vegan

I love these little green parcels that I first made using a Stephanie Alexander recipe. These have a different filling that bursts with the flavours of Cyprus.

A good, slow-cooked chilli always goes down well and is great for feeding a crowd. Make a double batch and freeze half for a later date. It’s also great served on jacket potatoes, in wraps or in tacos.

These nuggets can easily be turned into patties for hemp burgers. They freeze well too.

Having breakfast ready and waiting to go is one of the easiest ways to kick off good nutrition for the day. I’ve incorporated a variety of ingredients in this flavourful breakfast including nutrient-dense hemp seeds to add valuable plant-based proteins to the meal. You can play around with the flavours, fruits and spices but I think this carrot-cake style will knock your breakfast socks off!

A simple breakfast of jam on toast can so easily move from simple to healthfully decadent and abundant in nutrients too with this delicious jam. It’s heavenly on top of a sourdough or seed bread with a dollop of coconut yoghurt and some extra fruit such as banana or kiwifruit.

We usually have a variety of herbs in our fridge throughout the week, but by the end what’s left often looks a little weary. So rather than pop them in the bin or compost I try to make use of what remains by whipping up a scrumptious pesto. While a traditional pesto calls for pine nuts, ricotta, parmesan and olive oil I’ve swapped them for hemp oil and cashews, which create a beautiful earthy but creamy flavour. Serve with your favourite pasta — ours is pulse pasta — and some extra green vegies such as peas and you have a really delicious, wholesome meal.

One of the best things about nori rolls is that kids love to make them; when kids make things in the kitchen they also tend to eat them. I swap white rice for brown rice because it increases fibre and is a wholefood.

Clive of India curry powder is one of my favourite curry powders when it comes to making pies. When the spices combine with the puff pastry, it’s incredibly moreish. I also love this curry mixture without pastry, in a bowl with brown basmati rice.

Turmeric has been used and well respected for 2500 years in India as an Ayurvedic medicine. This brightly coloured spice, which gives curry its lovely orange-yellow colour, has many outstanding health-boosting properties. Curcumin is also a highly effective anti-inflammatory as well as having strong antioxidant properties. Regular consumption of turmeric in the diet could protect you against infections, especially those of the digestive tract, as well as relieving arthritic conditions and helping protect you from cancers and Alzheimer’s disease.

I can’t tell you how important it is to follow a soaking process when preparing any legumes or pulses. If you have a careful look at your soaked legumes after 24 hours, you begin to see the sprouting shoots pop up underneath the skin. This sprouting process reduces the amount of phytic acid in legumes, which makes them much easier to digest. Phytic acid can also bind to essential nutrients, making them less available to the body. Reducing phytic acid levels releases more of these essential nutrients to the body. I find it easiest to soak, sprout and cook a lot of chickpeas at once. Then I freeze them into smaller containers and have them ready for use in a dish like this.

Having a curry spice on hand is such a delicious way to diversify the way you cook vegies and proteins and this recipe is a wonderful example of just that. If you don’t have tempeh then an organic tofu, chicken or fish will work well, too.

These bliss balls are the perfect sweet treat and the spices add a lovely warm and heated flavour. These would also be delicious with some dried ginger powder to create a ginger-nut flavour.