VeganMoFo: A happy Hallowe'en dinner

This post is part of the Vegan Month of Food - or VeganMoFo to you and me. To learn more about VeganMoFo, click here.

It's the last day of VeganMoFo and it's Hallowe'en - both deserve a bit of celebration of the gluttonous kind. And a bit of silly mood-setting - I'm going for a Wicker Man kind of thing here, albeit a bit half-heartedly.

We decided for our Hallowe'en meal to go for a combo of swamp soup, witches' fingers and chalices of blood-red wine. Oh, and then a bit of pudding.

Here's the witches' fingers (yeah, we didn't have much in the way of props - did you spot that?) recreated from pastry:

And swamp soup (assuming your swamp was full of avocados):

And parkin (oh alright, it's normally a Bonfire Night thing, but who's going to quibble? It's like the lovely bastard offspring of gingerbread, sponge cake and a flapjack and should be eaten every day of the year, in my opinion.) If you want the recipe, the original is on The Guardian website and easily veganisable.

If you fancy making your own swamp soup (you could just call it leek and avocado soup when it's not Hallowe'en, I won't tell) you'd do it like this.

Swamp Soup/ Leek and Avocado Soup
Ingredients

Oil
Three cloves of garlic, finely chopped
One large leek, cleaned and cut into 1cm rounds
One or one and a half large avocados, chopped into dice
500ml or more* of stock
The kernels from one corn on the cob, cooked
Two tomatoes, cut into small dice
Salt, pepper and mustard if you fancy

How you do it
Fry the leek and garlic in a little oil over low heat for 10 minutes or so. If they catch the pan and caramelise a little, that's no bad thing.

Add the avocado and stock. Cover the soup, bring to a simmer, then turn down to a low heat and cook for 10 minutes more. *Add the amount of stock depending on how thick you like your soup. If thin, you can go up to 600 or 700mls. If not, 500mls, even 400mls, should suit you.

Liquidise the soup in a food processor or with a stick blender.

Add the sweetcorn and tomatoes, and cook for another five minutes. The tomatoes should start breaking down about then.

Add salt, pepper and mustard if you fancy. Serve.


And that's it - here endeth the last VeganMoFo post of my first VeganMoFo. I enjoyed it and would love to do it again.

Happy Hallowe'en and happy VeganMoFo!