Sodo Pizza Cafe, Clapton

Maybe I'm just a bit too accustomed to the downers that hit after every Domino's, but Sodo Pizza Cafe on Upper Clapton Road ticks all the boxes, along with boxes I didn't even know needed ticking. Delicious crispy-based pizza, attentive, straight-forward staff, no weird table booking codewords and the ability to get your cheese replaced with something else if you're ordering vegan.

On top of this there's gorgeous homemade ginger beer, table water ALL the time, some of the best beers London has anywhere (Kernal, London Fields Brewery) and salad leaves and vegetables supplied by Hackney-based Growing Communities (who you can read more about here). A glass of homemade tiramisu went down pretty fast with my parents too, just saying.

The Clapton Hart does a mean bean vegan burger

I try not to start too many sentences with the words "As a vegan...", however I'm willing to use up my monthly quota for this one: as a vegan it's sooooooo great when you discover a great pub also does great vegan food. The Clapton Hart is this pub. They do vegan roasts now and then on a Sunday (call ahead to check) and this week added a new 3-Bean Vegan burger to their menu. So obviously there was only one place I was headed when the snow settled on Saturday.

Aside from the burger, which was great, it was the tobacco onions which stole the show for me- I had no clue what these were before this weekend but I've decided pretty much any meal could be improved with these blighters, so called because after they are cooked they look like shredded tobacco. All I'm saying is no packet of Amber Leaf ever tasted this good.

Bye-bye trying to construct chip buttys at Wetherspoons Steak Club every Tuesday. If you need me, follow the tobacco onion trail to the Lea Bridge Roundabout.

A vegan, gluten free Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone! Here are a few photos from the gluten-free, vegan Christmas dinner/marathon I cooked with Naomi and Mark the other day. After five hours of cooking we'd used every pot and saucepan in the kitchen (my daily aim) and concocted up a feast of proportions we're still working through.

We started with salted popcorn and mulled cider to help fuel snowflake making, A Charlie Brown Christmas watching, and obviously, quite a bit of cooking.

  

Here's Mary Berry's chestnut and apricot stuffing, adapted using vegan margarine and gluten free, vegan ciabatta rolls.

You don't need turkey to have cranberry sauce (it tastes amazing with basically everything we cooked) so I made my own from scratch, just heating cranberries with sugar, a little orange zest and ginger. Based on a BBC recipe, I made this the day before and left it to thicken over night in the fridge.

Instead of one key dish to replace the meat, we had about twelve. Above are the mushroom, leek and wild rice tarts I made with gluten free flour and ground almonds for the base, taken and adapted from this recipe by Vegerrific.

Amongst a ton of other treats I'll have to blog about another time, Mark and Naomi bought some of the best beer I've ever tasted from The Kernel Brewery in Bermondsey.

Along with everything else we also had hasselback potatoes, cabbage, cavolo nero, butternut squash roasted in spices, balsamic shallot gravy, roasted parsnips, purple carrots, onions and apples with rosemary and mashed potatoes.

                                     
By the time we were ready to serve I couldn't fit everything on my plate and had to go for two rounds (convenient).

So until next year folks, have a wonderful Christmas!

Off the menu: a breakdown

The long and short of it is eating out as a vegan in most standard restaurants pretty much sucks. There will be the odd, amazing place that are happy to make something up for you in the kitchen, but most restaurants will see you as a Meg Ryan circa When Harry Met Sally orderer (she is just the greatest though) and after all the caveats and cross examinations, you're left with chips and salad. And a slice of bread. Thanks, Wetherspoons.

There are a few places that make it very easy to order vegan. Orders without parenthesis or footnotes are sooo nice. Wagamama is one of these places. Their dietary menu filter (click here) makes it really easy to spot what's suitable. And although it would be great to have a little more to chose from than just the yasai itame (pictured above), it's sooo nice to be able to order straight from the menu.

Other places that I've found are great for this are Wahaca (just ask your server to show you the list of menu items they can change, and then usually they'll circle them all and then you can just order EVERY ITEM) and Pret are also improving on being clear about what is vegan, (now soups and salads).

Earlier in the year I was in contact with Eat over their sliiiiightly confusing (read: very) dietary listings. They've since added two new vegan soups to their menu, and taken away a salad dressing that had honey in it so it is now suitable for vegans. SO IT AINT ALL BAD.

The moral of the story? If you want to see vegan dishes on the menu, ask for them. If they're not on there yet, carry on asking, tweeting and writing emails, until you can order straight from the menu in all its minimalist delight, no ifs, no buts, just vegan.