My favourite place

One of my favourite things about my blog is sharing my favourite veggie places! The Alley Cafe in Nottingham has to be top of my list. Their food is fab, the atmosphere is really relaxed and the staff are all friendly. Most importantly there's plenty of vegan options.

When I lived in Nottingham I was a regular but sadly now I live on the south coast I don't get to visit as much. One year I went there for my birthday meal and got a sparkler in my dessert, ace. Plus their chocolate biscuit cake is to die for! Needless to say when I do get back to Notts I always try and engineer a visit!

Easter weekend I was teaching back in my favourite city so managed to combine dinner with some good friends, with a visit to the Alley!

As well as a brilliant menu covering sharers, mains, light bites and sandwiches there's, always a specials board and a choice of vegan desserts which includes a 'cheesecake'.

While I was waiting for my friend I ordered a refreshing juice. The Alley offers a huge menu of fresh juices and smoothies. My favourite is the banana and chocolate smoothie if I'm in the mood for something sweet, in fact this could be a dessert in itself! This time however I went for a refreshing orange, carrot and ginger. I've always been afraid of trying carrot juice before but it was really refreshing and tasty - I felt much more awake afterwards! 

I went for something light and simple for my main - baked Alley nachos with soy cheese. Just what I fancied and it left plenty of room for dessert. Different to normal nachos these are an Alley special and are brill if you don't fancy a huge rich meal.

For dessert I chose vanilla and rhubarb cheesecake which was a wonderful sweet ending. In the past I've tried mint choc chip, Baileys, and various fruity ones, they really are yummy!

So if you're ever in Nottingham the Alley cafe is definitely worth a visit. It's quite small inside so can get pretty busy,  and there's can a bit of a wait for food, but it's well worth the wait! If you're going for a special occasion it's worth booking a table just to be safe. If you're heading out in the evening then make sure you check out their cocktail menu and look out for special events like Jumpers for Goalposts which are held regularly.

Check out their website for more info www.alleycafe.co.uk

Lattice Tart Experiments

Inspired by a wonderful lunch I had a few weeks back at the Beech Cafe at Petersfield's Sustainability   Centre, I was determined to have a go at creating a tartlet of some kind! As most of my cooking tends to be, this wasn't hugely planned out, I had no recipe, but figured I'd just give it a go and see how it turned out!

Amazing lunch at the Beech Cafe.

Deciding to cheat, I bought ready made pastry (who needs to be making pastry from scratch after a long day? Not me!) You can pick these up from the fridge aisle in the supermarket, I found mine in Sainsbury's. I'd never used this before but was delighted when I turned it over and found a recipe for a vegetable lattice tart on the back! Sainsbury's we salute you!

I had most of the ingredients called for, even the cream cheese, as happily I had discovered these super cute pots of Mini Tofutti in Holland and Barrett the day before!

I didn't have all of the ingredients though, so decided some improvising was needed! The recipe called for sun dried tomatoes (nope) and onions (not a huge fan) so I decided to raid the fridge and use up what I had. Here's what I used:

• 500g block of Sainsbury's Puff Pastry
• Box of chopped tomatoes
• Tbl spoon of tomato puree
• Half a green pepper
• Good handful of mushrooms
• Half a courgette
• 2 Cloves of garlic
• Mixed herbs
• Soy milk

The recipe asked for roasted veg, but I was hungry and it was late so I opted for a bit of gung ho recipe ignoring and scrapped this stage! I bet it would have been even tastier if I had roasted the veg, and sweet potato or butternut squash would have rocked!

First I cut the block of puff pastry in half and rolled out one half until it was roughly 30cm x 35cm. I greased a baking tray with marge (grease it well!) and laid this piece of pastry out on the tray.

Next I rolled out the other piece to the same size. This is a GREAT arm workout! Sainsbury's do a ready rolled version too though, phew! (Note: For some reason they don't seem to have the non-butter block I used on the website, just the ready roll - look out for Jus' Roll brand as many of these are vegan).

Following the recipe I chopped the garlic and fried it for a couple of minutes. Skipping the onion, I threw in the tomatoes, puree and some mixed herbs and let it all simmer for a bit, around 5 minutes. Next time I would do this for longer until the sauce was thicker, as I did end up with sauce running everywhere when I transferred it to the pastry. Oh dear! See recipes really do know best sometimes!

Next I threw in the veg and mixed it all up, before spooning it on to the tray, and added a couple of dollops of Tofutti on top. 

Then I folded the second sheet in half and cut diagonal lines in the pastry. I smoothed it over the veg and squished the edges together. Make sure these are pressed well together and that your tart has breathing holes, you may find the lines you cut have stuck back together again in the moving process.

Before you pop it in the oven brush soy milk over the top of the tart. Bake for around 25 minutes until golden (FYI it smells AMAZING whilst cooking). Mine was ready just in time for Game of Thrones, perfection! I served it with a side salad but had the leftovers the next day and it was equally awesome all on its own!

I've definitely been inspired to try more pastry recipes, maybe something sweet next time! If you have any recipes of your own, or ones that you've tried out I'd love to hear them! Have you ever had a go at making vegan puff pastry from scratch? Let me know!

For now, I'm off to catch some rays with my furry buddy Harry.

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