London Part III : Zilli Green

*Sadly Zilli Green is now closed*

As Nick and I had a week off we decided to head to London for the day to have some food and to do some shopping. I really wanted to try Aldo Zilli's new vegetarian restaurant Zilli Green. I'd had a look at the website and there were loads of vegan options so I was really excited.

We arrived at about 3.30 in the afternoon so the place was a little empty but I got the feeling from the amount of phone calls they were receiving that you'd definitely need to book for dinner.

We shared some bread to start as we were both ridiculously hungry after hours of shopping.

This was no ordinary bread basket! It was organic and filled with seeded bread, french bread and the softest most delicious focaccia I've ever had the pleasure of eating, there was oil on the table for dipping which was delicious and obviously really high quality.

To start I had the Quinoa and Wild Mushroom Mediterranean Sushi Roll.

This was not exactly what I was expecting from sushi but the clue's in the name, it's Mediterranean sushi. It was seriously amazing and I never thought I'd say that about a sushi with no nori or white rice! The flavours worked perfectly together and I really enjoyed the crispy side salad, I'd go as far as to say that if you visit Zilli Green you have to order this.

I'd already decided on my main before we arrived, just the idea of Tagliatelle with porcini mushrooms and white truffle oil was enough to make my mouth water.

I swear this is the best pasta dish I've ever eaten! It was perfectly cooked, as you'd expect at an Italian restaurant, but it was also really creamy which is something restaurants sometimes find hard with vegan dishes. This is another must order!

I was SO overexcited when I saw the dessert menu, this is the place most vegetarian places fall a little short in my opinion but here there were loads of options, look!

I love chocolaty desserts so I had to go for the Warm Pecan and Chocolate Chip Brownie although I was very tempted by the Limoncello Cheese Cake.

This was a damn good brownie! I wasn't expecting to like it so much as I'm pretty fussy when it comes to cakes but this totally rocked. It was warm and gooey with delicious nutty pieces, it also came with vegan double cream but I hate cream on desserts so I didn't add it.

I absolutely cannot wait to go back there, I'd totally go back to London just to eat here again!

Our Wedding!

So I didn't exactly manage to keep up with blogging in the run up to the wedding. I certainly intended to but when you set yourself tasks such as stamping every ones names letter by letter onto place cards & the table plan there isn't much time for anything else!

We decorated the venue ourselves the day before with a little help with lighting from a professional decoration company.

I incorporated place cards and favour bags into one thing by filling little bags with Raspberry Ruffles and tying people's names onto them.

One of the things I found hardest was finding the dress. I'm not overly girlie when it comes to clothing and usually wear skate shorts & t-shirts so even getting my head around the idea of wearing a dress was difficult! I toyed with the idea of wearing shorts & a tux t-shirt but I ended up deciding that I wanted to feel a bit more special than that. I also knew I'd never find anything I liked in the shops so I asked my amazing friend and bridesmaid Tabitha to make the dress.

We spent SO long shopping for fabric, partly because I'm fussy but also because every fabric I was totally in love with was silk! It was really frustrating partly because we really didn't have much time to plan the wedding (we did the whole thing in 6 weeks) and partly because I'm used to veganism being easy! This is the only time I've even found it remotely difficult, eventually we found something I liked and Tabitha made the dress in just a couple of weeks.

Our wedding was totally awesome even if I do say so myself. I couldn't stop grinning at my wonderful husband all day! Here's us using the photo booth...

The ceremony was really relaxed and lovely and at the reception we had awesome music, games, guitar hero and all the food was vegan! Having only been to all vegan restaurants a couple of times being able to eat (and drink) anything was super fun.

Our caterers were Veg Out who were absolutely amazing, I'd recommend them to anyone. They came up with an amazing menu...

...and even included a couple of my favourite picnicey dishes, my friend Kip's Blue Sheese Dip and my slightly adapted version of the Veganomicon Brooklyn Deli Macaroni Salad. Most of the photos below were taken by Kip from Messy Vegetarian Cook as I didn't manage to take a single photo on the day!

Before dinner there were canapes to go with the champagne. They included a totally delicious broccoli & cream cheese mini quiche and some filo pastry tarts with an amazing creamy mushroom filling.

