Vegetable Tagine

I think of making a tagine as a lengthy and complicated process. This one was dead quick and simple. I picked up the recipe in Waitrose four years ago and I've only just got round to trying it! The end result was a little less tasty than I'd hoped for but I suspect it would have been a lot better if I'd used the posh brand harissa recommended in the recipe. As it was, with cheapy harissa, it was pretty good for a one-pot quick meal but nothing special.

Goodies from Mummy

We visited my mum for the weekend recently and as always she filled her house with vegan treats and then sent us home with everything we hadn't eaten - which was mountains of it.

This Sunnyvale date and pecan cake was lovely. It was also really healthy because it was sweetened with fruit. That's a big bonus in this house of cake addicts. Tabitha is only 10 months old but she's already caught our cake obsession. But I figure it's okay for us all to enjoy cake as long as we try to keep it healthy (usually). I quite often bake muffins and sweeten them with fruit spread and raisins. It works pretty well but it's nice find something off the shelf which is virtuous too. Same goes for the Billy's Farm raisin cookies in the first photo. They're really nice but I saw them in a local shop yesterday and they're very expensive. Mum must have spent a fortune on that haul! Ah Mumsy.

Best of all she made a gorgeous nut roast which we devoured for tea with pasta, pesto and cheesly when we got home. She did tell me how she made it too but I've managed to forget. It was something like this:

Fry and onion and 3 large chopped mushrooms. Add a mug of freshly ground mixed nuts, 2 mugs of breadcrumbs and a handful each of pumpkin seeds and pine nuts. Mix in a jar of pasta sauce (and maybe some water to get it all wet enough) then press the mixture into a dish. Cover with more pasta sauce and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for a good old while.

I'll check the quantities with her but she's probably forgotten too. She cooks intuitively rather than from recipes and her food is always amazing.

Pesto

This stuff is yummy. I find most vegan pesto that you can buy in the shops is made from mixed nuts and herbs. That's fine but I prefer pesto that contains just pine nuts, basil, garlic, olive oil and salt.  In summer we grow basil and make our own pesto but in winter we usually go without. So Sunita Organic Pesto Genovese was a great find! It contains just those key ingredients and tastes really fresh an good.