FAST FAKEAWAYS – Roasted Vegetables with Satay Sauce

by Liz Child

If you’re a fan of peanut butter you’ll LOVE satay sauce. Try our organic jars of this intense, delicious, savoury sauce alongside your next BBQ. This south-east Asian dip is traditionally served with seasoned skewers of meat or vegetables cooked over coals, a squeeze of lime and a fresh, green salad. But for ease (and because it’s been too chilly and windy for a BBQ outside our house) I just roasted a large tray of veg this time. The combination of caramelised char, juicy interiors and the savoury, moreish dip is just irresistible. It’s so quick and simple to put together this way too. Perfect for that Friday night fakeaway! Make it a heartier meal with some rice or flatbreads.

Liz x

Ingredients

  • vegetables of your choice for roasting (some firm tofu or tempeh would be a great addition too) – cut into a large dice
  • sesame oil & soy sauce (a generous drizzle of each to marinade and cook the vegetables in)
  • satay sauce (1 jar is plenty for 4-6 people)
  • salad, limes and fresh chilli to serve
  • optional rice or flatbreads to serve to make it a heartier meal

Method

Preheat your oven to 200C (or fire up your grill/BBQ).

Cut vegetables of your choice into a large dice and drizzle them with sesame oil and soy sauce to season them. Mix well with your hands to evenly coat them in the simple marinade. Then spread on a large roasting tray (or push onto skewers to BBQ).

Roast (or BBQ the skewers) until the vegetables are cooked through with some delicious charred edges.

Meanwhile cook rice or warm up some flatbreads and prepare the satay sauce. Simply empty the jar into a small pan and heat it up with enough water to loosen it into a sauce.

Serve in bowls or on plates with sliced fresh, red chillies, wedges of lime and a crisp, green salad. Dunk, and scoop up the sauce with the vegetables and flatbreads/rice. Squeeze zingy lime over everything as you go. And enjoy!

FAST FAKEAWAYS – Thai Yellow Curry with Jasmine Rice

by Liz Child

Being a chef, I do mostly make everything we eat from scratch, but Thai curry paste from scratch involves buying lots of specialist ingredients. Our organic sachets contain no nasty preservatives, have authentic, top quality ingredients and make life simple and delicious!

This is one of our most-made fakeaways at home. Thai yellow curry paste is absolutely delicious, quite mild so the kids love it, but absolutely packed with complex flavour. Simply simmer a sachet with a can of coconut milk, add some cooked veg and you’re good to hunker down with a steaming, vibrant bowl of Thai food. This quick method is so flexible, chuck whatever veg you have handy into the roasting dish with some firm tofu – cubed butternut squash, sweet potato, carrots, aubergine, peppers etc… and simmer any tender green veg with the sauce – asparagus, kale, spinach… I love it with fragrant jasmine rice or quickly boiled wide, flat rice noodles.

Let me know if you try any of our organic, ready made sauces and what your best recipes are with them. I’m working my way through them all to give you some fuss-free fakeaway ideas for those days we really can’t be bothered to cook from scratch.

Liz x

Ingredients (serves 2)

  • 1 sachet of Thai Yellow Curry Paste
  • 1 tin of coconut milk
  • 1 pack of firm tofu
  • 2 carrots
  • 1 purple sweet potato
  • 1 tbsp vegetable oil
  • 1 big pinch of salt
  • 2 handfuls of kale
  • Jasmine rice or Thai rice noodles to serve
  • optional toppings – fresh coriander, lime wedges, chopped scallions, toasted cashews or sesame seeds, salted peanuts, sliced red chilli…
Watch how I put the meal together here or read the method below.

Method

Preheat your oven to 200C. Cube up your tofu, carrots and sweet potato and add them to a roasting dish. Of course you should feel free to use alternative vegetables.

Drizzle the veg with a little oil and season simply with a big pinch of salt. Toss the vegetables with the oil and salt and put them in the hot oven to roast for around 20 minutes or until tender.

Meanwhile make the curry sauce. It’s as easy as emptying the contents of the sachet into a pot with the contents of the can of coconut milk. Turn the heat on and allow the ingredients to mingle and simmer.

Then put on your jasmine rice. For two people I measure out an espresso mug of rice into a fine sieve then give the rice a good rinse. Then tip the rinsed rice into a small pot with 2 scant espresso mugs of water. Put the lid on the pot and put it on the hob on the highest setting. As soon as the rice comes to the boil, turn the heat to the lowest setting and leave it to absorb all the water. Do not stir the rice or remove the lid. This whole process should take about 15 minutes for white jasmine rice – brown rice takes considerably longer.

While the rice is cooking and the veg is roasting, turn your attention back to the pot of curry sauce. You can add tender, fast cooking greens to the pot just before the veg is ready to come out of the oven. I used kale this time. Strip the leaves from the tough stems and slice the stems very thinly. Add them to the pot of simmering sauce to soften well before you add the leaves. Add the leaves 3 minutes before you take the veg out of the oven.

Once the roasted vegetables and tofu are cooked through, take them out of the oven and scrape them into the pot of curry sauce and kale and stir to combine. Taste for seasoning. You may wish to add some lime juice or salt.

Serve the curry and rice in bowl and top with chopped coriander, spring onions, chilli and lime wedges. Additionally add toasted cashews or salted peanuts for some welcome crunch. Enjoy!

FAST FAKEAWAYS – Spaghetti with Lentil Ragu

by Liz Child

We all have those days when we really really can’t be bothered to cook. Ordering a takeaway is such a nice treat, but it can take forever to arrive and be quite pricey. So on those days where you have no energy and your family is hangry, there’s always our ready made organic sauces for a bit of a shortcut. Look out for my ‘fast fakeaway’ recipes (if they can even be called recipes) using our range of organic, ready made sauces. I promise they are all super simple and extraordinarily tasty!

First up is this simple spaghetti with lentil ragu. This meal serves 4 or 5 people generously, takes less than 15 minutes and costs under €7 to put together.

Liz x

Ingredients (serves 4-5 hungry people)

Method

Simply bring a large pot of water to the boil. Add a tbsp of salt and the packet of pasta to the boiling water and give it a quick swirl to stop it from clumping together.

Then tip the contents of the jar of pasta sauce into a small pot. Half fill the jar with water, replace the lid and give the jar a good shake. Then add the contents to the pot again.

Drain and rinse the tin of lentils in a fine sieve. Then add that to the pot of sauce.

Simmer the sauce while the pasta cooks. Taste for seasoning and adjust if needed. I find the jar of napoli sauce is perfectly seasoned.

Once the pasta is cooked to your liking, drain it and stir in the sauce. Add an optional drizzle of extra virgin olive oil to the pot.

Divide the pasta into bowls (alongside a simple salad or some steamed greens perhaps?) and top each bowl with a pinch of nutritional yeast for that parmesan cheese like flavour and extra nutrition.