Spice Up Your Life!

People of the world, spice up your life!

I'm feeling rather zig-a-zig-ah right now!

Brixton had it's first ever vegan fayre this weekend, and it was a wonderful, tasty, life-affirming day of face stuffing. Hosted by Rambling Vegan Fox at Dogstar-a venue I've not been in for about a decade, but am now resolved to re-frequent- it was a smash hit! (Yeah, that's right, another out of date pop reference...)

Luckily we arrived fairly early so only had to queue a little bit inside to get upstairs and near all of the edible things, but it was shoulder to shoulder inside, things had already started to sell out and the queue outside has started to stretch down the road and around the block. This silly vegan fad has clearly got no legs. Total lack of demand. I didn't even get to see the doughnuts.

I did however get to sample lots of tasty dishes like a dal by Spice Box, some loaded nachos by Mex It Up, and a lasagne by Nuragic. All delicious. We also scored some hand blended spices from Trunahpot and spice pastes from local lads Spiced!

The spice mixes were purchased to help encourage Massive Munch and their sudden onset of enthusiastic experimentations in cooking. MM has been rather getting the hang of things in the kitchen and appears to be enjoying it- I'll make a housewife out of that beast yet...

Anyway, it turns out that Spiced! pastes are also good for when you want a flavourful dinner, but cannot be arse to stand up for longer than 15 minutes, so without having to go to any of the effort of toasting, grinding and blending the perfect amount of spices. so despite them being Massive Munch's project, I got in there first and managed to knock up a rather yummy, quick and easy North African style tempeh and veg pot.

On easing off the lid, the aroma was immediately enticing and the finishing result was extremely tasty. I definitely recommend all novice, time pressed or sofa based cooks give them a go.

Here's my first crack at the crack pot:

Spiced! Tempeh

serves 4-6

1 onion, diced
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1/2 green pepper, diced
1/2 a swede, peeled & diced
handful of baby parsnips, roughly chopped
6 garlic cloves, diced
1 carrot, chopped small
1 block of tempeh, diced into bitesize pieces
1 tin of tomatoes
salt
1/2 tub of Spiced! North African paste
hemp oil

a couple of handfuls of shredded white cabbage to serve (optional)

1. Heat a large saucepan over a low heat and drizzle in some hemp oil.
2. Soften your onion & pepper. Sling in your chilli, garlic, carrot, swede & parsnips.
3. Chuck in your tempeh. Stir & salt.
4. Pop in the spice paste and watch statified as stirring turns everything an even shade of red.
5. Sling in your tomatoes and about half a tin of water. Stir, bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and cook for 15 minutes or until the hardest veg is tender.
6. Lay the cabbage over the top of your veg, replace the lid and steam for 5 minutes or until it's done to your liking.
7. Flop it onto a plate and then shovel it into your gob.
8. Go mmmmmmmmmmm and continue shovelling until gone.