Vegan (ish): 100 simple, budget recipes that don't cost the earth

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This blog is free to those who need it, and always will be, but it does of course incur costs to run and keep it running. If you use it and benefit, enjoy it, and would like to keep it going, please consider popping something in the tip jar, and thankyou. She’s an animal eater that uses low welfare cheap cuts when a decent vegan meal can cost less. There’s so many excellent vegan chefs that would love to work with you. Now, give it a rest, preferably in a fridge for at least half an hour to chill out. In my humble and experimental experience, the best, crispest, lightest batters are achieved in that moment when cold cold batter hits a shit-hot pan – think of the way you smoke the fat to make perfect Yorkshire puddings, or drop battered fish into a pan of rolling oil, and you get the picture. So jar it up, sling it in, and pop the kettle on or start dreaming about your toppings while it chills out in there…

Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients (a rough hole, nothing too precise or technical) and pour in most of the milk and water, and the butter or oil. Mix well with a whisk or fork to form a smooth batter, adding the rest of the milk to loosen it if needed.Now turn your oven on to 180C, and grab a suitable dish, one that looks like it will hold the same amount of lentil-mushroom-ragu that you have. Spread a layer of ragu into the bottom of the dish to cover it. Lay lasagne sheets over the top, leaving no gaps between them if you can help it. Spread a thin layer of white sauce onto the dry pasta. Then repeat: ragu, pasta, sauce, until the ragu is all used up. Top with a final layer of pasta sheets, then a generous layer of white sauce, carefully spreading it right to the edges. Sprinkle breadcrumbs generously across the top, and carefully place into the centre of the oven. Bake for 40 minutes, until golden and crisp around the edges. A knife inserted into the middle should go through the pasta easily. If not, bake for a further 10 minutes. Occasionally that does mean incorporating the cheaper brands of meat from the supermarket for specific briefs and believe me I have tried very hard to avoid it as much as possible as it’s not something I’m comfortable with. When the kidneybeans have softened, drain and add to the carrots and onions. Take off the heat and mash together until you have a smoothish purée (like mashed potato consistency). Stir in the flour. Make three more balls with the remaining mixture. Place one in the oil and flatten gently with a fork to make the burger shape. Depending on the size of your pan, you may be able to cook all the burgers at once or need to do them in batches – unless you’re freezing some of the uncooked patties.

Meanwhile, thoroughly rinse your lentils under a cold tap for a few minutes, and then add to the pan. Pour in the wine and tomatoes, add the herbs, and give it all a good stir before turning up the heat until it comes to the boil, then turn it down again to a medium simmer.Monroe has become increasingly prolific in recent years thanks to their diverse body of work, particularly their ‘austerity’ cookbooks – including Cooking On A Bootstrap – written after a period of extreme poverty. They have also campaigned widely on poverty and ‘hunger relief’, and written for outlets including The Guardian and Huffington Post. First peel and very finely chop the onion and garlic. If you have a bullet blender, magimix or small chopper, you might like to use it here. If you haven’t, don’t worry, it’s simple enough to do by hand. Toss into a large pan (either a saucepan or a shallow frying pan will do) with the oil and salt, and bring to a medium heat for a few minutes. Cook for a few minutes on one side, before turning. The burgers need to be handled with care as they can be quite fragile! Before I was confident trying recipes from the net, I used to make an extremely basic “baked bean lasagna” sometimes: