Tips for tasty cheap vegetarian cooking for cookbook?

[Tartanperil]

Doing a cookbook for students and would love your input on my section on tasty and cheap vegetarian cooking please:

• Spices are your friend. Buy lots - and experiment.
• Add some protein: tofu, tempeh, chickpeas & non-starchy beans, nuts (almonds are winners for protein), cheese, egg, & Greek yogurt.
• Nuts and seeds are more flavoursome when roasted first.
• Lentils and chickpeas can be delicious, but there is a vast range of other beans etc available.
• Jaime Oliver slugs olive oil over a meal before serving for a reason. Virgin is the most flavoursome, mild the least.
• Chopped greenery, eg coriander, on the top.
• Don’t use more water than necessary when boiling.
• Acidophilus yogurt can be a good substitute for cream if you’re on a low fat diet.
• Mashes can be legendary, especially if made from roast veges. Try adding off-the-wall things like gherkins or beetroot for fun.
• Garlic. Some say you can’t have too much.
• Chilli. Cheap and can easily lift a dish. You can however have too much.
• Vinegars and pickles added can lift a dish.
• The left-over horrible wine in a cask is fine for cooking with.
• Carrots and onions are a great base for many dishes.
• Seasonal veges. They are all the rage for a reason – they’re fresh and comparatively cheap.
• Google. There are thousands of tasty vegetarian dishes from around the world.
• Curry. It’s not one flavour – there’s hundreds. You can make your own with spices etc, or buy handy jars of paste at the supermarket.
• Soy and other Asian sauces are your friend.
• Don’t boil everything up in one pot. Fry tofu etc separately to add on the top for flavour variety.
• Texture-wise tofu, tempeh or halved mushrooms can be meat substitutes.
• Add crunch with some nuts on top of a meal (cashews are great) or in a salad (eg walnuts).
• Finely chopped raw onion mixed in can lift a dish.
• Try and have at least one green. Wilt a few chopped up spinach leaves into each meal.
• Asian grocery stores can be a cheap source of many wonder tasty vege ingredients.
• Canned chopped tomatoes are probably the cheapest source of tomato, just look out for the added salt.



Please add/correct/etc.... Only thing I don't want to hear about is costly things - this is advice for budget cooking

[dustbinflowers]

Amazing treats to wow your friends: fresh dumpling wrappers from Asian groceries (in the fridge next to fresh tofu and noodles). Chop up mushroom, garlic and cabbage finely, mix in a bowl with a glug of soy sauce. Put a small amount on one half of a dumpling square. Wet edges and fold diagonally. Press edges to stick together. These can be deep or shalloy fried or steamed, eaten by themselves or with soup. Play around with fillings- kumara and sundried tomato, or try chopping mock meats. They also freeze well, and win at pot lucks.

[Dixon Cider A.C.]

smoke weed

[Agnes]

i am also deeply offended at the suggestion that you can have too much chilli.

Yeah. Tell these fuckun students to harden up.
Eat some slugs wrapped in lettuce for extra protein.

[Philfy Vermin]

i am also deeply offended at the suggestion that you can have too much chilli.

Yeah. Tell these fuckun students to harden up.
Eat some slugs wrapped in lettuce for extra protein.

make sure to slug your slugs with soy sauce and jaime olive oil

[Dick Dynamite]

Virgin olive oil ain't THAT expensive. Meat cost more anyway

[Tartanperil]

Amazing treats to wow your friends: fresh dumpling wrappers from Asian groceries (in the fridge next to fresh tofu and noodles). Chop up mushroom, garlic and cabbage finely, mix in a bowl with a glug of soy sauce. Put a small amount on one half of a dumpling square. Wet edges and fold diagonally. Press edges to stick together. These can be deep or shalloy fried or steamed, eaten by themselves or with soup. Play around with fillings- kumara and sundried tomato, or try chopping mock meats. They also freeze well, and win at pot lucks.

Might steal that for a recipe if you're ok with that please?

telling teenagers/students to 'google it' probably wouldn't go down well...

Er, ok. What's the dwtk verb for trawling the 'net these days?

[akaxo]

"don't be a retard and do your own research"?

[Dixon Cider A.C.]

Haha actually do that.

[Dead Kid]

• Garlic. Some say you can’t have too much.

Unless you're a lab rat or an old cunt apparently:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2352608
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16910057

[Philfy Vermin]

it just seems like something that does not need to be mentioned. they grew up with the internet, they know to look for shit on it already and dont need to be reminded about it. if you are going to tell them to look on the internet then just put that on the first page and make it a 1 page book.

books are obsolete, burn them all!

[Tartanperil]

it just seems like something that does not need to be mentioned. they grew up with the internet, they know to look for shit on it already and dont need to be reminded about it. if you are going to tell them to look on the internet then just put that on the first page and make it a 1 page book.

Cheers yeah, I think I'll rewrite that one - my point is being missed entirely.

