Really sayin' something

It might have all fallen a little quiet on the Guac & Roll front over here, but rest assured there's more than a little something in the works for next week...

As well as recipe testing and scrawling ideas on my work roof at any given moment, I managed to finally get my hands on some of the gorgeous magazines pictured above- Kinfolk, Cereal, Wilder and Chickpea. I decided to buy the spring/summer issues as I think I'm in some major seasonal denial and wanted to read about ice cream and sorbets for another few months. If you come across any of these, they're all sumptuous reads, and I don't think anything can replace that luxury of having an evening or even just an hour to spend reading a magazine you've been trying to track down for months. I cycled home with all four weighing down my rucksack like a treasure trove.

See you shortly, and follow me on Instagram for vegan ideas and mishaps with burritos in the mean time!

Vegan potato croquettes

There's a semi-joke among my friends that my portion control is out of control. I say semi because I think everyone now knows and expects there to always be at least third helpings at any dinner at Casa del Guac, and also because leftovers are no laughing matter, and out of control portions mean a lot of these.

Too much mash is one of my favourite problems to have, which is precisely where a vegan potato croquette starts its life. You can make them from baked potatoes but as I make vegan mashed potatoes with vegetable stock and olive oil, by the next day the mash has usually developed its flavour a little and is perfect for a filing for croquettes.

I chose to add a salad and a wedge of lemon to mine, to cut through the stodge of the potato. But then again, I made this after a sober evening and I think with hungover eyes they'd go equally as well with as many other carbs as you can fit on a plate. Your call.

Makes enough for 4 with other breakfast things or 2 very hungry people!

Ingredients
400g leftover mash potato
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp paprika
Squeeze of lemon juice
Seasoning
2 handfuls of bread crumbs or a hunk of stale bread that has been grated into 2 handfuls' worth
1/2 cup of soy or almond milk

In a large mixing bowl, combine the mashed potato with the olive oil, paprika and lemon juice, and season to taste. You don't have to add these extra flavours- but I find the paprika is a great match to the smoky fried taste of the breadcrumbs, while the lemon juice freshens it all up a little.

Set aside the potato, and then get to work on your breadcrumbs- I would grate and then use a hand blender to make them extra fine- or if you have a mixer this can sort them out too! I used the stale end of a wholemeal, seeded loaf, and the seeds tasted amazing after they'd gone chewy from being fried, but whatever bread you have in will work well as long as it is a few days old.

Once your breadcrumbs have a fine, even consistency and no major lumps, pour the soy or almond milk in to a dish and arrange so you have the mashed potato ready to go on one side, then the milk, then the breadcrumbs, and a plate to pop all the prepared croquettes on, like a factory line.

Using two tablespoons, shape the potato croquettes into fat rolls and then quickly dip into the milk so they are covered all over. Then roll in the breadcrumbs, making sure the ends are covered. Leave on a plate and start the next croquette. They don't need to be perfect as you can add a few more breadcrumbs to them all once all the potato is used up, just make sure they are firm.

Heat a little oil in a frying pan and then wait until the pan is almost smoking hot before frying two or three at a time- any more and they start to bump in to each other and knock the breadcrumbs off. Once the breadcrumbs are totally brown all over, carefully remove and plate up with the rest of your breakfast. I find it easy to make beans in this time but anything else might need a bit more preparation, in which case you could set the croquettes aside and then heat them up in the oven once they're ready to go.

Paprika, pomegranate and lemon juice hummus

"But what do you do for protein?"

I've never made hummus before. It might sound ridiculous considering I eat chickpeas nearly every day now, but I always thought it was slightly more complicated than it was, a little bit trickier, a bit more expensive. In actual fact all you need is a reliable hand blender (no explosions please), some chickpeas, a bit of tahini, and anything else you want to flavour it with.

Naturally, I went a bit overboard for my first attempt, so added pomegranate seeds, paprika, pomegranate molasses, coriander and lemon to mine, but it might be better to focus on just one of those flavours. This batch of hummus lasted precisely 2 hours in my flat, so I guess the proof was in the total lack of leftovers!

