Caroline Campbell - Swim Sky Breathe

June 25, 2020December 2, 2020

Watercress Soup and Egg Mayo Sandwiches, Veganised

Watercress soup egg mayo sandwich recipe

My Granny was an amazing cook. She wasn’t vegan of course, but I have so many lovely food-related memories of her, from the little silver balls she used to decorate cookies with to her jam on toast cut into tiny squares. When she died almost ten years ago, I took some of her recipes and have veganised some of them. Her sister, my Auntie Eileen, also made great food – her lemon buns were the best lemon buns ever, and she’d always make delicate little egg mayo sandwiches for parties.

I’ve veganised two of their recipes here – Granny’s watercress soup, and Auntie Eileen’s egg mayo sandwiches.

Granny’s Watercress Soup

25g vegan butter

1 onion, peeled and chopped finely

2 potatoes, peeled and chopped coarsely

100g/4oz watercress with tough stems removed and discarded

900ml vegetable stock

300ml plant milk

1 bay leaf

Salt and black pepper

Vegan single cream to serve (optional)

Melt the butter in a large pan. Add the onion and cook gently, stirring from time to time until soft.

Add the potatoes and watercress – retain two or three leaves for garnishing – and cook for about 5 minutes until watercress has wilted.

Pour in the stock and milk and add the bay leaf, then season with a little salt and black pepper. Bring to the boil, cover the pan with a lid and simmer gently for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.

Remove the bay leaf and discard. Transfer the soup to a blender and blend until smooth.

At this point you can add a little single cream, and garnish the soup with a little watercress.

Serves four medium bowls.

Auntie Eileen’s Egg Mayo Sandwiches

1 block firm tofu

Vegan mayo – about half a jar

Kala namak salt – one to two teaspoons

Teaspoon turmeric

White or wholemeal bread

Handful chives

First, press the tofu using either a tofu press or by wrapping the tofu in a clean tea towel, putting it in a sieve with heavy books on top, and suspending it over a bowl to press out the moisture.

Once the tofu is pressed, mash it up to a fine consistency using either your hands or a potato masher.

Add the mayo till it is creamy – I use about half a jar of Veganaise for this.

Add the turmeric – you can use more to give a more yellow colour – and the salt till you achieve the taste you want.

Sprinkle with chives and make sandwiches – remember to cut the crusts off so they look as tiny and delicate as Auntie Eileen’s!

June 16, 2020December 2, 2020

Eight things I’ve learned about yoga

I started practising yoga around four years ago.

At first, it was purely a form of physical exercise for me. I absolutely hate gyms and machines and the pounding, sweaty vibe you find there, which I’m not dissing at all – it just isn’t me. I wanted something that would make me strong and toned and flexible, but that could also be slow and gentle and thoughtful.

Since then, yoga has evolved into a much more holistic practice for me, and has become more than a form of exercise. Here I thought I’d share eight things about yoga I’ve learned along the way.

It’s more or less free, though a good yoga mat helps. Yoga is a very inclusive activity. And although you can splurge a fortune on Lululemon leggings – which are admittedly fab – and expensive clothing, it can just as easily be done in a pair of leggings and t shirt. My main tips for clothing are to have clothes that fit, which means leggings that don’t slide down and need yanked up every minute during your practice, a top that isn’t too tight or so loose that your head disappears inside it when you go into down dog, and a decent mat. I started off with a very cheap £9.99 mat and it just got slippy and uncomfortable after a few months. A slightly more expensive one – which was £30 – was made of better quality material and doesn’t have me sliding all over the place, as well as having lasted two years and counting.
You can see results so quickly if you practice. I don’t just mean results in terms of the appearance of your body and increased strength, but in how quickly you can go from being absolutely hopeless at a pose to nailing it. When I started out, bakasana pose, or crow, was something that I watched other people in my class do, open mouthed. I couldn’t even fathom how anyone could lift themselves off the floor even for a second like that without face planting. But I was determined to try. A month, daily practice, and several face plants later, I managed to lift myself a couple of centimetres off the ground for maybe one second. And that was it! I kept practising, and now I can bakasana with confidence for a good thirty seconds. Headstand was the same – the sheer exhilaration I felt after two years of practise and finally kicking off into a perfect straight headstand was unbeatable.
The physical poses are only one part of yoga. Yoga, meaning ‘yoking’ or ‘union’ in Sanskrit, has eight limbs, that represent its central practices from the outer world to the inner. Asana – the postures practised in yoga – represent the third limb – and yoga is as much about spirtuality as it is about the physical practice. It’s fine if you want to focus just on that part of yoga – there’s no right or wrong approach. But it’s respectful to be aware of the bigger picture in yoga, and it will enrich your practice if you commit to learning more about the other limbs of it.
You never regret taking time out to do yoga. Sometimes you’re tired, or grumpy, and you just want to stay in bed and scroll through Instagram. But yoga, like outdoor swimming for me, is rarely something you come out of feeling worse (see point 5 for the exception here!). If you set aside time for yourself to practice yoga – even ten minutes if there’s too much going on – your body and mind will always feel better for it. So when you can’t be bothered, or you’re feeling low, remember to tell yourself that. Your future self will thank you for taking the time out to do a little yoga.
But, following on from 5, don’t set yourself up for disappointment by doing it when there’s too much else going on. There are exceptions to four. If your kids are being noisy, or you’re stressed because the guy downstairs has been blasting out his music since 6am, or next door are having a kitchen put in and the banging is driving you mad, there’s a good chance that’s going to come in to your yoga practice unless you’ve truly mastered the art of focusing solely on the moment and what’s going on with you, your mind and your body. And if you can’t focus, or you’re being interrupted by your five year old every two minutes, it’s likely you’re just going to end up more stressed than before. Set aside time for yoga – but only if you know you’re able to do it without noise and interruption.
We should respect yoga’s roots and its cultural heritage. This might be the most important point of all. Cultural appropriation is something that’s been talked about a lot in the yoga community in recent years, and rightly so. It’s important to acknowledge that there’s far more to yoga than Instagram headstands and expensive designer leggings. Yoga is estimated to be at least 2500 years old, having originated in India, and has deep spiritual and cultural roots. Many of the items that you see in yoga studios as decoration have important religious and cultural significance – so it’s inappropriate to wear a pair of leggings with Ganesh on them, or for your yoga studio to use items with spiritual significance as a decoration in the bathroom. Yoga has a rich history which it’s important to honour.
You can do yoga anywhere – well, mostly anywhere! I’ve stood on my head on the tops of mountains, planked on beaches and enjoyed the feeling of Shavasana (corpose pose) in quiet green spaces. Whenever you find a quiet, flat space, where you feel safe to do a little yoga, and you’re not bothering anyone else, go for it! But just to repeat – make sure it’s safe!
Yoga is a gentle activity but you can injure yourself if you don’t do it right. I ended up injuring my rotator cuff in January of last year with a poorly positioned side plank that I held for far too long even when my arm was screaming for me to stop. I’ve heard of people seriously injuring their necks doing headstands. Learn how to do the poses properly, either with an instructor or using online teaching, and if it hurts, STOP.

