Valentina is our Food Editor, who dreams up our tasty dishes and recipes for our social channels. She has loads of experience cooking up a storm in Italian kitchens, so it’s no surprise she can’t live without good-quality olive oil (don’t come between her and her olive oil) and fresh pasta.

Valentina Concordia

This streusel topped vegan yeasted cake was inspired by German week on The Great British Bake Off. It’s denser in nature than a regular sponge cake, making it a great afternoon or breakfast cake to munch on with a cup of tea or coffee. 

This rich and creamy vegan cavolo nero pesto comes together in under 20 minutes and can be made with whichever greens you have in the fridge - including chard, curly kale and spinach. The walnuts can also be subbed for pistachios, cashews or brazil nuts and the plant based milk can be left out entirely and subbed with the water the pasta is cooked in. Basically, this pesto is endlessly riffable and will turn out well with (almost) anything you throw at it. 

The warming and spicy broth in this soup was made for these deeply flavourful, hearty and doughy vegetable and peanut gyoza. It represents everything we want to be eating on a rainy and cold day this winter, and it has become our go-to dinner when we’re feeling chilly and in need of some warmth (or a hug). 

These easy vegan yoghurt flatbreads, don’t require any yeast or rising time, come together in under 30 minutes, and make for a filling and satisfying lunch or dinner when topped with a dip or salad. These are topped with vibrant and delicious roasted pumpkin and chickpea salad, which can also be eaten on its own or with store bought flatbreads if you’re in a rush. 

Making these 3-ingredient vegan crème brûlées with store bought custard might seem like cheating, but after having trialled six different crème brûlée methods - including homemade custard versions, coconut milk versions and silken tofu versions - we can say with certainty that this is the most delicious, rich, smooth, easy and quick way to make vegan crème brûlée. 

This creamy and rich mushroom polenta is what we’ll be eating from now until April. The polenta itself gets its flavour and velvety texture from being cooked in plant based milk and vegetable stock - as opposed to just water. The mushrooms, on the other hand, are first cooked until crisp and then simmered in a mixture of white wine, vegetable stock and plant based butter, which creates a rich and deeply flavoured contrast to the creamy and hearty polenta. 

These rich and flavourful vegan mushroom and peanut gyoza are delicious and satisfying, whether you make your own gyoza wrappers from scratch or go for store-bought ones. Filling and folding the gyoza gets easier and faster as you go along, and to give future you a gift you could also double the recipe and freeze the gyoza once filled, for weekday gyoza in under ten minutes.

This pasta e ceci, which translates to pasta and chickpeas, is just that - pasta cooked in a pot of creamy, brothy, deeply flavoured chickpeas. The result is a creamy, hearty, rich yet simple dish that is Italian comfort food at it’s finest.  

These vegan wagon wheels, inspired by Nadiya, have had quite a journey. Said journey began in August, when we set out to create a vegan, gelatin-free wagon wheel, because no one should go without a wagon wheel if they want one. Since the challenge started, these have been vigorously tested and have seen many rounds of biscuits, marshmallow fillings and chocolate coatings. The result of months of testing is finally here in the form of this recipe, which in our eyes, is as accurate as it gets. 

Melty, bursting, rich and velvety - these extra chocolatey vegan fondants are easier to make than you'd think. Serve them with vegan vanilla ice cream, whipped cream or with a sprinkling of icing sugar (or all three). 

We recently asked our Instagram community if they’d ever struggled with being 100% plant-based. It turned out the answer was yes. So much yes. And it inspired us to turn your fess ups into tasty recipes, but no judgement if the pans stay in the cupboard.

This recipe was inspired by once of our readers who told us her weakness was "jaffa cakes. whole packet. every time." We thought we owed it to her (and to jaffa cakes), to create a packet of delicious, soft and pillowy vegan Jaffa cakes she could whip up and make when the craving strikes next. What started as a seemingly stressful challenge turned into a happy surprise - they're extremely simple to make and require very little technical challenge. If you're in a huge rush, you can sub the vegan jelly filling for orange marmalade. Untraditional, but just as delicious. 

Homemade churros might sound intimidating, but they’re extremely simple and rewarding to make. The dough comes together in around five minutes and the frying only takes ten minutes - which makes them the dinner-party-dessert you didn’t know you could pull off, but totally can. This recipe also includes instructions to make a rich, creamy, lightly spiced vegan hot chocolate to serve the churros with - but they’re also delicious on their own. 

Valentina Concordia

Posts by Valentina Concordia

Vegan German Yeast Cake

Vegan Kale Pesto

Vegetable Gyoza Soup

Roasted Pumpkin Flatbreads

Vegan Crème Brûlée

Creamy Mushroom Polenta

Mushroom and Peanut Gyoza

Vegan Pasta e Ceci

Nadiya's Vegan Wagon Wheels

Vegan Chocolate Fondant

Eat-The-Whole-Packet Jaffa Cakes

Vegan Churros

Let us take care of dinner