Makes enough for 4
Ingredients
2 tins chickpeas, drained
2 garlic cloves, chopped small (if using a hand blender, or just crushed if using a larger blender as this will be able to handle the harder work)
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 pinch of salt
1 large tbsp tahini paste
2 tbsp water
Juice 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp paprika
Seeds of half a pomegranate
Handful of chopped coriander

Pour the majority of the chickpeas into a mixing bowl, holding back a small handful or so for serving. Add the garlic, cumin, salt, tahini, water, lemon juice, olive oil and paprika, and mix with a spoon just to get the liquid stirred in, before mixing with a hand blender.

Add more lemon juice, salt, olive oil, to taste, and then stir in a few pomegranate seeds to flavour the hummus. It should be a firm mixture, but looser than a paste.

To serve, top off with the rest of the pomegranate seeds, whole chickpeas, pomegranate molasses, coriander and a little more lemon juice.


And now for a bit of an apology for my absence:

What do I do for protein? I find it one of the strangest questions anyone can ask once you've told them you're vegan. There's a lot  more questions I'd expect- and yet 80% of the time, it comes back to this strange, peculiar obsession with protein.

Obviously, I know why people are concerned about protein- in general. I get that. I don't understand when they can hold a conversation with me and I am alive etc, why they would ask it, apart from the fact that it must be a total knee-jerk reaction, and maybe they just don't care about anything beneath asking a question back to a reply they didn't expect. Who knows. In any case, my inability to give that question a proper answer recently led to a mini hiatus from food blogging. I found myself with nothing to say apart from "Well, I eat chickpeas, everyday." Which is the truth, but it felt pretty limp in reply, especially after being told by someone I met 40 minutes beforehand that I was "unhealthy" and "selfish" for being vegan.

I didn't know how to reply, because I made a decision around a year ago not to be someone that reels off statistics when people start cross examining a vegan diet. I think if people haven't looked for those figures themselves, they become very easy to block out. I managed to do it for 22 years. In my month away from Guac and Roll I wanted to do more research, question whether writing a food blog was really the best way to start a conversation on veganism. I read a lot more studies, watched more documentaries (we need to talk about sugar, btw) but in the end, I came around full circle: I love sharing the recipes I've discovered, talking about them with friends in the park, researching where those recipes come from and adapting them to suit a vegan or vegan and gluten free diet.

There are plenty of vegan diets that are unhealthy, just as there are many, many, omnivorous diets that are also pretty unhealthy. Guac and Roll isn't ever going to be a call to arms, but hopefully something a lot more subtle.

Dinner in daylight

Oh the novelty. I have lots of recipes to share but here are a few snaps from today. At dinner. When it stopped raining/snowing/sleeting for about 40 minutes and I managed to eat a meal in sunlight. It was glorious, and then it was gone, as fast as it came.

These salads were largely inspired by a meal I had at Naomi's earlier this week, which I simply don't have enough epithets for. In short, salad leaves from Hackney, chickpea, red onion, cucumber, tomato and olive oil salad, spice-roasted cauliflower and refried chipotle beans you could have in a wrap or as a filling in a quesadilla. By the time I finished eating it was raining again.

To combat an endless winter

I must apologise. While searching through the archives of Guac on the hunt for a curry recipe I realised just how long winter has held centre stage here. Don't get me wrong, I love comfort food and hunkering down for the night probably a lot more than the next person, (got the personal best of six roast dinners in seven days to prove it) but I think my capacity for stodge has reached its limit.

Here's a lunch or even brunch to add a little colour to the end of the coldest March in more than 50 years. This salad is warm, filling and perfect for anyone totally sick of porridge. The garlic in the spinach and herb pesto is left raw so it really comes through against the lemon juice, cutting through the giant cous cous and the olive oil. You could make a more traditional pesto with basil leaves and pine nuts, but basically it was too cold and windy for me to leave the house so I went with something different! 

-One last thing- don't bother with sourcing giant cous cous from the posh bit of the supermarket- if you have any newsagents with a good food section or local shops they will usually sell it in packets at around a third of the price. 

Giant cous cous with spinach pesto, grilled tomatoes and puy lentils

Serves 2 for a big lunch

Ingredients

150g giant cous cous

Olive oil

1 handful spinach leaves

1 spring thyme

2 sprigs of parsley

Seasoning

1 garlic clove chopped small

Juice 1 lemon, half for the pesto, half for serving

2 tomatoes, chopped in half

2 inches cucumber, cut into slices

1 spring onion, cut into slices

125g cooked puy lentils 

In a medium pan on medium heat, gently fry the giant cous cous for about 60 seconds in olive oil, until it just begins to sizzle. Then pour in around 300ml of cold water and let it cook for around 15 minutes.

