House sitting weekend

Last weekend Marcus and I did house sitting in his friends house near by. They lived in a big house with fantastic kitchen and dry store. For me, it was exciting to cook in such beautiful kitchen. It was my dream kitchen (used to be) to have AGA oven, and an island in the middle of kitchen with cool stools. The kitchen had everything. Fantastic dry store, plenty gadgets, nice white plates, light and airy dining room and conservatory. Dry store like that always reminds me of when I used to work in restaurants. Just took whatever I needed from there and went back into kitchen and carried on cooking/baking. Fantastic. And when I looked at ingredients I could use excited me also to make up some yummy dinners. First night I cooked " Tofu sausage, quinoa and butter bean mash with raw broad beans and olive salsa" Basically, vegan version of bangers and mash. I found butter bean (tin) in the dry store, I knew it wouldn't make enough for mash for us, then I saw quinoa.....so, this is what i did. Cooked quinoa with some dried mushrooms, clove of garlic and splash of tamari. when done, mixed with lemon zest, butter bean, extra virgin olive oil then blitz. In the meantime, lightly brown sausages. Then make salsa. My salsa consisted of: raw broad beans (outer skin removed), sliced good green olives, chopped tomato (with seeds), chopped basil, parsley, grated garlic, lemon juice and lots of olive oil. Fun is to assemble onto plate. I just splodged onto them but can present pretty. Bangers and mash looked like this.

Dessert was vegan ice cream( maple and pecan flavour) with wild strawberry and peach and extra maple syrup! Yummy. I loooooooove maple syrup. I remember when i was a child, I actually drunk maple syrup, I can still do that now. I got such sweet teeth!

Following evening, I cooked pasta dish. We had loads of broad beans picked from near by field. So, I made: Raw spicy tomato sauce with tofu and broad beans. I made everything separately. First I made the sauce by blitzing; tomatoes, black olives, sun dried tomato, roasted pepper, basil, chili and garlic. Then another bowl I mixed chopped basil tofu, broad beans(also soyabeans are nice too!), some herbs and olive oil(extra virgin). Cook buckwheat pasta (our favo pasta), when they are done, add to the bean mix. Put onto plate, spoon the sauce. Finish with some more good olive oil! It's easy and quick. What i love the most of cooking/making food like these(one of reasons) is that less washing up and less greasy and easy to tidy up afterwards! I remember when i used to cook meat, it always stuck on pans, needed to scrub hard, and stunk with fish or meat smell. So, cooking vegan foods are smelly-smell free! Hooray!