The Dunwich Dynamo, veganised

London Fields pre-Dynamo

There's a hill on my journey home from work I've never been able to cycle up. I can cycle down it no problem at 7.20am each morning, but up just never happens. Instead I grit my teeth and bear it, pushing my bike on foot.

Cycling is something I turned to after becoming vegan- I believe I wouldn't have chosen one without the other. Twelve months after becoming vegan in January 2012, this year I wanted to do something else that both scared and intrigued me, and that I knew would change my lifestyle for the better. When my boyfriend, K, first mentioned doing the Dunwich Dynamo, I hadn't even completed the seven mile one-way commute to my work. 120 miles overnight seemed like an impossible, all-out ludicrous thing to attempt. I wouldn't even say target, because in January, it just didn't seem do-able.

I didn't decide to do the Dunwich Dynamo until 7th June, when I read this article by the Guardian, and realised I wanted to achieve something from my new choices. Against people saying vegan diets are unsustainable, can't be healthy, and also don't lend themselves to an active lifestyle, I wanted to commit myself to something I would never have given a realistic thought to a few years ago, powered on vegan food.

The Dynamo, or Dun Run, takes riders from London Fields to Dunwich, in Suffolk, overnight in the weekend closest to a full moon in July. It's not a race. There's Brompton Bikes, penny farthings, even one year a Boris bike. There's a man with two spaniels that travel in the front basket of his bicycle, teenagers, couriers, an older man with an amazing billowing white shirt (the sight of which got me through an awful few miles at 4am) and, of course, a lot of lycra. I did it vegan.

On Saturday 20th July, at about 8.30pm, I set out to cycle 120 miles on the Dunwich Dynamo. I cycled with K, who has been cycling every day to work for two years and before that was obsessed with BMX. With us came two of our best mates who had completed the Dun Run a few times before- B, who works for a cycling charity, and J, who works in a bike shop. We were also joined by M, who works with J. Basically, a lot of very proficient riders plus me.

The thing that is impossible to downplay is how magic the Dunwich Dynamo is. It is enshrined in urban myths involving a group of couriers that set out for the sea one Saturday night and ended up in Dunwich. In reality, it was probably organised from the start, but no-one really thinks about that as you begin to set out. The blogs I read in preparation said villagers put out jam jars with tea lights to light up the route on the way. Again, in reality, this is the meticulous organisation of the mysterious organisers- members of the Southwark Cyclists; people no-one seems to know the specific names of but who everyone talks about in a hushed respect basically reserved for no-one else in the dry, cynical zone of cyclist humour.

(Me, plus a lot of flapjack...)

I made a lot of mistakes. The first major mistake I made was packing too much. I rode with panniers for the first time and literally could not lift my bike out of my flat when we set off to go. Pretty sure that the cafes and pubs we'd find on the way wouldn't be vegan-focused, I'd made 24 flapjacks to share around and two rounds of peanut butter and jam and marmite sandwiches for me and my boyfriend. Me and K also packed two litres of water between us. The flapjacks alone felt like a brick.

As we approached Hackney I began to see the roads fill up with hundreds of cyclists. More cyclists than I'd ever seen before in my life. The air was heavy from too long without rain. I was only when we rolled up to London Fields that I could appreciate just what we were heading out with: over two thousand cyclists making last minute checks, meeting friends, first pints of the night. There's no forms, race numbers, official starting point or time. So the spectacle of this word-of-mouth tradition is something to behold in itself.

B gave us each a nip of whiskey and we attached blue neon lights she'd found to our wheels so we could spot each other in the pitch black. These turned out to be so useful later on, when you couldn't even tell who was cycling next to you let alone behind.

We started out on what many people say is the worst part of the journey, through London Fields, up through Clapton and in to Walthamstow. I loved this part. Traffic at an absolute standstill as more than a thousand cyclists passed though streets we usually struggle to pick our way through. Buses letting twenty cyclists go at a time, van drivers furious. I told B I wished this was how rush hour was every day. I was already finding the load on my bike heavy but I decided to ignore it.

It got dark as we entered Epping Forest, which really throws you in at the deep end of the route. I soon realised if I had gone with just K, we wouldn't have been well equipped enough. We needed someone with knowledge of the route before and J's bike's lamp to light up the road. If we hadn't ridden with this we might have fallen in one of the pot holes like I sadly saw and heard other cyclists fall in to. I believe the Dun Run is harder than it has been billed in the past. I do not think you could safely do it alone without the experience of someone else that had done it before.