In this time you can make the pesto: in a small pan heat the spinach with just enough water for it to cook in, and take off the heat the minute it's wilted down. Drain the water away, and now blend the spinach in a jug with a handblender, a mixer or even a pestle and mortar, with the leaves from one sprig of thyme, 2 springs of parsley, plenty of salt and pepper and the garlic. Add about 2 tablespoons of olive oil and half the lemon juice and check the seasoning. 

Give the cous cous a stir to make sure it isn't sticking to the pan, then either grill or fry in a little oil the tomatoes with plenty of black pepper. While all this is cooking you can chop the cucumber and spring onion ready for assembling the salad.

Once the cous cous is ready turn off the heat and add in the pesto to the pan so it takes on some of the flavour of the pesto at the very end of its cooking time. Then add the puy lentils and check the seasoning once more. 

Assemble on a large plate with the roast tomatoes, cucumber and spring onion on top, with any extra spinach leaves or olive oil for serving. 

Springtime roast with braised celery and paprika butternut squash mash

Sunday, Sunday here again! A few notes from a spring-time roast last week.

Celery is one of my all-time favourite flavours, and yet it sometimes feels a little side-lined, just one stick needed for each recipe, a few sticks garnishing a jug of bloody mary, left in the sieve from gravy, reduced down beyond any recognition in rich sauces. And all of those components are better with celery, but on it's own, it's strikingly salty flavour and texture can also be delicious. I lightly roasted a few sticks along with some carrots and onions last Sunday, so it came out juicy and almost the same taste as celeriac, (the bulb of the plant of which celery makes up the stalk), but without the aniseed flavour, which I can sometimes find overwhelming. One thing to bear in mind when seasoning the celery is that it does seem to absorb any salt it goes anywhere near.

With the braised celery I made a paprika butternut squash mash, adding some chili flakes and chili oil. The squash seemed to release a lot of liquid so I let it reduce on a low heat for about 20 minutes. You could also add a potato to the mash to absorb some of the excess liquid. This paired up well with some flash-cooked greens and leeks, barely boiled and left with a clean, light flavour to counter everything else going on. 

Roast potatoes, vegan haggis uncovered from the depths of the freezer and rosemary onion gravy completed a pretty huge Sunday roast line-up.

Squash and potato pie with braised red cabbage and mustard

I made this pie in the deep mid-winter but I think comfort foods like this are still appropriate when even the supermarket's daffodils are refusing to spring. Made with Jus-roll puff pastry, this would be a perfect weekend lunch for friends and will make enough for six servings.

Team up with the braised red cabbage, apples and onion recipe from way back in November for optimum comfort times, and of course a hefty dollop of English mustard for good measure.

Ingredients
Jus-roll puff pastry
1 onion, chopped into circles
1/4 gem squash, chopped into large chunks
2 carrots, chopped
2 handfuls of potatoes, peeled
2 bay leaves
500 ml stock
Vegetable or sunflower oil
Seasoning
A little soy milk for glaze

Sweat the onion rounds in a large saucepan with the oil, then add in the carrots, squash, potatoes, bay leaves and seasoning. Allow the vegetables just to start heating up before adding the stock and bringing to the boil.

Cook with a lid on for around 20 minutes, then 10 minutes off so the liquid can reduce and until all the vegetables are nice and soft and break apart easily. At this point you can pre-heat the oven to around 180 degrees Celsius.

Add a little more seasoning to taste for the pie filling, then remove the bay leaves and spoon into your pie dish.

Roll out the pastry and cover the pie dishes and seal with a fork edge, or however you fancy! I like to make tiny bite-size pastry rolls with any extras which are good for plying guests or housemates getting impatient about dinner! (To do this just roll out the extra scraps of pastry into a rectangle and spread anything you like- mango chutney, bbq sauce, even ketchup, across one side. Roll up into a swiss-roll shape and then cut into slices, then place on a tray and pop in the oven for about 10-15 minutes while the pie is cooking. Messy, sure, but tasty.)

Brush on a little soy milk on the top of the pies to add a glaze, and then cook in the oven for about 20-30 more minutes, until the pastry has risen and is a golden-brown colour.