Here's the Macaroni Salad and in the foreground you can see one of my favourite dishes from Veg Out their Cauliflower and Asparagus tart. More than one of my omnivorous guests said that they couldn't believe you could make something so creamy without cream or cheese, as a vegan I know that of course you can but it was awesome to be able to show other people this! I had about 3 slices and am certainly going to be trying to get hold of the recipe.

Here are a few more pics, Potato Salad...

...Dolmades...

... Tofu and Vegetable Kebabs...

...Red Quinoa Kedgeree with Tofu...

...Green Bean Salad with a lemon, mint and parsley dressing ...

...and Sausage Rolls.

After dinner there was dessert, my favourite part of most meals! We had a chocolate fountain with Dandies marshmallows, chopped Go Max Go bars & fruit for dipping.

Veg Out also made a totally delicious Lime Mousse which was made with avocado, although we didn't tell people this until after dinner! Even my dessert hating dad enjoyed this and I had two.

Of course their had to be cupcakes! We used The Vegan Cake Girl for these as I'd read great reviews about their cakes on my friend Melisser's blog and their prices were insanely reasonable! The cupcakes were beautiful, sparkly and really delicious...

... we ordered Mint Chocolate, Chocolate Fudge, Chocolate Orange, Raspberry, Lemon Kiss & Chocolate Cherry. My favourites were the Mint Chocolate and the Chocolate Cherry and Nick loved the Chocolate Orange. We also ordered some of her Blueberry Muffins to take to the hotel for breakfast the next day, we put a few out at the wedding in case some people weren't into cupcakes but I didn't try one until the next day. I was SO glad I'd decided to order some, they are seriously the best muffins I have ever eaten and another thing I'm going to be trying to get the recipe for that's for sure!

We stayed at the Kemp Townhouse hotel for a couple of nights after the wedding, it's not very far from our house but it was nice to pretend to be tourists in Brighton for a day! The room we stayed in was gorgeous and the owners were happy to make us vegan breakfasts as we let them know our dietary requirements in advance. The full English breakfast was great with Sausages, Vegi Bacon, Mushrooms, Tomatoes, Baked Beans, Hash Browns and Toast. Unfortunately I didn't manage to get a picture. We also dined out at Terre a Terre but boringly I ordered something I'd had and also blogged about before!

We're just getting towards the end of our mini-moon, we took a week off work as we can't afford a proper honeymoon just yet but hopefully we're going on a day out to London tomorrow. We really want to try out the new veggie restaurant Zilli Green and visit Vx the Secret Society of Vegans new London store. I'll be writing about them soon!

Cupcakes & Brunch.

I don't often blog about food I've made but I had a bit of a baking frenzy last weekend for my ''hen'' night & made 3 types of cupcakes!

Instead of the traditional girls night out which as far as I can tell is meant to involve L Plates & cock balloons I had a girls night in instead. It was super fun & I don't think any of us had been to a sleepover in about 10 years!

I've been practicing my frosting skills recently and with the addition of the best ever cupcake icing kit from Bake it Pretty I think I'm getting a lot better, even if I do say so myself! The chocolate ones were the last to get decorated and I think I'd kinda gotten the hang of it by then!

I made chocolate with thick chocolate buttercream frosting, mint choc chip & lemon blueberry. Everyone should buy Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, the recipes are super easy to follow and they always turn out beautifully. Not everyone at my girlie night was vegan or even vegetarian and every single person said they were the best cupcakes they'd ever eaten! Awesome!

The next morning after a very late night staying up watching Clueless & stuffing our faces with pizzas, popcorn & Dandies marshmallows some of us managed to drag ourselves out of our sleeping bags to hunt down some brunch.

We'd planned to head to Iydea but once we arrived at around 11.30 it didn't look like there was enough food left for us so instead we headed across the street to another all vegetarian business, WaiKikiMooKau. Happy Cow seems to have this place down as not very vegan friendly but it's changed a lot in the last few years, the prices have dropped and their vegan options have increased, yay!

We all ordered the Full English Breakfast, priced at £5.95 this is a real bargain!

