For years I’ve read about this seasonal goodie, the edible flower of the summer squash which we know as courgette (or zucchini, depending on where you’re from). It’s a vegetable which takes over supermarket shelves in late summer, but sadly the blossoms rarely come attached to their counterpart. For the first time in, well, ever, I found some at a farm shop last weekend. My initial reaction was to greedily purchase the entire basket, but I settled with a mere half dozen.

I should have gone with the whole basket.

Recipe notes

What to do? Make stuffed courgette flowers? Yes. Deep fried in beer batter? Most definitely.

For the beer batter I used a moderately light lager, Becks if I remember correctly. I’d stick with light, even so much as something like Corona. If you don’t consume alcohol, try soda water instead.

And yes, I realise Daiya cheese isn’t available here in the UK. I hoard it like my mother hoards cereal on sale (sorry mom, it was the best analogy I could think of), using it sparingly for a treat (I go to the US a couple of times a year). Try any melty vegan cheese here, a cheddar or mozzarella style preferably, and it’ll be good.

When it comes to snacks and dinner party appetisers, sometimes the simplest things are best; this gourmet vegan cheese ball (hey, it looks gourmet, even if it’s easy) is no exception. I feel like I’ve said that about something else recently. I get paranoid about repeating myself too much. Four gold stars to the person who can find where I’ve already said that. Metaphorical stars. Invisible ones. Use your imagination, okay?

You remember those containers of plastic cheese (yes, the adjective “plastic” refers to the cheese as well as its receptacle) your mother would pick up from Sam’s Club or Costco, or whatever your local cash and carry megagluttony store might have been? Specifically, do you remember the port wine ones? Yeah, that stuff was pretty much one of the best tasting things ever. I mean, I don’t even know how I didn’t have a heart attack at age 11 based on how much of that I consumed.

Recipe Notes

Okay, so point being this non-dairy cheese ball is reminiscent of the port wine spread. I used sherry here, but feel free to use a port wine too for a stronger flavour (but don’t expect that red and orange streaked nonsense without astronomical rations of dye).

This makes a great vegan cheese pasta sauce too! Just mix it with a bit of margarine and/or pseudo cream cheese to bulk it up and add an extra creamy texture (if that’s your thing). Perfect with a side of garlic bread, but then again what isn’t?

Okay, so it’s just potato salad for eff’s sake. Does the world need yet another potato salad recipe, dairy free or not?

This is where I come up with a tremendously prodigious response along the lines of “OMFG one potato salad to rule them all, with stars, hearts, lots of exclamation points and stuff! YEAH!”

No.

It’s just potato salad, but it’s really good, and vegan yoghurt makes a way better sour cream substitue than any commercially available substitute I’ve tried. Give it a try. In fact, I need to make some more since the dude out there ate it all.

Recipe Notes

Branston pickle, for those who’ve never heard of it, is a sweet and tangy pickled relish containing a whole melody of uniformly diced veggies (which you can’t pick out individually). A brand suffering from low-key genericide, Branston Pickle is often used to refer to any sort of sweet brown pickle relish, and any such variety will do for the purpose of this recipe. If you don’t have any approximation then don’t stress because it’ll still taste good; you could even try dicing up some jarred pickles instead.

This vegan potato salad recipe makes a fair amount of dressing (hey, I like creamy stuff), so consider cutting back on some of the yoghurt if that’s going to be an issue for your digestive bits. That’s also why I gave a range in the quantity of potatoes to use, if you must know.

Nothing beats the nutty, creamy taste of a ripe avocado, and this oven baked avocado recipe really shows off the characteristics of the decadent fruit. The avocado is baked lightly and served warm with a tangy tomato sauce and sweet cashew coulis, the entire stack resting on a bed of lightly fried vegetables.

This baked avocado recipe was inspired by one served at London’s 222 Veggie Vegan restaurant. Similar but not quite the same, I promise this avocado recipe won’t disappoint.

If you’re a bit weary of baking avocado, just go ahead and give it a try. It sounds odd, but the only difference is the fruit is a) warmer and b) creamier. The former adjective, I realise, would appear to be a given seeing as this is a baked avocado recipe, but sometimes common sense comes at a premium. I may be talking about myself.

Layering the avostack

Avostack. What an excellent word.

Look, you’re not going to screw up how it tastes so long as you have the four basic components: the tomato sauce, the baked avocado slices, the fried vegetables, and the cream sauce. Still, think of it in terms of two basic chunks of layering. First the fried julienned vegetables go down with a bit of yoghurt sauce and basil.

