Broad bean risotto with lemon - Vegan, DF and GF

This recipe includes slipping the grey overcoats off the broadbeans, to reveal their sweet bright green true selves. Once you've blanched them the grey outer slips off easily and its very much worth the extra step. You can add whole kernel corn and frozen peas for additional colour, there's zest and juice of a lemon and there are flaked almonds in here as well for texture. This will all take you about half an hour. 

Rice with broccoli and pak choi - Vegan, DF and GF

This may look a bit like a risotto (i know) but it emphatically is not. The flavour profile is spice heavy: Cardamom, bayleaf, cloves, five spice, black pepper all head you off to the Orient. There are nigella seeds, tamari and sesame oil to finish off this very satisfying and flavourful meal. Yum.

Smoky tomato beans - Vegan, DF and GF

This part of the recipe is vegan,  with fresh tomatoes charred in a grill pan with whole chilli and a couple of garlic cloves. These are blitzed together to make a smoky sauce. Then there's roughly chopped tomato sauteed with cumin and drained cannellini beans; this gets tossed through the sauce, then plated and dressed with toasted pumpkin seeds, diced avocado and cucumber, and broken up goats cheese sprinkled over. It's a great combination of textures and flavours! 

Corn cakes - Vegetarian, GF

This bit of the recipe is not Vegan or DF, so i felt it needed to be listed separately. These corncakes are really interesting: not savoury or sweet - just a vehicle for other flavours really. They're substantial but not heavy (not so good the next day i've discovered) and work really well with the smoky beans. I've had them with maple syrup and this also worked well! Kind of like a chunky pikelet... they're made with cornmeal flour and chickpea flour, but have buttermilk and egg. 

Hunza pie - vegetarian, GF

There are no apricots in the hunza pie - someone asked me once, so i'm getting in ahead. There's red rice (a favourite) and silverbeet, stripped off the ribs. The ribs are sliced finely and sauted til soft then included, which i also like. There's cottage cheese (drained and rung out a bit) the silverbeet leaves, herbs and ground almonds, also some goats cheese broken up on top. This all bakes for half an hour or less, and it's really really good. Hunza is in North Pakistan, and was an independant state until 1974 (thank you Aunty Google).

Sichuan Beef with wilted greens - DF and GF

This looks impressive, tastes amazing, is remarkably simple to make and doesn't take long either - about half an hour should do it. The beef is sprinkled with a sichuan pepper and salt mix  then seared and cooked to your preference. While the meat rests you add ginger, sesame oil and bok choi/shanghai to the frypan, then add tamari, oyster sauce, a little sugar and water and simmer til the bok choi is tender. Done.

Chicken dumpling soup - DF and GF

The dumplings are made with minced chicken, ginger and garlic, sesame oil and some S & P... the soup is based in vegetable stock, more garlic and ginger, some leafy greens, some creamed corn, some srirarcha and then some noodles. It's only going to take you 20 minutes to make this deeply delicious comfort food soup... Is very good.