My other major mistake, and I mean this is one of those massive, so ridiculous mistakes that it went from serious to funny within a matter of seconds, is that I didn't realise I could change the gears on my bike. It became apparent somewhere near Epping that I had been commuting in the highest gear for four months. This is why I couldn't do hills, and this is why my legs had developed crazy muscles nothing like my boyfriend's. Yep, vegan muscles. Deal.

We arrived at our first stop, twenty miles in, and cycled up to the second pub in the village. I had a whiskey and coke, the others a mix of larger and Guinness. We started on the flapjack to try and lighten my bike. I couldn't believe we were only 20 miles in.

We didn't stay long at the pub and set off the minute everyone was ready. It was at this time the reality of what we were doing set in. The darkness took over. J stayed behind us as much as possible to light the way, but without J's light I couldn't see the two metres ahead of me that I had cycled in to. People overtook us only to stop ahead to say they were lost, and that they had been following us. The jam jars I read about lit our way through the endless stream of villages that ensued. Thank god for the organisers, I thought, as I spotted a lone jam jar while the others tried to work out where we were on the directions. The journey went on for what felt like eternity. Finally, we turned down a lane where a woman was telling us it was the wrong way. It was in fact the half way pit stop.

It was a surreal sight as we got off our bikes to come down the hill to the hall. It must have been four hundred cyclists laid out on the ground in a deserted village. The food and coffee ran out while we were there, the tea as we were leaving, as a man with a megaphone apologised. I ate a sandwich and tried to catch five minutes' sleep. K said I was being very quiet and asked me what was wrong, at 54 miles in to the trip and two in the morning, I think I was beginning to see just how hard the road ahead would be.

We pressed on, now passing the same people over and over, the headwind coming into its own entity. Damn headwind I would say as we approached the base of another hill, I hate you so much. Truly, go to hell. I got caught talking to the wind like this quite a few times- but I also heard the same swearing from the others we passed, choosing profanities to fuel their up-hill struggles.

Apart from swearing, it's the tiny red lights out in front that literally tail off for miles into the distance that power you through. Practically, you don't want to lose sight of them, and they also show you what's ahead. When they are at eye height, you know it's time to curse another hill. When they dip beneath the road it's time to stop peddling.

We cycled on through to daylight. This was another favourite part- I saw a light I hadn't seen since being 16 at camp outs and talking straight to sunrise. It's just before the sun is up and it lingers around the ditches and hedgerows of the fields, heavy on the horizon that now stretched out in front of us.

On we went, for another thirty miles. Now I was peddling for the promise of coffee and coffee alone. It was five in the morning when I think my problems started. I found myself having to push up every hill, while even flat lanes, the type I couldn't wait to hit when we were in Essex, now became virtually impossible. I'd had enough sugar, I'd had enough water, but it felt like I was getting near my breaking point. As someone who has never done anything as intense as the Dun Run, (I skipped every sports day) I had no idea where my will to succeed had to be balanced out by a sensible decision to stop. I didn't want to let anyone else down that I was cycling with, but I was beginning to feel really, really sick. We cycled through Needham market, 82 miles in, past a huge queue for coffee as we decided to stop at somewhere quieter instead of wasting time waiting for a drink.

Here, K pointed out that his house was only 3 miles down a country track off the route. As we hasn't booked coaches or trains in time we were set to hit Dunwich at 120 miles in, before turning back along the same route to this point, thirty miles away, to stay at K' s house, in other words 150 miles for us, in total. The rain set in, the headwind continued, and I carried on peddling, my stomach now churning with nausea as the others rode easily ahead. I did something I would never do on my commute: I hoped there was something wrong with my bike. Anything to give a reason to the physical wall I had hit that didn't seem possible.

It was just after six in the morning on a drizzling, freezing cold dual carriage way coming out of Needham Market, K suddenly asked me to cycle in front of him. "I just want to check something on your bike" he told me, as I overtook him beneath an underpass. It was only a few seconds before I heard those magic words: "You've got a flat."

I tried to shout for J, B and M, but they were way ahead, and at that point I decided it was better for us to make up the ground later. I didn't want them to feel like they had to stop. K and I cycled to the side of a road to fix the puncture. It didn't take long, but after ten minutes J and B came back up the road. It was half six in the morning by now, and I'd spent the last hour or so trying not to think about how much longer I'd be sat on a saddle that day. While our friends approached our curb-side spot, K told me I'd been cycling flat out, for what must have been the last two hours or so, with two full panniers and a flat tyre. No wonder I could barely stand.

