Last Updated on August 18, 2024
Easy vegan & vegetarian dinners
As my bookshelf will attest, I am a fan of Rukmini Iyer’s Roasting Tin series, having a number of the cookbooks neatly lined up and regularly used. Her no-nonsense, one-tray meals are suitable for novice cooks and experienced ones alike. Her new book, The Green Cookbook (Square Peg, June 2024) might sometimes use more utensils, but the recipes follow Iyer’s use of easy-to-source ingredients and help get a meal on the table with minimal fuss and washing up. The Green Cookbook is packed with 75 vegan and vegetarian meals, many of which are also gluten-free.
I earmarked many of the recipes – a good idea when a new Iyer cookbook makes its way into my kitchen – and I will work my way through them over the next few weeks. In the meantime, I started with three for this review. One hot dish and two salads. The first is a riff on that baked tomato and feta recipe that went viral in 2022. Iterations of this dish have proliferated ever since and there can hardly be a recipe reader who has not tried the original. Iyer’s take on this dish is to add orzo – a most useful pasta that looks like a large grain of rice and brilliantly soaks up sauces. The preparation could not be easier – place the orzo in a baking dish along with hot stock, add the cherry tomatoes (plum tomatoes are particularly delicious I found), a handful of black olives (I’d suggest Kalamata), give it all a stir and place a block of feta on top and strew over fresh basil leaves. Into the oven for 25 minutes and dinner is served. A crisp green salad is all that is required on the side to cut through the rich cheese. I had expected the feta to melt and create a sauce – as it does in that viral recipe – but it didn’t do so here. The feta can be roughly chopped up on serving.
The broccoli, date, pecan and chilli chopped salad was wonderfully crunchy. It looked and tasted healthy and had that winning combination of sweet (dates), sour (lime) and salty that kept me returning for another few spoons. The vegetables are briefly blanched to retain their crispness and nutrients. The recipe calls for mangetout but I couldn’t find any in my supermarket so I substituted with sugar snap peas which are very similar. You could dial up the heat if you wish to by adding extra chilli – I used one as the recipe stipulated and it added a bit of heat but not much.
The final recipe took the longest cooking time as it involved roasting carrots. I almost used my air fryer to cut down the time needed but as I was baking the pasta dish at the same time, I stuck the carrots in the oven. Spiced, roasted carrots and hazelnuts, silky butterbean mash will have you licking your plate clean. Certainly, vegan guests will thank you for a delicious meal. The recipe makes great use of coriander seeds which I love and the butterbean mash is fabulously smooth and so tasty with the garlicky oil (that you infuse) and spring onion. It is colourful – and crunchy if you reduce the cooking time on the carrots as I did as I like mine to retain some bite. I will be storing away the butterbean mash to use as a base for many other toppings as it is very versatile. I use the jarred beans which are a different eating experience to the canned variety so I would recommend these if you can.
The Green Cookbook is divided into 7 chapters from “quick cook carbs” (on the table in 15 minutes) to “dinner today, lunch tomorrow”. There are chapters on family dinners, light sharing plates and “big dishes, big flavours”. Also one on batch cooking and even a section on weekly meal planning. In other words, this is a book with versatile recipes for every occasion whether you want dinner on the table within half an hour (who doesn’t during the week?) or to impress your friends when they come round over the weekend.
Iyer’s recipes are always full of flavour and this book is also bursting with nutrients. Whether you are a vegetarian or simply trying to eat less animal protein, The Green Cookbook is one for the collection. For those who dread having vegan guests for a meal, fear no more. The same goes for gluten-free guests, half the recipes are suitable for people with coeliac and gluten-intolerant guests. The Green Cookbook has your back for quick meals, summer salads and winter pies, pasta, and loads of deliciously cooked vegetables. With menu suggestions for entertaining throughout the year, The Green Cookbook is one to keep at hand from Spring through to Winter.
Spiced roast carrots & hazelnuts with silky butterbean mash
Ingredients
- 1 tsp coriander seeds
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 12 small carrots, halved
- 45 ml olive oil
- 45 ml water
- 2 tsp agave or maple syrup
- 50 grams blanched hazelnuts, halved
- sea salt flakes to taste
- flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
- For Butterbean mash:
- 90 ml olive oil
- 1 lemon, zest plus a squeeze of juice
- 1 tbsp coriander seeds
- 3 spring onions, thinly sliced
- 2 fat cloves garlic, finely grated
- 700 gram jar butterbeans (or 2 x 400g tins) drained and rinsed
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 180 C fan/200 C/gas 6. Lightly grind the coriander seeds and black peppercorns in a pestle and mortar, then add them to a medium roasting tin along with the carrots, olive oil, water and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cover with foil, then roast in the oven for 40 minutes.
- After 40 minutes, remove the foil, drizzle the carrots with the agave or maple syrup, then return to the oven for a further 15 minutes to reduce the liquid and get some colour on the carrots. Put the hazelnuts on a small baking tray and pop them into the oven at the same time to toast.
- Meanwhile, put the olive oil, lemon zest, coriander seeds, spring onions and garlic into a small frying pan and warm through over a low heat for 5 minutes – you're not aiming to get any colour on the garlic, so keep the heat down.
- Put the butterbeans and the infused oil, spring onions etc, into a high-speed blender or food processor and blitz until very smooth. Add a squeeze of lemon juice, then taste and adjust the salt if needed. warm the mash and spoon into shallow bowls, topped with the roasted carrots. Scatter the carrots with a little sea salt, the toasted hazelnuts and flat-leaf parsley and serve warm.
The Green Cookbook will be published in June 2024 and is available on pre-order from Amazon and other good booksellers
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