In the mean time you can now prepare anything else to go alongside the pie and track down/beg/borrow/steal the strongest mustard you can find, which tastes perfect alongside the slightly sweet squash and flaky pastry.

Vegan fry ups take two: refried chipotle beans and herby spinach mushrooms

Vegan and fry-ups go together like- well, where to start? Hashbrowns and beans? Linda McCartney sausage sandwiches? Mushrooms with thyme and oregano? So here's my 2013 take on that bastion of weekend-ness- when two whole days stretch out wayyy into the distance and no-one needs to talk about things like commuting times and tube delays. And if you'd like to see the 2012 edition, just click here.

Although I guess refried beans might sound a little strange pre-midday, they're a key part of traditional Mexican breakfasts, just as baked beans are to English ones. Refried beans aren't actually fried twice, as the English use of the prefix suggests, but just 'well' or 'very' fried, as the Mexican Spanish use of 're' means when translating frijoles refritos, or 'well-fried beans'.

Makes enough for two or three

Ingredients
For the refried chipotle beans:
2 tins black eyed beans
1 onion chopped small
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp Sainsbury's chipotle paste (or use a chopped chipotle chili if you have one!)
1/2 tsp chili flakes
1 clove garlic, chopped
Vegetable or sunflower oil
Seasoning
-plus lemon/lime juice if you are so inclined!

For the herby mushrooms:
Few sprigs of thyme
Dried oregano
Spinach
Mushrooms, chopped into chunks
Seasoning
Olive oil if you have it, or vegetable or sunflower oil

...plus hashbrowns (Sainsbury's are vegan), Linda McCartney sausages, tomatoes  to grill, bread for toast and of course a Bloody Mary or five.

In a pan with a few glugs of oil, gently fry the onion, garlic and chili flakes, adding some seasoning and the chipotle paste. Once the onion has softened, add the two tins of beans with a little more oil and the bay leaf and allow to simmer.

(While this is happening get everything that needs cooking in the oven on the go, as the beans can take as long as you like.)

Once the beans are cooked through, turn off the heat of the pan and transfer 3/4 of the mix to a mixer, or if you're like me and don't have one, use a hand blender or potato masher in a bowl or jug to blend up the beans. Make sure you leave the bay leaf and a few beans in the pan, as I think these add to the final texture.

As soon as the beans are just blended, add back to the frying pan and cook on a low heat to allow all the flavours to intensify. Add a little more seasoning or even some lemon juice if you fancy it. This will happily fry away for about 10 more minutes.

In a large pan begin to fry the mushrooms with the thyme and oregano. I do them in batches with just a little olive oil to make them really dry, but cook to your preference. When the mushrooms are almost done, gently wilt the spinach over a pan of boiling water, and add to the mushrooms once they are off the heat.

Plate up with the refried beans (which are great on toast), grilled tomatoes, hashbrowns, sausages and whatever else you fancy. Bingo, le weekend.

Vegan Oreo chocolate cupcakes

Without fully realising my luck, I managed to procure upwards of sixty Oreos last month. Now while European-manufactured Oreos have milk in them, those made in the US don't, rendering them vegan. 24 of them mysteriously never made it into the baking process, but a fair few did. I've adapted this recipe to make it a little more simple from one over at the PETA website.

Something I've noticed from baking with cake wrappers is because of the lack of butter, the cupcake often sticks to the wrapper after baking, so it doesn't come apart as a whole. To stop this from happening so much, only take the wrapper off when the cake is totally cool. I've also read that you could do away with using them altogether and just grease a muffin tin on its own, but I haven't experimented with that yet!

Milk and I have something in common...

Makes around 36 cupcakes

Ingredients

For the cupcakes

4 1/2 cups plain flour
3 cups caster sugar
1 cup cocoa
1/2 tbsp salt
1 tbsp bicarbonate soda
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil
1/8 cup vanilla extract
3 cups fresh brewed coffee
1/4 cup and 2tbsp vinegar

For the faux-butter icing (the measurements really depend on how much icing you want- I often start with a small amount mixed to the right consistency and carry on adding until there is enough)
Icing sugar
Pure soy margarine
1 tsp cocoa powder

Preheat the oven to around 150 degress celsius and fill the cupcake tins with wrappers.

