Fly. And gnocchi.

Yesterday a plane crashed with 150 people on board in the foothills of the French Alps. Today, I’m 38,000 ft in the air; we’ve just reached the altitude of the plane that crashed yesterday had before it went into a fast, eight minute descent.

It’s easy to feel immense sorrow for all those involved in the Air Asia crashes, but closer to home, in European airspace, on a German plane that apparently crashed arbitrarily, with no bad weather reported, the risk seems greater. Taking a flight is still immensely safe, but it’s a little like playing poker. You have to go all-in to have any fun. Once you’re on the plane, that’s it.

I’m on my way to Moscow, but since hearing the news about the plane crash yesterday, I’ve felt jittery. There was once upon a time when that was it – I wouldn’t have set my alarm at 4am and I wouldn’t have gone to the airport. This wasn’t that long ago- just last January Sam and I were booked in to go to Morocco and I got as far as the plane. I chatted to the pilot, and then I calmly got off and took the bus to Amsterdam instead.

I’m an aviophobe, one who has spent their entire life trying to overcome it. Want to hear the hilarious twist of fate? I am, by profession, a travel journalist. I’m fascinated by aviation, new plane models, runways, airports, and, I guess, the destination. My job has been formed by my fear- my need to ask questions and to reassure myself that “everything will be ok.”

Fear of flying for me at least, is fear of fear itself. That lack of control when the plane is bouncing through the clouds, and the pure terror when the plane hits an airpocket and the captain comes over the tannoy with a strained voice: “Cabin crew, take your seats immediately.”

Nothing can floor me more than that – grief, physical pain, love. Nothing affects me more than inflight fear. So, it seemed cutting that the night before getting on a plane where I knew my stomach would be roiling, I should make something hearty, filling, and nutritious. To calm the nerves and cleanse the soul, so karmic turbulence wouldn’t hit!

Gnocchi with avocado sauce

Ok, I get it. This looks a bit green, and green doesn’t scream “yay!” It screams “health kick.” But hey, the blogs called Fly Green Vegan and I’m doing all of those things, so tough shit.

Serves two

Ingredients

1 cup gnocchi, boiled for three minutes until tender

One large, ripe avocado

Juice of half a lemon

2 tbsp olive oil

Enough almond milk to make it liquid

A handful of basil leaves

Salt and pepper

1 cup button mushrooms

1 leek, sliced

1 clove of garlic

 

Method

Add the chopped leek into a pan with a dash of oil and cook until softened. Add a dash of water to help things along. Add seasoning, a tsp of stock, and mushrooms. Cook for a further 5 minutes.

In another bowl, blend the avocado, almond milk, lemon juice, garlic and basil together until you have a liquid the consistency of double cream.

Add the avocado mixture to the mushrooms and leeks, and tip in the cooked gnocchi. Stir, and season to taste.

Hopefully this will quell any pre-flight terror you have!

Recipe: Roast pepper and olive tapenade tart

Maybe it’s because I did a lot of cycling today (and it was so windy in London so my thighs were working extra hard) but I’ve been craving olives all day.

Olives are my popcorn. I could, and do, eat them by the handful. Black and wizened or fat, green olives, as large and acidic as unripe apples.

But eating olives out of the jar is a really unappealing habit (or so I’m told) so this Saturday evening, with some free time, I made an olive tapenade (minus anchovies!) and spread it on pastry.

It’s baking in the oven and the whole house smells delicious. Sam keeps wandering in and poking his head round the door to ask if it’s ready yet (and to check I haven’t licked the bowl I made the tapenade in clean). He’s thoughtful like that.

Update: tart was fabulous, especially with the sweet peppers and salty olive combo. It’s also so quick to make, and great with a simple side salad.

Hope you’re all having a lovely Saturday!

Tapenade

Ingredients

A cup of green or black olives, pitted

Two cloves of garlic

A squeeze of lemon juice

A glug of oil

Half a red chilli

Method

Blitz!

