VEGANUARY ZERO WASTE RECIPE IDEAS
Veganuary is a well-established global campaign to encourage people to adopt a plant-based diet for a month that’s grown in popularity since it began back in 2014. It’s estimated that some 400,000 people from around the world signed up to the campaign last year, which translates into a carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction equivalent to 450,000 London to Berlin flights, 2.5 million litres of water saved and the lives of more than one million animals.
Additionally, plant-based diets can have a great impact on your health, helping to reduce the risk of heart disease, diabetes, cancer and mental health issues such as depression…so what have you got to lose?!
Throughout Veganuary we’ll be updating this blog regularly, providing you with a new vegan recipe every week that uses ingredients that can mainly be purchased from our Withington or Marple shops, so you can also reduce plastic waste at the same time - just bring your containers along to refill!
KIMCHI TOFU RAMEN
Another dish that’s often on our home menu is ramen, a rich Japanese broth-based dish that often involves tender noodles, lots of fresh vegetables, rich earthy flavours and a wide variety of condiments. We love that it can be as simple or technical as you like; you can either knock up a quick meal or spend a day (or two!) developing flavours through various processes. Kimchi emanates from the Korean peninsula and it’s thought that it was originally developed as a way to preserve vegetables throughout the winter - the “OG zero wasters” perhaps. Both ramen and kimchi have an almost infinite number of recipes and methodologies, but his dish is one of our favourites and it uses lots of Asian products that we stock in our shops. You can use store-bought Kimchi, such as Manchester based Loving Foods that we stock, or you can make your own (but that takes a bit more forethought).
INGREDIENTS - SERVES 4
(Ingredients in bold indicate what you can buy a Lentils and Lather).
1 tablespoon vegetable (rapeseed) oil
1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
1 large white onion, sliced
400g kimchi, including the juice
1.2 litres water
8 mixed dried mushrooms
1.5 tablespoons soy sauce
4 dried noodle nests
340g Morinaga silken tofu
500g tender greens of your choice, such as watercress or spinach
A couple of spring onions, sliced
2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted
steps
Bring a large saucepan to a medium heat, add the oils and slowly fry the sliced onion for around 10 minutes until golden brown. Drain the kimchi, reserving the liquid, then shred and add to the pan with the onions. Fry for a few minutes until the ends are starting to caramelise slightly before adding the water and kimchi brine. Bring to a boil then remove from the heat, add the dried mushrooms and soy sauce, cover and steep for 45 minutes to let the flavours infuse.
Toast your sesame seeds gently in a separate pan until they’re fragrant and begin to change colour, then remove from heat and set to one side.
Remove the mushrooms and slice them finely, before returning to the pan. Test the broth and add a touch of salt if required. Turn the hob back on to a low setting and allow the broth to come back up to temperature gently. Add a bit more water if it’s reduced too much.
Cook the noodles. Bring a separate pan of water to a boil and add a generous pinch of salt. Drop the noodles in and cook for about 6 minutes. Drain and run under cold water to remove the starch, but reserve the water.
Blanch the greens in hot noodle water, then drain.
Cube the silken tofu.
Divide the noodles equally in each bowl and top with the cubed tofu. Arrange the greens around the outside of the bowls and then gently ladle the steaming broth over everything, covering the noodles and vegetables. Sprinkle the toasted sesame seeds and spring onions then serve immediately.
VEGETABLE BIRYANI
Biryani is a rice dish that’s often overlooked in the curry house, but it’s widely eaten across India and the South Asian sub-continent. Roasted sweet potatoes is added to the rice, which is flavoured with the usual suspects of chilli powder, garam masala and cumin and strips of our dried beetroot provide a distinctive zing, but the coconut and coriander sauce really finishes the dish off. As you can imagine, biryani recipes can vary widely, but this version uses products you can find around our shops to make a quick, convenient and plastic-free meal. We’re bagging up some of these recipe kits so that you can pop in, grab and go! If you want us to create a bag for a different serving size, let us know and we can help.
ingredients - serves 4
(Ingredients in bold indicate what you can buy a Lentils and Lather).
