Festival Food

Ever been to a music festival with a vegan? Well, I have! And I've had to get quite creative to keep the recipes tasty, cheap, quick and with the minimum amount of ingredients to take along. All the recipes below are vegan but you can substitute ingredients for more conventional alternatives - though the chocolate fudgey bites are phenomenal as they are!

Doing what I do best - cook for everyone!

So yeah, sorry I haven't posted for a few days but we spent the weekend at a music festival (a vet, vegetarian, vegan and a legendary Essex lad!) - All Tomorrow's Parties - in Minehead (across the sea from Cardiff). To prevent excessive consumption of junk food during the weekend (we did pig out once for lunch...), I decided to come up with easy, quick recipes to feed 4 people using as few ingredients as possible.
Note that this is not for your typical South African festival, you'll need basic kitchen equipment for these recipes but they'll work for a quick meal.

Lunches and dinners for 3 night stay: 
Tomato Soup
Leek and Parnsip Risotto
Roasted Potato with Beans (don't need a recipe for this one, lol!)
Butternut Mac n Cheese
Celeriac and Cauliflower Mash with Veggie Burgers

Snacks:
Chocolate Fudgey Bites
Pita and Carrots with Hummus

Tomato Soup
I absolutely love tomato soup - it is probably the best kind of soup out there. The trick to delicious tomato soup is to de-seed all the tomatoes before cooking them. It can be quite time consuming but it is really worth it. You can also use cherry tomatoes if you have the patience/time to de-seed them!

Ingredients:
1kg tomatoes (you can use 1kg cherry tomatoes or half cherry tomatoes/half normal tomatoes)
1 onion, sliced
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 liter vegetable stock (use as much as desired depending how thick you like your soup)
Salt and pepper
Optional: butter, bread (we used wholemeal sourdough from the Earth's Crust in the Cambridge market) and cream to serve

How to:
If you'd like, you can skin the tomatoes but it is not necessary.
Start by chopping up the tomatoes and remove the seeds. 
Heat up some olive oil in a large pan and cook the onion until soft.
Add the tomatoes and cook for about 3 minutes.
Add the stock and the balsamic vinegar. Cook for 10 minutes.
Blend, season and serve warm with some cream and buttered bread.

Leek and Parsnip Risotto (with Ruby Orange Vodka Cocktail)

Eating lunch outside in the sun - an ATP festival first!

Ingredients (for 4 people):
1 onion, chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
1 fennel, chopped into small cubes
2 leeks, sliced thinly
400 grams risotto rice
150ml white wine - I used Pinto Grigio but I think a drier white would work best
1 liter of vegetable stock, keep warm in a separate pan
juice of one lemon
parsley or thyme - I only had thyme handy but I think parsley would work better
Salt and pepper
Olive oil

How to:
Heat up some olive oil in a pan on medium heat and add the onion. Cook on low heat until the onions are translucent but not brown. Add the garlic and cook for a further 2 minutes.
Add the fennel and leek and cook on low-medium heat until both are soft.
Add the risotto rice and make sure it is nicely coated with the leftover oil in the pan. Keep mixing gently for a minute.
Pour the white wine in the pan and wait until it has mostly evaporated.
Add ladles of the warm stock one at a time. Wait a bit in between each ladle until the water has been absorbed by the rice - make sure the stove's not too hot or the stock will just evaporate and not cook the rice.
You can always add a bit more stock if needs be, just taste the rice along the way until it is al dente!
Once the rice is cooked, add chopped parsley, salt and pepper to taste and the lemon juice.
Serve immediately on a sunny patio with a cool glass of white wine.

For the Ruby Orange Vodka Cocktail:

Eating tasty Butternut Mac n Cheese

Pour some Vanilla Vodka (I tend to be heavy handed so I won't give you any guidelines there, but the usual "single, double" rule should be alright here) in a tall glass. The mix is made up of 2/3 blood orange juice (or ruby orange juice) and 1/3 cranberry juice. Drink cold.