Tart

Ingredients

Roll vegan pastry

Four mixed peppers

One red onion

Olive oil

Balsamic vinagar

Salt and pepper

Method

Slice peppers and onion and put in baking tray. Cover with olive oil and a drizzle of balsamic. Season. Cook for 20 minutes or until roasted.

Roll out pastry to fit the tray. Cover tray with light layer of olive oil and blind bake for ten minutes at 180 degrees.

Spread tart with tapenade and pop in the oven for another few minutes.

Scatter the vegetables over the tart and cook for another ten minutes or until crispy.

Serve with olive oil drizzle.

When fusion gets weird: Chotto Matte Peruvian Japanese in Soho, London

The staircase leading to the weird-ass toilets

Something isn’t quite right. It’s dark. There are lots of girls wearing short dresses and spangly earrings. The sort of music that might induce me to take speed is playing. And there’s a rockery. Just the one, piled up in the corner, like an abandoned archeological dig. Welcome to Chotto Matte: which seems to be a club, restaurant, and garden centre all rolled into one. 

We got a table right away at the bar, and thank god, because it meant we got the chance to feel the “curved bar made out of lava stone” which the menu dedicated an entire page to describing. I wouldn’t have lived happily without experiencing it.

Sitting at the bar also meant that we were able to listen in on all the staff arguments which was an absolute relief. I hadn’t gone there with the intention of talking to my date, so again, praise the Lord that the staff yelling at each other about table orders which filled in all those awkward lapses in conversation. 

The interior of Chotte Matte at it’s best-with no clientele, food, or waiters.

Japanese and Peruvian restaurants have flooded into Central London in the last 18 months: Ceviche Lima and Coya from South America and Tonkotsu, Shoryu, Bone Daddies, Ramen Sasuke and Koya from the East. It’s entirely possible somebody noticed these cuisines were proving popular and so the brainstorming meeting went something like this:

“How do I make lots of money?” “Well people like ramen and they like ceviche.” “Let’s open a restaurant that serves Japanese food and Peruvian food!” “Why?” “Ceviche and sushi sound similar if you say them fast enough.” 

For that seems to be the only reason why you’d consider a joint venture between these two very different cuisines. My meal was comprised of whatever I’d had a chance to point at before the waiter left again, so whatever arrived had an element of surprise. I was slightly hungover so had opted for corn fritters (grease), barbecued courgette (yeh, what the hell), a sushi roll, sautéed chilli veggies, smokey brown rice, tostaditas with yellow heritage tomatoes and “guacamole”. I’d hoped that would give me a greasy kick out of my lethargy and perhaps my five a day at the same time. 

Not sure what this is, but all the press pictures online were of food in a line. None of my food came in a line, but I didn’t want to be a food dick and photo my plate. So you’ve got this dish. That looks nothing like what I ate.

Meanwhile, our drinks had arrived. My date had got his beer, and I’d been given a litre of sparkling water which I was apparently expected to swig throughout the evening. Only after a bout of waving and gesticulating did I manage to secure a glass. Seconds later the tostaditas arrived, sadly the highlight of our meal. I say sadly, because at the time I was unaware that each dish we were served would get progressively more depressing. If I’d have known I would have savoured every bite of the tangy sweet yellow tomatoes prepared in front of us by a precise, Japanese-knife wielding chef layered on a charred tostada and soaked in lime and a guacamole paste.

Two bites and twenty minutes later our other courses arrived in that “fashionable style” of when the kitchen decides. Read: when they remember your order. How I wish they hadn’t. A bowl of soggy root vegetables stewed in the musty flavour of lotus root and miso smelt of old wardrobe and two hours later my fingers still smell of Narnia. My corn “fritters” were three chunks of corn on the cob. No oil, no grease, no indulgence. Just healthy, bites of gigantic corn to indulge in. The lack of fritters resulted in a disappointment that I found difficult to accept. The barbecued courgette was the only dish I’d reorder if forced to at knifepoint. Slivers of raw-ish and lukewarm courgette lay in a row on a rectangular plate topped with friseed carrot on top of a sickly sweet BBQ sauce. That also had a slight aroma of mothballs. A bowl of fried brown rice and vegetables was just that: healthy, wholesome and went some way to fill the cavernous space in my stomach that hadn’t been satisfied by the other eight courses (at on average £7-10 each-this is not a cheap joint). 

