Put your pastry face close to mine, love

I had two pasties this week. One was from the canteen at work and it was brilliant. It just had mushroom in it. That's all. Genius.

I just made some pasties filled with onion, potato, Quorn mince, reconstituted chanterelles, sauerkraut. Also added, garlic, rosemary, cinnamon powder, clove powder, yeast  extract, mustard, dash of soy sauce, water and cornflour for the "gravy" and of course my beloved salt.

It gave me a sudden craving for liver.

Another pictureless dinner

I made dinner last night and it smelled like Christmas. Maybe it's because I put cinnamon in the gravy- by mistake but it worked out.

Pie- this was mushroom, tofu, leek and cannelini bean. I fried the mushrooms in garlic with salt to get the water out of the mushroom and hope that some of that flavour would go into the tofu chunks I threw in. With sliced leeks and cannelini beans from a can (they were just added for bulk, but it worked out all right), I put in mustard, pepper, smoked paprika, ground cloves, ground cinnamon, lemon juice, Henderson's relish and a teeny tinny drop of shoyu. There was also fresh sage chopped in and the last of the oat cream.

Gravy- I slivered two medium onions and fried with some toffee / caramel I had made. This was left over from the chocolate toffee muffins I made 2 days previous, which I guess makes this non-vegan as it had cream in it. The pinch of cinnamon powder was a mistake. Then I stirred in yeast extract and sieved in some cornflour and stirred well. I guess this saves you making a roux. My liquid of choice was red wine and water, and I added a rosemary twig.

Potatoes- I cut these into small chip sizes to roast. After the oil, salt and pepper, I dusted these with polenta grain to improve texture. You could use semolina, that's where I got the idea; I heard this is a good trick for roasties. So, if your body doesn't like wheat you have an alternative.

And to think I made all this effort just to have something to go with my curly kale.