Sift the flour into a large mixing bowl with the sugar, cocoa, bicarb and salt. Then add the vegetable oil and vanilla extract until just combined.

Slowly pour in the coffee, mixing for a few minutes until well combined. Finally, add the vinegar and stir for one last minute.

Pour the mixture into the baking cases to just below the edge of the wrappers and bake for around 30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle of a cupcake.

Allow to cool completely.

To make the icing, sift the icing sugar and cocoa into a large bowl, and add small chunks of the soy margarine. Mix in with a fork to separate the margarine until it blends in with the sugar. Add more and more icing sugar until it is as firm as you'd like it to be- the icing will get softer once it's been mixed for a while, but will harden in the fridge. Decorate with a whole or half piece of Oreo- the biscuit will soften next to the icing so it's best to save this final touch to the very last minute.

In defence of sweetcorn fritters

Say what you like about sweetcorn fritters and ketchup, but if you haven't sat down on your birthday to a plate full with a load of cava then I'm afraid your argument can stop right there. Sweetcorn fritters are the BOMB. It doesn't need to be pancake day to bust these out, and they go down a treat as a change to a fry-up on a hungover Saturday morning.

My boyfriend made me a stack yesterday to celebrate me becoming a little bit older- he played it safe with golden syrup, bananas, strawberries and blueberries, where as I went in for sweetcorn, ketchup and tea. If you want to make half the mix without sweetcorn, just add the sweetcorn to every other pancake when you first pour in the batter. And obviously scorn at the plain mix and its lack of ability to become a match made in heaven like sweetcorn and pancake batter is. Thank you again to Jenny for this recipe! And Becca and Joe for the amazing plates and pans, you can check out Becca's blog too!

Makes a lot of two or enough for three

Ingredients

1 cup plain flour
2 tbsp baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 cup soy milk
2 tbsp vegetable oil

Plus a tin of sweetcorn or fresh corn if you can get it.

Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, then add the soy milk and oil and mix until smooth. I've found the batter will always improve if you chill it for as long as you can. So if you have time, pop it in the fridge for 20 minutes while you get your fruit/coffee/tea ready.

When you're ready, heat up a frying pan with a little oil, until you can see smoke coming out of it when you look closely. Add a large tablespoon of mixture, so it's about as big as your palm. If you're adding sweetcorn, put a teaspoon in now as this mixture cooks very quickly. After a few second they will be ready to flip, then a few more seconds on the other side and they will be ready! Stack up in a pile and add whatever toppings you fancy.

Soups to mend a broken heart: Hoskers' lentil soup

I'm not saying anyone's got a broken heart. What I'm saying is this soup is the culinary equivalent of Petula Clark's 1965 hit Downtown. This soup mends everything, fixes everything, warms everything and quells everything. This soup pretty much brought me up.

My best friend Rachael's Mum used to cook vats of this soup in a huge pressure cooker at their house over the weekend, when we'd wait in the kitchen to eat bowl after bowl. It would simmer away for hours before being blended into a smooth, rich liquid we'd dip pitta bread and bagels in to. When I moved away from home, the first thing I asked for to put in my new kitchen was a pressure cooker and a blender, so I could make this soup. It's not glamorous or show-stopping, it's delicious, cheap and sustaining.

We eat it before gigs, coming home from nights out, for Sunday lunch, for Monday lunch, for catch ups and for late-night suppers. It freezes well and will keep on the stove for around a day, deepening in flavour after a few hours. I've kept the Hoskers' recipe the same, just switching chicken stock for vegetable stock instead.

Makes enough for six bowls

Ingredients
1 mugful of red lentils, rinsed with a sieve
3 potatoes, peeled and diced
1 carrot, peeled and chopped
1 onion, peeled and chopped
400 ml (or more) of vegetable stock
Few glugs of oil
Salt, pepper, and extra seasoning if you fancy it (chili, paprika, coriander all work well added at the end)

Take the largest pan you can find. Sweat an onion in oil for around five minutes. Add the chopped potato and carrot and stir in. Boil the kettle or prepare your stock so it is ready to pour in. Add the red lentils to the pan, mix in with all the vegetables, then add in the stock to ensure the lentils don't burn to the bottom of the pan. I would leave off seasoning for now until everything is cooked to gauage how the stock is absorbed by the lentils and vegetables.