360g basmati rice
250g sweet potatoes
300g cherry tomatoes
400g tin La Bio Idea/Suma chickpeas
50g dried beetroot slices
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1.25 teaspoons garam masala
5 cardamon pods
2 tablespoons La Bio Idea/Suma lemon juice
2 onions, finely sliced
Rapeseed oil
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 tablespoon nigella seeds
100g organic cashew nuts
For the coconut and coriander sauce:
400g tin coconut milk
75g fresh coriander, chopped (including stalks)
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 green chilli, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 tablespoons La Bio Idea/Suma lemon juice
STEPS
Pre-heat the oven to 200°C. Rinse the rice a few times until the water runs clear, then leave to soak. Pour boiling water over the beetroot slices and leave to one side to rehydrate.
If using sweet potatoes, give them a quick scrub (we sell vegetable scrubbing brushes made from sustainable beech and plant-based bristles for £5.50), then roughly cube them and add to a baking tray. Drain the chickpeas and add them to the tray as well along with the cherry tomatoes.
In a small mixing bowl combine 4 tablespoons of rapeseed oil, the sea salt, chilli powder, cumin seeds, garam masala and lemon juice. Give it a stir and then toss over the sweet potato and chickpeas, making sure that everything is well coated.
Put your tray of spiced sweet potatoes and chickpeas in the oven for about 40 minutes, turning everything over halfway through.
Get a small frying pan on your hob and bring up to a medium heat, then add a couple of glugs of rapeseed oil. When hot add the sliced onions and cook them low and slow to caramelise them.
In another small frying pan, toast the cashew nuts lightly so they start to colour slightly.
Whist your vegetables are in the oven and onions are frying, make the sauce by blitzing all of the ingredients together in a food processor. If you don’t own one, you can chop everything as finely as you can for a more rustic feel. Once you have your sauce add it to a small saucepan and cook over a medium heat for around 10 minutes.
Drain the rice and cover it with cold water about 1cm above the rice, then add the cardamon pods and nigella seeds. Bring to a boil, reduce to a medium heat for a few minutes, then turn off and leave covered. The rice will absorb all of the hot water and self-steam, leaving it perfectly fluffy.
By this point everything should be ready so it’s time to turn everything off and start building your biryani. Tip your cooked rice into a large serving bowl then gently fold the roasted sweet potato and chickpea mixture and the toasted cashew nuts. Try not to break up the potatoes too much. Drain the beetroot and stir that through too. Scatter the caramelised onions evenly across the top and sprinkle on the sesame seeds. Pour the coconut and coriander sauce into a serving jug. Gather everyone around and get stuck into this sociable South Asian speciality.
MOUSSAKA
Often referred to as a Greek version of lasagna, moussaka traditionally uses meat and dairy, however, this vegan version uses soya or sunflower mince as a direct replacement for minced meat. If you’ve not tried either of these products before this is a really tasty dish that demonstrates just how easily meat can be replaced without losing any texture or flavour. The white sauce is normally made with regular milk, however, this recipe swaps it for almond milk that’s bolstered with nutritional yeast and grated nutmeg and topped with vegan mozzarella that’s just delicious.
INGREDIENTS - SERVES 6
(Ingredients in bold indicate what you can buy at Lentils and Lather).
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 onions, chopped
1 carrot, diced
1 pepper, diced
8 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon each dried oregano and thyme
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 bay leaves
100g sunflower mince or soya mince
1 glass red wine
2 tablespoons tomato puree
3 aubergines, sliced lengthwise ~1cm
Salt and ground black pepper
For the vegan white sauce:
1L almond milk
60ml olive oil
64g plain flour
2 tablespoons chickpea flour
2 teaspoons garlic powder
1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
2 tablespoons nutritional yeast
150g vegan mozzeralla, grated
Salt and cracked black pepper
STEPS
Salt the sliced aubergine and set to one side while you prepare the mince mixture.
