My rooftop garden

And now for something slightly different: A couple of months ago, I moved house, from a place with no outdoor space whatsoever, to a place with a sizable roof terrace. I'm very excited about this, and have been gardening like mad! I have a mix of herbs, vegetables and flowers (whereby I tried to pick good flowers for bees), and most of my containers (as well as my garden furniture :D) was either found or re-used from other stuff. Just some pics to show you what I've been up to:

Making a pallet garden

Filling the pallet with earth

...and planting the first plants: thyme, strawberries, lavender and echinacea

The pallet in its vertical position, after giving the plants a week to settle in horizontal position. I added some flowering plants, cat grass (in a bid to keep my two furry monsters away from the rest of the plants :-)), various kinds of lettuce, and planted land cress, garden cress and coriander seeds.

The bean box, built from the wood of an old Ikea futon frame

The pallet plants growing

...and adding irrigation pipes (old curtain rails with holes drilled in them) when watering the pallet proved tricky

The emergence of the snow peas

Box built from shelves of a disused Ikea shelving unit, filled with tomatoes and indian cress

...and the terrace today :-)

You can't see it too well here, but my honeysuckle is growing enthusiastically. Also in the pot are rosemary and lavendar, and in the pot next to it are indian cress, mint, and a courgette plant - unfortunately, I think the courgette has Zucchini Yellow Mosaic Virus, and I'll have to take it out as it's unlikely to produce much :(

Under the second pallet, the rucola has blossomed (after I got to use loads of it in pastas and salads) - once it goes to seed, I'll try to harvest and save it for next year.

Great vegan fennel and asparagus risotto

Joy! My weekly CSA packages have started up again: I get mine from a small vegetable farm run by a friend, Tuinderij de Groene Steen. In the winter months there isn't enough produce to make the packages, so I have to do without. However, they've been back for a few weeks now, and this week my package included - among other things - fennel, green asparagus, and fresh garlic, which I turned into a deeeeelicious risotto. I'm currently trying to refrain from eating the portion I saved for lunch tomorrow....

This is an adaptation of a recipe I've been making for a long time: before, I've always used roasted red peppers in stead of asparagus - either way is lovely, I'd recommend you make this version in asparagus season, and red pepper the rest of the year :)

Ingredients
(serves 2)

• 1 tbs olive oil
• 3 small onions, chopped
• 5-6 cloves of garlic, minced (adjust quantity to taste)
• 1 medium fennel bulb, chopped, including stalks and fronds
• 120 ml dry white wine
• 120 grams arborio rice
• 500 ml vegetable stock
• 8 large green asparagus, heads removed and stems halved lengthwise (if you have smaller asparagus, use more and leave them whole)
• zest of one lemon
• 2 tbs ground almonds
• 3 tbs nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:

1) Gently grill the asparagus - both the halved stems and the heads - in a grill pan or under the grill in your oven. Turn and taste occasionally: The asparagus should be cooked, but still firm. When they are done, remove from heat and set aside.

2) Meanwhile, over a low fire, gently sauté the onions, garlic and fennel in the olive oil, for 10-15 minutes, until the onion is soft and translucent.

3) Add the rice, and fry with the vegetables briefly, stirring so the grains are covered in oil. Then, add the white wine, and cook until the wine is absorbed - this should only take a couple of minutes.

4) Add 1/3 of the vegetable stock, and simmer gently. When it begins to be absorbed add more in small amounts: you may not need all the stock, and cooking times can vary depending on the rice you use. It took about 25 minutes for my rice to cook, taste regularly to see whether yours is done: risotto should be very soft in texture. When it reaches that point, stop adding stock and remove from heat.

5) Chop the grilled asparagus stalks into bite-sized pieces, and stir into the risotto.

6) In a bowl, combine the nutritional yeast, almonds, garlic and onion powder and salt. Then, stir into the risotto together with the lemon zest. Taste for seasoning, and garnish servings with grilled asparagus heads.

