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Trying to eat less meat for environment/cost reasons. However every recipe I can find that looks half decent has aubergine in it, which is fine but not every time. Probably best with pasta/curry type things.
Anyone any suggestions?
Loads of nice vegetarian recipes on The Guardian site:
https://www.theguardian.com/tone/recipes+food/vegetarian
Sweet potato curry and mushroom risotto are my two current favourites
Paneer curries are great. Just be cautious about replacing meat with cheese too often. It's easy to get through LOADS.
Mushroom risotto is the default veggie meal. Made a nice mushroom wellington recently too. Recipe was on tesco website.
Courgette is good in anything. Sweet potato too if you like the flavour.
Halloumi is great in fajitas and enchiladas etc.
Chickpea curries. Bean chilli.
Butternut squash works well in curry and pasta. Does make one a bit guffy though.
We didn't really alter much about our cooking other than just replacing the meat with veggies or cheese. Not full vegetarian. Just don't eat meat much anymore.
Blending the chickpeas/beans is a good way of hiding them in meals. They can make a good sauce base.
Aubergine is much better in saucey things if you roast it first. Much less mushy.
I'm still working it out too tbh. Will keep an eye on the thread for more ideas.
These use American measurements etc but there are some more nice ideas:
https://www.bonappetit.com/recipes/vegetarian/slideshow/easy-vegetarian-dinner-recipes
watching with interest, trying to eat less meat. Which for me tends to mean mushrooms or chickpeas mainly, I'm not really a huge vegetable fan.
To my mind the only place aubergine works well is IN THE ****ING BIN. Along with jackfruit, FWIW.
Oh yes - halloumi very much a thing. Smallest one won’t eat paneer though unfortunately as I’ve got a good paneer dhal recipe somewhere.
There was someone in Northern Ireland on the TV saying that lentils are an easy way of bulking up/thickening up sauces and hide quite well.
@theotherjonv You are wrong about aubergine but 100% on the nail about jackfruit.
Blending the chickpeas/beans is a good way of hiding them in meals. They can make a good sauce base.
I'm not veggie but I also do this, a blend of beans/pulses etc. makes a good stodge, of course onion and tomato are you friends too
Anyone had much luck with Banana blossom? It's the banana flower and comes in tins, meant to be fairly flavourless but takes on flavour really well, and a good replacement for white fish. I.e like an unprocessed Tofu
However, I tried it in a curry and found the texture wasn't great and had a bit of a tangy unpleasant flavour. Ended up eating around it and I'm not fussy. Anyone had better luck with it?
The Joe Wicks butternut squash risotto is a brilliant recipe.
I was vegetarian for 6 or so years. Never ate an aubergine but now you've piqued my interest. What aubergine recipes do you have?
There are a gazillion veg recipes without aubergine. Just going down the Italy pasta corridor, some classics:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/spaghetti_with_chilli_89628/amp
https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/linguine-with-courgettes-egg-parmesan/
Vegetarian here too. Aubergine tastes like tea bags / tea bagging.
Why on Earth would anyone want to hide chickpeas or beans?
Chick pea curries are a staple in our mom veggie house! Find a recipe for curry paste of your choice, like a korma, and make a huge batch. Fill muffin tin holes with the paste and freeze. When it's frozen, pop them out with a knife and bag them all up, put back in the freezer. Then when you want your curry, defrost gently in a saucepan, add chopped onion and fry off. Add a load of chopped veg, and coconut milk/chopped tomato/whatever, throw in chickpeas, sorted.
Chilli is dead easy too, just dice a load of veg up small (tend to use courgettes, onions, pepper, celery, carrots as a base) fry off, then add a load of ground spice (we use a mixture of chilli powder, smoked paprika, cumin, coriander, mustard seeds), then add a good few cans of different beans (adzuki work well, as well as kidney, canellini etc) then passata to cover, and a bit of stock. Simmer gently for 25 mins or so, add cheese, done!
It's not an authentic chili I'm sure, but it freezes well and gets gobbled down in this house!
Someone on here recommended these a while back, and they're ace https://minimalistbaker.com/easy-grillable-veggie-burgers/
Nigel Slater, Hugh FW, Cranks, and loads more all have great veggie recipes.
Veggie fajitas.
🍆
I love an aubergine me.
Used to do a good stuffed one with cous cous and various other bits.
Also, Baba ganoush is blummin lush.
Sorry op. Embrace the eggplant!
Risotto with purple sprouting broccoli and kale is great. Veggie stir fry is another quick, tasty meal.
Being in a similar situation, we have some success with the green roasting tin recipe book. The Gado Gado recipe in particular is popular (roast potatoes and veg with spicy peanut butter sauce), which is also available here:
https://foodism.co.uk/recipes/rukmini-iyer-vegetarian-gado-gado/
Also, Baba ganoush is blummin lush.
It is indeed, but there is very little aubergineness left after adding all that other stuff.
I like a good dal, surprisingly varied. Meera Sodha has some very good recipes.
Baba ganoush is blummin lush.
Best Who song of all time
Most people can't cook Aubergine properly in my experience... the most recent being a Moussaka my MiL made.
