Veganuary Day 6: Look East

Saturday mornings are always a little slower in the Ediblethings house. Sure, the dog will still wake us up sometime before seven, demanding her breakfast, and will still need a walk fairly soon thereafter, but we can fit in some laziness and languish over our breakfast around that. She’s also a total princess, and hates going out in the rain, so only wanted a short walk in this morning’s miserable weather. This gave us plenty of time for a pumpkin and chickpea hash. It was based on this recipe from the Simple Veganista. I don’t buy sweet potato all that often, but I did have half a butternut squash that needed to be used. The substitution is a fine one. This recipe was delicious, and the sauce and avocado made it totally satisfying. You can easily prep this in advance, and warm it through when you need to eat it. We chopped it before our dog walk, and put it on to roast while we dragged her around a short walk. We even had time to make the best coffee I’ve had in a while, due to our early return. I’m really enjoying oatmilk with a nice French-pressed coffee.

Despite the slow start, Saturday was a busy day. Lunch was a simple salad and hummus wrap, using up the hummus from the market.

We had another veganised old favourite for dinner. I first saw this recipe back in 2020 and have cooked it at least once a month since then. In fact, this is from another YouTube gem I found that I cannot recommend highly enough. The channel is (rather brilliantly) called Middle Eats, run by presenter and cook Obi and his wife, Salma, who mostly does the recipe development for the channel. As the name suggests, they cook dishes from around the Middle East. Many of the dishes featured are vegetarian anyway, and Obi will often make suggestions for vegan substitutes.

Fatteh is so tasty, with relatively few ingredients. I tend to crisp up my Pita breads in the airfryer with a little oil, rather than deep frying them, as they do here. It doesn’t suffer any for this substitution. We made the tahini sauce with oat yoghurt. The soy yoghurt brands available to me are much too sweet to work well in this dish. It is a lot thicker than the cow’s youghurt. It seems to seize somewhat when you add in the lemon juice. It did thin when I added oat milk, but it needed quite a bit of it.

We also added some black olives to the sauce and served some wilted spinach over the aubergine layer. They both needed using up – in the case of the spinach it had to be today. I think they were noble additions to this satisfying meal. The only problem I have is the recipe serves two, so there’s no leftovers for another day.

I want to explore a lot more Middle Eastern food this month. There’s a lot of vegan dishes that people think are every day foods across the region. I’ve always wanted to try to make ful medames, an Egyptian breakfast classic. I used to order it a lot in London, but I’ve never made it myself. Obi has other fatteh variations, and a tonne of other delicious meals to try. I’m sure there are a good few Ottolenghi recipes I can make. I’m getting hungry again just thinking about it.