How do I insert chunk to mushy vegan food? | Foodstuff

How do I increase texture to vegan pulse, pasta and rice dishes so my non-vegan household can not complain it is just mush?
Signe, Brighton

“It’s all about a drizzle, a dollop and a crunch,” claims Bettina Campolucci-Bordi, creator of Celebrate: Plant-Centered Recipes for Each individual Event. “I insert at the very least two to every single meal, and that quickly results in diverse textures.” A drizzle could be a thing as straightforward as fantastic-good quality olive or flavoured oil (chilli, garlic, basil) or date syrup, when a dollop is essentially a little something creamy: “Hummus designed from butter beans or chickpeas, a pesto or flavoured yoghurt, say.” As for the crunch, which is “chopped toasted nuts, a chunky dukkah or za’atar, pomegranate, sunflower or pumpkin seeds, roast chickpeas flavoured with factors like tandoori spice”. In shorter, Signe would be smart to adopt Campolucci-Bordi’s mantra of “more is better”.

An additional tactic for keeping away from the mush variable is to think about how you chop your veg. “With veggies that need much more cooking, these kinds of as potatoes, chop them small, whereas if you’re introducing courgettes to the identical dish, chop them greater, normally they’ll go delicate and mushy.”

For excess oomph on the texture entrance, Craig and Shaun McAnuff, whose most up-to-date e book, Purely natural Flava: Brief and Straightforward Plant-Dependent Caribbean Recipes, is out this month, favour roasting their veg (“for an remarkable crust on the outside the house and melty insides”) or grilling it (“it provides you that crispy texture and smoky flavour”). Vivek Singh’s texture methods, in the meantime, contain frying mustard seeds and urid lentils with curry leaves and spices in oil, then tipping the lot into a lentil broth. Another option, says the executive chef and founder of The Cinnamon Collection restaurant team, is to major lentil and bean dishes with raw, pickled or flippantly sauteed vegetables (consider chopped broccoli or cauliflower). “You can also experiment by introducing chopped nuts, fried shallots, and puffed or toasted flaked rice to the leading of major, hearty bowls of lentils and rice for extra compound.” Some spicy scrambled tofu wouldn’t go amiss, either.

Singh also recommends khichdi to keep Signe’s family’s objections at bay. “It’s a standard, house-design rice and lentil dish tempered with cumin, turmeric and greens [cauliflower, peas, carrots, chopped tomatoes].” He ups the ante by serving it with a roast aubergine relish: “Stuff two aubergine halves with cloves of garlic and rub with mustard oil. Char the aubergine in excess of an open up flame, turning routinely, until eventually blackened evenly on all sides.” As soon as awesome, take out and discard the skin and the garlic, chop the flesh and mix with sea salt, crimson onion, chillies, coriander and mustard oil.

Ultimately, when all routes issue to pasta, Shaun McAnuff is partial to a “creamy, crunchy” vegan mac and cheese. He caramelises onion, garlic and chilli, mixes that with cooked pasta and vegan “cheese” sauce, and seasons. “Spoon into a deep baking dish, top with vegan mozzarella and breadcrumbs [you could even use broken crackers], and bake.” His brother, Craig, meanwhile, is all about pesto created with callaloo, a leafy Caribbean green. “All you do is caramelise garlic and mustard seed, then blitz with callaloo [or spinach], nuts, avocado, scotch bonnet and spices.” Toss that by means of cooked pasta and best with a sprinkling of nuts (walnuts, almonds, cashews) for that all-vital crunch.

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