Recipe: Truffle oil, lemon and walnut spaghetti

Spaghetti with truffle and walnut sauce recipe

I first discovered truffle oil on a year abroad in Italy. I was having lunch in an eaterie near the Duomo in Milan called the Panino Giusto and ordered – as this was back in my pre-vegan days – a Speck and Provolone panino. It had this incredible, intense, earthy flavour I’d never experience before, and I asked the server what it was. She told me that it was ‘olio al tartufo’ – which I’d never heard of, but was hooked from that day on.

Milan visit inspired recipe for truffle and walnut spaghetti — Milan’s Piazza Duomo

This was back in 1994, so it was a rare ingredient to find in the UK, whereas now it’s pretty easy to find it in most supermarkets. This truffled spaghetti is a decadent and rich pasta dish that’s bursting with flavour, so definitely not one to make if you’re on a diet! This recipe serves four medium size bowls of spaghetti.

INGREDIENTS

Block silken tofu
100g walnuts
2 lemons
Salt
2 tbsp truffle oil plus more for drizzling
2 handfuls parsley
About 250g spaghetti

METHOD

To prepare the sauce, you don’t need to press the tofu as you are adding water anyway and blending it. Put it in your blender (I used a Nutribullet) with the juice of a lemon, a teaspoon salt, the walnuts, 2 tbsp truffle oil, a handful of parsley plus around 100ml warm water so the sauce isn’t too thick. Add more water if it isn’t creamy enough.
Then cook the spaghetti to your taste and serve topped with the rest of the parsley – you’ll probably find this dish doesn’t require much seasoning as it’s so laden with flavour already.

Maybe even enjoy it with my homemade fennel and olive rolls!

May 17, 2020July 3, 2022

Vegan fennel and olive bread rolls

Recipe: fennel and olive homemade bread rolls

I had a fennel in my veg box recently that I wasn’t sure what to do with. I love the taste of fennel, and it has lots of health benefits, as well as the bulb being a good source of fibre, potassium and vitamin C. I didn’t fancy soup, or pesto, or eating it as part of a roast that day. So I hit on the idea of baking it into a bread recipe! I knew fennel goes beautifully with olives, so decided to make vegan fennel and olive bread rolls. They were delicious with Just Vegan butter, and also with cashew cheese, smoked Applewood and salad.

Here’s how I made them:

Ingredients

Medium-sized whole fennel bulb that has been roasted and liquidised in a food processor with 150ml warm water
750 g strong white bread flour
7g yeast
300 ml warm water
Jar black olives, chopped
½ tsp salt
Tbsp sugar
2 tbsp olive oil
Tbsp fennel seeds
Rock salt

Method

Once you’ve prepared the fennel, add the flour, yeast, salt and sugar to a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the olive oil, water, and liquidised fennel.

Mix together to form a dough, and knead for ten minutes until you can stretch the dough so it’s thin enough to see through and it springs back when you poke your finger in it.

Put the dough in a clean bowl and leave for an hour to prove.

Then divide the dough into 10 equal size strips and roll them into sausages of about 32 cm in length.

To make knotted rolls, tie the sausage of dough into a loose knot as above. Tuck one end over the top of the roll into the centre, and tuck the other end to meet it under the roll to the centre. Leave to prove again for half an hour.

Toast the fennel seeds in a dry pan for a couple of minutes and sprinkle on top of the rolls, along with a little rock salt.

Bake for 15-20 minutes in the oven until your fennel and olive bread rolls are golden and enjoy!

These are very good with our truffle oil, lemon and walnut spaghetti!