Welcome to Scraps! The whole of April is dedicated to meat-free recipes. The working title was ‘veg month’ which I hated saying and seeing written down, and ‘veggie’ month also gave me the ick. So there you go. Meat-free month it is. Shall we just crack on with it?
1.Grain bowl with roasted carrots and lemon-yogurt sauce
We’ve been here before – I did a grain bowl story last month, using some meatballs and pickled onions. But this was an attempt to tackle the carrots I always find stewing away in the back of a cupboard. On Monday, I took a quick screen break to peel some leftover carrots, smash some garlic cloves, drizzle some olive oil, and roast whatever else I could find for 40 minutes or so (I included some shallots and a leek, too). The idea was these would roast, caramelise, and I’d add them to a pouch of grains. I just needed something wet to dress the grains, which can be a bit chalky and dense. Which brings me to yogurt.
I always buy a tub of yogurt, and I often throw half of it away. The intentions are so good (can’t eat dry granola!) and yet time and time again I find a sulphurous tub of yoghurt ruining the vibe in my almost-immaculately organised fridge. So apart from buying less, which is one option, I had this idea of using some of it to make a garlicky lemon yogurt sauce I could drizzle on my grains. In the interest of journalistic integrity, I had this idea while there was no yogurt in the fridge, so I went out and bought a 150ml tub as a kind of experiment, and added the juice of two lemons, a grated clove of garlic, and a good pinch of salt (very important here because most yogurts have that sort of lactic tang that can catch in the back of your cheeks). It was really, really good – I think it would be great drizzled over roast vegetables, in any other grains, or, as I did this week, spooned over eggs on sourdough (shout-out to last week’s issue: I’m still frying a lot of eggs).
2. A (meat-free) miso-butter pasta
One of the best things I’ve made since launching Scraps was the chicken-butter pasta in March. I love that it came from a place of genuine problem-solving, and it was nice to literally not just pull recipes from the same 2-3 websites. As soon as I made it, a couple of friends reached out (one actually pulled me aside at a gig) and wondered if there was a meat-free version?
I knew instantly that it would involve miso, since I have a jar of it in my fridge and it has that same thick but pliable consistency. So this week I set to making it. I did check a couple of recipes for research – including New York Times Cooking and Cravings – but they were more emulating a carbonara. I wanted coated, not saucy pasta, and I wanted it as close to the chicken-butter pasta as possible.
An appropriately meat-free, pro-fruit song this week by Wet.
The best thing about the end result was the wildly simplistic recipe. I did two tablespoons of white miso in a saucepan, with a thick slice of butter, a bit of olive oil, and a single clove of garlic, grated. I splashed some pasta water in, too – miso likes hot water, it helps thin it down a little – and I kept cooking this sauce and letting it coagulate. I squeezed some lemon juice into it, as miso is a pretty thick and knock-you-over-the-head savoury taste, and I wanted some kind of light relief. That was literally it – I think I ground some black pepper and chilli flakes in, too. Once it was ready, I tossed the pasta and served, like last time, with crispy breadcrumbs and some parsley.
I was so happy with it. This is a really simple dish and it tastes great (the raw garlic, which cooks in the sauce, gives it a really nice flavour). A note on the breadcrumbs; by virtue of my shop having no good bread, I actually just bought some panko-style breadcrumbs and cooked those in butter, herbs, and lemon zest. They had the consistency of wet sand, in a sort of brilliant way. Who knew.
3. Your meat-free re-cookables
Since it’s a month of meat-free content, and I can’t say no to a whacking great lump of steak in my diet, I thought it would be good to ask Scraps readers to share any of their favourite veggie recipes so we can include them in a future newsletter. A nice way to help me eat less meat and also share some good resources with other people. Win win!
See you next week,
Chris.