Vegan Sushi - The Aztec and The Beast

Here are two ideas for vegan sushi. You can do pretty much what you want with sushi - it rocks. This recipe makes a reasonable amount for four, but it's so good that it tends to be wolfed down really quickly.


My advice is to entrench yourself near to the serving plate and don't let anyone else come near until you've had enough. Sharing is for hippies.

3/4 cup sushi rice
2 cups water
1/4 cup rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons demerara sugar
5 sheets nori seaweed

The Aztec:
1 avocado
1/4 red pepper
1 spring onion
toasted sesame seeds

The Beast:
1 Carrot
10cm length of cucumber
1 spring onion
cashew nuts

Dipping sauce:
50ml soya sauce
1/2 teaspoon wasabi paste

Put the water and rice in a pan and bring to the boil. Simmer until the rice is tender and has absorbed all the water. Add more water if you need. Towards the end, fluff it up with a fork.

Meanwhile, mix the vinegar and sugar.

Put the rice into a large bowl and while still hot add the vinegar and sugar mixture. Fluff it up, while blowing on it to cool it down. Leave to cool.

Steam the carrot and pepper. Toast any seeds that you might have to. Lightly toast your seaweed and put on a sushi mat. Cover with a thin layer of rice, put the ingredients to either the Aztec or the Beast across the middle of the sheet and roll.

Mix together the ingredients of the dipping sauce and voila! Bob's your uncle.

Tofrooms

2 Large mushrooms
100g firm tofu
1 teaspoon tumeric
sprinkling of toasted sesame seeds
few leaves of basil
liberal squirt of lemon juice

Grill the mushrooms on both sides. Meanwhile, crumble the tofu in a bowl and mix together the rest of the ingredients. Heap onto the mushrooms and brown off under the grill. Easy.

Sweetcorn, squash and kale soup

1 340g can sweetcorn
1 squash
1 thumbnail-sized piece of root ginger
1 handfull kale
1 pint veg stock
olive oil
squash pips

Sweat the ginger and squash in the olive oil for a few minutes. Add the sweetcorn and stock. Bring to the boil and cook until the squash is tender.

Add the kale and cook a little more. Add to a blender and hit Pulse a few times. Remember - keep it chunky!

Meanwhile, toast the squash pips and grind up in a blender. Garnish the soup with ground up pips.

tapenade

340g jar of pitted black olives.
1/2 green pepper
1/2 red pepper
2 spring onions with greens
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
good squirt lemon juice





put em all in a blender, push the ON button and you're off!

let them eat cupcakes

One of the biggest fallacies of cooking with animal products is that you need egg to bake with. Do you flipping heck as like!

On that note, here's a really cool recipe for cupcakes, kindly made by the lovely Sharon. I don't really use other people's recipes, but Sharon appropriated it from the excellent Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. And I scoffed them.

Gingerbread Cupcake

1 1/2 cups self raising flour
3 tsp ground ginger
1tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup oil
1/3 cup light molasses
1/2 cup syrup
1/4 cup soya milk
2 tbsp soya yoghurt
1 1/2 tsp lemon zest, finely grated
1/4 cup crystallised ginger, finely chopped

Preheat oven to 175oC. Line a muffin tin with paper cupcake liners.
Sift the flour, ginger, cinnamon, cloves and salt into a bowl.
Whisk the oil, molasses, syrup, soya milk, yoghurt and lemon zest in a separate large bowl. Add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until just smooth. Fold in the ginger.
Fill the cupcake liners by two-thirds. Bake for approx 20 minutes until a knife comes out clean. Move to a cooling rack and allow to cool completely before adding the topping.

Topping

1/4 cup vegan margarine
1/4 cup vegan cream cheese
2 cups icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream together marg and cream cheese. Whip it up with a mixer, while adding the icing sugar in 1/2 cup batches until smooth. Mix in vanilla.
Pipe on top of the cupcakes.

live in cities you freaks!

Christ! Some people don't live in cities. Freaks!

These people don't have access to basic necessities - cinema within walking distance, pound shops, vegetable samosas, running water, shoes.

Can't help you with cinemas, pound shops and running water, but try getting your vegetarian shoes HERE. I got some big boots and they ROCK.

And regarding samosas, well, here's a recipe for city and non-city dwellers alike. Makes a boxful, which is dead good like. Serve with salad as a starter. Or eat them until you go off pop.

sweet potato and banana samosas

1 pack filo pastry
1 medium sized sweet potato
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
1 small red chilli
1 small onion
1 banana
1 dash mango juice

Peel and chop the sweet potato and put in an inch of boiling water with the tumeric. Boil until soft, drain and put it into a big bowl.

Fry the mustard seeds, chilli and finely chopped onion until the seeds start popping round your ears and the onion has gone clear.

Add to the bowl with the sweet potato and bung in the banana (as the vicar said to the actress). Mash roughly with a dash of mango (as the actress said back to the vicar).

Now follow Percy the Punk Rock Penguin's pictorial guide to making samosas.

wholemeal just ain't rock n roll

What was George Orwell's gripe against vegetarians?

For a champion of libertarianism, he came unstuck on so many occasions.

In Road to Wigan Pier, he ranked them alongside cranks like nudists, weirdy beardies and sandal wearers for dragging back the socialist cause.

Then he defended the annual bout of christmas hedonism against the puritan lifestyle of vegetarians and teetotallers. Teetotal veggies like Ian MacKay and Ray Cappo appeared 40 years later.

Orwell was wrong, but he foresaw the future. Innit. Like.

"As teetotallers and vegetarians see it," he wrote, "the only rational objective is to avoid pain and stay alive as long as possible."

Yeah yeah, that might be true for bearded, sandal wearing workers in wholefood cooperatives, and possibly true for nudists, but those who like to mix their ethical diet with full on punk fucking rock can leave them to it and go and eat something altogether groovier instead.

So, here's something that's cheap, fast and will probably give you indigestion. Just like MINOR THREAT or YOUTH OF TODAY.


Kidney bean burger

1 tin kidney beans
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 tablespoon tahini
1 tablespoon rosmary
1 medium red chilli
½ green pepper finely chopped
1 spring onion
½ cup rolled oats
2 tablespoons roasted sunflour seeds

Put the kidney beans, tomato paste, tahini, chilli and oats in a bowl and mash together with a potato masher. Add the remaining ingredients and mix together.

Shallow fry on a high heat in olive oil until golden brown on both sides, and then turn down the heat and cook for a further five minutes to cook them all the way through.