Tobie Puttock’s Super Natural recipes celebrate plant-based eating
Struggling with that New Year’s resolution to “eat better” and squeeze more veg onto your plate? These tips for easy, meat-free meals will get everyone on board the healthy dinner bandwagon, writes Dan Stock.
Eating Out
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A new year, a new resolution to “eat better”.
And for an increasing number of Australians, that means giving up eating meat.
But, like with so many things promised when the clock chimed 12 a fortnight ago, once we’re back to work and the kids back at school it’s so easy for good intentions to fall by the wayside in the day-to-day hustle of family life.
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WHY MORE PEOPLE ARE DITCHING MEAT
TIPS TO GO FROM NOVICE TO PRO CHEF
Chef Tobie Puttock spent the first 20 years of his career butchering, cooking and eating every type of animal in restaurants around the world but now eats a predominantly plant-based diet. He has one key piece of advice for those looking to swap snags for celeriac and lamb for legumes this year.
“If you say, next week we’re going vegan and chuck out all your animal products you’re doomed to fail,” he says. “Just start replacing one thing at a time.”
He says summer is a great time to start experimenting with going meat free.
“I would say one to two nights, go meat free, cook a main vegetable — whole roasted cauliflower with romesco sauce, say. You could add a small bit of meat to the side, if you need, before leaving it out all together,” he says.
To help the home cook in creating these vegetable-based dishes, Tobie has written his fifth cookbook SuperNatural that he says “just happens to be vegan”.
“The idea was to create an accessible approach to using vegetables. I didn’t want to do a vegan book for vegans. It’s not about ‘meat is bad, eat a vegan diet’ but more like, here’s some interesting ways to eat veggies.”
It’s a growing movement — people who are consciously eating less meat but don’t completely omit it from their diet. This semi-vegetarianism is known as a flexitarian diet that people usually adopt for environmental and sustainability reasons — though it really just means eating mainly vegetables.
“I still eat meat — I just eat a hell of a lot less than I used to,” Tobie says. “It’s about reducing our impact on the planet. We know if we reduce the amount of meat we eat it’s better for us. There are certain cancers vegans just don’t get — so it’s better for our health,” he says.
“Becoming a full vegan is no mean feat, but imagine how much difference it would make if everyone just ate a bit less meat and dairy.”
While many fall into an all-or-nothing approach, Tobie says today’s Millennials put no pressure on themselves to eat a wholly plant based diet. “They’ll happily eat a mushroom burger then on a Saturday night have a minute steak with gorgonzola sauce.”
NATURAL BEAUTY
He says the first step in changing our thinking around veganism is to look at vegetables in their natural state and work up from there.
“All this produce is so beautiful, why can’t we change the mentality of how we cook vegan food a bit. Why can’t we cook beetroot like a piece of meat, and have sides along with that?
“Vegetarian products at the supermarket look like science experiments with all the numbers on the back, mimicking meat — there are no vegetables even in there,” he says.
“And vegan books (at the time) were all about that hippy food, piles of dal, piles of rice, that sort of thing.”
Tobie says he’s noticed a change in the past year in how vegetables are approached by home cooks and professional chefs alike.
“When you get the likes of Rene (Redzepi) of Noma getting on board, you know things are changing,” Tobie says. “He said something that really gelled with me. ‘The vegetable menu at Noma was by far the hardest thing they’ve ever tackled, but that he’s had a taste of the future by doing it.’”
SPICE IS RIGHT
Spices are everything to vegetarian and vegan cooking, Tobie says.
“They are your best friend and will allow you to make simple dishes with just a few ingredients that are incredibly layered and complex in flavour.”
Some of the mainstays in the Puttocks’ pantry include cardamom, chilli flakes, ground cinnamon, coriander seeds, cumin, fennel, paprika and whole nutmeg.
“You need to get your head around herbs and spices with this type of food, otherwise it can be boring. That’s really important.”
FRESH FLAVOURS
While fresh is best when it comes to dressing dishes with herbs, unless you are cutting what you need from the garden, there’ll often be leftovers that will be wasted. Tobie recommends laying out those excess leaves on a tray lined with baking paper then leaving in a warm part of the kitchen to dry out.
“You can then keep them in zip-lock bags or crush them and store in jars to be used through the bases of sauces for added flavour.”
The herbs everyone should have growing at home include basil, coriander, dill, mint, both curly and flat leaf parsley and tarragon.
DO THE CAN CAN
“You can, of course, use dried beans of all varieties, but, to be honest, I almost always use canned at home,” Tobie says. “You’ve got to make it easy for people, and canned beans are ready to rock in seconds and don’t need to be soaked overnight.”