What I was trying to get across is that there is a heap of cultures in the world with perfectly delicious vegetarian instead of the uninspired couple of items students from deepest Southland have seen on the menu in Gore's only progressive chippie. The medium is unimportant really - the message would same if it was in the '80s, except the medium would be to look in library.

"don't be a retard and do your own research"?

Yeah good advice for most but I work at a Polytechnic and our students include 16 year old school drop-outs and 85 year olds who are only just learning to touch a computer. As tempting as it is to take up J's 1 page book idea

[akaxo]

gore has a vege friendly chippie??

[Philfy Vermin]

yeh, you can get a egg burger, chips and potato fritters

[akaxo]

that aren't cooked in animal fat?

[Philfy Vermin]

they still cook chips in fat down south? i havnt seen that for fuckin years.

[akaxo]

yeah heaps do

[Tartanperil]

what kind of cookbook do you mean anyway? a pamphlet/something cheap to produce that you would leave in common areas around your polytech for students to take?

Slightly more targeted distribution and it'll go to poly and uni, but yep that's pretty much exactly the sort of thing.

they still cook chips in fat down south? i havnt seen that for fuckin years.

Most Dunedin chippies even still use animal fat sadly.

And far as I'm aware most chippies that use vege oil also fry meat patties etc in it so animal fat leeches into the vege oil. Unless there's one smart enough to keep meat out of one of their vats I imagine it's impossible to get a truly vegetarian chipies etc. Some may, but at the risk of sounding like nazi scum the language barrier makes it enough of a struggle to determine if the base oil is vege or not, let alone if it's been subsequently polluted by cooking of meats in it.

[akaxo]

what a fucking racist

[Rabooyah]

if a minimal amount of fat gets into the oil is it really that big of a deal?
people don't eat chips for health reasons and the shop profits from the meat industry despite a few customers only buying chips and potato fritters

[Dixon Cider A.C.]

I wouldn't care. Just me though

[Philfy Vermin]

opting for canola or whatever is sweet as, but the type of vegan that demands separate cooking oil and hotplates is a bit of a wanker honestly, id understand if it was a flavour thing maybe, but thats still a bit precious, but something you cant even detect?

fuh

[Tartanperil]

what a fucking racist

To be clear I'm referring to the chip shop front of house staff whose language ability doesn't extend to more than taking an order and maybe dealing with change. I can find it irksome, not because they're Asian/Turkish/Indian/whatever, but because it's plain annoying to have anyone with inadequate communication skills in any customer service role, nothing to do with race. I find it a challenge for me communicating with such staff to ask if the oil is vegetarian or not, which I think is a reasonable thing to know about food you're about to eat - and so far impossible to ask if meat other than fish is cooked in the same vat.

I'm not in any way saying all Asian chippie staff don't speak more than make-an-order English simply because they're Asian, that would be plain wrong and indeed racist. Sorry if I've somehow given that impression.

if a minimal amount of fat gets into the oil is it really that big of a deal?

It's something I can, or perhaps rather, have learned to live with. But it'd be nice to have the choice.

[FC]

Never come to Czech Republic. Friends have told me that sometimes the "vegetarian option" comes with pieces of bacon mixed in.

[Tartanperil]

Sounds like Otago in the '90s - I'll never forget being earnestly asked if I'd like bacon with my vegetarian burger at an Alexandra chippie on the way to protest John Major at CHOGM

[Philfy Vermin]

haha yeh i remember when bacon was vege, those bacon bits that used to be common were actually just tvp tho

[akaxo]

bin inn bacon bits are vegan

still pretty sure now tartanperil is a closet nf supporter

[Philfy Vermin]

i heard he was moving to chch just so he could vote for kyle

[Tartanperil]

still pretty sure now tartanperil is a closet nf supporter

Pretty sure you need some reading some comprehension lessons. I absolutely welcome Asian people to NZ. But as I said I find people who don't have the communications skills for the job they're in annoying - if a mute person was answering my questions on a front counter I'd be equally as irked that the person doesn't have the ability necessary for the position they're in, am I a disabled hater as well?

And I'm not even saying that "they" should all learn English if they want to live here, like a red-neck. But I am saying if you want to run a customer service business it's a good idea to have people who can in that role if you don't want to irk your clients.

Where's the problem with that?

i heard he was moving to chch just so he could vote for kyle

Speaking of people who doesn't have the communication skills for the role they're in

[Dixon Cider A.C.]

still pretty sure now tartanperil is a closet nf supporter

Pretty sure you need some reading some comprehension lessons. I absolutely welcome Asian people to NZ. But as I said I find people who don't have the communications skills for the job they're in annoying - if a mute person was answering my questions on a front counter I'd be equally as irked that the person doesn't have the ability necessary for the position they're in, am I a disabled hater as well?

And I'm not even saying that "they" should all learn English if they want to live here, like a red-neck. But I am saying if you want to run a customer service business it's a good idea to have people who can in that role if you don't want to irk your clients.

Where's the problem with that?

Learn to take a joke cunt.