Easy soya free vegan meals?

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My vegetarian daughter, who has been highly allergic to peanuts all her life, recently had a very bad allergic reaction to soya (hospital confirmed allergy with blood test - she'd been suspicious for a while). She's been quite ill recently and hospital have told her to cut out dairy too. She's also allergic to chestnuts and bananas.

I feel I'm left with almost nothing she can eat! Just about everything ready made you can buy has either soya or dairy in it or carries a peanut warning .

I've got bread under control - I'm making that each morning in the breadmaker and am whipping up cakes pretty easily too (she can have eggs so not actually vegan but many veggie recipes contain dairy).

However, I'm really struggling with dinners. I work until mid evening and we've got used to convenience foods and takeaways (partly the problem leading to all this, I suspect). DH will happily cook if home but also isn't in until gone 9pm much of the time and is as stumped as me over what to cook.
I've bought some vegan cookbooks and it's all been delicious but means that I am hours in the kitchen - time I don't have. Casseroles that I can chuck in and leave work well but variations on veggpetable stew are wearing a bit thin!

Does anyone have any easy, quick vegan dinner recipes? Or recipes for dinners I can cook in mammoth batches and freeze some of? Veggie recipes which use egg are fine too. I need to make my life a bit less 1950s housewife!

I like to do an aubergine stir fry: medium chunks of aubergine cooked with mushrooms (enoki ones if you are being fancy), sesame seeds and a tablespoon of barley miso mixed to a paste with water, or just soy sauce if you prefer. If you use toasted sesame oil for the frying it tastes even better. When cooked I add some raw chopped spring onion. This is good with rice (egg fried or plain) or noodles.

Roasted tomato soup (you do need quite nice tomatoes for this):

Halve the tomatoes and put cut side up in a roasting tray with a couple of unpeeled garlic cloves. Brush with olive oil. Roast at 200C until tomatoes are soft and starting to colour on top, about 25 mins. Take out pan, unpeel cloves and return to pan with a litre of veg stock. Cook for another 10 mins then remove from oven. Add any herbs you like (basil is best) Blend in batches with a stick blender. This is at its nicest sieved smooth, but you can skip that stage and just eat it as soon as it is blended.

You can use the same technique (roast veg, add stock, return to oven) with butternut squash chunks. Add spice, e.g. cumin seeds, chilli flakes along with the garlic.

Have you ever done pan pizza? You make up a quick yeast free pizza dough, and instead of leaving to rise then baking, you spread the dough on an oiled cast iron griddle and cook it on the hob while heating up the grill. After 10 minutes on the hob add your toppings of choice and place under the grill to cook the top. Tomato paste, a jar of artichoke hearts, red onion and some black olives would make a nice combination.

Do you eat pasta? I like it with fairly simple flavours rather than involved sauces: either garlic, oil and chilli or lemon zest, parsley (either kind) and black pepper.

Merchant Gourmet do very nice sachets of cooked grains (haven't checked but I don't think most of them have soya in them). They are great because they're tasty and easy-you can just microwave and add to the rest of your meal to bulk it out.

You could do roasted veg (as in a ratatouille): peppers, courgettes, onion and tomato and serve with lentils and herbs sprinkled over, or roasted carrots, beetroot and parsnip served the same way. I also use a sachet of e.g. spelt as the base for a salad with raw, finely chopped vegetables and herbs.

Dahl: use red lentils that cook the fastest. Dry fry spices (or curry powder) then add oil and onion. When onion is soft add the lentils and water, cook as per packet instructions. Serve with wholemeal roti and a green vegetable like green beans fried with nigella seeds and lemon juice.

Fritatta: parboil potato, mix with your eggs and some finely chopped rosemary, cook (without stirring/lifting as you do with omelette) until firm underneath then place under a grill to cook the top. Serve with green salad.

Also, try kedgeree without the fish. Just allow an egg per person and top with crispy fried onion.

That does sound quite tough.

Indian vegetarian food might be good, make big batches of different types of veggie curry e.g. potato and spinach, pea and potato, cauliflower and green pepper, chickpeas etc, then freeze and defrost a couple of different types and/or dahl to have with fresh rice in the evening.

Supermarkets do ready made samosas, pakoras etc which may be ok ingredients-wise.

Make loads of pasta sauce to freeze, e.g. tomato based with olives, sweetcorn, peppers, beans etc.

Baked potatoes give you loads of options - do them for an hour in tin foil in the oven for flavour, but do loads at once and then keep in the fridge so they only need 15 mins reheating in the evening. I like them with salad and hummous, but there are just so many options you're bound to be able to come up with a few you all really like.

If you can find a vegan spicy bean burger recipe you could use real egg instead of whatever substitute is suggested - the binding is usually the worst bit about vegan burgers so being able to use real egg might turn a good recipe into a very good one. Again would be suitable for batch cooking and freezing, and possibly the mixture could be rolled into sausage shapes too instead of burger shapes for variety.

Have a google for "vegan roast", there are lots of suggestions for how to do the protiene part of a full roast dinner for vegans - nut roast isn't the only option! Yummy things abound with mushrooms and beany things.

