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Oat-Stuffed Bell Peppers with Carrot Umami Sauce

It’s a vegan classic, the stuffed pepper. Here, we’ve served it with a sauce that’s so good that you’ll lick the serving spoon!

To make the sauce: 

Ingredients: 
2 carrots, trimmed and sliced
1 potato, scrubbed and chopped
1 garlic clove
1/2-1 cup water
1 tbsp miso paste
salt, to taste

Directions: 
1. Add carrots and potato to a pan. Cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, simmer, and cook until fork-tender. 
2. Drain and add to a blender with the rest of the ingredients. Season to taste. 

To make the stuffed pepper: 
1/2 red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup oats
2 tbsp hummus
1/2 cup Carrot Umami sauce
2 bell peppers, deseeded (if you’re following the plan, yours will each have a slice removed that we used for previous meals) 
Small handful spinach

Directions: 
1. Preheat oven to 180C. Fry the onion until lightly caramelised. Add the garlic until just fragrant. 
2. Mash the beans in a bowl. Add in the oats, onion and garlic, hummus, and carrot umami sauce. Season to taste. 
3. Stuff the peppers with the oat mix, pressing in well with your hands. 
4. Place the peppers on a silicone- or parchment-lined baking tray, and bake 25 minutes, or until the pepper has cooked. 

To serve: 
Suitable-for-vegans tortilla chips
Suitable-for-vegans salsa

Serve the dish with a large handful of tortilla chips, more Carrot Umami sauce, and some of the salsa.

Oat and Bean Burgers

Once you have a good vegetable burger recipe, you can adjust the flavour profile to your taste. Try changing the herbs and spices in this recipe to create your own flavours: add basil, oregano, sundried tomatoes and even chopped mushrooms for an Italian burger; choose garam masala and curry powder; you can even try fajita spices and serve with salsa. Have fun, experiment, and play around with flavours on top of the base recipe to make this your own. This recipe makes 8 patties.

Ingredients

Base Ingredients
2 x 400g (gross weight) cans cooked beans (I used one can of kidney and one can of cannellini)
1 red onion, quartered
1 red pepper, deseeded and quartered
1 cup oats

Flavourings
1 tbsp suitable-for-vegans Dijon mustard
2 tbsp tomato purée
1 tbsp soy sauce
pinch chilli flakes
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp salt

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 200C, and line a baking tray with parchment or a silicone sheet. Pulse the beans, onions, and red pepper in a food processor until fine and combined. If you don’t have a food processor, finely dice the onions and pepper, and mash the beans. Combine.
2. Add the oats, and pulse to combine further (or mix by hand). Transfer to a large bowl.
3. Add the flavourings suggested above, or experiment and create your own. Try to have about 2-4 tbsp wet ingredients among the flavourings so that the burgers are not dry.
4. Combine all ingredients well, preferably using your hands. Squeeze a handful of the ingredients together: they should hold without crumbling. If your hand is very, very sticky, add some more oats; if the mixture feels too dry, add a little suitable-for-vegans ketchup, mustard, or tomato purée.
5. Shape the mixture into 8 patties, flatten out, and place on the baking tray. Bake for 10 minutes, flip, and bake 10 minutes more. Serve in a suitable-for-vegans bun with preferred salad vegetables and sauce of your choice (I have used creamy potato dressing on mine).

Mexican Beans and Rice

Ideal for packed lunches, this is a budget recipe that cooks up relatively quickly and serves 4.

Ingredients

250g rice, uncooked (produces 500g cooked rice)
2 x 400g cans kidney beans, rinsed and drained
2 carrots, finely diced
100g frozen peas
100g frozen sweetcorn
80g cabbage (we used the tough outer leaves of our sweetheart cabbage), finely shredded
5 cherry tomatoes, quartered
150g salsa
1/2 cup vegetable broth or water
1 tsp garlic powder

Directions

1. Cook the rice according to the packet directions.
2. Meanwhile, steam or boil the carrots, cabbage, frozen peas, and sweetcorn, until done to your liking. We added the kidney beans too, because sometimes those in tins can be slightly undercooked.
3. Add the cooked vegetables, beans, and cherry tomatoes to a large frying pan or saucepan with the water/broth, salsa, and garlic powder. Cook until the sauce is reduced and slightly thickened (about 5 minutes).
4. Serve the rice with the bean and vegetable mix.