Recipe for delicious vegan chocolate and strawberry pie

This one is all kinds of sinful, but no animals were harmed in the making of, the karma must cancel out some of the calories, right? :-) This has been a *huge* hit every single time I've made it - and it looks pretty, too! Don't be daunted by the recipe: Yes, it comes in three parts, and yes you need to make it in stages (the chocolate ganache needs at least a few hours to cool and set in the fridge before you can make the strawberry topping), but none of it is complicated. I purchased a pie tin with a removable bottom a while ago, and it's fantastic for this kind of pie. A spring-form tin will do the job well too, but I wouldn't use a pie tin with a fixed bottom as it will be hard to remove the pie from the tin and serve it without it falling apart.  

Enjoy!   

Ingredients:

Biscuit pie crust:

• 150 - 200 g vegan biscuits (I use wholemeal wheat and oat cookies, but any dry biscuit will do)
• 1 tbsp cocoa powder 
• 75 g vegan margarine

Chocolate ganache 

• 400 g dark chocolate (most dark chocolate is vegan, check the ingredient list to be sure) 
• one 400 ml can of coconut milk

Strawberry topping: 

• 400 g of fresh strawberries
• juice of half a lemon
• 1 tbsp of maple syrup (or other sweetener of your choice)
• 1 tsp of agar agar powder 
• 200 ml water

Preparation:

Crust:

Pre-heat the oven at 180*C

1) Melt the margarine over a low heat  

2) Pulverise the biscuits using a food processor. If you don't have a food processor, try putting the cookies, 2-3 at a time, in a zip-lock bag, and rolling a glass bottle over them until they are crushed.

3) Stir the cocoa powder into the cookie crumbs, followed by the melted margarine, until they are well mixed

4) Press the sticky crumb mixture into a 22 cm pie tin to cover the bottom and sides. If you are using a higher spring-form tin, cover the sides up to about 3 cm.  

5) Bake at 180*C for 10 minutes, then set on a rack to cool. 

Chocolate ganache:
6) Break the chocolate into pieces, put into a heat-proof bowl (e.g. stainless steel or pyrex) with the coconut milk

7) Place your bowl on a small saucepan filled with water, so that part of the bowl is submerged in the water. Place the saucepan on the stove over a low heat, and stir the chocolate and coconut milk until fully melted and combined

8) Pour the chocolate mixture into the crust, and refrigerate for 3-4 hours (or longer of course, if that fits your schedule better), until the ganache has set. Only then prepare the strawberry topping.

Strawberry topping: 

9) take about 100g of the least pretty and ripe strawberries, and puree them with the water, lemon juice and maple syrup or other sweetener. Taste and add more syrup if necessary. 

10) halve the remaining strawberries, and place them cut-side-down on the chocolate ganache. I like to make concentric circles, but be creative and turn it into your own work of art :-) 

11) In a saucepan, gently bring the strawberry puree to a simmer, stir in the agar agar, and allow to simmer for a further 5 minutes, stirring regularly.

12) Carefully pour the mixture over the strawberries on the pie, until the top is evenly covered. Do this right after removing the saucepan from the heat, as the agar agar will begin to solidify immediately. 

13) Place the cake back in the fridge, until the topping has completely cooled down and set. In hot weather, store the cake in the fridge until use, or your ganache might melt :-)

This. Is. Fricking. Delicious.

Delicious raw vegan fennel, orange and avocado salad

A very tasty, whole food, quick and easy new salad to share today! Don't worry, there's a chocolate ganache and strawberry pie recipe coming up soon to compensate for for all this healthiness :-)

Serves 1 as a full meal, or 2-4 as a side dish

Ingredients: 

• 1 large fennel bulb, very thinly sliced (use a mandolin if you have one)
• 2 oranges, peeled and pith removed, halved and segmented 
• 1 avocado, peeled and roughly chopped
• 30 grams of rocket (I'm sure more would be tasty too, this was all I had) 
• 40 grams of currants (or raisins or sultanas, but note these are often coated in vegetable oil if you want to avoid that)
• 1 spring onion, finely chopped (optional) 
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
Put all the ingredients in a bowl, mix them thoroughly, and season to taste. There is no separate dressing for this: The oranges, which will give off some of their juice, provide the acid you would usually add in the form of vinegar or lemon juice, the avocado provides the fat in stead of oil. If your avocado is nice and ripe it will partly 'dissolve' and form a creamy dressing together with the orange juice. I didn't have any, but I imagine some chopped toasted walnuts or toasted almond flakes would be very nice with this too! 

