Blackened egg, beetroot and corn two ways, patty pans with charred green pepper sauce, onion flour buds and fried capers.

I had so much fun experimenting with the concept of meat free Mondays. The challenge set myself recently is to create a vegetarian and zero-waste dish at least once a week.

This came from the realisation that I am daunted by cooking vegetarian dishes.

Where do I start, what do I make and most importantly: won’t I miss my favourite part of the whole dish, meat?

What I soon discovered is that it was just my own lack of exposure to good vegetarian dishes. Not having had much experience creating meat-free dishes and not knowing how to cook a good vegetarian dish and how to compensate for my standard go-to -meat- scared me off.

This dish brought back my confidence in myself and my ability to create a delicious, meat-free dish. Going waste-free was an additional challenge that fit in well with my overall aim to cook sustainably.

Blackened Egg

First up, a perfectly cooked egg. Boiled in six minutes and then straight into an ice bath. I created the ash with charcoal ciabatta, nori and black sesame seeds, seasoned with smokey Maldon salt.

Beetroot

Challenged to have zero waste, I wanted to use the whole beetroot, so I boiled the bulb, pan fried the stalks with garlic and pepper and utilised the leaves for garnish.

Corn

I cut the corn from the top down to create 4 long slices, covered these in olive oil and olive salt, roasted to a crunch at 200 degrees for 30 mins. The second corn method is corn husks dehydrated and crisped.

Patty pans

I often tend to over-engineer food, so I’m learning to have restraint when something is a hero on its own. This time I decided to just chop off the bum of the patty pans and roast them at a high heat with salt and pepper.

Charred green pepper sauce

This is one of my favourite sauces. Take four peppers, chopped into quarters, cover in fresh thyme, olive oil and season well. Then roast until charred at 200 degrees. Blend with two whole fresh peppers to brighten up the sauce and mix with two tablespoons of cream cheese.

Assemble the dish and decorate with onion flower buds.

About Shawn Godfrey

Shawn Godfrey is an entrepreneur based in Cape Town, South Africa. After the Covid-19 lockdown saw his business in financial distress, cooking was the creative outlet that helped to keep him sane. To keep track of his recipes, and encourage friends and families to join him, he starts his instagram account The Roasted Dad.

Fast-forward to late 2021 - on a whim Shawn (encouraged by his wife Lianne) enters MasterChef South Africa. It is a crazy time of life: running a 200 people business and struggling to keep it profitable, two small children with a third on the way, and about to move into a new house. But when Shawn gets selected to be one of the 20 contestants participating in the fourth season of MasterChef South Africa, he decides to go all in. Leaving his 7-month-pregnant wife to look after their then three and one-year-old children, he battles it out and comes back home five weeks later with the trophy and a million rand prize money in his pocket.

It all started with an Instagram account, but The Roasted Dad is so much more now. Shawn has stayed his entrepreneurial self and whilst he hosts Private Dinner Parties and Cook-with-Me Demos, does Restaurant Take-Overs, he still runs the lighting company and several other businesses.

On his blog, Shawn shares Restaurant Reviews and Accommodation Reviews, and gives an insight into the wild and wonderful life he leads together with his wife Lianne, and their three children Aiden (6), Olivia (4) and Harvey (2).

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