You’ve organised a brunch at home and your best friend is top of the guest list—but you’ve forgotten that her new boyfriend is vegan! Don’t worry, you just need to do some extra shopping and give your plans a bit of a tweak.
There are lots of commercially available vegan products today to make it easier when you’ve got ethically committed guests coming to brunch, from vegan cheese to vegetarian cold cuts. Here are some ideas:
Vegan cheese, apple and golden syrup bagels
To make homemade bagels you’ll need 350 g of wholegrain flour, a packet of baking powder, 250 ml of water, 3 spoonfuls of golden syrup, 1 teaspoonful of salt and poppy seeds. Mix the flour, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. Add warm water and continue mixing until you get a smooth mixture. Cover with a tea towel and set aside for an hour. Roll out the dough on a floured surface and knead well. Divide up and shape into bagels. Bring some water to the boil and preheat the oven to 180 ºC while you finish off shaping the bagels. Dunk the bagels into a bowl of water to check they float, remove and roll them in poppy seeds. Put them into the oven to bake; they’ll take about 30 minutes.
One idea is to fill them with vegan cheese, slices of organic apple and a little golden syrup to offset the sharp apple and the savoury cheese. Alternatively, you could use salad leaves and vegetarian cold cuts.
Vegan “eggs” Benedict
Brunch isn’t brunch without eggs Benedict, so here’s a delicious vegan version. You start with vegan bread—without any eggs, milk or butter—and vegan bacon. We’ll replace the scrambled eggs with tofu: break a piece of well-strained tofu into small pieces with the help of a fork and fry with some finely chopped onion, turmeric and pepper. Cook until all the liquid has gone. Use a glass to cut out circles of bread and arrange the “eggs” and bacon on top. All that remains now is the sauce: vegan hollandaise sauces are commercially available or you can mix together vegan mayonnaise and mustard.