Easy vegan Sushi Salad recipe

During the summer, I eat a *lot* of salads, especially for lunch at work. I have quite a variety, but this remains one of my absolute favourites: I call it my sushi salad as the combination of flavours reminds me of sushi. You can up the sushi-ness by adding some shredded nori, leaving out the orange juice, and adding a small amount of wasabi to the dressing, also very tasty!

Serves: full meal for one hungry person

Indredients:

Salad:

1 cup cooked brown rice, cooled

1 avocado, diced

2 spring onions, chopped

75 g grated carrot

1/2 cucumber, finely chopped

75g bean sprouts (mung or soy)

1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

dressing:

juice of one orange

1 tbsp soy sauce

1/2 tbsp sesame oil

(adjust to taste)

Preparation:

1) Mix salad ingredients.

2) Mix dressing ingredients.

3) Stir dressing into salad.

4) NOM :)  

Vegan Olive Tapenade Recipe

I love olives and olive tapenade, but almost all the supermarket varieties contain anchovies, so I decided to make my own, and it turned out raaaather good:


Olive-rocket tapenade
Ingredients:
115 g pitted black olives
30 g rocket (rucola) leaves
40 g raw unsalted cashew nuts
heaping tablespoon nutritional yeast
heaping teaspoon miso

Preparation:
Put it all in a deep bowl, and blend. YUM.

Be sure to store in the refrigerator. I finished this amount in about a week, and my guess would be that it wouldn't have kept much longer than that with the rocket... oh well, I suppose I'll just have to make more :)

Vegan pumpkin and broad bean pilav

I just made this up today based on a few different things I was craving, and it turned out surprisingly tasty, so I thought I'd share it with you. 

I love risottos and pilavs - basically, it's baby food for grownups, so comforting! Also - WOOHOO!!! - pumpkin season is here! And, okay, it is very much not broadbean season, but they're delicious, so I cheated with a pack of frozen ones. 

If you do not use brown basmati rice for this, you probably need to drastically shorten the cooking time or it will turn to mush - check the packet instructions of the rice you are using. If you do need a shorter cooking time for the rice, get the pumpkin in the oven first (step 4), and then proceed with the rest of the recipe.

If you would like a pumpkin desert to follow your pumpkin entrée (and why would you not!?), do yourself a huuuuuge favour and head on over to Allyson's wonderful blog Manifest:Vegan, and try her amazing Chocolate Acorn Squash Baked Custard. I couldn't find an acorn squash, so I used a regular little orange pumpkin in stead. I'm not gluten-intolerant and didn't have sorghum or buckwheat flour, so I used regular wholemeal wheat flour in stead - worked perfectly.   

Enjoy! 

Pumpkin and broad bean pilav

(serves 3-4)

Ingredients

• 2 medium onions, roughly chopped
• 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tbsp olive oil 
• 200g brown basmati rice, thoroughly rinsed
• large pinch of saffron, about 50 strands
• 1 veg stock cube
• 1 small pumpkin (ca. 1 kg, 700g when deseeded and peeled), peeled and cut into 2x2 cm cubes
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 300g frozen broad beans
• salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

preheat oven to 180C 

1) Fry the onions in a large (ca. 4 litre) pan in 1tbsp of the olive oil over a medium heat until it is turning translucent, about 5 minutes, then add garlic

2) After a further five minutes, once the onion and garlic are just starting to brown, add the basmati rice and briefly toss with the onions and garlic

3) Add about 750 ml of water and the saffron strands to the pan, and crumble in the stock cube. Bring to the boil, then turn heat to low, cover, and let simmer for 30 minutes

4) Meanwhile, toss the pumpkin with the remaining olive oil, some salt, and the allspice in an oven dish, and arrange in a single layer. Roast in the oven for 25 minutes.

5) Give the rice a stir, and scatter the broadbeans on top of the rice. Spread the chunks of pumpkin on top of the beans, cover the pan, and cook for a further 10 minutes, or until the beans are fully defrosted and heated.  

Season to taste (I enjoyed a good twist of black pepper with mine), and presto!