WE CAN BE HEROES
Tobie says the best way to create satisfying vegetable dishes is to “hero one ingredients and then build the plate around that”. Oven-roasted beetroot, for example. “Now look at the flavours that go with that. Horseradish goes well. Then, cavolo nero goes well with horseradish.” Now you have the basis for a great main dish.
VEG PLEDGE
Other vegetables Tobie suggests putting on rotation on the dinner table include celeriac, which you can roast whole, cabbage, and cauliflower — either roasted whole or cut into ‘steaks’ and grilled.
“Pumpkin has replaced roast lamb in our house. Slice it, stuff if full of bread, dried fruits and nuts and roast it really slowly. It’s fantastic,” he says.
“If you show enough love to any vegetable you can transform it into something that’s worth championing in the middle of the plate.
THE NUTTY PROFESSOR
Nuts are an integral part of making meat-free dishes satisfying and filling.
Toby says linseeds, pepitas (pumpkin seeds), poppy seeds and sunflower seeds are great to have to hand, along with almonds, pistachios, pecans and walnuts.
These can be used to bolster salads and enliven roasted vegetables, adding texture along with the minerals, vitamins, iron and protein you’d usually receive in your diet from eating meat.
HEMP DAY
Hemp seeds — which have been legally sold as a food product for the past year — are a nutritional powerhouse, Tobie says, along with being an environmentally friendly, pest-resistant crop.
“Hemp is a complete protein, containing all nine essential amino acids and is high in fibre, vitamin E and minerals, as well as having a rare optimum ratio of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.”
GET FREEKEH
Tobie reckons freekeh (pronounced free-kah) is a great grain to use for building salads as it is both flavoursome and nutritious — low GI, low fat, a good source of protein, iron, calcium and zinc.
“Freekeh can provide greater satiety after eating than other grains due to its high fibre levels — twice as much as quinoa and three times as much as brown rice,” Tobie says.
GO FULL TURM
Turmeric is a versatile spice that’s long been used in Ayurvedic medicine for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, Tobie says. Recent studies suggest combining turmeric with black pepper increases the benefits of both spices.
“That’s why it’s great to combine the two in recipes such as the scrambled chickpeas (see recipe below),” he says.
EGGPLANT PARMIGIANA
Serves 6-8. (Recipes by Tobie Puttock)
I’ve made the traditional version of this dish so many times using so much cheese. It amazes me that when I simply leave the cheese out, rather than trying to substitute it, the veggies stand out strongly. You can really taste the richness of the tomatoes and, to be honest, I prefer this version to the traditional one! Although this is delicious to eat straight out of the oven, it freezes well too.
Ingredients
Extra virgin olive oil, for greasing
4 eggplants (aubergine) (about 2kg in total)
3 cups (750ml) tomato basil sauce
large handful (1 cup) basil leaves
1 cup (70g) homemade breadcrumbs or panko breadcrumbs
Sea salt and cracked black pepper
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 Preheat the oven to 180C. Grease a 5cm deep, 20cm by 28cm ovenproof baking dish with a little olive oil.
2 Use a sharp knife to remove the green end of the eggplants, then cut each lengthways into 1cm slices.
3 Pre-heat a barbecue or grill plate on high. Cook the eggplant slices for three minutes each side or until grill marks are visible and the eggplant starts to brown.
4 To assemble, spread a fifth of the tomato sauce over the base of the prepared baking dish, then tear four or five basil leaves over the sauce. Top with a fifth of the eggplant slices (they don’t need to overlap but try not to have big gaps).
5 Spread another fifth of the tomato sauce over the eggplant, followed by some more torn basil leaves, a sprinkling of breadcrumbs and a pinch of salt and pepper.
6 Repeat the layering, finishing with a layer of eggplant, tomato sauce, basil and breadcrumbs.
7 Drizzle with the olive oil and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbling. Set aside for 10 minutes before serving.
SCRAMBLED CHICKPEAS
Serves 4
I’m not going to pretend to you that these are anything like scrambled eggs — they are not. They are super quick to make and you can adjust the consistency with the aquafaba from the chickpeas (that’s the liquid from the can) to make the scramble runnier or denser.
Ingredients
1 tsp ground paprika
1 tsp ground turmeric
sea salt
cracked black pepper
2 x 400g cans of chickpeas, drained and liquid reserved
1 tbs olive oil
Small handful (¼ cup) flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
1 Put the paprika, turmeric and a pinch of salt and pepper in a large bowl. Add enough of the reserved chickpea liquid to make a loose paste.
2 Add the chickpeas and roughly mash with a fork, making sure you distribute the spices evenly.
3 Fold through about ½ cup (125 ml) of the reserved chickpea liquid to make the mixture nice and moist, add more if you wish.
4 Heat the olive oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat.
5 Add the chickpea mixture and cook, stirring often, until golden in colour, about five to six minutes. Fold through the parsley and serve.
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