Thursday, October 24, 2013

Vegan Roasted Tomato and Eggplant Stew with Millet (from Veganomicon)

VG, GF



Yesterday the weather was a bit cooler so I decided to use up an eggplant I had in the fridge in the form of a stew. I'm eating a lot of vegan dishes at the moment and really enjoying them. My absolute favourite vegan cookbook is Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. It has everything you need to know about vegan food in it and is great for beginners.

So, back to my stew. After I decided to make it I realised that my cookbook is with a pile of precious things at my husband's work due to the bush fires we've had here recently (see, I told you the cookbook is good - it made it into the "must take" pile!). We evacuated on Wednesday and now we have things scattered about all over the place so that if the fire hits our house we'll still have a few important bits and pieces. Another thing that's been evacuated is my DSLR camera. The pics of this post were taken with my phone, so my apologies. Without my recipe book this is an adaption of the original using other blog posts I found and my memory.

The first step to this stew is roasting some eggplant, garlic and red capsicum on a tray. I heated the oven to 200 degrees C and put 1 eggplant sliced up, two capsicum halved and seeds removed, and some cloves of garlic with the skins on onto the tray. I sprayed a bit of olive oil over everything and popped it into the oven for around 25 mins.


This is it when it came out. Yummo right? Then I put the capsicums into a plastic ziplock bag and sealed it up so that they steamed. This is to make the skins easier to peel off.

While that was happening I sautéed a diced onion in some oil and then when it was turning brown I added 2 cloves of minced garlic.  After that I added 1/2C vegetable stock, 1 tin diced tomatoes, 1 tsp dried oregano, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1 tsp salt. Once that was all happening I added the eggplant, squeezed out the garlic from the skins, and added the peeled and chopped capsicum. The last step was to add a drained tin of chickpeas. You can add a little more water at this stage if it's too thick.

Once it was all mixed up I let it sit for 20 mins off the heat with the lid on while I made the millet. 

Millet is a really yummy GF alternative to couscous. We buy hulled millet from the food co-op and  use it in place of rice or couscous with a casserole or a stew.  You can add flavouring to it or vegetables for a complete meal or have it cold as a salad. It's cooked using the absorption method with a 3:1 ratio of water to millet. Once it's boiling turn the heat down as low as it'll go and place a lid onto the pot. 1C of millet takes me around 20 mins to cook. Check it regularly so that it doesn't catch on the bottom. Once the water has almost absorbed take it off the heat and leave it for another 5 mins or so with the lid on to steam then fluff with a fork.

We served it with a little parsley over the top. 

The kids had the stew and millet and also some beef which I covered in rice milk and then rice crumbs. Even though I'm eating vegan food a lot I still want to give meat to Ben regularly because he's already on such a restricted diet, and he needs the protein.

I got a great deal on some organic beef from Coles, this will do 3 meals for the kids.


Ingredient list:

1 large eggplant
2 red capsicum
olive oil
garlic
1 onion
vegetable stock
1 tin tomatoes
1 tin chickpeas
salt
paprika
oregano
millet, polenta, couscous or rice




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