National Vegetarian week

I have to come clean here - I'm not a ‘proper’ vegetarian. I eat fish, I'm a pescatarian or a ‘fish-n-chip-acrit’ as someone (a ‘proper’ vegetarian) called me. But, it's National Vegetarian week, and, although I'm not preachy about it (how can I be? I'm not even a fully fledged veggie), I thought I’d compile a list of the ten best vegetarian dishes.

Humus - or, if you're buying it from Tesco, 'houmous'. Smooth and garlciky - even non vegetarians seem to like it!

Imam Bayildi: a very tasty Turkish dish (although I first tasted it in Greece!) made with aubergines. Here is a recipe:http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/oct/10/aubergine-recipes-turkish-imam-bayildi-hungkar-begendi-roast-with-tarator-yotam-ottolenghi I have made it and it wasn't too fiddly.

Tandoori paneer - A good one for a BBQ and a very pleasant alternative to a veggie burger. You marinate the paneer (Indian cheese which seems to be available in most big supermarkets now) in Tandoori spices (by which I mean a pack of ready made spices), yogurt and lemon juice. Paneer is quite robust and will keep its shape when cooked so you can skewer it with some peppers, mushrooms etc, drizzle it with oil and voilà! You'll be the envy of all the carnivores, eating their boring, blood drenched, badly cooked meat!

Aloo Gobi: potato and cauliflower curry, I like it when the spuds are slightly mushy but the cauliflower isn't!

Mary Berry’s canapés; made with vegetarian pesto, I actually made these ones, pictured below. Here's the recipe: http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/tomato_and_goats_cheese_46597 But, oops, this is a BBC recipe so won't be available for long, best print it out now and put it in your recipe folder! (I don't have one either)

Baked Camembert/Brie. Stud the cheese with garlic cloves and thyme and pour a little white wine over, bake and you get a delicious dip for crudités and bread.

Goat’s cheese tart - if this is the only vegetarian option in a pub I'm quite happy, especially if it comes with beetroot and/or onion marmalade.

Portobello mushroom burger with Monterey jack cheese and pesto mayonnaise.

Vegetable Paella: the more vegetables the better - artichokes, peppers, mushrooms. Nice with a Spanish chick pea stew.

Tofu in a black bean sauce - from a Chinese takeaway, they seem to be doing a lot more tofu options now, but beware rogue bits of meat. If you make it yourself you have to squidge every last bit of moisture from that tofu. Marinated tofu is great if you can get hold of it but very salty.

Not included on the list:

Risotto - a plate of slop - not nearly as nice as a paella, not sure why...

Vegetable lasagne - not that bad, if it's home made but the frozen kind is hideous.

Not a vegetable lasagne!

Bean burger - bit too stodgy for my taste, probably a lot nicer if you make it yourself.

Surprisingly easy recipes:

Smoked tofu hash - I first had this in Vienna. Someone warned me that it was really hard to find veggie food there so I printed off a list of vegetarian/veggie friendly restaurants before we went and had the some of the best veggie food I'd ever eaten! One of the first things I had was smoked tofu hash, here is a recipe: http://vegannook.com/recipe/smoked-tofu-and-sweet-red-pepper-hash

Bruschetta - just make sure that your tomatoes are nice and ripe and that you season it well.

Frozen jacket spud - years ago, I moved in with my boyfriend (he was later to become my husband - reader, I ….) I was cooking and asked him to buy a jar of sauce with which to make a chilli, to which this troublesome blighter replied - ‘I don’t really believe in using jars’. Thus began a strict regimen of cooking everything from f-ing scratch. To be fair to him - (the food dictator) he did do most of the cooking but sometimes, all I wanted to do was have a simple supper of beans on toast. We didn't have a freezer, so couldn't do any batch cooking and far too much cooking (and cleaning up) went on for my liking. Anyway, since we’ve had kids it’s been jar central around here - curry sauces, those Amoy, chow mein sauce sachets, ready meals, the lot! Things have moved on a great deal from the bad old days, though, when we had the first sprog we lived on biscuits and pot noodles until we got ourselves sorted, I’ve never felt so unhealthy! Now we have a freezer and it’s brilliant! I’m a huge fan of the frozen jacket potato - it doesn’t even feel that unhealthy, ditto frozen, cooked rice. There are probably those of you out there who love cooking and are appalled by this but surely a frozen jacket - or ‘fro-joe’ as we like to call it in our house, isn’t the most heinous thing imaginable. If you can’t be arsed to cook you could do a lot worse than a fro-joe with some proper butter.