Spiced satay pineapple beans in sweet potato

With our weekly pizza making and love of tinned pineapple on pizza, we regularly have leftover pineapple in the fridge. It can end up in smoothies, on cereal, in baking, or just eaten plain. Occasionally it ends up in stir fries. Last week, it inspired this meal.

This is one of those simple dishes that barely constitutes a recipe. You can make it with store cupboard staples (presuming your staples are like mine and include tinned beans, pineapple, peanut butter and spices) and it takes all of 5 minutes to throw together. The bean mix could top a regular jacket potato instead of sweet potato, or be paired with rice or couscous or quinoa. It does work brilliantly with sweet potato though.

I served this with asparagus which is in season here at the moment. Asparagus isn't my favourite vegetable, but I do take pleasure in eating it in season when the flavours are at their peak.

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We Should Cocoa chocolate malt challenge: Vegan chocolate malt pie

This month, Johanna of Green Gourmet Giraffe is hosting the We Should Cocoa challenge. This is a long running link-up (70 months to date!) centrally organised by Choclette of Tin and Thyme. I haven't participated before but was drawn in by Johanna's theme: chocolate recipes that also feature malt. Reading the theme made me realise that I'd not had malty products since turning vegan - clearly something to be rectified.

After doing a bit of research, I was delighted to discover you can get vegan malt powder - and indeed, malt powder per se is vegan. It is the added milk powder that renders commercial malt drinks (like Horlicks and Milo) non-vegan. I was less delighted by the difficulties I had sourcing any malt powder, even in London with Whole Foods as an option. You can order it online but I opted to skip that and use malt syrup for my recipe instead. This was also fun to discover and reminds me a bit of molasses...but is maltier. It's quite readily available in health food stores in the UK.

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Vegan pizza with tahini, mint, sriracha and kale

I've mentioned previously that we regularly make pizza for dinner. However, I've never actually shared a full savoury pizza recipe (I have shared a dessert one). There are two main reasons for this. One is that I use a base recipe only loosely adapted from Kate's on No Meat and Three Veg, and it didn't seem necessary or appropriate to re-post it. The other is that I generally use the same toppings, and they aren't that exciting: tomato paste, dried oregano, spinach or kale leaves, pepper, tomatoes and pineapple. Sometimes I use hummus instead of tomato paste, and sometimes I add nutritional yeast. So far, so standard.

This pizza was a bit more adventurous and so I am taking the opportunity to share the recipe with you. To be honest, even as I made it I wasn't confident that it would work out. I was sure about the tahini, and even the sriracha, but mint on a pizza? It wasn't something I'd come across and I was prepared to regret my whim to use it. Fortunately, the combination was delicious and I can now attest that mint on pizza is excellent! I will definitely be adding these toppings to my pizza rotation.

I tend to make pizza base in a quantity that gives 4 individual pizzas. Mr Bite and I each have one for dinner, and then another slightly smaller one for lunch the next day. We have his and hers toppings (albeit with lots of overlap) and I am sure many households would do the same. Thus, I list the pizza base ingredients to make a quantity of 4 bases, but then give the toppings for this particular recipe with a guide to what you need per pizza. Whilst the tahini, mint and srirarcha components are essential for this version, feel free to vary the vegetable toppings to suit what you have to hand.

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Two years in the UK - a celebratory day trip to Lewes and Brighton

Today marks 2 years since we flew into London from Australia. In many ways, it feels like much longer. The last year has been particularly eventful - we moved out of London to Kent, bought a car, and consequently made it from almost the bottom of the UK (Cornwall) to the top (Scotland), as well as seeing lots of places in between. I smiled when I re-read my post from last June on 'One year in London'. I spoke then about adjusting to life in a one-bed flat without a car, and it is safe to say we have since adjusted out again to life with more space and driving. Overall, I would also say that we are very settled now into life in the UK.

Lewes Castle

To mark the 2 years since our move, we ventured south yesterday to Lewes and Brighton, both in Sussex. I don't think I'd ever been to Lewes before and we were both impressed by the town, which is dominated by an impressive castle (above and below) and has a mix of attractive streets and parks.

Lewes Castle

Whilst Brighton is a hot-bed of vegan food, I knew we would struggle to get there for lunch and so directed us to Laportes in Lewes instead. Laportes is a cafe and food store with an emphasis on fresh, local, organic produce. They aren't specifically vegan or gluten-free but cater to both of those requirements if required. They also have an attractive garden at the rear of the cafe for outdoor eating when the weather permits.

Laportes lunches

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Carrot cake ice cream (the simple version)

In January 2014, I shared a recipe for carrot cake pudding or ice cream. I still love that recipe and highly recommend it to you. It features carrots (of course!), frozen banana and canned coconut milk, as well as optional but recommended maple syrup, vanilla, spices and desiccated coconut.

Today's recipe is similar but slightly streamlined. It's entirely appropriate for breakfast and, if you're like me, you'll always have the ingredients on hand (I don't always have coconut milk). Adding raisins to the carrots and bananas gave plenty of sweetness without extra syrup, and really boosted the carrot cake profile. Basically, I love this version too. I wanted to share it with you and record it for my future reference!

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Spiced couscous salad with grilled portobello mushrooms

I'm still in my mushroom phase and have branched out from small button mushrooms to the larger portobello variety. Aren't they fun? One day we will have an outdoor barbecue and I'll grill them in style, but for now they are just as delicious cooked in an oven-based griller.

This simple meal pairs the grilled portobellos with an easy couscous salad. The combination worked very well, both in ease of making (the couscous cooks while the mushrooms grill) and in the resulting mix of flavours and textures.

I used paprika, onion and chilli powders to flavour the meal, along with a dash each of salt, pepper and sugar and some fresh mint leaves. The mint leaves were from our garden, which added to my enjoyment of them! I also added diced carrots and whole snow peas (mange tout) to the couscous. I loved the resulting mix but other vegetables would work well too if you have different things to hand.

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