Here in the South of England we’ve had a miraculous April. The past couple of weeks have been glorious, and even on the long bank holiday weekend just passed we only had an hour of rain. With average daytime temperatures in the mid-20s (celcius, kids) the whole weekend and a glut of lemons bought on the cheap, what else is a girl to do but make lemonade drinks?

These homemade lemonade recipes are the non-fizzy type. Lemonade in Britain is a carbonated Sprite-like soda, but I miss the American still variety (which exists here, but it’s not the same). These three lemonade recipes are a combination of what I remember the drink to be as a child and the flavours with which I tend to marry lemons in my grown up kitchen.

Recipe Notes

Pomegranate and lemon go together in Middle Eastern cookery, so I thought why not in lemonade? A little bit of this syrupy pomegranate juice reduction goes a long way, so there are only a couple of tablespoons in the recipe I’ve included. Feel free to add more to suit your own tastes, but you may want to balance it with an added spoon or two of sugar or agave if you do. Speaking of that, the pomegranate lemonade is definitely the most tart of the three recipes below, so taste it for sugar and add more if the drink is too sour for you.

Conversely the ginger is probably the sweetest tasting lemonade. It has slightly less lemon juice than the other recipes to allow the ginger to shine through the intensity of the citrus, but a similar amount of sugar to the mint lemonade. Add more lemon juice and/or water to adjust if it’s too sweet for you. Personally I like the tiny bit of extra sweetness with the zingy ginger.

You can adjust all of these recipes easily. If it’s too lemony, try adding a little bit of water. Too sweet? Add some more lemon. Too bland? Add some more lemon and sugar.

Try freezing these juices in popsicle trays for a super easy ice lolly treat!

I begin every post here in my head with the same basic sentiment: this is one of my favourite something-or-other. Alas, the dairy version of this mock halloumi was a dish I did love pre-vegan; thin slices of briny halloumi fried and doused with lemon juice and freshly grated black pepper.

It was only after I started making my own tofu that I realised I had enough control over texture and density that I could probably turn out a vaguely similar vegan version. I heavily salt the bean curds that get pressed into the final tofu product, but have no fear if you’re not ridiculous enough to have a 50kg box of soy-milk-to-tofu-ready soy beans under your sofa. So long as you really make sure to go crazy with the salt, your fried tofu vegan halloumi snackytime will go unscathed.

Tofu + Halloumi = Tofoumi

The Cypriot cheese has a very high melting point, meaning its consumers have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to cooking method. Halloumi can easily stand up to a frying pan or grill, so for this particular preparation it makes sense to use equally sturdy firm bean curd. If you get the cooking method right, with the right product, you can even expect a bit of the ol’ halloumi sqeak. Just be sure to be liberal with the salt, because that’s a major feature in the cheese counterpart.

I’m not going to try to kid anyone into thinking this is just like halloumi, but I think it’s a happy marriage between veganism and something close enough to make me happy.

Recipe Notes

• Try warming the dish first (under a grill, in a low temperature oven, that sort of thing). Tofoumi can be eaten at any temperature, but I think it’s best hot.
• If you make your own tofu, you can improve this dish by sprinkling some generous pinches of salt between layers of curd before pressing. If you do this, omit the step in the instructions to rub the tofu with salt.
• The other trick is really robust tofu, and that means as little liquid as possible. Press, press, press!

You know how much of a sucker I am for any food that’s even remotely arabic. I mean, come on, how could you go wrong with a cuisine which can use so few ingredients, often the same ones again and again, to achieve such a bountiful display of flavour and general awesomeness? If you’re in any way as big a fan as I am then I have a feeling you’ll enjoy this vegan spinach börek recipe.

A term to cover multiple definitions

The concept of börek is more a method than a dish in itself as there are tens of ways you can prepare these pastries. Originally Turkish, it’s a dish now popular all over the Middle East and also in Eastern Europe. The most basic components of börek are simple: pastry, filled and baked or fried. Wrapped, rolled, or layered, this classic concept covers a broad range of recipes. The recipe below is based on the idea of sigara börek, or cigar filo pastries.

Recipe Notes

This doesn’t have to be a precise recipe. Use chard (silverbeet) if you want, or vary the quantities. Add nuts or TVP. Go crazy! Culinary crazy, not tinfoil hat crazy; ice-cream and string do not make good börek filling.

These spinach cigar börek pastries are meant as a main meal, so they’re bulky and dinner plate friendly. If you’re looking for a party treat, use more pastry (in smaller pieces) and less spinach to create smaller cigars. The bonus of serving these as a main meal is there’s no harm done if they explode a bit and the spinach oozes out of the filo.

If you want to bulk the meal up a bit, serve the sigara börek on a bed of steamed couscous or a freshly made toubouleh salad.

Very simple to make and tasty to eat, this recipe for marsh samphire is perfect for a warm spring or summer evening.

A brief look at samphire

This is a plant of which I’d not heard until very recently. Having never seen it for sale before, I quickly forgot about the existance of this somewhat rare plant, but upon spotting it at London’s Borough Market a couple of weeks ago I quickly grabbed a few handfuls.

