salads and appetisers

This vegan spring sushi will look (and taste :)) great on your table at Easter. I added some black salt (Kala Namak) to the rice to give an egg-like taste, but you can omit this ingredient if you don't use black salt in your cooking. Serve the sushi with horseradish sauce, which perfectly completes the flavour composition in this recipe. Instead of cress, you can use parsley, chives or your favourite sprouts. I think radish or alfalfa sprouts will go well with the other sushi ingredients.

This vegan spring sushi will look (and taste :)) great on your table at Easter. I added some black salt (Kala Namak) to the rice to give an egg-like taste, but you can omit this ingredient if you don't use black salt in your cooking. Serve the sushi with horseradish sauce, which perfectly completes the flavour composition in this recipe. Instead of cress, you can use parsley, chives or your favourite sprouts. I think radish or alfalfa sprouts will go well with the other sushi ingredients.

The recipe for vegan eggs made from white beans is an attempt to reconstruct the traditional Polish Easter dish. Thanks to the beans, it is a very nutritious dish and supplies the body with plant protein. To get the yolk colour, it's not enough to use only turmeric (as I was thinking at the beginning), because you would have to add a lot of turmeric to get an appropriate colour and it would have a negative impact on the taste - turmeric is quite bitter. So I added a piece of raw carrot to the yolk. Instead of a carrot, you can also add a little hokkaido pumpkin purée. And the most important thing - if you haven't stocked up on the black salt Kala Namak yet, it is worth doing this, because it's used very often to prepare plant based dishes.

The strawberry season is still ongoing, so I've prepared a delicious and light salad that will be perfect for hot days such as now. I used vegan feta cheese for the first time and I am delighted with its taste, so I plan to introduce it to the menu of Flavours from Vega :) Thai basil has also made its debut in my kitchen, but the usual one will also be okay.

The asparagus season is underway, so today I'm serving another dish with this healthy and delicious vegetable - potato salad with asparagus, carrots, button mushrooms and peppers. I've prepared a garlic-herb sauce for the salad, but the silken tofu mayo from this recipe will also work great here.

I recommend the salad for dinner, but you can also prepare it in the evening and eat it the next day for breakfast. One serving has 395 kcal (if you divide the salad into 4 servings), and the calorie content of the whole salad is 1,580.

Today we recommend a delicious salad with beetroots and horseradish sauce, served with cress and other yummy ingredients. It is a spring salad, because I've always associated cress with spring :) The composition of flavours is really delicious in this salad. You have to try the recipe!

I prepared this silken tofu mayo for the stuffed avocado, which contains a lot of fat (healthy fat), so it should be served with a light mayo. The silken tofu mayo is light and dietary, and at the same time very tasty. I used sarepska mustard to prepare the mayo, but you can add any other mustard that you like best. This mayo you can also add to all kinds of sandwiches, burgers and salads.

Instead of traditional stuffed eggs, which are popular in Poland and served for different occasions, I prepared stuffed avocado that can taste similar to an egg if you add Indian black salt – the Kala Namak salt. This salt is commonly used in South Asia and, due to its egg-like taste and smell, it is often used as an egg substitute in plant based dishes.

I recommend serving the stuffed avocado with silken tofu mayo, which is very light because it is oil free. Such mayo fits very well here, because avocado contains a lot of (healthy) fat and if we added traditional mayo to it, the dish would be a calorie bomb.

You can eat the stuffed avocado raw, but it's also possible to bake it. I recommend baking it covered in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for about 20-25 minutes. If you plan to bake the avocado, don't take the skin off and serve the mayo separately after baking.

In the wintertime, when it's often gray, gloomy and depressing outside and you miss vivid colours and sunlight I recommend preparing the red cabbage salad with orange and tempeh. With this salad you can improve your mood and energise yourself in a quite simple and uncomplicated way. I also added tempeh to the salad to make it more filling. Instead of tempeh you can add tofu, but please try to find a tofu of good quality. I often hear the opinion that tofu tastes terrible, but I can't agree with that. A high quality tofu is delicious, although its flavour is quite subtle. Today I prepared a rather plain marinade for tempeh / tofu, but it will add character to the salad and you don't have to wait a very long time for the tempeh to be ready, because the marinade works very fast. You can of course marinate tempeh / tofu much longer, but it's not necessary.

As a first culinary proposal in the New Year I prepared a delicious salad. There are many reasons for that: a New Year's resolution that there will be more salads on the blog - so far there are only two, and now three :-). My detox consisted of consuming only raw vegetables and fruits for three days, after which I felt great and it motivated me to eat more raw food. Besides I've been thinking about preparing a dish with celery for a long time, because of its beautiful, light green colour, which brings spring to my kitchen. Add fresh marjoram to the salad if you can, it fits here perfectly. If you don't have marjoram, add your favourite fresh herbs or parsley. However, I would recommend adding marjoram, which is really the main character here, even though it may not seem to be one at first glance.

Christmas sushi is a very delicious combination of Polish and Japanese cuisine, and in terms of taste it resembles a little bit the Greek-style fish – a traditional Polish dish served on Christmas Eve.

Instead of the Japanese seasoning blend you can use powdered chilli or choose a few favourite ingredients for this seasoning mix.

The Christmas sushi is a perfect light appetiser, not only for Christmas and special occasions. It is sure to whet the appetite of your guests and they will certainly ask for more.

Kale has become a permanent feature of the Vega menu because of its health benefits. It has a very high nutrient density and is loaded with vitamins: A, C and K, micro and macro elements: iron, magnesium, calcium, potassium, and folic acid. Moreover, what is extremely important, the kale has anticancer properties.

The salad also includes oil free oven baked sweet potatoes. To give character to the sweet potatoes you can roast them accompanied by dried thyme. Of course, it is important to add some fat to the salad (e.g. in a dressing), because it assists with the absorption of the above-mentioned vitamins A and K as well as vitamin E, which can be found in pumpkin and sunflower seeds and apricots.

The kale goes beautifully with the pomegranate in terms of colour, also in terms of taste of course. Instead of pomegranate seeds, you can add dried cranberries. I think that thanks to such a healthy and colourful salad, many people will come to like the kale and will reach for it more often.

Pears and walnuts are certainly a perfectly matched pair. The juicy sweetness of pears and the slight bitterness of walnuts harmonise very well with each other. Together with red onion, parsley and spices, they form a successful composition of flavours.

It is a piece of cake to prepare such a salad, and it is also quick and painless. The salad is a good idea for brunch as well as for a starter, which you can treat your guests to before the main dish appears on the table.