B skidded to a stop in front of my deconstructed bike. "Guys, it's another seventy miles."

As we hadn't sorted transport home, the 35 miles plus the remaining 35 we still had to go, meant at least another 8 hours on bikes. There was no sun, the beach would be wet, miserable and endlessly grey. B said the one thing that actually hadn't crossed my mind since starting the Dun Run: she thought we should stop.

The minute she suggested it I realised it might be the only sensible thing to do. K's house was still only five miles away, and with it the promise of wholly exotic things like a kettle, a shower, a sofa. So we did something I would regret only a few hours later, we turned back to find that country lane, and cycled on to K's house.

At 90 miles in, that was the end of my Dun Run for 2013- incomplete and infuriatingly so, and not through anyone's fault but mine. But even on the meandering cycle to K's house, I realised I would be back on the ride next year, and I would know exactly what I was in for.

Before we set out from London Fields, B told me the Dun Run was like how she imagined childbirth- painful, a total ordeal, but shrouded in romanticism for the 364 days a year you aren't cycling it. At 2am on Sunday morning I'd rued the day that lost port's name had ever been mentioned to me. But by 11am the same day, I was ready for 2014.

I got back to London on Monday night, and Tuesday morning I cycled to work. I sped down the hill I suffered walking up for four months, switching into a higher gear for the descent. At 5.20pm I began the ascent. I put my bike in a low gear, worked up some speed before the approach, and took it steady. I managed it easily, barely breaking a sweat in the summer heat.

Beetroot hummus with charred dippers

It's way too hot to stick anything in the oven right now, so instead I'm not ashamed to say I fantasized about beetroot hummus for most of Tuesday.

Beet hummus is a great way of brightening up some aperitifs or grab-and-go dinners, and is much lighter than regular hummus so you don't need to worry about filling up before a show-stopping main course. The deep pink shade of hummus coupled with the oily wrap dippers make a perfect understated entrance for guests and is refreshing enough to serve mid-heatwave.

I would team this with some giant green olives on ice and some herb toasted almonds, or just a few cold wheat beers and plenty of the dipper wraps pictured above and below.

Makes enough for four as a dip

Ingredients

4 beetroots, peeled and cut into quarters

1 tin of chickpeas, drained

2 garlic cloves, chopped small

1 tsp ground cumin

2 tbsp tahini

Juice of one lemon

Seasoning

Olive oil to taste

Plus flour wraps to serve

Boil the beetroot in salted water until they are soft and can be pierced with a fork. Once cooked, chop into smaller pieces to make it easier to blend.

In a large mixing bowl, add the chickpeas, garlic cloves, cumin, tahini and lemon juice, along with the chopped beetroot. Using a hand blender or mixer if you have one, blend until smooth. The consistency will be lighter than normal hummus, so don't be worried if it isn't as thick. Add olive oil and seasoning to taste once you've blended, and set aside.

For the charred dippers, use a griddle pan to fry flour wraps on a high heat with olive oil for a few seconds (about 10) on each side. Then chop into quarters or eighths and get scooping!

BBQ sessions: Sweet potato and lime falafel with plantain and lime and coriander hummus

The only thing funnier than British people moaning about the heat is British people moaning about moaning the heat. Rest assured, this blog is a no-moan zone. Why moan when you can eat falafel?

These sweet potato and lime falafels are uber easy and perfect for making in advance for a BBQ. They also use a lot less flour and oil than other versions that are fried. They're very soft when straight out the oven, but leave them for half an hour or so to cool and they firm up, and proved the perfect summer accompaniment to my packed lunch! Heck, they survived a 7 mile cycle into work- these things are a falafel miracle.

Makes enough for four servings

Ingredients
For the falafel:
1 large or 2 medium sweet potatoes
1 tsp ground cumin
2 garlic cloves, chopped small
1 handful fresh coriander
Juice of 1 lime
100g plain flour
Seasoning
1 tbsp oil

Heat the oven to 200C. Wrap the sweet potatoes in kitchen roll and microwave for 8-10 minutes, until they are cooked the whole way through (you can check with a fork). Allow to cool for a minute or two before taking off their skins, which you should be able to do with your fingers.

Add to a large mixing bowl with the cumin, garlic, coriander, lime juice, flour and a little seasoning, and mash until smooth. Using a teaspoon, shape the potato mix into falafel-sized balls, I usually get around 16-20 out of a batch. Depending on the consistency, you can add a little oil to make the mixture wetter, or chose to leave it out.