There's a pasta sauce I make with Aubergine and Tomatoes. The cubed Aubergine has to be softened for 10 mins on its own with plenty of oil, then add onions, garlic. Once those are softened add the tomatoes. Often I then put it in the oven to ensure the Aubergine skin is definitely going to be soft. It tends to disappear almost completely then
Aubergine done as above but with crushed coriander seeds added to the oil. Amazing.
But, to the OP, why don't you just use any recipe but drop or sub the aubergine?
Someone on here recommended these a while back, and they’re ace
That will have been me. I swap the black beans for kidney beans due to personal preference, but they're the best home-made veggieburgers I've found to date.
Veggie fajitas.
The Girl is a proper picky eater, to the point she struggles to feed her almost-1-year old due to having to handle the texture of baby food. Yet I get requests "can we come for fajitas on Sunday?" most weeks, it's become a thing. I ended up making up a massive jar of my own recipe spice mix rather than sod about with quarter-teaspoons of this and that, it's probably about a litre and I'm halfway through the second batch now.
Fajitas are great because everyone can mix and match according to taste. Here's a big bowl of Stuff, there's the cheese, the rice, the sweetcorn, the salsa, the sriracha, the sour cream, the whatever else you want to stuff in it, help yourselves.
If you have an Asian grocery in your neighbourhood, try substituting nasu for aubergine.
I have been vegetarian for 40 years and hardly ever eat aubergine and don't really like it but I try to eat a good mix of everything whether I particularly like it or not as each veg/fruit has something good in it (and I am not 8 years old so can just eat stuff)
Op what is it that's put you off Aubergine?
I grew up eating meat (until 14) and everyone around me did, and the trouble with that is (sweeping generalisation alert) that most folks that consider meat the focus, don't know how to cook veg, especially in the 70's, 80's.
Have you eaten it on its own, boiled to death with nothing on it as a side?
That style of veg presentation certainly put me off veg growing up, and I imagine that's true of a lot of us.
What specifically put you off it?
Mixed in with all sorts of other stuff in a lovely sauce, it's kind of discrete I find.
I make sprout samosas.
I detest aubergines.
Op what is it that’s put you off Aubergine?
Not the OP, but I know the answer.
It's mushy and tastes shit.
Matar Paneer would always be my go-to suggestion. Just make sure to slightly brown the cubed paneer on two opposite sides.
Saag Aloo - for a twist, use nettle instead of spinach - gorgeous.
To be honest, I like the cop-out student special too - a nice fresh veg stir fry with a tangy sauce.
It’s mushy and tastes shit.
Not when it has been grilled by anyone Greek!
Edit: admittedly it has probably been grilled on something ingrained with a decade of lamb fat.
Not the OP, but I know the answer.
It’s mushy and tastes shit.
+1
I'm vegetarian and have never cooked aubergine.
I started off with a "no fake meat" policy to cooking, then relented and found the following:
Aldi meat-free balls
Linda McCartney Mince
Quorn Roast (it's too kind to call it fake chicken, it's somewhere between chicken and a Matterson's sausage), cook it for a roast then the leftovers go into other meals.
In fact basically anything from Aldi has been great. At worst they taste a bit tough/chewy, like cheap meat, whereas some of the alternatives lack texture like expensive cuts or American meat.
Saitan, oddly Aldi ready make no-chicken katsu tastes exactly like Wagamama saitan, as do their spicy fried no-chicken burgers? Might just be coincidence. But it's a good substitute for fried chicken in any recipie.
Curys - obviously just use any recipe and add chickpeas or paneer as preferred.
Italian - Any pasta recipe, substitute about half the meat for green lentils and add butterbeans instead of pasta to get the protein up.
A tin of chickpeas, heaped tablespoon of flour to bind it , and a lot of spice mix (generic medium curry powder works surprisingly well even in Italian/Greek recipes) as the chickpeas and flour nullify any flavor, mash them together coarsely so there's still a bit of texture and roll into balls with a little more flour then shallow fry. Makes for a passable emergency meatball / burger (make sure to add plenty of sauce to mask the flavor) mix.
Big fan of bosh.tv lots of lovely plant based options, i make it a mission to try at least 1 new recipe a week alongside the usual staples.
Most people can’t cook Aubergine properly
Could be the issue? You shouldn't just slice it up and put it in. It's all about getting the water out and the oil in. But I've no time (literally) for recipes that involve salting it and sweating it. I tend to wrap in a teatowel and give it a good wring. But I think it's probably only me that does this. And I like aubergine anyway in any form.
If you don't like it, why not just leave it out? Admittedly if you're doing stuffed aubergines this may mean just eating the stuffing, but so what?
I'm not a veggie (was years ago and have been de facto at times as various kids have gone through veggie and vegan phases. And we don't do dairy), but I don't think there's a particular association between veggie food and aubergines. Middle eastern food maybe, but my main experience of that was living in turkey, where it's v hard to be veggie.
One of our number did attempt it, eating lots of delicious lentil soup. Ignoring the lamb stock which is what made it delicious. Mmmm imam bayaldi...
Saag Aloo – for a twist, use nettle instead of spinach – gorgeous.
Ooh there's a thought. Given the state of our garden we could save a fortune.
most folks that consider meat the focus, don’t know how to cook veg
Just cook it the same as meat. Boil it till it's soft.