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.

Notes from a vegan picnic

At the start of the month Amelie had a picnic to celebrate her birthday and it was a BONANZA. I was running preeeety late by the time I got to the park, having decided to make homemade pizza and guacamole with pomegranate seeds half an hour before the picnic started. But it didn't matter- there was a feast to get through...

Amelie and Ruth had made falafel, potato salad with purple potatoes and vegan soy cream, homemade hummus with homemade tahini (mind blown), hard lemonade (it involved gin) and a whole lot of other stuff I can't remember, probably because of the hard lemonade. Joe and Becca made some amazing cous cous salads and an aubergine and tomato sort of stew with so much olive oil it was the richest, tastiest thing I think I've ever eaten at a picnic.

We finished with a gluten free, vegan birthday cake made by Ruth. Happy belated Birthday Amelie!!

Sunday is brunch day

All vegan... Jus Roll croissants and pain au chocolat. I realise I sound like I'm on commission but I assure you, 12 months away from pastry for breakfast would turn anyone gooey-eyed at the smell of these in the oven on a Sunday morning.

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.

Man cannot live on pre-drinks alone: vegan stop-over snacks

 

Sometimes pre-drinks on their own just don't quite cut it (I speak from experience), and maybe you need a little something to soak up some of that tequila. These three dishes make the perfect stop-over food- for friends to pick at en route to somewhere else, or while you're waiting patiently for the hair dryer.

The herb almond recipe is originally from Martha Stewart, who suggests teaming it with sherry and manchego cheese, but I went with white wine and processo, then gin with the figs, although vodka would also be a good match. These recipes are all really easy to prepare an hour before anyone arrives so there's basically no excuse to still be in your dressing gown/towel/the bath (ahem) when the doorbell goes.

Makes enough for 4

Herb toasted almonds
4 tbsp olive oil
200g whole blanched almonds
2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
Salt, pepper

Heat 3 tbsp of the oil in a large pan and add the almonds and cook for about 12 minutes, until they turn golden and fragrant. Tip onto a baking tray to allow to cool.

With the other tablespoon of oil, drizzle over the serving dish you are using and add the herbs and seasoning, then pour in the almonds and mix until everything is thoroughly coated.

Coarse chopped bruschetta
4 tomatoes, roughly chopped and still in bite size chunks
Handful of basil leaves
Half a red onion, chopped small
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt, pepper
1 loaf of ciabatta, cut into chunks

Combine all the ingredients in a mixing bowl and stir. Allow to sit for an hour so the basil can mix in with the oil and tomatoes. In this time, toast the ciabatta chunks under the grill dry, as the oil from the almonds and the fig dressing will flavour the bread, whilst stopping it from being too rich.

Fig and leaf salad
Salad leaves, washed
4 figs, cut 2/3 of the way to the base into quarters, but so they still hold their shape
Fig vinegar- I used L' Olivier fig vinegar just to cut against the fig texture and the almonds, but if you can't get hold of this, a simple French dressing would work too.

Place the leaves on a serving plate, then arrange the figs on top, with enough per each guest. Drizzle the dressing over the figs, making sure the flesh of the fruit gets the flavour.