Place on a greased oven tray and bake for around 30 minutes. They are very soft whilst baking so I would resist the temptation to try and turn them and just let them cook through.

While they are cooking, slice the ends of the plantain and vertically score one side of each from tip to top. Wrap up the plantain tight with foil and stick it towards the bottom of the oven, to cook alongside the falafel, or prepare now and save to cook on the BBQ.

For the lime and coriander hummus, follow this Guac & Roll hummus recipe, but  instead of lemon juice, pomegranate seeds and paprika, add lime juice and stick with the coriander.

The falafel and plantain should be ready at the same time, so either allow to cool and pack up for a BBQ or begin stacking into pitta breads for a quick, light lunch in the sunshine, sans moan!

Superhero food: Roasted hazelnut, pomegranate and radish salad

Radishes make me really happy. There, I said it. I love the colour pop, I love the spicy crunch and I love their tree-trunk pattern. They're also a great source of that infamous vitamin B6 everyone keeps asking me about. I teamed up them with hazelnuts, which are also rich in protein and a load of other B vitamins, but mainly because I love the taste of hazelnuts that lingers between sweet and savoury, which is made even more apparent when toasting. Pile 'em on fellas and get crunching!

I made this salad for brunch with soft polenta, roasted mushrooms and grilled tomatoes. I also added some pomegranate molasses for a dressing but I think it works just as well left plain and extra refreshing.

Makes enough for four as a side dish

200g hazelnuts
1 handful of radishes
2 inches cucumber
Pomegrante seeds from half a pomegranate
Different types of salad leaves

In a dry pan, toast the hazelnuts on a low heat for about 3-5 minutes. You'll know when they are ready as they will start to brown and you will be able to smell the oil from the nuts toasting.

Keeping an eye on the nuts, slice the radishes and cucumber and arrange with the salad leaves. Sprinkle the pomegranate seeds on top.

Roughly chop the nuts- leaving some whole, and place over the salad, mixing a little to make sure all the good stuff doesn't roll to the bottom if you're using a salad bowl.

Serve with warm polenta, juicy mushrooms or just the pomegranate molasses for a tasty wake-up call.

Breakfast like a king, notes on the best meal of every day

In the pub last night with some friends we got talking about how different diets can boost your mood- that classic "yeah live a healthy lifestyle okay" attitude we all take for granted. The main recurring issue seemed to be that everyone said they didn't have time to organise every part of their day to be healthy, and that's something I can defo agree with. Chips in the kebab shop are a way too-frequent occurrence on my weekly meals rota!

It was this sense of not having enough time that used to mean I never, ever ate breakfast. When I moved away from home and was studying I didn't eat until 5pm at the earliest. Crazeh times. In any case, I've realised through a few good pals that always seem to be switched on from dawn til dusk that breakfast is, in fact, the bomb.

In the winter I'm pretty much a porridge or bust kinda lady. I don't even care about soy milk any more. Hand me the goddamn water and oats perlease. But by summer I guess there's reason to be a bit more adventurous- here are a few ideas for vegan breakfasts:

In reality, no one has time for freshly baked breakfast muffins or tracking down that bit of the smoothie blender that got used as an ashtray last time you had people round. Ta. Working on a five minute preparation-limit, the easiest thing for a vegan breakfast is to have some uber nice museli hidden away somewhere at your desk, some soy milk in the work fridge and some pieces of fruit in your bag. I usually add a vegan hot chocolate for extra decadence/motivation to see the day through to lunchtime. Be sure to pick a museli with plenty of nuts and seeds like almonds and brazil nuts and you'll be getting a good helping of protein and essential nutrients. Whack three pieces of fruit in and you're basically on the 5-a-day home run.

At the weekend I say no holds barred, go all out. Fried mushrooms with shallots and dried herbs on ciabatta are almost easy enough to make before your first coffee (almost, I said, almost) or there's homemade baked beans OR American-style pancakes with banana and cinnamon. Go on, go on, go on, go on.

Gazpacho sweats and sangria withdrawal

A staple Catalan diet (maybe) of sangria and gazpacho

Hey, I'll admit it, I wasn't holding out much hope for an easy vegan ride in Barcelona. Considering Spain ranks as one of the highest meat consuming countries per capita in the world, I figured it would be paprika crisps, watermelon and black coffee most meals, if my (admittedly brief) stays in Poland and Italy were anything to go by.

So you can only imagine the relief that began to seep in after a few days in Barcelona and at Primavera Sound. There's stuff vegans can eat here! People know what that word is! There's VEGANAISE!! By the time I left Spain I'd tried more vegan food than I had ever imagined I would and have basically never eaten better on holiday. Scotland was more difficult. Who am I kidding, central London is more difficult.