Marsh samphire, also known sometimes as glasswort or sea asparagus, is a plant which thrives in saline environments (a halophyte, if you’re into that sort of knowledge). The cactus-like plant can be found along salty marshes and coastal areas in Britain and the USA, and is worth seeking out if you can.

Recipe notes

Astute readers of this blog will have likely noted minimal quantities of salt in the majority of my recipes. When I prepared this marsh samphire dish, I omitted all but a small pinch of salt because samphire is naturally salty. Hence, if you cook with it, I recommend erring on the side of less salt until you first try the end result.

The recipe below prepares enough for two, but as more of a light meal than a substantial plateful. If you want to bulk it up then I suggest upping the quinoa and samphire quantities, and adding a bit more lemon and dill.

I’d planned on posting this recipe anyway, but Michelle over at My Zoetrope has named ginger and lemon as this week’s vegan mofo iron chef challenge. Call it a cop out entry (really, this is a stupidly easy thing to make), but you’ll be grateful once you try it. So simple it’s hardly worth posting yet so good it’s worth sharing, this incredibly simple tea consists of just a few key ingredients and is the perfect wintertime drink.

I discovered this simple tea a couple of weeks ago in Rishikesh, a city in Northern India famous for yoga and hippies. A young man at our hotel restaurant pushed it on me, claiming it would cure my cough. While we insisted the lifetime of my cough goes back to 1990 or so, he continued to proclaim the tea’s natural cough-curing qualities.  Finally I took him up on his offer, and now I’m hooked.

The cough remains.

Recipe Notes

The local recipes used honey, but any sweetener will do. I’ve tried it with sugar and agave both, and it’s just fab either way! I’ve also sampled this drink both with and without the addition of a tea bag and both are acceptable. In fact the only reason I’m talking so much about the tea is because it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever voluntarily consumed anything with a breakfast tea involved. Yes, I think I have conquered my English tea phobia. Miracles do happen.

Of course the quantities I suggest are based purely on my personal tastes. I love lemon and like a bit of a bite, so you may want to cut back on the citrus if you want a lighter flavour.

Quinoa is seriously under-valued by so many, and it’s a real shame because it’s a truly divine grain. Fortunately it’s seen for its value in its land of origin, the South American Andes region, where it has been cultivated for some 6,000 years.

Technically a seed rather than a grain, this star food is one of the most complete proteins out there, containing all the amino acids about which those uneducated doctors-cum-[wannabe] nutritionists chide veggies (I’ve been vegetarian for 17 years and I’m still waiting to be hospitalised for malnutrition, as promised by so many).

Recipe Notes

In my pictures you’ll notice I used this recipe as a stuffing for baked peppers. While this was good I suggest using this as a side dish instead. The reason lies with the dill, a mild herb with a flavour easily lost with too much heat. If you intend to oven-bake this quinoa recipe then I suggest serving it with some fresh dill after the baking process is complete.

Why Arabic inspired? The Arabic world’s contribution to the food fusion scene is one which has offered uncomplicated yet inspired results. One reason I adore this region’s food is because its cuisine uses simplicity and general know-how to engineer heaven on a plate. Combine this with a little creativity and your imagination can stretch the basics for miles and miles. For instance pine nuts, dill, and Middle Eastern spices combined with a seed of the gods, an Incan grain fit for kings.

As with many (most?) of my recipes, the ingredient quantities can take some guesswork in measurements, and most certainly have room for experimentation.

Perfect to serve with some new potatoes doused in olive oil or butter, this quinoa is also filling on its own (though you may want to increase the recipe a bit).

Wow am I tired. The busy doesn’t ever seem to end, and I know I’m not the only one who feel that way. Days fly by, work never seems to end, and suddenly it’s time to cook a meal. The last thing you want is something that will stretch your brainwaves too far or take half the evening, but at the same time you don’t want junk food. Enter stir-fries.

Sometimes as a teenager my family would eat stir-fry for dinner. Frozen vegetables and tofu. Just about the only frozen vegetables I can bring myself to eat now are peas and ice cream (yes, I just said that). I didn’t realise the difference a fresh vegetable could make, and it took me many years before I’d set foot near a stir-fried meal again.

Recipe notes

This one is very simple, quick to prepare (my problem is sucking at writing cooking directions, but don’t let the wordiness fool you into think it’s tricky), and incredibly yummy. My husband is nost a fan of broccoli and he inhaled it (“it has to either be raw or barely cooked and hot,” he says). Other vegetables would suit this dish also- think mushrooms, flat beans, maybe not ice cream.

Give yourself about 30 minutes to prepare, but you could cut that down to ten if you eliminate the roasted sweet potato and go for noodles instead of rice.

“And lemon,” I replied. “Don’t forget the lemon. Why?”

He laughed again and explained to me that a character on The Fast Show often referenced cheesy peas, citing them frequently in various situations (“You like Cheese!? You like Peas!? Then you’ll love Cheesy-Peas!!”)

I punched him in the face and told him to eat his vegetables.

Well, I told him to eat his vegetables anyway.