After that you simply want to layer the avocado slices with tomato sauce and top with a bit of both sauces and the remaining basil. Really, I promise, this baked avocado recipe looks a whole lot fancier than it actually is to put together.

As a vegetarian I used to make a similar dish using a soft brie or camembert and, as with most things, I refuse to let my change in diet limit my food opportunities. This is one of my alternative solutions to the dairy version, a healthier and happier vegan non-dairy cheese. And it involves deep frying, which means it must be good. Okay, so mostly healthy (frying really isn’t that bad for you so long as you use decent oil and don’t overheat it. I tell myself this).

Recipe Notes

My recommendation is to serve this simply on a bed of rocket (arugula) leaves with a dollop of blackcurrant or lingonberry (yes, I’ve been to Ikea recently) jam. Cranberry works too. Pretty much any leafy greens will complement this vegan side and it makes a lovely light lunch on a spring afternoon.

If you want a more tart flavour in this vegan cream cheese recipe, try adding some vegan yoghurt or lemon juice and upping the nut content to compensate for the additional moisture.

Sesame and miso get along famously, complementing each other in a way that makes a perfect base for soups, stir fry sauces, and salad dressings. This basic miso salad dressing recipe uses tahini for thickness and creaminess, but a nice sesame oil is just as delicious. The best part? It’s probably the easiest salad dressing you’ll ever have to make.

And this stuff really does go well with the ol’ stir fry. Today’s lunch involved broccoli and red onion stir fried in groundnut oil with some garlic, a splash of soy and chili sauces, a few tablespoons of coconut milk, and a splodge of this dressing. But miso enthusiasts, beware: the high heat will kill off all the healthful bacteria in that soy paste.

Basic, filling, awesome and, well, awesome, everyone needs a basic recipe for miso soup. This vegan version swaps the traditional bonito dashi for a shiitake broth alternative, with the added bonus of soft tofu clumps stirred in (think extra soft eggy flavoured spaetzel in soup). If you’d rather, omit the tofu cream and simply add a few cubes of bean curd. Feel free to throw some big, thick udon noodles in there too!

For years I had no idea what a pot sticker dumpling was, assuming it was some sort of hip kids’ terminology for the reefer. Hell, it wasn’t until I found myself in Beijing one autumn day that I was made aware of the existence of a non British style dumpling or gyoza. In fact, I’d go as far as saying those few days in China’s capital city were the basis of what blossomed into a love affair with my disaster area laboratory kitchen.

This vegan potsticker filling is both simple and delicious, meat free and an ideal party food. The ingredients can be easily juggled to suit your own tastes (don’t like broccoli? Try celery and carrot).

It’s oyster, not meat!

Anyone who knows me can attest to my obsession with Southeast Asia, my own personal respite from the never-warm-enough climate of Greatish Britain. I’ve yet to visit the country as a practising vegan, but even the vegetarian diet seemed tricky during my travels. Very little dairy is used, so it wasn’t so much the typical “is there rennet in the cheese” issue as it was the argument that fish is not, in fact, vegetarian (which reminds me, there’s a word for that: pescetarian. Yes, that’s right. Vegetarians don’t eat fish).

I could only take so many arguments regarding the “fact” that oysters don’t count as meat, so I’d settle for simple pasta to avoid conflict and chance. My most recent visit, however, introduced me to some vegetarian-friendly establishments I’d yet to try previously. Thus began my love affair with the region’s cuisine, my constant attempt to get it right in my own kitchen. And honestly, making vegan Thai food isn’t difficult at all.

A sexist meal?

You wouldn’t be the first to question the title of this Thai dish, pondering the whereabouts of its female counterpart. “Down with this patriarchal snack,” you might say, but the seemingly most frequently told story speaks quite loudly for feminism (albeit slightly on the passive aggressive side if you ask me, which you probably didn’t). It goes something like this: A mother is disgusted with her son in law’s arsey behaviour and serves him these eggs as a metaphorical representation of what’s going to happen to his man vegetables if he doesn’t snap to it.

And with that, here’s the recipe.

I’m a sucker for salads. It’s a genetic flaw, or I think my husband would see it as a flaw anyway (“there’s a piece of green stuff on my plate”), one which has been passed down from mother to daughter. My cravings come in waves, where one month I’m satiated by heavy stews and steaming piles of potatoes and the next all I crave are light bites and simple salads. Clearly the latter is suggestive of the basis of my current diet.