Allow to simmer for around 30-40 minutes. Check back every 10 or 15 minutes or so to ensure the lentils haven't absorbed all the water. Top up with any leftover stock or water if this happens. Once the potatoes and lentils are cooked through, take off the heat and blend with a hand blender or mixer. Now season to taste, it may need quite a bit of salt to take the bitterness away from the lentils. I like to toast croutons to have along side this, or a huge loaf of bread to tear apart- so bowl up and enjoy.

Marinated aubergine and Monday night feasts

Last Monday I made a vegan, gluten free feast for my friends Amelie and Ruth, after deciding Monday nights should be more like Friday nights and include wine and lots of food.

As ever my portion control was out of control and I made far too much, but it meant I could also do lunchboxes for everyone for the next day. Over night the marinated aubergine got even better, while using a salad with shredded cabbage meant it didn't go soggy with all the oil and dressing mixed in. Monday night feasts make everything okay!

For the marinated aubergine I adapted a recipe from Turntable Kitchen. With this I added spicy potato cubes, roasted butternut and acorn squash with rosemary, shredded cabbage and spinach salad, chipotle refried beans (recipe to follow this week!) and sauteed green lentils with leeks. While all these dishes may sound a little summery, they're all made from seasonal vegetables so make a nice break from stews, pies and soups!

Makes enough for six as a side dish

Ingredients
2 medium aubergines, sliced 5mm thick
Handful chopped parsley
Juice 1/2 lemon
Oil to roast
2 tbsp capers
Seasoning

Preheat the oven to around 200 degrees celsius. Take a large roasting dish, cover the sides with oil and seasoning, and place in the sliced aubergine. Drizzle with a little more oil and then cover with foil and roast for around 20 minutes. In this time mix together the lemon juice, a little more oil, salt, pepper and capers. Once the aubergine is soft and cooked through, pour into a mixing bowl along with all the roasting oil, and stir in the dressing, finishing with the chopped parsley. Leave to cool until the rest of the meal is ready, then serve with a little more parsley if you fancy it.

Baked beetroot with pistachios and green lentil salad

As much happiness as a jar of pickled beetroot can bring (I've been known to bring my own beetroot to barbeques so I don't have to share), their flavour alone, just baked in the oven with a bit of seasoning, can be just as moreish. I added a green lentil salad and spiced potatoes to make a huge mid-week dinner, easily enough for two lunches the next day, by which time the pistachios have taken on a bit of the beetroot dye and the lentils have soaked up even more of the garlic and onion flavours.

Ingredients
300g beetroot, peeled and chopped into discs
200g green lentils
1 onion, chopped
3 galic cloves, chopped
1 leek, chopped
Salad leaves
Olive oil
Seasoning

Pre-heat the oven to 220 degrees celsius, and lightly oil and season a baking tray. Place the beetroot on the tray and bake for around 30-40 minutes. You will need to turn half way through to make sure one side doesn't dry out.

Follow packet instructions to prepare the green lentils- you will probably need to boil them for around 10 minutes.

While this is happening, heat a little oil in a pan, and add the onion and garlic and let sautee for around 5 minutes so it all reduces. Once the lentils are ready, add these to the pan, along with plenty of seasoning as the lentils will often be quite bitter. You might want to add a little water or oil to stop the lentils from sticking as they heat through. When the lentils have reduced down, add in the chopped leek and cook slowly until the beetroot is ready.

Plate up with the salad leaves and pistachios, which will add a great texture to the soft lentils and leeks. I served with some lightly roasted curried potatoes, or this would be great with rice or cous cous.

Burnt sugar and blood orange churro bites

Last night a churro changed my life. Well, not just one, a whole plate full. Inspired by Nigel Slater's Churros with apples recipe, I whipped up a plate of moreish churro bites with some brown sugar and blood oranges. What caught my eye from Nigel's recipe is that the ingredients list was already vegan- a pretty rare find once you've strayed further than a fruit salad.

I've used every part of the blood oranges- the peel, flesh and juice- which breaks through the stodgy texture of the churros, and is perfect with the brown sugar, which I found burnt into little clusters once sprinkled over the hot churros.

Although this pudding would be PERFECTION for having friends round (everyone can eat as much as they like and still struggle to make a dent on the churro mound), I would make this a few times before to practice; the churro mix is quick to make, but the bubbling pan of oil to deep fry them in will require all your attention.