Some brilliant ideas here - thank you very much :)

Fajitas?
I make more filling than I need and freeze the leftovers, and it is always fine.
I use quorn, if she can have that? And whatever veg she likes, finely sliced and then stir fried. Add a bit of ground cumin and coriander, chilli, salt and pepper to taste, and some passata/tinned tomatoes. Simmer/stir fry until cooked. Usual salsa/guacamole/salad ...

The carrot and bean burgers on A Girl Called Jack's web site are very good, very quick and easy to make and freeze well :)

Puy lentils are a good substitute for mince in cottage pie, bolignaise etc. They take about 30 mins to cook from dried or you can just use tinned lentils. If using dried you can just make the sauce however you normally would, adding the lentils when you would usually add the mince, but add add extra water as they absorb a lot of water when they cook.

Many different versions of shakshuka basically got a onion tomato stew with an egg poached on top - Huevos rancheros, Bombay eggs....Spanish version with chickpeas and smoked paprika.

Orange sweet potato is good baked, and takes a lot less time to cook than conventional potato. You could do a quick black bean salsa to go with this: tinned black beans, chopped tomato, spring onion, cucumber and coriander leaf with lime juice.

Actually, black beans are fantastic generally. They make a really nice, earthy soup or chilli with sun-dried tomato, onion and green pepper and chipotle sauce, which is in most supermarkets now.

Cauliflower is fantastic. I like it in a dry curry - just stir fried with whole spices as a side dish to dahl and rice

Other ideas: Sweetcorn fritters and homemade coleslaw (use vinagraitee instead of mayo. You could blend in a cooked egg yolk for more creaminess), potato rosti with a poached egg on top, fried bean cakes with guacamole, steamed asparagus (alone or with other green veg) also with a poached egg. Tinned butter beans blended with salt, back pepper, olive oil, lemon juice and finely chopped fresh rosemary to make a dip eaten with olives, flatbreads, pickles nuts and any other bits you fancy as a mezze. Pitta breads filled with fritters or bean burgers, hummus, chilli sauce and shredded lettuce.

And, hurrah, you can always fill up on puddings, like apple crumble with cashew nut cream (recipe here). I had this at a vegan restaurant when I was at Uni and it was so nice I still think about it all these years later. The cream can be the basis for lots of other desserts, e.g. add chocolate for a nice mousse-y pud. Orange slices in syrup (orange juice and sugar cooked down until syrupy, then add orange flower water, or rose water, or mint leaves chopped fine, or nothing at all) is a family favourite. Melon and berries work well done this way too.

I recommend any Claudia Roden cookbook for good vegetable recipes. The cashew nut cream one above is fromthe woman who wrote this, which looks promising.

I can actually spell vinaigrette, don't know what happened there!

and ps I recommend Yotam Ottolenghi vegetarian cookbooks too.

Please can i come to your house for dinner Monstrousratbag!

I can't add anything in addition to monstrousratbags wonderful ideas.

Indian food is lovely for vegetarian food without soya. There are so many different types of lentils, veg curry's and stuffed flatbread recipes.

How about a lentil dhal? Put 150g red lentils, 1 large onion finely chopped, 1.5 pints water and 1tsp salt in a pan and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer for 30 mins. Fry 1/2 tsp cumin seeds and 1/2 tsp mustard seeds on low for a few seconds until they start to pop, add 1tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp garam masala and 1/4 tsp chilli powder, fry for a minute or so, add 1 tbsp tomato puree and then mix into the lentil mixture. Eat with rice, naan or popadums.

Or, another favourite in this household, lentil hotpot. Fry a chopped onion, add a clove of crushed garlic, add some veg (a couple of peppers or carrots chopped), 200g of mixed lentils, 2 pints of stock, 1 tbsp of tomato puree and a dash of soy sauce, bring to the , cover, and simmer for 1 - 1 1/2 hours. Add a handful of frozen green beans about 15 mins before the end. Only takes a few minutes to prepare and can then be left to its own devices although will need a stir towards the end to stop the lentils sticking to the bottom of the pan.

Or for something non-lentily, what about vegetable fritters? Grate a couple of carrots or courgettes, mix with an egg, a bit of garlic and some spice (cumin works well with carrots, chilli with courgette), add chopped spinach or herbs, and mix in some flour until you've got a thick mix. Make into patties, coat in some some flour and fry for 3-4 mins on each side.

Certainly, mercy! I am not a brilliant cook, though I talk a good game, but I am the Queen of Quick! It's usually 'coat off, pinny on' for me in the evenings so I've learned to get from arriving home to putting dinner on table in a pretty short time.

I'm veggie and cook around 3 vegan meals a week. I don't generally like to spend hours cooking them. My suggestions are pretty similar to others: shepherdess pie, gnocchi, lentil pasta bolognaise, veggie bean burgers, soups, chilli, curries etc. Can she eat Quorn? If so you could do sausage/Quorn fillet cassoroles etc to make a change from pulses.