I've had this breakfast before but then it was at dinner time so I went with the chips as my potato option, this time around I choose the hash browns which are homemade and delicious. This breakfast still comes with my favourite Realeat sausages, yummy baked beans and their signature pesto tomatoes...oh and that basket of bread was for the 4 of us, no cafe is that generous!

I'll definitely be back at WaiKikiMooKau again soon, it's one of mine & Nicks favourite places to eat especially as it's stumbling distance from our front door. Next time I'm up at a reasonable hour and not rushing to work I'm going to keep Iydea's breakfast menu in mind. Their lunch food's always good and from what I could see from the few things left there were a fair few yummy looking vegan options.

After our weekend apart Nick & I reconvened for an evening of hanging out being silly and eating ice cream!

My work friend J gave me this hat as a gift, I love it! I think Nick loves it too!

I knocked up these chocolate ice cream cupcake sundaes.

These had chocolate cupcake at the bottom and were topped with chocolate Booja-Booja ice cream, chocolate sprinkles and Oreo Straws which were a gift from Kristy & Toby. These could've been made more awesome with the addition of some marshmallows and chocolate syrup but I didn't think of that...next time my friends, next time!

I'm going to continue trying to keep up with blogging in the midst of the last few of weeks of wedding planning, we've found awesome caterers for our all vegan wedding and I'll definitely be posting food pics from the big day!

Beatroot.

*Sadly Beatroot is now closed*

Last Wednesday my friend Tabitha & I headed up to London to buy the fabric to make my wedding dress. I was super excited to find out that vegetarian cafe Beatroot is on the exact same street as all the fabric shops we were visiting.

Situated about halfway down Berwick Street, which is just off Oxford Street, Beatroot is a cafeteria style cafe with a menu that changes day to day & always has loads of vegan option.

As always I went for a little bit of everything.

The staff at Beatroot are super generous with their portions, this is a large container but they just kept piling on the food, as you can see I doubt I could've got that lid shut! The large box was about £5 and there are also small and medium boxes to choose from.

Hidden right down at the bottom was a really delicious Shepherds Pie, full of veggies. Also hidden was an amazing brown rice dish that I really picked so I could justify an extra sausage roll but it turned out to be one of my favourite bits of the meal! It was crunchy and full of barley and seeds, yum! I also picked the Quinoa Taboullah which was full of chickpeas and sunflower seeds and was seasoned with parsley and a yummy lemony olive oil dressing. There's a kidney bean, beansprout and peanut salad hidden right at the back, it was a little too spicy for me but I can't handle pepper so I think most people would have loved it!

The roasted veggies were perfect, the sausage rolls were seriously good and the broccoli was really well done too, and I'm pretty fussy about my broccoli!

It's a bit of a shame we managed to get the dress fabric sorted or we'd have a reason to head back up there soon, I'm looking forward to ending up in this part of London again because Beatroot was awesome and I forgot to order one of their freshly squeezed juices!

Vegan Cheese & Wine Party

Myself and a few friends from The PPK, including The Messy Vegetarian Cook and Off to Guildford! decided in October that we wanted to try loads of different vegan cheese so we came up with the idea of a cheese & wine night. We had our gathering last night and everyone brought different bought or homemade cheeses, crackers, dips, spreads, wine and juice.

The Messy Vegetarian Cook really outdid herself by bringing not 1 but 2 cheese balls, hopefully she'll post some details of how to make these delicious balls of joy on her blog! Above there are also Ryvita pumpkin crackers, water biscuits, vegideli sausages and one of my contributions Sheese and pineapple on sticks made with Medium Cheddar Sheese.

In the background you can see more crackers, cream crackers and homemade crackers in the huge pot, wine, juice, vegan Haribo and pure cheese slices (a great gift from one of my guests).

Right there on the front plate are mature cheddar Cheezly and cranberry Cheezly. On the green plate there's bacon Cheezly and medium cheddar Sheese. In this picture there's also original creamy spreadable Sheese, spicy pinto bean dip, sunflower Pure, blue Sheese dip made by The Messy Vegetarian Cook and (something I made) the Crock Cheez from The Ultimate Uncheese Cookbook.