Gently fry the onion, carrot and pepper in two tablespoons of the oil for 10 minutes, adding the garlic towards the end. Mix in the oregano, thyme, bay leaves and cinnamon, then add the tomato puree and red wine and stir for a minute or two before adding the and the soya mince or sunflower mince, allowing it to soak up some of the liquid. You may need to add a bit of water (or more wine!) to the mixture as the vegan mince hydrates.
Put a separate frying pan on a med-high heat and remaining oil in a separate pan, then brush off any excess salt from the sliced aubergines, before adding to the pan and quickly frying in small batches. You want them to colour quickly, set them aside once they’re ready.
Set the oven to 200°C and make the sauce whilst it’s warming up.
For the sauce, start by bringing the almond milk to a boil, then turn off the hob. Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the flours together, quickly stirring to form and cook a paste. Add the garlic powder before slowly adding the almond milk one ladle at a time. At first the sauce will be really thick, but as you add more of the milk it will become silky and smooth. Throw in the nutritional yeast, nutmeg and pepper. Add salt as required.
Choose a deep ovenproof dish and add a layer of aubergines in the base. Next, add a layer of the mince mixture. Repeat the aubergine and mince layers until everything has been used up - no waste, please!! Finally pour all of the vegan béchamel sauce on top of the dish and scatter the vegan mozerlla all over the dish. Bake for about 30 minutes, until the cheese and sauce has coloured.
Serve, enjoy!
TUNAH PASTA BAKE
Marigold’s soya-based “tunah” is heaven in a 170g tin can! Honestly, you can easily open it and consume the contents straight away without thinking about how to use it in a dish, however, it does work really well as a sandwich filling or mixed into salads too. In this recipe, we show you how it can be used in a tomato sauce and folded through some of our fine, British-made pasta from Pastificio Carleshi. Pastificio Carleshi uses organic, British, “ancient” grains such as spelt, einkorn and emmer to make pasta the traditional way, proving that the best pasta doesn't have to come from Italy. They even use plastic-free packaging, sending their shapes in 4kg paper sacks, so it was a real no-brainer to stock these products as soon as we came across them. We stock a few of their pasta shapes, including rigatoni and fusilli, however, we think the white spelt conchiglie works really well with this dish as it cradles the sauce and chunks of "tunah” well. For those with gluten intolerances, we also stock corn and rice-based gluten-free conchiglie pasta that can be used instead. Finally, the last major ingredient is our Italian seasoning herb mix, which blends basil, parsley, oregano, thyme, sage, garlic, pepper, salt and sesame and just makes things super easy - a quick vegan pasta fest, perfect for midweek munching.
INGREDIENTS - SERVES 4
(Ingredients in bold indicate what you can buy at Lentils and Lather).
300g organic white spelt conciglie / organic gluten-free conchiglie / Barilla penne rigate
170g Marigold vegan “Tunah”
400g Mutti / Suma chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoon La Bio Idea / Mr Organic tomato puree
10g Italian seasoning mix
Glug British cold-pressed rapeseed oil
1 red onion, chopped
1 red pepper, chopped
Couple of sprigs of fresh basil
50g Violife vegan cheddar, grated
Table salt
Black pepper
STEPS
Pre-heat your oven to 200C.
Bring a pan of water to boil and add 30g of salt, then add the pasta for about 9 minutes. You want the pasta to be al-denete (firm when bitten) as it will be cooked further once in the oven. Drain once ready.
In the meantime, make the sauce. Bring a frying pan to a medium-high heat and add the oil and onions. Fry for about 10 minutes, then add the red pepper (and any additional veg you may want to use) and fry for another 5-10 minutes until the vegetables have softened and started to brown slightly. Add the tomato puree and fry for a minute or so, then add the Tunah, tinned tomatoes and Italian seasoning and slowly cook it through. Test the sauce for seasoning and add more if required.
Combine the sauce and pasta and give it a good stir. You might want to add a little water if the sauce is looking dry.
Next, pour the pasta sauce mixture into an oven-proof dish and sprinkle the grated vegan cheese evenly across the top. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the cheese has started to brown. Remove from the oven, portion, add fresh basil and serve.