Onion Pakoras
1 cup white flour
1 cup chick pea flour (gram flour)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon cumin powder
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
1 teaspoon red chili powder
1 pound sliced onion
Salt and pepper to taste
Oil for deep frying
Cucumber Raita Chutney
1 cucumber, grated
3 tablespoons soy yogurt, drained
½ teaspoon ground mustard powder
¼ teaspoon cumin powder
Green chilies
Salt and pepper to taste
Asparagus and Mushroom Tart
1 sheet puff pastry
2 handfuls dry beans
400 grams asparagus
400 grams mushrooms
200 grams vegan cheddar cheese, grated
1½ cups soy milk
1½ tablespoons vegan margarine
1½ tablespoons plain flour
Mustard to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional garnish)
Directions (to preparing onion pakoras):- Put 1 cup of chickpea flour
- Put 1 cup of self-raising flour
- Add a teaspoon of salt for taste
- Add ½ a teaspoon of turmeric
- Add a teaspoon of coriander powder
- Add a teaspoon of cumin powder
- Add a teaspoon of red chili powder
- ½ a teaspoon of baking powder
- Mix together
- Put approximately 5–6 medium-sized onions, cutting lengthwise
- Add the onions in all dry ingredients and mix well
- Fry the onion pakora
- Fry them each at least more than a minute, make sure it’s nice and golden brown
Directions (to prepare cucumber raita):- You need a medium-sized cucumber
- Grate it
- Squeeze out the extra excess water
- Add ¼ teaspoon of salt
- Add ¼ teaspoon of cumin powder
- Add half a green chili
- Add 3 tablespoons of vegan soy yogurt (i notice you’ve drained the yogurt on absorbent paper, because you need a nice and firm yogurt raita)
- Mix well
Directions (to serving onion pakoras with cucumber raita chutney):- Take a plate
- Put the onion pakoras on the plate
- Put the cucumber raita chutney
- Ready to serve
Directions (to make the pastry):- Take a pan which already greased
- The best way to put the pastry (puff pastry) on the tray is simply put the rolling pin under the pastry and roll it up. Lift it up and over into the pan and unroll it.
- Fit it in nicely into the pan, make sure you get the pastry into the corners, make sure it’s even and flat, and pull it into the edge
- And now, this excess pastry can be trimmed off. The way to trim the pastry is to lift it up, and simply angle the knife outwards, and slowly, gently, trim it
- After you’ve done that, prick through the pastry so it doesn’t rise up into a bubble and spill out the filling you will be putting in there
- Bake blind ; in other words, you cook the pastry without the filling so that when you put the filling in, it doesn’t go right through the pastry and the bottom doesn’t remain uncooked
- Put some pre-cut greaseproof paper, and put some beans in there so that the weight of the beans prevent the pastry rising
- Bake this pastry shell in a pre-heated oven at 220 degrees centigrade until it’s lightly golden brown
Directions (to boil asparagus):- Boil the water
- Boit the asparagus for approximately 10 minutes
- After its cooked well, drain it
- Two of the asparagus for decoration purposes
- And the rest i’ll just cut them into half because they’re fairly small
Directions (to fry the mushrooms):- In the meantime, fry the mushrooms
- Use some of the margarine, approximately 1 tablespoon, into the frying pan
- Let that melt
- Add the sliced mushrooms
- Just toss them around
- Let the mushrooms fry for approximately 10 minutes, or at least the liquid from the mushrooms should disappear, and let them get slightly brown
Directions (to make cheese sauce):- Put 1½ tablespoons of margarine and melt it
- Add 1½ tablespoons of flour
- You’ll notice its now getting lighter, a lighter mixture, it’s beginning to separate more
- After it’s beginning to turn red, add soy milk
- Take the pan off the heat and just work the soy milk into the sauce
- Just mixing to ensure that there aren’t any lumps in there
- After you’ve added your soy milk in, about 3–4 minutes, once it reaches the boiling point again. You boil it for about, cook it for about 2 or 3 minutes
- Reduce the heat and add in your seasoning
- Add black pepper
- Add salt
- Add 100 grams of grated soy cheese
- Add approximately ½ teaspoon full of mustard
- Mix that in nicely
- Add the mushrooms to the cheese sauce
- Pop the cutted asparagus into the sauce
- Mix them up lightly because since they’re soft they can be damaged quite easily
Directions (to make savory asparagus and mushroom tart):- Check my pastry in the oven
- Remove the greaseproof paper and the beans, set them on the side.
- Put this pastry filling of the mushrooms and asparagus in a vegan cheese sauce into our pastry base
- Decorate the pie with the asparagus which you have left over
- If you wish you could put extra the remaining soy cheese
- Sprinkle it over
- If you wish, this is purely optional, you just give it further color by sprinkling some chili powder or cayenne pepper to give a more festive look to the dish
- Pop that back into the oven just for about 5–10 minutes until the vegan cheese bubbles on top and gets slightly brown
- Loosen it nicely and pop that onto a plate there
- Ready to serve