Happy Birthday to Hip Hop Vegan, Andre 3000

Source PETA

 It's May 27, which means that Roots and Greens has the honour of celebrating the birthday one our favourite human beings and commited vegan, Mr. Andre 3000. Along with performing serious services to awesomeness with hip hop crew Outkast, Andre 3000 has dabbled in acting, activism, fashion, and music production. His commitment to the cause earned him a place as PETA's Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrity in 2004. For his birthday, I put on the Love Below and I've prepared a special Andre 3000 inspired vegan meal that even Ms. Jackson would like. Happy birthday Dre, I hope you like the Bombs over Butter bean Cassoulet with Idle -Wild Rice and Spinachplayalisticohsosimpesideofsalad as much as I did.

  Idle-Wild Rice

Wild rice needs a little bit more prep than most store bought rice. I used a Thai Glutinous Black Rice for this and it need to be soaked for a hour before I could put it in rice cooker - but it was worth the wait for the beautiful colour and nutty flavour of the rice. I'll be honest, though, I didn't find it that sticky! 

Bombs over Butter bean Cassoulet

This is what happens when you mix one of my all time favourite Outkast songs, Bombs Over Bagdad, with a Nigel Slater recipe.

• 1/2 medium-sized red onion 
• 1/2 bell pepper (I used a yellow but red will work too)
• 2 large cloves garlic 
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 x 400g can of chopped tomatoes (or passata) 
• 1 x 400g can of butter beans 
• 1 tbsp grain mustard
• 1 tbsp red wine
• Mix of seasoning to your taste

1. Put your big casserole pot on the hob and heat the olive oil. Add coarsly chopped onions, bell pepper and the garlic, to the pot and let cook over a meduim heat until they are soft. give them a stir to keep them from sticking to the pan.
2. Add a bit of all spice and dried thyme to the onions with the chopped tomatos and drained beans. Next fill one of your empty cans half way with water (about 150ml) and pour this over the mixture, and then bring to the boil. 
3. Seaon to taste. For this I used mustard as recommended by Nigel, as well as thyme, a bit of stock cube, pepper, and all spice. The thing that finally made it sing for me was a couple of cap fulls of red wine!
4. Then just partly cover with a lid and leave to simmer gently for 30 minutes or so – you want the sauce to thicken- but of course, the longer you let it cook the tastier it gets.

Spinachplayalisticohsosimpesideofsalad 

This is just what is says, an oh so simple side of playalistic spinach salad. For this I used raw baby spinach  and cucumber. I must say that spinach is one of my favourite salad greens because, like watercress, it can be used for cold salads or hot meals, it's just so versatile. Then I just mixed it together with a bit of olive oil and chinese vinager, and topped with pepper. Delicious.