Food with flowers; presumably taken from the rockery

The toilets are also fucking weird. To empty your bladder you have to press a green, industrial “door open” button which reveals a slightly futuristic bathroom, and not the fire exit as you may have thought. Cue lots of drunk girls walking into the door with a series of soft thuds. The cubicle doors are so heavy that I wouldn’t be surprised if the puddles all over the floor by the sinks were caused not by the ridiculous design of the basins, but because women had lost the will to hold on any longer.

Leaving Chotto Matte was the highlight of my evening. The feeling that I would never have to go back and navigate the dining area with the strangely roped off areas (like enclosures for rich people) or sit on a wobbly bar stool staring at a tomato, gave me a warm feeling inside that I normally hope to get from a good meal with friends.

I headed straight to Gelupo for a serving of bitter chocolate sorbet to celebrate my bravery and foolhardiness in the face of weird fusion restaurants. 

 

Banana and chocolate peanut butter icy almond milk goodness

Peanut butter glory!

Two days ago I was waxing lyrical about my new favourite summer drink: banana almond-milk iced cooler. Except, I realised, as I was rooting through my fridge trying to find some olives to accompany a day-old enchilada, I could make it better.

But how to make a frozen, creamy, luxurious, iced banana beverage better, I hear you cry? Well how you make all things better-by adding peanut butter! I’ve been after a post-gym recovery drink for some time and this seems to hit the nail on the head.

As a vegan, I struggle to put away enough protein sometimes, especially in the summer when every day sees me cycling 15 miles along London’s busy roads, plus a trip to the gym and the pool as well. Tofu is expensive here, and beans and pulses just don’t cry summer weather to me. So I look for my protein in peanuts, which I sprinkle on salads, add to cold soups, and put in curries.

Peanut butter is a great healer (seriously, I eat the stuff by the spoonful, hence the need to do all the physical exercise…) and there is none more exciting than “Peanut Butter & Co’s Dark Chocolate Dreams.” I bought mine at Wholefoods Market in Kensington but if you can’t find any I imagine a scoop of your favourite crunchy or smooth nut butter plus some cocoa powder will do the job just as well. If you use plain peanut butter and cocoa powder, you might find you need to add whatever your favourite sweetener is to it (I use agave syrup, but I imagine maple would be incredible), or it could be a bit bitter.

Simply follow the recipe for the banana almond milk drink, and omit the honey/agave for the chocolate peanut butter.

Healthy, nutritious, post-work out, perfect for summer iced drink! 

 

Salad season! Middle Eastern Fattoush

The pool at Brockwell Lido

It’s the hottest day of the year so far (probably). This means we’re well into salad season.

London is heaving with ice-cream eaters, white pasty legs and babies in parasol covered pushchairs. The sun is out and people are picnicking, grazing and drinking in sunny beer gardens. London in the sun is like nowhere else on earth: still cool enough to move around, warm enough to show some leg! To make the most of this sunny saturday I went for a swim in my local outdoor pool at Brockwell Lido.

Apparently the temperature of the pool was 20.4 degrees this morning. I’ve been swimming here since the end of April without a wetsuit so the water felt like the Carribean… I’m lucky enough that my pool and gym has a little spa area attached to it (hot hydrotherapy pool with jacuzzi, sauna and steam room). It’s perfect after an April dip, but also soothing after a late June splash about outside. After my swim I picked up a new bike (NEW BIKE!) and headed to Maltby Street Market, one of the best places in London to browse artisan food stalls, second hand furniture and drink gin/beer/wine. According to trend predictors and estate agents, it’s all about SE16 in 2014!! Shame it doesn’t rhyme…

I found myself drawn to the Middle Eastern food stalls. I needed to go to Borough Market to pick up some strawberries anyway, and I had the toughest time trying to avoid buying a falafel wrap or a burger from the Veggie Table. Instead, I peddled back home and made some hummus and fattaoush, one of the best, tangy, sourest salads that acts as an antidote to all hot weather.

