Category Archives: vegetarian

Roasted winter vegetable soup

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Roasting the vegetables gives this soup a delicious flavor, as the veggies caramelise and develop a depth of flavor that boiling just doesn’t achieve.

I’m a bit casual with ingredient quantities – this recipe doesn’t require precision measuring (and I kind of made it up as I went anyway), so don’t worry if you have more or less of something. You can make this as thick or as thin as you like, simply by adjusting the amount of stock you add.


Serves 6

About 500-600g sweet potato
1 large parsnip
1 medium swede
2-3 large carrots
1 large brown onion
3 medium tomatoes
5-8 whole cloves garlic, unpeeled
2-3 tbs olive oil
¼ cabbage
2-3 stalks celery
1 to 1.5L chicken or vegetable stock
½ cup chopped fresh herbs of choice*

Preheat oven to 180C.

Peel sweet potato, parsnip, swede and carrots and cut into chunks about 3cm square. Peel onion and cut into quarters. Quarter tomatoes and remove seeds and pulp. Place the prepared vegies into a large baking dish and add the olive oil, mixing well – using your hands works best, but a spoon will do if you don’t like to get mucky.

Place baking dish into oven and bake for about 40 minutes, then add whole garlic cloves and return to the oven for an additional 40 minutes.  The exact cooking time will depend on your oven, which veg you use and the size of the pieces. Move the veggies around in the pan a few times during cooking.

Meanwhile, slice the cabbage and celery and place in a saucepan with the stock. Bring to the boil, then turn heat to low and simmer for about 20 minutes or until veggies are tender. Remove the pan from the oven and squeeze out the roasted garlic from the cloves, discarding the skin.

If your saucepan is big enough, tip the roasted veggies in with the cabbage & celery, add the herbs and use a stick blender to puree the soup, adding extra stock or water if it’s too thick. Alternatively, you can use a traditional blender and blend the veggies plus stock in 2 batches. Return to the saucepan and heat, stirring to mix well. Season with salt & pepper to taste.

Serve with a blob of Greek yoghurt and some extra chopped herbs sprinkled over.

* I scrounged whatever was available in the garden and ended up using rosemary, oregano and parsley. Thyme and/or sage would work well too.

** After removing the roasted veggies, if pieces have stuck to the bottom of the baking dish, pour a little of the stock in and scrape the brown bits off the pan, then add them to the mixture to be blended – these are the most flavoursome parts!

Warm pumpkin and green bean salad

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I just created this one tonight. I was looking for the caraway seeds, but can’t seem to find them. Sesame seeds are nice, but nothing like the same thing… and I’m not ALL that sure about the nutmeg. It tastes good, but not quite the flavour I was after.

Serves 1-2

About 2 cups diced butternut pumpkin
120g green beans, cut into 2cm lengths
1 tsp olive oil
1 tbs chopped coriander leaves
½ tsp ground cumin
½ tsp sesame seeds
Shake of nutmeg

Steam or microwave the pumpkin and beans till tender, drain and place in a large bowl with the coriander leaves. Pour the olive oil over, add cumin and sesame seeds and stir through gently. Add a shake of nutmeg to taste, plus salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Serve warm.

Mini "quiches"

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This makes 6 mini quiches – which is one serve for me. If you want a light snack, 2 or 3 would probably do.

4 egg whites
85g creamed low fat cottage cheese
About ¼ of an onion, finely chopped
¼ red capsicum, chopped
A little green capsicum, chopped
2 medium mushrooms, chopped
100g cooked sweet potato, diced
A handful of baby spinach leaves

Cook onion and capsicum in a non-stick pan sprayed with cooking spray until soft. Add mushrooms and sweet potato and stir for another minute or so. Divide between 6 muffin cups. Mix egg whites and cottage cheese in a bowl until well combined, add a small sprinkling of grated parmesan if you like. Chop the spinach and add to the mixture, then pour the egg white mixture over the veggies in the muffin pan.

Cook at about 170C for 25-30 minutes or until browned on top and cooked through.

The reason there are weird leaves sticking out of the quiches in the photo is because I was too lazy to chop the spinach and just poked it in at the end.

Veggie "Fritters", take II

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I refined my original recipe for the sweet potato “fritters” and I’m much happier with this one.

This time, I made them with potato, instead of sweet potato, and just made some other fairly minor changes. They got the husbandly stamp of approval, which means that as a veggie recipe, they must be GOOD.

3 small potatoes (about 120g each)
1 medium carrot
1/2 a large zucchini
A small onion
1 egg
1 egg white
1 tbs cornflour
About 1/2 – 1 teaspoon of any herb or spice mix you fancy.
1 tablespoon of olive oil

Peel potatoes, carrot and onion. Cut all the veggies into chunks and grate them in a food processor. Or do it by hand if you’re still living in the dark ages. Tip the grated veggies into a clean cloth and sque-e-e-eeze as much juice out of them as you can. Throw the wrung-out veggies into a bowl and add the other ingredients, mix well.

Divide between 6 muffin cups and bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes.

Spicy crisp chick peas

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Looking for something crunchy and tasty, yet healthy? Read on…..

1 can chick peas
2 tsp olive oil
1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of your favourite herb/spice mix
1/4 tsp chilli powder
A good shake of garlic salt

Drain the chick peas, rinse well and leave in a colander or strainer for 5 minutes or so to dry. In a bowl, mix the other ingredients together. Pat the chick peas dry with paper towel and add to the spice and oil mixture. Stir with a spoon to coat well.

Spread on a tray lined with baking paper, and bake in the oven at 180C for about 45 minutes until crisp.

Try not to eat them all straight away…..

I divide this into 2 serves, and each has:

192 Calories
9g protein
21g carbs
5g fat

Veggie "fritters"

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I would probably prefer to make these with white potato, but I didn’t have any, so sweet potato it was. Either way, it’s a nice side dish for chicken, fish, steak or whatever. And who knew you could make a fritter without frying it?


Serves 2-3 as a side dish

A small sweet potato (or 2-3 small potatoes – about 200-250g in total)
1 small to medium carrot
1 medium onion
1 tbs chopped fresh basil
1 tsp za’atar spice mix
1 egg
2 tsp corn flour

Peel the sweet potato and carrot, and grate them, along with the onion. Dump the lot into the centre of a clean linen tea towel, gather up the corners and squeeze as much liquid as possible out of the grated veggies. You really should do this over the sink…..

Shake the veggies back into a bowl, stir through the basil and za’atar. Mix the egg and corn flour together, add to the veggies and mix thoroughly. Divide the mixture between 6 muffin holes, sprayed with a little cooking spray (If you don’t have one, get a silicone muffin pan – those things are the BOMB!) and bake in a moderate oven for about 30-40 minutes or until cooked.

Note: I make no guarantees about cooking times and temperatures – figure out your own oven’s idiosyncracies!

You could add a zucchini to the grated veg, but again, I didn’t have one handy. And any fresh herbs and/or spice mix can be substituted for the basil and za’atar. These really are a work in progress….I want to experiment a bit more with quantities of this and that to get juuuust the right consistency. The flavour was perfect though!

Edit note: On reflection, I think these would benefit from an extra egg or egg white, and just a little olive oil. Less dry, more sticky-together. I’ll try that soon and post the results.