Your favourite meat free/fish free family meals please

[janeite]

Inspire me please! No aubergines, okra or mushrooms but the dds will eat most other veggies without complaint. If some of the recipes can be cheese and egg free, even better, as this would make dd1 happy.

Pasta recipes that aren't tomato sauce based or macaroni cheese would be especially helpful. Also anything one pot that can be served with rice or potatoes to make a complete meal.

Many thanks in advance!

How about asparagus risotto?

Dice an onion and fry gently in a large dollop of butter and olive oil. Add a chopped clove of garlic (or two), and chopped asparagus. When softened, add risotto rice and stir round/cook for a minute or two, until the rice is thoroughly coated in fat.

Pour in a glass of white wine and let this cook out completely, then add stock, bit by bit, until the rice is cooked through. When cooked, add a generous handful of grated parmesan.

Pour in a

Lovely. Haven't had risotto for ages and I love asparagus. Unfortunately the dds, although they will eat it, are less fond and it's too expensive to waste on them. Could I maybe do it with green beans or butternut squash or soemthing and then add steamed/roasted asparagus to mine and dp's portions, do you think?

Rainbow rice - cook rice in water or stock for extra flavour and add whatever veg you like. We normally use diced carrots, peas and sweetcorn for colour. Then, if you want, you can stir through a beaten egg at the end which makes it easier to eat (more sticky!) or anything else you fancy.

vegetable stir fry is a good one- using the chunkier veg such as cauliflower, broccoli, baby corn gives more to bite on.

Pumpkin risotto is very nice; Big veg soups/stews; bean risotto (or general veg again)

pasta recipes are a bit more tricky without either tomato or mushroom - I don't eat tomatoes but we use food-processed mushrooms and olives to produce a similar consistency. You could use red peppers instead.

Stuffed roast peppers are another good one.

Stuffed peppers are already a favourite, although we haven't had them for a while. I stuff them with cous cous and vege then serve with a tomato sauce. Hence trying to avoid tomatoes with pasta as so many of the things I cook seem to involve tinned tomatoes, or passata.

leek and potato soup
homemade pizza with pesto instead of tom puree then you could do olives, pinapple, peppers

Soup is always good!

The ones I do at the mo are:

lentil and coconut milk
leek and potato
tomato

Any more ideas for soup would be brilliant as a favourite easy meal is soup plus "pudding" (usually a crumble and custard) as we don't usually have dessert other than fruit or yoghurt or a biscuit, so this is a treat meal!

oh, do butternut squash soup - it's lush!
Actually I did leek and butternut squash once as well cos I was aiming to do leek and potato and hadn't registered that we had no potatoes so had to use the squash instead - yum!
I quite often put celery in it as well, and nearly always put celery in carrot and coriander soup as it helps to make it more 'smooth'.

french onion soup is nice too..

Thumbwitch - sounds great. Do you have recipes please?

I have a lovely recipe somewhere for a veggie version of shepherd's pie. From memory, it's onions, carrots and celery with tinned tomatoes, brown lentils and mushrooms - but the mushrooms are finely blitzed in the processor, and you wouldn't honestly know they were in there! My boys don't like mushrooms but they both happily ate this.

Pie is topped with mash, and then grated cheese on the top of that.

which ones for? the soups come out of the Good Housekeeping bumper recipe book, the others tend to be basic risotto recipe plus appropriate add-ins.

If it's the soups, I can get them for you

Yes that sounds fab. We do something v similar. A version without tinned tomatoes would be even better but I'm not sure how you could make it "saucey" without the tomatoes. Any ideas?

Pesto pasta
Veggie sausages and mash (you could make your own, look up a recipe for Glamorgan sausages)
Vegetable and halloumi kebabs, serve with rice
Soya mince and peas curry
Chickpea and spinach curry

That's what we have (I'm sure there's a few more but my mind has gone blank)

Yes please Thumbwitch - the butternut squash soup.

Veg curry - onion, carrot, potato, cauliflower, peas (or whatever you have to hand/like!)

I serve this with rice but also naan bread which they love

ok, shall go fetch it - in the meantime, finely blitzed (as BIWI puts it) red peppers can make a good sub for tomatoes.

Mercy - I've never used soya mince. What does it taste like?

It's completely tasteless!

Which is why it works in a curry as it absorbs flavours well. I also use frozen soya mince (bit chunkier than dried soya mince) to make vegetarian cottage pie. I use mushroom ketchup and a bit of stock to give it flavour.

There was a list posted some time ago that was amazing.
Will find it.

here

Brill list.

butternut squash soup (actually not in the book)
2 butternut squash, peeled, deseeded and chopped into chunks
2 medium onions, chopped
2 oz butter
2 pints stock (vegetable in your case)
seasoning

Cream to serve, if required.

Melt butter in heavy-based pan, and slowly cook onions until soft (about 10 mins). Add in squash chunks, stock and season to taste - I use salt and black pepper, plus a smidgeon (and I do mean that!) of sage (I also use that in my leek and potato soup too)

Bring to boil then cover and reduce temp to simmer for about 30 minutes.

Liquidise and then add cream to serve, if you like. If not, it will be fine without.

Yum yum. Dried sage or fresh?

Thanks Mercy and LittleRach?

dried sage - about 3-4 "crumbs" of it, crushd as much as poss. More than that and it tends to take over.