World Food Café Cookbook

The Sunday Salon is a virtual gathering of booklovers on the web, blogging about bookish things of the past week, visiting each others weblogs, and oh — reading books of course ;)

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This is my first Sunday Salon of 2011 and I’m going to talk about a cookbook. As you may have noticed, food has been on my mind a lot lately! ;) For my 10-day ExtraVeganza! project I relied heavily on the World Food Café: Global Vegetarian Cooking cookbook. It is a feast for the eye — and your tummy!

The book was put together by Chris & Carolyn Caldicott. It contains recipes they collected, or got inspired, on the many journeys they’ve made across the globe. They did so with the aim to open their own restaurant: the World Food Café in London.

Chris Caldicott is an awesome photographer and the cookbook is littered with beautiful full-colour photos — at least one on each double page. So even if you don’t like to cook, you could display this treasure on your coffee table. ;) But that is certainly not what it’s meant for.

It really is a great collection of recipes, many dairy-free! Rather unique for a vegetarian cookbook these days… Still, it is vegetarian and not all-vegan. Especially the section on The Americas ‘regularly’ contains dairy or eggs: 5 of the 23 (disregarding butter). Now that’s not too bad, is it? Unfortunately the only dessert of the book is among those — a mouthwatering chocolate cake. I wouldn’t know how to substitute the 6 eggs needed for that, but in many cases it’s possible to omit or replace the non-vegan ingredient.

As you may have understood from the previous paragraph, the book is divided in different global regions:

• The Middle East & Africa (p.10-57)
• India, Nepal & Sri Lanka (p.58-111)
• Southeast Asia & China (p.112-145)
• The Americas (p. 146-185)

Each continent starts with a two-page photograph, followed by an introduction. And most of the recipes also have short description of where they came from. The book concludes with a short glossary of ingredients and an index.

I’m sure I made 10 dishes from this book, of which 7 got a BIG thumbs up. The other 3 were either okay or so-so and I need to stipulate that in two of the cases I didn’t use the proper ingredients… I mostly cooked from the Indian section and am still dying to try the potato bondas (fritters) from North India that seem perfect for a bento. But so far my expeditions in search for the essential ingredient ‘asefetida‘ (a.k.a. hing) were in vain.

List of recipes tried

Middle East:

• Hummus (p.35)

India, Nepal & Sri Lanka:

• Kashmir Gobi (p.64)
• Calcutta Eggplant (p.72)
• Orissan Jagdish Saag Aloo (p.74)
• Deep-red Rajasthani Vegetables in Poppy-Seed Sauce (p.93)
• Gujarati Carrot Salad (p.96)
• Diu Corn Curry (p.98)

Southeast Asia & China:

• ‘Buddhist Meat’ and Shiitake Mushrooms (p.121)
• Thai Green Curry (p.132)
• Spicy Bean Curd and Bean Sprout Salad (p.133); recipe below

This book comes highly recommended! And I would like to express a huge THANK YOU to the globetrotter in-laws that gave it to me as a birthday present.

Here’s a recipe we’ve made several times. You’ll find a variation of it in tomorrow’s bento!

Spicy Bean Curd & Bean Sprout Salad from Thailand

Ingredients
Serves 4-6

• 1 cucumber; grated
• 1 red bell pepper; seeded, deribbed and cut into fine strips
• 8 ounces / 225 grams of bean sprouts (I grow them myself!)
• 1 tbs sunflower oil
• 10 ounces / 275 grams of tofu; cut into 1/2 inch (1 cm) slices and ready to fry
• 1 garlic clove; crushed
• 1-2 green Thai or serrano chilies; thinly sliced (red chili is fine)
• juice of 1 lime
• 2 tbs light soy sauce
• 2 ts packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup (150 grams) skinned peanuts; toasted and crushed
• handful of fresh cilantro leaves; chopped

Preparation

1. Combine grated cucumber, bell pepper and bean sprouts in a salad bowl.
2. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat and fry the tofu slices until brown and crunchy. Set aside en let cool.
3. Using the same pan, sauté garlic and chilies for a few seconds, then add the lime juice, soy sauce and brown sugar. Stir until all ingredients are combined.
4. Arrange tofu slices on top of the salad and sprinkle with crushed peanuts.
5. Pour on the hot dressing and garnish with lots of cilantro.

ENJOY!

This review is my first post for the Foodie’s Reading Challenge!

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Join Beth Fish’s weekend cooking with a food-related post!