This post is part of VeganMoFo 2019, a month-long celebration of vegan food. This week’s theme is travel, and today’s prompt is favourite international dish.

I’m not usually keen on onion-centric food: onion rings have too strong a flavour for me, and I don’t like the crunch of lightly-cooked onions when they’re part of a larger dish. However, at my company’s annual conference last year the vegan option was French onion soup, and to my surprise I enjoyed it.

This is proper slow food: I put on the deluxe edition of London Grammar’s Truth Is A Beautiful Thing as I started, and I was still cooking when the album finished an hour and twenty minutes later. The long cooking time makes the onions soft and silky, and mellows their flavour.

Ingredients (per person)

2 onions
2 cloves garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
½ teaspoon brown sugar
200ml vegetable stock (or water)
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
¼ lemon
¼ teaspoon salt
Several pinches of black pepper

Method

Finely slice the onions and garlic.

Heat the oil in a saucepan and add the onions, garlic, and a tablespoon of water.

Cook over a low heat, stirring every few minutes, until the onions start to brown. This may take up to an hour. If the onions start to stick to the pan, add a little water.

Once the onions have started to brown, stir in the sugar and add the stock (or water) and vinegar.

Bring to the boil and then simmer for fifteen minutes. Season with the juice from the lemon, salt, and pepper.

Serve with slices of crusty French bread.

 

This post is part of VeganMoFo 2019, a month-long celebration of vegan food. This week’s theme is travel, and today’s prompt is road trip snack.

These gram and vegan cheese shortbread rounds may be small, but they pack in a lot of flavour. Fill a mini lunch box with them for a delicious snack that’s robust enough to survive being thrown around in your travel bags.

This recipe is adapted from a non-vegan original in Rose Prince’s The New English Kitchen. The keys to success are using a firm vegan butter (I used Naturli Organic Vegan Block) and the strongest vegan cheese you can find (I used Daiya Medium Cheddar Style Farmhouse Block).

Ingredients (makes 12)

60g gram flour
50g vegan cheese, grated
40g vegan butter, cut into cubes
¼ teaspoon salt
Several pinches of ground pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 180℃.

Put all the ingredients in a food processor and process until they start to combine.

Tip out onto a clean surface and knead for a few seconds until the mixture has an even consistency.

Roll into a cylinder about 3cm in diameter, and then cut into rounds about 1cm thick. Use a sharp knife and rotate the cylinder a quarter turn after each cut to avoid squashing it.

Put the rounds onto a baking tray and bake for 15 minutes. The edges should start to turn a golden brown colour. Leave to cool.