbage which sounds weird but is delicious - simple recipe here: https://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/495/Stir-Fried-Cabbage-With-Eggs-91813.shtml

We will also add frozen peas (chuck in at last minute), and grated cheese. I like it alone but the kids will have it with potato coins (slice potatoes into circles, sauté with oil and salt), or with bread on the side.

Dinner I think will be pasta with cannelini beans and courgette sautéed together with lemon juice and add crumbled feta once cooked.

In our house, it’s paneer tikka skewers with basmati tonight

We are neither vegetarian nor vegan, but we do have the occasional meal which is veggie/vegan.

Stir fried vegetables with cashew nuts
Pasta with tomatoes/vegetables and cheese
Roasted vegetable tart (using bought pastry which is, interestingly, vegan) with or without cheese
Vegetable curry

Also salads/ploughmans etc but everybody has those

Some lovely recipes here thank you all.

I'm also planning tofu schnitzels this week. Using the Sainsburys firm tofu and breadcrumbs as usual. That's a big favourite for all of us.

We eat a lot of dhal and rice.
Also bean chilli.

Other ideas
Tofu stir fry with rice noodles

Nachos. Vegan mince, salsa, tortilla chips, jalapeños, vegan cheese, guacamole.

We love paneer @forgottenmyphone a great veggie option.

Macaroni cheese here too tonight with leeks from the garden.

We are also eating a lot of dal as we have carrots aplenty (also from the garden - DH cleared a big patch to plant the potatoes and there were loads of carrots hiding), my favourite is Meera Sodhas Malaysian dal curry.

I recently bought Fuschia Dunlop's Every Grrain of Rice which, whilst not a vegetarian book, has lots of great veggie or convertible recipes and plenty of ideas for tofu.

Our local Chinese supermarket sells tofu puffs which are amazing crisped in the oven then tossed in a sauce and served with rice.

I absolutely love red lentil dhal and make it almost weekly. It's addictive. But my recipe is really simple, just onions, carrots, red lentil,s veggie stock, ginger, turmeric and mild curry powder. If you would not mind posting yours I'd love to try it!

I’m trialling vegan wellington and potatoes boulangere for the family tonight; we are vegetarian but have vegan friends coming for dinner in a couple of weeks.

nervous there is something in there that isn’t vegan so will check ingredients carefully (some other friends cooked these vegan friends french onion soup once thinking they were doing so well accommodating veganism - they used chicken stock!,)

Tonight im having roasted sweet potato with black bean, avocado and lime salsa.

Boulanger sweet and regular potatoes. You could also use beetroot or butternut squash or all of them. I just use onions and vegan bouillion powder.

Ratatouille type thing but with added butter beans.

Polenta chips served with creamy mushroom sauce . Not sure what cream alternatives you can use as I do just use normal cream. But that's really nice with a bit of thyme and garlic.

I'll have to ask DH as he's the one who makes it 😁
It's so good. He even does these little fried crispy type onion things that you can sprinkle on too.

Yesterday our Easter Sunday dinner was veggie sausage and mash with a side of puy lentils dressed with oil, vinegar & chopped red onion, and home made veggie gravy plus green beans and cabbage.

Yum and leftovers today!

I’m lurking for the recipe suggestions again

So thanks to all ❤️

Do you make it without coconut milk? I’ve never made Dahl because I’m not keen on coconut

Indian cuisine is the absolute best for variety of vegetarian food - try South Indian recipes for a very different taste to the usual kinds of North Indian-style curries. A few other ideas based on dishes I have cooked over the past couple of months:

Thai curries with coconut rice
Pad thai with tofu
Malaysian mee goreng or nasi goreng with tofu
Fish (tofu wrapped in seaweed and then battered; I've also used mock fish) and chips

Veggie chili with black and kidney beans (make extra so that you can have half with tortilla chips or rice, and the other half another night in enchiladas topped with enchilada sauce and cheese)
Tacos with refried beans
Turkish gozleme (pan fried breads stuffed with spinach and feta)
Pita pockets stuffed with hummus, roasted peppers and onions, and halloumi (slice the halloumi or cut into fingers, coat with a little flour and then pan fry with a little olive oil)
Vietnamese pho with tofu and egg, and summer rolls
Veggie stirfries are always easy and quick
Sweet and sour tofu/Quorn with rice
Veggie sushi (so easy to make when you get the hang of rolling) and miso soup
Vegetable and tofu katsu curry with rice
Red lentil, carrot and sweet potato soup
Spanakopita (Greek filo pastry pie with spinach and feta, but I throw in sweetcorn as well)
Mixed mezze platters with flatbreads (can mix and match as you wish with different Middle Eastern/Greek/Turkish veggie dishes)
Pasta with veggie sauces (obvs tomato based ones but also try creamy pesto and mixed veg), risottos, minestrone
Cheddar and leek quiche
Shakshuka (eggs cooked in a tomato and red pepper stew - always add more spices than any recipe calls for, especially smoked paprika!)
Root veg stew with herbed dumplings (using veggie suet)
Mushroom stroganoff with wild rice
Caribbean rice and peas with plantain (I make it the way a friend from the Cayman Islands taught me)
Feijoda (Brazilian black bean stew, but a veggie version) with rice or pao de queijo
West African-style peanut stew
Loaded jacket potatoes
Veggie moussaka
Georgian khatchapuri (cheese-stuffed breads) with lobio (kidney bean stew) and ajapsandali (an aubergine dish)

I also make a few different "mock meat" dishes using things like Quorn and meatless sausages and bacon, but I know some prefer to avoid mock meat - I can share some ideas if you like.

I never add coconut milk to dal - that's more of a South Indian/Sri Lankan thing. In the part of India I'm from, we never do. Have you ever tried making dal makhani (black dal)? Takes a good few hours, but most of that is just slow-cooking it on the stove and stirring from time to time; it's insanely delicious and freezes well, too, so worth making a gigantic batch.

Some really good ideas....and here's me having beans on toast tonight!!😆