My favourite fattaoush in London comes (unimaginatively I know) from Yalla Yalla, but I had a decent helping from a Lebanese takeaway called Beirut in Detroit which was just spot on. I’m trying to save money though, so I made my own. Here’s how:

Mix all the salad ingredients together. A few minutes before serving, add the dressing and mix it all together, giving it a chance to soak everything up. Enjoy!

 

Toast the pita

Mix the dressing and salad ingredients together

Serve with flatbread and homemade, garlicky hummus!

 

Ingredients:

A head of shredded romaine lettuce

Two inches of diced cucumber

Two diced tomatoes

I added some sour, shrivelled black olives, but it’s not authentic

I pita bread, torn and baked in the oven on high for 5 minutes until it’s crispy

Diced red onion

Eight very finely sliced radishes (this isn’t necessary if you don’t have it in the house!)

 

For the dressing:

Three tablespoons of good olive oil

The zest and juice of a whole lemon

Two finely diced cloves of garlic

Two teaspoons of sumac

(I added some zataar too, but only because I like a bit more spice)

 

 

 

 

Vegan pizza: yummy or not yummy?

My Holland and Barrett meat free pizza

When I was in the US, I saw a lot of hoohah about Amy’s pizzas. These seemed to be a frozen, gf, vg option for vegans who really just wanted a quick ready meal to eat with their non-vegan, pizza loving brethren. The UK is painfully low on GF-VG pizza stocks. Holland and Barrett, a health food shop, stocks vegan “meat feast” pizza in some of its stores. This has a doughy, flaccid base with almost non-existant tomato sauce and is heaped with chunks of “beef” and “mince” and strange vegan pepperoni. I’ve never been a vegetarian or vegan who craves substitute meat products, and I actually found the whole concept of eating fake meat so weird that I picked off the chunks of whatever they were meant to be.

In the UK, if you’re a vegan craving pizza, what’s the plan? Normally I go to Franco Manca’s and order a pizza with just the tomato and oregano sauce (with extra olives and basil of course). This also works if you go to Pizza Express, or Strada (though make sure you say you’re dairy free or sometimes they sprinkle the base with Parmesan).

Short of making my own with blobs of vegan cheese, I can’t find a decent vegan pizza anywhere. And as much as I’d love to, I can’t eat Mozzarella. So, if you have any hints or tips on where to find good vegan pizzas, please do let me know by tweeting me at @Ellieross102 or leaving a comment below.

I’m desperate folks!

 

 

The fussy eater’s Christmas dinner!

A steamy Christmas dinner with very flat Yorkshires

This year, my mum and dad came round to the fact that I really was severely  intolerant to dairy and gluten, and went all out to ensure that I could enjoy the Christmas cheer. Normally, I hate Christmas food. As a vegetarian, I was always handed a cop-off dry nut roast from M&S while the rest of the family tucked into turkey and ham and all the trimmings. Even though my mum and dad are vegetarian too, before quite recently they still thought that overcooked vegetables were just great, so Christmas dinner usually descended into a soggy, water-logged affair where the sprouts, now light green, would ooze water over the plate soaking the roast potatoes and the nut roast. 

The last five years I have cooked my own Christmas dinner. While everyone else tucked into the turkey, I would cook an innovative veggie main for my mum, dad and I that made the rest of the family envious. Until this year, I really struggled to understand why people enjoyed Christmas dinner.

But then this year, we had a family meal with just my boyfriend, my mum and my dad on Christmas day. My dad encouraged me to try Christmas dinner again, so I conceded. He made everything dairy and gluten free including this amazing tomato, butter bean and lentil nut roast which was absolutely fabulous. 

