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Prep Ahead. Easy Meals. All Plants.
It was right about when I tipped the sautéed garlic and greens into the food processor that I realized, oh, I’m about to make enough pasta sauce to feed an army. Not all the recipes in 27-year-old British recipe creator Calum Harris’s latest cookbook are scaled to keep a platoon alive for a month, as his Gorj Garlic Edamame Pasta is; the majority make a reasonable four-ish servings. But most are simple enough that you could tackle a few on a Sunday afternoon, stocking a fridge-shelf’s worth of sustainable vegan meals for the busy week ahead. That’s the idea behind Batch: Prep Ahead. Easy Meals. All Plants.
Batch cooking has a long tradition and a bit of a mixed connotation. For busy parents and professionals, it helps ensure there’s a home-cooked meal at the end of a long work day, yet it often risks the specific misery of eating the same thing for many days in a row. Harris skirts this risk by advocating for the liberal use of the fridge and freezer: Eat a bit of what you’ve made, he says, then punt the rest frostily into the future by days or even weeks.
In his third cookbook — all of which have been vegan — he rejects the idea that plant-based eating is a “dying movement.” In the U.S., of course, veganism no longer enjoys the hype it did through the pandemic years: The “carnibro” is ascendant in 2026. All the same, Harris has a point that plant-based eating is more accepted than it once was. Restaurants are now far more expected to have actually tasty vegan options on the menu, and few people would bat an eye if you showed up to a potluck or a watch party with a plant-based contribution, like a batch of Harris’s British take on ranch dressing to go with a veggie tray.
I’m not vegan myself, but to reduce my carbon footprint, I try to make all my grab-from-the-fridge breakfasts and lunches animal-product-free. There, Harris has a lot to offer in the way of schmears and salads that can fill a pita, top toast, or grace a bed of greens: His Salsa Verde White Beany Filler is herby-bright and light but filling — just what I want on a sandwich or by itself during a quick work break. His Not an Avocado Topper makes vivid-green use of edamame and peas, with more protein than avocado toast.
Given the meal-prep premise, I loved the meal plans at the back of the book, but wished more of the recipes built on one another, the way the Salt + Pepper Crispy Tofu is used in the Gingery Poke Bowl, and the leftovers from a Harissa Bolognese are used in a lasagna. But it’s hard to mind, when Batch contains so many good ideas for how to turn garbanzos — my favorite pantry staple — into exciting mains like his Creamy Romesco Chickpeas and a genius little number called Chocolate Banana Butter. Why haven’t I been mashing up bananas, cocoa, almond butter, and syrup all along? A smear of that on sourdough may be toast’s highest form.
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Gorj Garlic Edamame Pasta
- Yield: Serves 4
Description
One of the first recipes I ever uploaded to the internet was a plant-based dish called Green & Mean Pasta. I’m not sure what was so mean about it, but what I did love was that the greenness didn’t take away from how gorgeously garlicky it was. Because greens = healthy and healthy can = boring, but this is not.
Ingredients
- 14 oz broccolini
- 6 garlic cloves
- Light olive oil
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 1 16-oz box dried rigatoni
- 3/4 cup frozen peas, slightly rounded
- 1 1/2 cups frozen edamame beans
- 11 cups baby spinach
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1 1/2 cups fresh basil, loosely packed
- 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
Instructions
- Chop the broccolini up into little tiny bits and pop the garlic cloves out of their skins. Fry them both in a large frying pan over a medium heat with a good glug of olive oil and a good salting and peppering.
- Now get your large saucepan on the heat with boiling water and give that a salt too. Pop your rigatoni in and follow the packet instructions until it’s cooked.
- When the broccolini starts to soften up a bit, add the peas, edamame, and baby spinach to the frying pan. Cook until the peas and edamame defrost and the spinach wilts.
- In a large food processor, add the cooked veggies, lemon juice, basil, and nutritional yeast. Get a jug and take some of that pasta water out of the saucepan, around 2/3 cup. Pour it into the processor and blitz everything until you have a smooth and vibrant green pasta sauce. Give it a season to your taste.
- Drain your pasta and pop it back into the saucepan, then lovingly pour that green sauce in. Stir it all so it’s combined, and voilà. I think that’s a green pasta worth crying about, if you cry about your food.
Notes
- If somehow you have spare sauce, may I recommend using it as a green dressing for a salad, or perhaps as a sandwich sauce, if you’re into that. I don’t judge.
- I’d recommend storing this in a container as you would if you were serving it at dinner. It’ll last for 3 days in the fridge. Alternatively, make the sauce only for batching, then loosen with pasta water when you come to use it.
Creamy Romesco Chickpeas
- Yield: Serves 4
Description
Romesco is a type of tomato sauce. I like chickpeas. Thus I’ve combined the two to make the best kind of batched up, plant-based goodness to serve with brown rice and arugula. A beauty, I would say.
Ingredients
- 4 jarred red bell peppers
- Juice of 1 lemon, plus extra to serve
- 2 Tbsps tomato paste
- Scant 2/3 cup silken tofu
- 3 Tbsps ground almonds
- 2 tsps smoked paprika
- 4 garlic cloves
- 5 Tbsps olive oil, plus extra for the chickpeas
- 2 15-oz cans chickpeas
- 7 oz broccolini
- Salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Drain the peppers from their jar and add them to a food processor, along with the lemon juice, tomato paste, silken tofu, ground almonds, smoked paprika, garlic, and olive oil. Blitz till smooth, and season.
- Drain your chickpeas and fry them in a large frying pan over a medium heat with a little drizzle of oil. Chop the broccolini into nice small bits and, once the chickpeas start to soften a little (after about 5 minutes), throw the broccolini in and season with salt and pepper. Let those fry up and soften, about 10 more minutes. (You may need to cook the chickpeas and broccolini in batches if your pan isn’t big enough.)
- Once everything is, well, cooked, pour that sauce lovingly into the frying pan and mix everything together. Add some boiling water (scant 1/2 cup), if it’s too pasty. Once bubbling and looking lusciously smooth and thick, you’re done.
- Add to airtight containers or serving bowls, with arugula and cooked brown rice. You might want to squeeze in some extra lemon. Why not?
Notes
- If you don’t have a food processor, an immersion blender will work to blitz the sauce: Combine all sauce ingredients in a deli quart container (or similar) and blend. Add a few more tablespoons of water as needed to facilitate blending — just subtract that amount of water from what you add to the pan in step 3.
- You could slow cook this by throwing everything in at the same time for 2 to 3 hours on a medium setting.
- Chickpeas in the sauce will keep for 3 days in the fridge in an airtight container.
Reprinted from Batch: Prep Ahead. Easy Meals. All Plants with permission from Carnival, an imprint of The Quarto Group.
