Spicing up veggie dishes with Mama Nagi’s

As part of my personal “anti-cancer plan”, I am trying to eat less meat overall each week than I used to, to help with my overall goal of being healthier and eating more vegetables. As part of this, I try to eat a plant-based breakfast and lunch most days and a vegetarian/vegan dinner 3 nights a week. It has been difficult to introduce vegetarian recipes into my routine as they weren’t something I was used to, but I am slowly getting better at it.

On Sunday I was down in my local SuperValu store picking up a few groceries. A lovely woman handing out tasting samples of a vegetarian product called Mama Nagi’s caught my attention and I stopped to try them. Afterwards I was so glad I did! The lady gave me small taster samples of each of three vegetarian/vegan pastes on a piece of cream cracker.

The first was the Mama Nagi’s Keralan Coconut Chilli Paste. And it was divine. I couldn’t believe the beautiful flavour from such a little sample. It made me enthusiastically say out loud, wow, that’s really tasty! I asked to try the other flavours, the Bengali Sweet Chilli Paste and the third, Hot Punjabi Chilli Paste. Each one was delicious. I walked away with two of them, the Keralan Coconut Chilli Paste and the Bengali Sweet Chilli Paste, in my shopping trolley.

So far this week I have used both already. I used the Keralan Coconut Chilli Paste as a dressing in a cold pasta salad on Sunday and Monday and in a veggie stir-fry with mushrooms, noodles and a little coconut milk on Monday night. And last night I used the Bengali Sweet Chilli Paste with the rest of my bag of stir-fry vegetables, mushrooms, noodles and a little more coconut milk. I was really pleased with the pasta salad but the two stars so far have been the stir-frys. These pastes from Mama Nagi’s really pack beautiful, tasty flavour into what could otherwise be quite plain veggie meals.

Each product is made according to “Mama Nagi’s” authentic raw vegetarian Indian recipe and the products have been brought to market by her daughter, Mindi Keane. I’m not sure if it’s Mindi herself I met in the store, I wish now I had asked.

The pastes can be used as stir-in sauces, for stir-frys, as BBQ marinades, for grilling, or in dips. They’re so good you could even spread them on bread (or cream crackers!). Each paste includes suggested recipes on the inside of the cardboard sleeve packaging too, if you need a little inspiration.

The pastes are sugar-free, dairy-free, gluten-free, 100% vegetarian and vegan. They are all made with whole food ingredients like dates, rapeseed oil, chillis, coriander leaves, garlic, ginger and lemon juice (those are the ingredients of the Bengali Sweet Chilli Paste, for example). There are no preservatives or strange ingredients to wonder about.

I look forward to discovering new ways to try out these pastes in more veggie (and meat!) dishes and will definitely be purchasing these again. I think a little of the Hot Punjabi Chilli Paste would be great in a bean curry…

If you think you might like to try them out, you can find them in the SuperValu Food Academy fridges. They are €3.99 each and would do a couple of meals, not just one, but you’d need to use it all within the best before date, once opened. If you give any of them a try, please let me know, I’d love to hear if you enjoy them as much as I have.

This is not a sponsored post.