Makes a lot for 4 people
Ingredients
350ml water
1 orange's rind peeled
5 tbsp sunflower oil for mix, more for frying
1/2 tsp salt
200g plain flour
2-3 tbsp brown sugar
2 blood oranges for serving and juicing

In a saucepan, pour in the water, orange rind and 5 tbsp oil. Bring to the boil and then allow to infuse for 20 minutes.

Remove the rind, and add to a bowl with the salt and flour. Mix until a smooth paste forms.

In a pan suitable for deep fat frying, heat enough oil for bite size churros to cook in. Drop teaspoons of the churro mix into the oil, and wait until they turn a dark golden colour and float to the surface. It may take a few attempts to get the right colour, but once the oil is hot enough each churro should take around 30 seconds to cook.

Once they have turned a golden colour, remove from the pan and pile on a serving plate. I added a few sprinkles of brown sugar to each layer- along with some squeezes of orange juice, so that each churro tastes slightly different depending on how much sugar or juice it's soaked up.

Thai-style coconut and chili broth

Another ideal rescue recipe for January is this coconut and chili broth, which is perfect if you're looking for something rich, fragrant and spicy. Both lemongrass and coriander have long been touted for their calming and restorative properties when cooked, while chilies are a great source of vitamin C. Ginger is well known for its therapeutic properties, and garlic for lowering blood pressure and helping to fight off colds. Basically a bowl of this is gonna feel good.

Makes enough for four servings
Ingredients
2 tsp vegetable oil
Handful sliced mushrooms
One sliced red pepper
1 chopped chili
4tsp grated ginger
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 lemongrass stalk, sliced length ways
300ml vegetable broth
1 tin coconut milk
1 tbsp sugar
2 spring onions chopped
1 handful fresh coriander
Juice of 1 lime
1 portion rice noodles

Heat the oil in a wok and add the mushrooms, pepper, chili, ginger, garlic and lemongrass. Cook for three minutes, stirring to ensure nothing burns. Next add the chili, and cook for another minute.
Pour in the vegetable stock, coconut milk and sugar, and bring to a simmer, before reducing the heat and allowing to cook through for 10 minutes.
Most rice noodles will need to soak in cold water first- while they soak, remove the lemon grass and discard. Add the noodles and finally the fresh coriander, spring onions and lime juice, before serving.

January rescue recipes

I've been working on a few rescue-recipes for January as pay cheques begin to reach the thin end of the wedge and the month shows no sign of ending. The silver lining is my new kitchen recipes notebook from Naomi as a quasi-Christmas present, along with Union hand roasted coffee and L'Olivier fig vinegar I'll be saving for some knock-out warm salads. How do you hold out through the most hated of months? Share the wealth below so we can all hurry the last two weeks along!

Maltby Street Market and spicy squash soup

On Saturday, against my toes' better judgement, I braved the freezing winds with Keelan and Naomi to visit Bermondsey's Maltby Street market and the Ropewalk. Plenty of black filter coffee, stall holders with battery-heated socks and a swift trip to the Kernal Brewery's store meant we were able to stand the cold for a grand total of one hour before heading to the Design Museum to defrost our fingers. 

Still shivering the day after, I made this spicy squash and potato soup with plenty of chili for a perfect snow-day lunch. I didn't manage to save any of the soup back (there seemed to be a continuous depletion of stocks throughout the afternoon...) but this would be great to freeze and defrost for lunches midweek.

Serves about six, or enough for a lot of lunches!
Ingredients

600g potatoes, peeled and chopped
350g squash, peeled and chopped
1 large onion, diced
2 chilis, chopped
1 tsp marjoram
400ml vegetable stock
2 tsp chili flakes (plus a little more for seasoning)
Glugs of vegetable/olive oil
salt
pepper

Sweat the onion in a large pan with the oil. Add in the marjoram, fresh chilies and dried chili flakes. Prepare the vegetable stock, then add the potatoes, squash, seasoning and stock to the pan, and bring to the boil.

Allow to simmer for around 30 minutes, until both the squash and potato are completely cooked through.

Turn off the heat and use a hand blender or mixer to blend the soup to a rich consistency, leaving it as chunky as you like. I added about 200 ml of water at this point to thin it down a little.

Bring back to a simmer, add pepper to taste and you're done.