The roast potatoes were flour-free and fondenty and delicious. The sprouts weren’t overcooked. Mum made some cranberry sauce which actually worked. And, best of all, he even made me some little Yorkshire Puddings that were dairy and gluten free. Which, considering that a Yorkie is basically flour and milk was an absolutely wonderful (if slightly flat) achievement. 

Super out of focus

It has been the only meal in living memory where nothing was compromised and I was able to eat everything on the plate. And that, being able to join in with everybody else because there were so few of us, made the day pretty special. And, even though visiting extended family members over the last few days has meant that I’ve had to live off potatoes only for three days, the memory of the effort my mum and dad put into to making Christmas edible for me got me through!

But I’m interested in how other vegans and vegetarians celebrate Christmas. Do you go traditional and still have a nut-roast? Or do you just have the trimmings? Has anyone just cooked themselves a separate meal and brought it to the table? 

Itsu weird.

Lunch.

Ok Wasabi Christmas special you have a contender! Welcome the Itsu “Eat beautiful Hummous flatbread”. This lunch choice is not excellent. In fact, the fact that I am now stuck with five pounds worth of regret on my desk saddens me.

I didn’t think you could really go wrong with hummous and flatbread. Evidently, I was mistaken. They’ve added some salad on to the hummous. Awesome! Nice touch! Except salad really translates as very long pieces of stringy rocket, the type that when you eat them the hang out of the side of your mouth and you have to make that apologetic face to colleagues as you suck in the greens like you would spaghetti, flicking hummous and sauce all over the shop.

Initially I only logged onto my wordpress blog to make the point that this hummous wrap is impossible to eat and that it is the nemesis of any desk worker. Especially when trying to hack at lumps of the wrap with Itsu’s flimsy cutlery.

Then you dig a little deeper into the mound of hummous and there are edamame beans. Why? What do edamame beans have to do with hummous? I’m sorry, is this fusion lunch food?

Want to know what’s worse? Sure you do. Someone has to warn you. They’ve added a sauce. No, me neither. No idea why you need a sauce with a hummous flatbread unless you’ve got something to hide. In this case, the edamame beans and the weirdly inconvenient wrap that’s not a wrap but a class A hassle. The sauce is bright green. I didn’t notice this when I bought it, but as soon as I did I was hooked. You don’t give somebody a luminous green sauce with a hummous wrap and not experiment. It would be mint, obviously. Everybody pairs mint with hummous. It’s very middle eastern. Maybe this would be a sensible step to cover their edaame mistake. They were probably embarassed by adding the beans. “Oh it’s Phil’s idea. He’s been here for ages. He has a wife and kids to support. Oh, we’ll give him the edamame beans. I know sounds horrific but it’s the first idea he’s had in months and we can’t fire him before christmas. Ok then, well develop something to disguise the idea then. Ok, brilliant, bye!”

And so they designed a lurid green coconut coriander lemon sauce to drizzle over the hummous, the floppy rocket and the wrap that can’t be wrapped. It was an expensive mistake and I feel it is my duty to alert others. Stick with the Potsu.

To hell with the Wasabi christmas special sushi

Take that sign down, buddy

Ok, enough. Anybody who knows me knows that I crave sushi most hours of the day. I could eat it for breakfast or supper. I crave the fiery wasabi paste and love the umami flavour from the soy sauce mixing with nori. The palate cleansing pickled ginger is equally good. The chains in London aren’t wonderful, but they do ok sushi. I wrote a post way back when about the top places to buy sushi in London, and this totally still stands: Wasabi, as a chain, are the best.

But their vegetarian Christmas special is beyond disgusting. With flabby pumpkin croquettes and a solitary pomegranate seed placed gingerly on top of the breadcrumb, it’s just a weird combination. Even more strange is the extremely generous helping of Thai Sweet Chilli sauce. What is this shit? Fusion Thai, Japanese, Middle-Eastern Christmas Sctick? It SUCKs-bin it.

