Vegan Suppers - Goulash and Dumplings

With snow on the ground and sub-zero temperatures outside, British winters call for warming, tasty,  filling, nutrient-packed dinners and this Goulash ticks all those boxes.  It's  also ridiculously cheap and easy to cook.

Traditional Hungarian Goulash definitely is NOT vegetarian and as much of the flavour and richness of the dish comes from the slow-cooked meat, it mightn't seem an obvious candidate for conversion to a veggie dish.  I've been cooking this recipe for years though and even a committed carnivore like my dad can't fault it. In fact, it's also one of my boyfriend's favourite meals and this is a man whose other favourites are corned-beef hash and steak and kidney pie!

I sometimes serve it without the dumplings but it's soooo much better with them.  You can add a bit of grated cheese to the dumpling mixture if desired but they're just as tasty (and remain vegan) without. 

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Vegetarian Goulash and Dumplings

Serves 4

For the goulash:

2 tbsp mild olive or sunflower oil

2 onions, roughly sliced

2 large carrots, peeled and chopped into chunky slices

1 x 400g tin chopped tomatoes

400g potatoes, peeled and cut into one-inch cubes

3/4 pint vegetable stock

1 tsp caraway seeds

1tsp smoked paprika

salt and pepper to season

For the dumplings :

75g self-raising flour

50g vegetarian suet (I use Atora Light)

2 tbsp finely chopped herbs such as chives or oregano (fresh is best but dried is fine too, just use a bit less)

generous pinch of salt

4tbsp water

1. Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onions.  Cook over a low heat for 5-10 minutes until starting to soften.

2. Add the garlic, carrots and caraway seeds and cook for a further 10 minutes, stirring frequently.

3. Add the potatoes and paprika, stirring well.  Cook for one minute then add the tomatoes and stock. Bring to the boil, reduce heat, cover and leave to simmer for 20 minutes.

4.To make the dumplings, sift the flour into a bowl and mix in the suet, herbs and salt. Add the water, 1tbsp at a time, mixing until you have a soft, dough-like mixture.  Make 8 dumplings, either by hand, or by using two spoons to shape them.  

5.Stir the goulash thoroughly then place the dumplings gently into the pan and cover. Simmer gently for 15 minutes or until dumplings have roughly doubled in size.

Serve in bowls, seasoning with salt and black pepper if required, and enjoy :-)

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Jenny
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Malteser Cookies Recipe

As my friends and family all know me very well, I always get lots and lots of Maltesers for Christmas and birthdays.  This is obviously brilliant, but even I have a limit as to how many Maltesers I can eat (I don't actually, that's a total lie, but I did fancy a change).  I made a Malteser Refrigerator Cake a few months ago which went down really well and I wondered if I could make Malteser cookies by adding some bashed up Maltesers to a basic cookie mix.

A quick search on Google revealed that others had gone before me and that the general consensus was that Maltesers do very nicely when incorporated into cookie mix and baked in the oven.  I adapted a basic cookie recipe and came up with the recipe below which produced 28 of these beauties:

These are by far the best cookies I've ever baked.  They're not as chocolatey as others, and not quite as sweet.  I think the dry centres of the Maltesers really takes some of the richness away, although I did make them pretty small so maybe that's the real reason I was able to eat three in one sitting.

Here is my recipe for the tastiest, chewiest, maltiest cookies:

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Malteser Cookie Recipe

Makes 20 - 30 depending on size

• 250g buttery-style margarine or softened butter
• 150g demerara sugar
• Half a teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 free-range egg, beaten
• 220g plain flour
• Quarter teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• Pinch of salt
• Crushed Maltesers to taste (I used about 130g)
• 50g milk or plain chocolate chips (optional)

Pre-heat the oven to 200C/Gas Mark 6

1. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy and well combined.
2. Beat in the vanilla extract and egg until well combined.
3. Add the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt and mix well until mixture is smooth.
4. Add the crushed Maltesers and chocolate chips (if using) and stir well until evenly distributed throughout mixture.
5. Spoon generous dollops of mixture onto a baking sheet, leaving plenty of space around each one for spread.
6. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges are light golden brown. Stand for a few minutes then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

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The cookies are amazing straight from the oven but will keep well for a few days in an airtight container.  Even my boyfriend, who generally doesn't have a sweet tooth, loved these cookies.  They're delicious and I will definitely be baking these again soon.

Enjoy!

Jenny

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Triple Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix In A Jar

I'm a big fan of giving and receiving Christmas gifts that can be used up, whether that's eaten, drunk, poured into a bath or spent.  Unless I know someone wants something very specific, I always try to give them something I know they will be able to use up and won't have to keep lying around the house for years to come.  Last year, I gave several friends and relatives homemade jars of cookie mix as part of their present.  They went down really, really well so I'm doing a few more this year.

After trawling the Internet for hours last year trying to find the perfect cookie-in-a-jar recipe, I ended up combining a couple and adjusting the quantities to perfectly fit the 750ml jars I had.  The recipe below will fill this size jar perfectly and you can easily increase the quantities of each ingredient by, say, 25% to fit litre jars.

Of course, you have to do a trial run of the cookies, just to make sure they're good enough to give out as gifts...that's my excuse, anyway.  I don't like 'hard' cookies, so when I sampled the recipe, I baked the cookies for 10 minutes which gave a lovely, soft chewy texture.  If you like them more crunchy, bake for a few minutes longer until they're just right for you.

Triple-Chocolate-Chip-Cookie-Mix-In-A-Jar Recipe

Fills one 750 ml jar

60g white chocolate chips

60g dark chocolate chips

60g milk chocolate chips

15g Rice Krispies 

150g plain flour

Half tsp of bicarbonate of soda

Quarter tsp of baking powder

80g dark brown soft sugar

75g caster sugar

30g porridge oats

Layer the ingredients into your jar in any order you like, but see the tip below on the brown sugar.

Attach a label to your jar with the following instructions:

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Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes 24 small or 12 enormous cookies

1. Preheat oven to 180 C / Gas 4. 

2. In a large bowl, cream 75g of butter or margarine until light and fluffy. Mix in 1 egg and 1 additional egg yolk. Add the contents of the jar and stir until well blended.

3. Dollop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking tray.

4. Bake for 10 minutes for a soft, chewy cookie, or a couple of minutes longer for a crunchier cookie. Remove from baking trays to cool on wire racks.

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Tips on filling your jar

Obviously, you want the jars to look pretty but I found it a lot harder than it looks to get perfectly neat layers!  I just spooned the different ingredients into the jar and levelled them out as best I could.  

One thing I do recommend, is to mix the brown and white sugars together before adding them to the jar.  

Dark brown sugar has a tendency to harden and I read lots of comments on other cookie jar recipes from people who found they had to hack away at the brown sugar layer to get it out the jar!  Mixing the two certainly worked for me, and a jar I kept back for a couple of months was fine when I came to use it. 

Decorate your jar any way you like - I keep things simple with a length of ribbon and a customised gift tag.  Those retro style card luggage tags you can buy in stationery shops for pennies are perfect as they're big enough to write the baking instructions on!  

P.S How cute are my Santa and polar bear?  We had an almost identical Santa when I was a toddler in the 80s and I loved him. I was delighted when I saw this 2012 version in M & S and had to have him and his polar bear friend. Tacky, you say? Absolutely :-)

Jenny

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