By the way, I need a creative name for the above cocktail - please help me with one!

Butternut Mac n Cheese
I stole this recipe from "Oh She Glows" so I'll link this up to her website where the original recipe is. I follow it to the letter and it comes out perfect, comforting and delicious.

Celeriac and Cauliflower Mash with Veggie Burgers (or any other burger for that matter)

Ingredients:
1 celeriac, peeled and chopped - I guess you could use parsnip or any other root vegetable
1 cauliflower, chopped
Thyme
A knob of butter (vegan or not)
A splash of milk (dairy or not) - adjust quantities depending on how thick/runny you like your mash
Salt and pepper

How to:
Boil the celeriac and cauliflower until very tender.
Drain and put into a large bowl. Add the thyme, salt, pepper, milk and butter.
Mash using a hand-held blender or a masher.
Adjust seasoning if necessary. 

Serve with the burger of your choice - we ate Aduki Bean Kiev and they were delicious!

Chocolate Fudge Bites! Nom Nom Nom

Chocolate Fudgey Bites
For snacks, I made these little devils: German Chocolate Fudge Bites and they came out so chocolatey and addictive!

Mark E Smith and Me! - "Good Evening, we are the Fall"

Damon's musical note: Music wise, the weekend's highlights included the Boredoms, the mighty Fall, Group Doueh's infectious Saharan grooves, Mount Eerie, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, the monumental Earth and Matana Roberts.

The Boredoms (and me!) - Acid Police!

Parsnip Latke served with Horseradish

Latkes dipped into the soup topped with some horseradish cream

So for my first recipe I thought I'd start with tonight's dinner: Parsnip Latkes with horseradish cream and Kale Soup.

I know that potatoes and onions are traditionally used to make latkes but the parsnip adds a little zing to them and make them extra crispy. If you don't have parsnip, you can use onions instead, use 1 onion for 2-3 potatoes. 

To be honest, the kale soup had been sitting in the fridge for a few days... I'd been defeated by the amount of kale we've been getting in out veggie box lately (from Riverford) and didn't know what else to do with it so I threw it in a pot with some onions, garlic, potatoes, stock and blended it all together. You can pretty much use any soup but the latkes are perfectly respectable (read DELICIOUS) when served alone or with some horseradish cream.

For the Parnsip Latkes (I adapted this recipe Smitten Kitchen for what I had lying around)
Makes at least 12, excluding those used for tasting while cooking :-)

Ingredients:
1 large potato
4 medium sized horseradishes
Juice of 1 lemon
2-3 spring onions, sliced thinly
1/4 cup whole wheat flour (or all-purpose flour)
1/4 cup soya flour (or some other high protein flour, though you could just use some more whole wheat flour)
1 tsp baking powder
3 eggs, lightly beaten
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil for frying (this uses quite a bit)

How to:
Peel and grate the potato and horseradish using a coarse grater (or anything else you've got handy).
Using paper towels or a clean kitchen towel, dry the grated horseradish and potato until there are quite dry - this ensures extra crispy latkes!

Transfer the grated veggies into a bowl and add the lemon juice and spring onions. Mix.
 In another bowl, mix the flours, baking powder, salt and pepper (to taste) and the 3 eggs. Add to the veggies and mix well.

Pour olive oil into a heavy pan (cast iron is best but you can use any pan you have lying around) so that the oil is about 3-5mm deep (!!). Heat up the oil until it starts to sizzle - the guideline is that a drop of water flicked in the oil should hiss and sputter. Then try to keep the temperature as constant as possible, adding oil to the pan if necessary through the frying process.

Using your fingers, grab a small ball of mix, roll it then flatten it between your palms. Throw it (gently) into the pan. Repeat until the pan is full, though leave yourself some space to be able to flip them. Let each side cook about 3-4 minutes.
Once a latke is done frying, put it out onto some brown paper or kitchen paper towel to get some of the excess oil off.

Serve as is or with some horseradish cream or any other sauce of your choice.

Enjoy!

Just keep on frying!