Plus, you marketing apes at Wasabi, don’t think just because I’m vegetarian I want to eat this crap. Give me back the massive vegetarian platter for £5.45 and keep your arbitrary christmas themed sushi. Because nobody, nobody in the history of the world has ever gone: “Oh, it’s the 25th of Christmas. Bin the roast potatoes and pudding darling, we’re off to get some Christmas sushi! I hope they still have that single festive pomegranate seed on it! That would really bring some sparkle to my yuletide celebrations!”

So no. Stop it. No.

Strada: a guide for Vegans and Coeliacs

I have a soft spot in my heart for this fancy chain Italian restaurant. I worked there on and off this year to save money for my Masters, and also before, up north in Sheffield after I resigned from KPMG and when I was saving up to move to Italy. Strada has struggled with its identity recently: is it still the posh Pizza Express, and what else can it offer to justify those expensive prices? Staff recently were given a missive to “act casual”: Strada, the home of anniversaries and reliable birthday meals became more like an Italian diner. Except, it didn’t really. The food stayed pretty good, and, like any good chain, it’s consistently tasty.

However, as Pizza Express and Pizza Hut make the move to Gluten Free pizza bases, how can Strada compete? Other than invest in some gluten-free pizza dough, I’m not sure I have the answer. However, to all you vegans out there, rest assured that Strada’s pizza dough is absolutely, 100% dairy and egg free-just wheat flour, rapeseed oil and yeast.

Strada’s big draw is the Aglio: flatbread with garlic oil and rosemary. Ask for it with garlic oil, and remind your server not to let it even waft near butter and this is what you’ll levae Strada remembering. It smells divine, and waitressing pre GF and Vg, this was what I craved at the end of every long shift.

The tricolore salad with the mozzarella, tomatoes and avocado can be made into a satisfying bicolore. Ask for extra avocado to make up for the protein deficit, or ask for an egg to be sliced up and added instead. If your server is good, they should be happy to offer you this alternative.

In terms of mains, vegans are well served with the Puttanesca, a cheeseless pizza covered with capers, fresh basil and chilli flakes. Bear in mind this comes with anchovies, so ask for the anchovies to be switched with mushrooms to make a satisfying meal. Also, a drizzle of chilli oil and extra garlic comes in handy because without the Mozzarella it can be quite dry. Still pretty delicious though.

For any dairy-free eaters out there, it’s good to note that every pizza can be altered. Tell your server that you’re allergic to dairy and they have a big fat button on the till that says “Dairy allergy.” If they’re super good (and Strada staff are trained within an inch of their life-trust me, they’ll even go up to the pass and have a quiet word with the chef letting him know that table 17 has an allergy).

If you’re after risotto or pasta, make the point that you have allergies to your server again. The verdure is a fail-safe choice (remember to remind your server that you’d like it cheese free, just in case). If you crave the tang of cheese, I would suggest adding a hefty helping of balsamic vinegar and chilli oil to it and a squeeze of lemon. If it’s not busy, ask the bar to fetch you a slice. Mix it all together and you’ve got a pretty neat approximation of the tangy flavour Grana Padano. The addition of as many herbs as you can get helps to add more flavour (extra basil was always appreciated) and a hefty grind of black-pepper makes the blandest Strada meal sing.

Finally, the pasta. Penne Arrabiata is the obvious safe choice for vegans (not gluten free yet I’m afraid, although, like Pizza Express, if it’s very quiet if you bring you’re own pasta, the chefs will cook the sauce of your choice with it). Otherwise, ask for a vegetarian version of the strozzapreti luganega: no sausage, bacon, cheese or butter, but instead just the spinach, some big mushrooms, lemon and some garlic oil. Ok, so it’s not identical, but the chef’s work better if you just alter the menu, than asking them to be creative going crazily off-piste. Plus, your server will have to press fewer buttons on the till which is always appreciated. There’s nothing worse than having to find out where “extra, extra aubergine” is on the till for a children’s menu.

So there you have it. How to do Strada, the vegan way. If you’re gluten free too, as I am, I’d give Strada a bit of a wide berth unless you really, really like risotto and olives, because that, I’m afraid is what you’re stuck with until they catch up with their competitors.

Buon appetito!