A healthy chickpea salad dressed with sweet white balsamic and smoked paprika, diced avocado and aromatic coriander is a beautiful lunchtime treat that's bursting with mexican and middle eastern flavours. It's vegetarian and vegan to boot, a meatfree treat to have for lunch or dinner and tastes even better if you make it in advance!

Smoked Paprika Avocado Salad

Gavin Wren Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

Most of the writing on my blog is not about food, but life in general and how I cope with it or not, in some cases. On occasion I veer onto a food-related social or political bent, but it’s rare for me to write lovingly about the flavours and story behind a recipe. Today, I’ve been staring at my screen for 53 minutes and have only written the preceding sentence. The first 51 minutes and 13 seconds were spent typing then deleting, typing then deleting as I attempted to coax a story about smoked paprika onto the page.

Constructive Procrastination.

I also checked out the bulk price of Kalamata olives (c.£20 for 2kg on eBay, £16 on Amazon fresh) and appraised which size Really Useful Boxes I need for my cupboards (none, they’re not quite the right size), to round up the disparate bags of half… come and read more…

Here's a spicy, zingy Indian style sprouted bean salad which has been my default lunch option for a few weeks, because it ticks all my boxes for a great lunch. It's simple to make (once you've got the sprouts), it's ridiculously tasty with the combination of seeds, spices, lemon and chilli, plus it's got a big tick next to all the major nutrients we need. All this alongside it being completely vegan, it really couldn't be more versatile and all satisfying.

Indian Sprouted Bean Salad with Avocado

Gavin Wren Recipes, Salads, Vegan, Vegetarian

Here’s a spicy, Indian style sprouted bean salad which has been my default lunch option for the last few weeks, because it ticks all my ‘great lunch’ boxes. It’s simple to make (once you’ve got the sprouts), ridiculously tasty with the combination of seeds, spices, lemon and chilli, plus it’s got a big tick next to all the major nutrients we need. Alongside it being completely vegan, it really couldn’t be more versatile and all satisfying.

Social Sprouts

Sprouts say one thing to me. Brussels. I’m not talking about the cosmopolitan city, lying a mere 121 minutes away from London St Pancras, rather the bitter green orbs of distaste which I was deigned not to like well before one had ever crossed the threshold of my trap. Society seemed constructed for little children who Don’t Like Sprouts. Perhaps it’s their bitter flavour, or perhaps there’s an entire social… come and read more…

Today's recipe is a simple beetroot and mint salad with a pomegranate dressing, made with just a few ingredients and prepared in a matter of minutes. This delightful vegan and vegetarian dish makes a perfect side dish for a quick lunch or salad staple for the summer BBQ season.

Beetroot and Mint Salad with Pomegranate Dressing

Gavin Wren Recipes, Salads, Side dishes, Vegetables, Vegetarian

Today’s recipe is a simple beetroot and mint salad with a pomegranate dressing, made with few ingredients and whipped up in a matter of minutes. This delightful vegan and vegetarian dish makes a perfect side dish for a quick lunch or salad staple for the summer BBQ season.
My spiritual culinary hero, Edouard de Pomiane sums up beetroot beautifully in his book ‘cooking in 10 minutes’.
“Beetroot can be a very pleasant vegetable. Its [sic] possibilities are exploited far too little.” – Edouard de Pomiane
He continues to describe several beetroot recipes which redefine the word simplicity, the most straightforward recipe being laid out using thirteen words, including the title. That, however, is not the shortest in the book.

Hero.

Edouard de Pomiane published that book in 1930, becoming hero to many of today’s most lauded cookery writers. The inside cover sparkles with comments from pillars of culinary knowledge Elizabeth David “

Traditional Caprese salad doesn’t have pesto, balsamic, loads of herbs or other ingredients, it’s just fantastic tomatoes, mozzarella di bufala campana, basil, extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. That is all you need for the most amazing, light, bright, fresh mouthful of summer. When you see the tomatoes in season, it’s time to jump at this perfect vegetarian lunch dish and KISS! (Keep It Simple, Stupid!)

Caprese Salad – Mozzarella, Tomato and Basil

Gavin Wren Recipes, Salads, Small Bites, Vegetables, Vegetarian

Today, I revisit the world of beautiful Italian simplicity, the Caprese Salad. Borne out of luscious hot summers that gift the Italian land with amazing tomatoes, they marry with thick wedges of traditional Mozzarella di Bufala Campana perfectly, creating a dish that deserves only the best ingredients, and nothing else will do. Along with it’s stablemate, the Tricolore Salad, the Caprese sits in the throne of elegant beauty amongst dishes, so often bastardised by those who don’t know better. On the other hand, you, my friend, do know better, or at least you will do, in about 730 words time.

Last year I published a rant about how Italian food is debased by people’s interpretations of it. Italian dishes often require just a few ingredients, which makes them incredibly accessible and simple, but they should be the most amazing examples of the ingredients that you can find.

Clementine and fennel salad with a citrussy dill dressing, a light, sweet side salad with the zesty overtones of clementine and the uniquely aromatic flavour of dill, which pairs beautifully with citrus flavours. Anise-scented fennel is the ideal vegetable to base this salad upon, bumping it up to a full sized, slaw-esque side salad. Perfectly suited to light summer dinners, shared lunches, picnics or alongside fish. It’s vegetarian and vegan as well, plus dairy free so perfect for most diets.

Clementine and Fennel Salad with a Zesty Dill Dressing

Gavin Wren Recipes, Salads, Small Bites, Vegan, Vegetarian

Today’s recipe is a clementine and fennel salad with a citrussy dill dressing, a light, sweet side salad with the zesty overtones of clementine and the uniquely aromatic flavour of dill, which pairs beautifully with citrus flavours. Anise-scented fennel is the perfect vegetable to base this salad upon, bumping it up to a full sized, slaw-esque side salad.

Milestones in Blogging.

This is post number one hundred and ninety six in the history of le petit oeuf, meaning that the big two-hundred is fast approaching, a massively significant milestone in my blogging life. Those 196 posts comprise approximately 200,000 words and around 1,000 images. If that’s not enough words, I write another thousand every morning of every day, as part of my morning pages ritual. This practice is fast approaching it’s first anniversary on the 9th May, meaning I will have written nearly 365,000 painful

Sweet, crunchy pomegranate seeds sit alongside the sweet, sharp pomegranate molasses in this light chickpea and red pepper salad which makes a great side dish, accompaniment to bread & cheese or alongside a bigger meal or picnic. It really is simple, with no cooking and just a few ingredients, most of which can be kept in the cupboard to whip together at the last second. It's vegetarian and vegan as well, so perfect or everyone!

Jewelled Chickpea and Red Pepper Salad

Gavin Wren Recipes, Salads, Side dishes, Vegan, Vegetables

Today’s recipe is a chickpea and red pepper salad jewelled with delicious, crisp pomegranate seeds and dressed with a pomegranate molasses dressing infused with za’atar, which I knocked up in a hurry whilst trying to use up some leftovers. Yes, I genuinely had everything except the rocket knocking around in the cupboard. I keep an excessively large jar of roasted red peppers in the fridge and I was gifted a couple of enormous pomegranates along …