We stayed in the centre of Barcelona where things like soy milk, plain pasta sauces and a lot of gorgeous fruit are easy to come by. The Turkish shops sell falafel wraps until the small hours and a lot of the bars will bring you a selection of vegan tapas dishes if you ask extra nice.

Espinacas a la Catalana, or, the best spinach you've ever tasted

But even when we ventured into the mountains- an hour's train ride out of Barcelona, we were able to make up a huge vegan, gluten free picnic with some of the most delicious food I've ever tasted- a tray of Catalan spinach cooked with olive oil and pine nuts was so rich we had to pretty much roll back to the cable car and down into the valley.

But it was the vegan food stall at Primavera Sound that changed EVERYTHING. I ate vegan brownies whilst watching Deerhunter, a vegan thali at 3am before Hot Chip and veganaise with (not so hot) chips at pretty much every opportunity. I would probably have eaten my way through the entire stall if we'd stayed any longer.

¡Muchas Gracias Spain! 

We're caught in a trap: The perils of potato dauphinoise

Few people are able to understand the heartache that comes with adoring potato dauphinoise. Amelie is one of these people. Not only did she cook me, Ruth and Keelan the most perfect vegan potato dauphinoise ever, but in the same week managed to get into some kind of virtual tussle with Felicity Cloake over what exactly makes up such a flawless yet infamously tricky dish.

See, the problem with potato dauphinoise is that when it's done right, it's a wall of creamy potato, infused in garlic with an impossible-to-place yet omnipresent nutmeg seasoning. It's the kind of side dish that people row over at Sunday lunch. It's the kind of dinner I've been known to simply take out of the oven and walk off to my room with, oven mits still in hand.

So, conversely, when it's done wrong, when there's cheese, clumps of garlic, onion, ham, bacon, egg, (THESE HAVE ALL HAPPENED TO ME) it's heartbreaking, and why, until now, I had never even attempted to go near it with soy cream.

My Nanny was also one of the few people who fully comprehended the gravity of the gratin. Her potato dauphinoise was secretly also Marks and Spencer's, carefully re-assembled in her own crockery, heated to perfection and shared out among my aunts and uncles. Everyone always wanted more dauphinoise, but once it had all been served up, my portion never seemed big enough. I soon worked out that if I went to see my Nanny in the kitchen twenty minutes after dessert, she'd let me help her 'tidy up' the plastic microwave-able dish the dauphinoise came in, our stealth second helpings disguised by the rumble of the dishwasher.

Just as I tried to savour my helping of creamy potatoes as a child, I now only ever make dauphinoise when nothing else will do. Sick days, birthdays and bad days, when life gives me lemons, I can still be found in the kitchen tidying up bits of leftover potato. This one is for you Nanny!

This is based on Amelie's recipe for potato dauphinoise. I would use fresh nutmeg over ground anytime, but ground is better than nothing, so just use what you have in. Unlike some other recipes I've seen, the potatoes are not parboiled, as this means any moisture they soak up is also from the cream, making it far richer and less likely to go gloopy or too sloppy. A slice of this should stand up on its own.

Makes enough for 4, or 2 if you are not in a sharing mood. Let's be realistic.

Ingredients
500ml cartons soy cream
Fresh nutmeg
Salt, pepper
4 garlic cloves, sliced in half
400g potatoes, peeled and sliced as thinly as possible, around 1mm- 4mm thick.

Gently heat the soy cream in a pan, with a good amount of seasoning and about 1 tsp of nutmeg. Add in three of the garlic cloves and allow to simmer. It's much better to add the salt here, so taste the cream to test if it needs any more. Once heated through, remove and discard the garlic from the cream and set aside while you prepare the dauphinoise dish.

Preheat the oven to around 180 degrees Celsius.

Using the remaining garlic clove, rub a wide, shallow dish all over with the cut-open side of the clove. You may need to use both halves to get a thorough coating.

Then begin to layer up the potatoes, slightly overlapping the edges as you work across the dish. Once you've completed a layer, pour over a quarter of the cream and grate some more fresh nutmeg over. You should be able to do around 3-4 of these layers, before pouring the rest of the cream over the last of the potatoes.

Place in the middle of the oven and cook for at least 40 minutes. The top potatoes should be crispy, the middle and bottom piping hot. Allow to stand for a few minutes before serving, or bribing everyone else to leave.