I bought some soya mince the other day, mostly for old time sake. Soya mince much like the larger equivalent, soya chunks, are fairly horrible. They tend to be overly chewy, with a slightly unappealing texture. But they are cheap, and about 50% protein. I used to eat lots of this stuff when I was a student and then stopped, because I could afford nicer food. But I saw some the other day, and remembered that I had one dish where it was quite nice. This is it.

Ingredients

1 Red Onion
Handful Soya Mince
Handful Rice
Tomato Puree
2 potatoes

Toast

Spices

Garlic Puree
Various Curry Spices

Preparation

Essentially, this is your basic curry — fry the onions, then add garlic puree. After it's cooked for a while, add some lime juice, then cumin, coriander, tumeric and any other spices you fancy. This makes it pretty dry, so before it burns add tomato paste, and then water. Today, I also washed added some garlic pickle. Milk is good as well. Cook for about 10 minutes. Then add the soya mince.

While this is doing, parboil the potatoes, then add them to the curry. Follow this by part cooking the rice in the same saucepan, and add this to the curry.

The combination of the rice and soya mince will soak up a lot of the moisture. Add a bit more water if needed: there should not be much left by the time everything is finished; it's supposed to be dry.

At this point, it tastes okay, but sort of wish you hadn't added the soya mince. But this is the good bit; make some toast, then spoon the biryani on top of it, and stick the whole lot under the grill for a couple of minutes and serve.

Today, I tried some bulgar wheat which I haven't cooked with for several years. I think it was fairly succesful.

Ingredients

1/2 Red Onion
Large Handful Bulgar Wheat

Spices

Garlic Puree
Dark Soy Sauce
MSG
Rice Vinegar
Chilli Sauce
Pepper
Veggie Oxo cube

Preparation

Fry red onion, with some garlic and pepper and the Oxo cube in a small pan, with olive oil. When half done add decent splosh of soy. Wait till the soy starts to brown somewhat. Add the vinegar to shift the soy stuck to the pan. Wait till most of the vinegar has evaporated off, then ad the bulgar wheat, followed by a cup of water, put a lid on and simmer.

The wheat takes about 10 minutes to cook, after which most of the water is poured off, leaving enough to keep it moist. Then, it's served and garnished with a some few threads of the chilli sauce.

Served with

In this case, I used this to accompany some quorn garlic and herb chicken things. And topped it off with some garlic bread that's been hanging around for ages.

Comments

So, yeah, this meal had a lot of garlic in it (the olive oil was garlic infused as well). It was reasonably hot. I really like the MSG/Soy/Rice Vinegar combination which I discovered recently and currently using in lots of food.

I quite like the Bulgar wheat; it's nice to have another staple to play around with.