I really loved the blue Sheese dip, yet another thing I hope the Messy Vegetarian Cook can give me the recipe for as I'd like to serve it at my wedding in 6 weeks time! I've had the book for over a year but the Crock Cheez is the first thing I've made from The Uncheese Cookbook, it's inspired me to make many more of the recipes from this awesome book. It was really great, as well as being made with healthy ingredients it was super easy to throw together.

I think I might be developing some love for bacon Cheezly, I don't know why I've never tried it before, especially as I've ferried many packets across the ocean to my American vegan friends, so if you haven't tried it yet please do. I've raved about the Medium Cheddar Sheese many times and it's still the most realistic fake cheese product I've ever eaten in the UK, it's no good for melting but perfect on crackers or with pineapple on a stick!

Of course we didn't just have a cheese party without dessert, alongside the Haribo was the Messy Vegetarian Cook 's Tiramisu.

Now, as a person who dislikes both coffee and cream, tiramisu was never going to be my favourite dessert but I couldn't not try a slice of a cake this beautifully made! It was really moist and creamy which is what I gather it's meant to be like, everyone loved it and we managed to get thought a whole lot of this cake!

I had a great night with awesome food, delicious wine and lovely company, I can't wait to do this again some time soon.

Terre a Terre - Part II

I'm so excited to be getting back into blogging again that I'm going to hop out of chronological order here to blog about the amazing meal Nick and I had at Terre a Terre recently. The photo's aren't the best as it's pretty dimly lit in there but you'll get the picture!

My amazing work colleagues got me £60 of Terre a Terre vouchers as an engagement gift (I know, awesome right?...and who knew you even got engagement gifts?!) and life had been hectic enough to prevent us from going until last week.

Nick's vegetarian but can be a bit of a fussy eater so we were a bit worried about what he'd enjoy from their fancy menu but there were no worries to start with as he happily ordered the Fabulous Garlic Focaccia (£4.60), and he made it vegan so I could try it.

The bread at Terre a Terre is seriously awesome and this garlic bread was great. So many places use far too much garlic but this was just right.

I ordered the exact same starter as I'd had as a main last time I visited, the Smoked Sakuri Soba (£8.65) Chilled soba noodles and raw vegetable spaghetti served with smoked tofu, wasabi cashews and pomegranate beads.

This was just as delicious as last time. I think I'm developing a serious obsession with their smoked tofu and I've been attempting to recreate this dish at home, minus some of the fancier touches! I think I'll probably order this every time I visit as it really is just that good.

For our main we both picked the Revisited Rosti (£13.95) a huge crispy fried potato rosti topped with creamed spinach and finished with a cream, parsley and nutmeg sauce. For the veggies this comes topped with melted cheese and a fried egg (Nick's choice) and for the vegans it's topped with marinated tofu (my choice).

We both really enjoyed this course and agreed that mine was the better option (that's a win for veganism right there!). Whilst the tofu isn't even listed on the menu as the vegan option it was, in both our opinions, the best bit about the meal. I'd urge every non-vegan I know to give this option a try at least once. The tofu was amazingly soft, perfectly marinated and totally delicious. If it told you how to make this in their new cookbook we'd have bought it right there and then! The flavours in this dish went perfectly together and it was great to have such a hearty filling meal at such a fancy restaurant.

Even though we were stuffed there was no way I was leaving without dessert even if it did mean sharing. I'd been eyeing up the Perky Pear and Choccy Tart (£7.85) on the website for a while and couldn't resist ordering it.

This is described as a chocolate tart with chocolate sorbet, Poire William pickled coriander seed pears, star anise sugar snappy pears, served with lush custard.

I was a little worried about the custard as I'm a hater of all things yellow and gloopy but I was assured by our lovely waitress that it was nothing like that kind of custard. I'm glad I trusted in the magic of the wonderful Terre a Terre chefs as this custard was delicious and went perfectly with the deliciously spiced pears, sorbet and the gorgeous tart. I've never had a chocolate tart this delicious, it was beautifully light and perfectly chocolaty.

I really cannot wait to be able to go back to Terre a Terre again, hopefully there's a PPK meet up headed there this summer as it is hard to justify spending more than our weekly shopping budget on one meal, although it is definitely worth the cost.