The Sunday Salon is a virtual gathering of book lovers on the web, blogging about bookish things of the past week, visiting each others weblogs, and oh — reading books of course ;)
Last November -that’s almost a year ago indeed- Annemieke from Rozemarijn kookt asked on Twitter who would like to receive her copy of A Vegan Taste of Greece, by Linda Majzlik. Of course I was interested and she kindly sent me the book. Shame on me that I didn’t cook from it until a couple of weeks back!
Now why did I finally pick it up?
Well.. There’s a PPK Cookbook Challenge on the Post Punk Kitchen forum. A vegan cookbook is chosen each week, and if you don’t have that particular book you can choose another from your shelves. This event coincides with Uniflame’s Cookbook Challenge on She Likes Bento. The difference between the two?
- PPK: any (vegan) book will do if you don’t have the designated title but you’ll need make at least three recipes from it.
- She Likes Bento: there’s no set amount of recipes to try (just one will do) but you have to choose an unused or hardly touched cookery book.
Conclusion: I’m making it harder on myself by combining the two. What else is new? ;)
A Vegan Taste of Greece by Linda Majzlik
A Vegan Taste of Greece was the only vegan cookbook I own from which I hadn’t tried a single recipe — so there really was no other first choice possible.
After a short introduction on the origin of Greek food and its place in society, A Vegan Taste of Greece starts with an alphabetical list of a regular pantry, often including nutritional info. Nice! The rest of the book is divided into chapters focussing on different courses: mezedes, soups, main courses, vegetables, grain accompaniments, salads, sauces and dressings, breads, desserts and baking.
I’ve made 4 recipes from 3 different sections: a main course, grain accompaniment and two salads, one green and one legume (bean). Each recipe indicates the amount of servings; mostly four but since it’s just the two of us here at Graasland, I usually made half of it.
Main course: Briami
Briami is a vegetable casserole containing potatoes, courgette, red pepper, mushrooms, onion, tomatoes and a selection of herbs & spices like fennel seeds, rosemary and thyme. Wine and lemon juice provide additional liquid. The dish is finished off with olives and vegan cheese, for which I used a combination of faux parmezan and ‘rawmezan’ (a mix of ground nuts & ‘nooch‘, aka nutritional yeast). Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Despite of all the flavourful ingredients I found the briami rather bland. :( It could have used more sauce and even then I’m not sure it would be really good. Maybe my expectations were too high? Mr Gnoe thought it was okay.
It’s an easy recipe to make but it does take some time preparing because of all the ingredients required. And then it has to go into the oven for about an hour. Oven dishes that can be prepared in advance are great when having guests for dinner, but I don’t think I would dare serve this. Don’t want to confirm a possible prejudice that vegan food is tasteless! ;)
Grain accompaniment: Minted bulgar with leeks
The bulghur was… nice, but once more a bit dull. Admittedly I forgot to garnish with fresh mint. But I could hardly taste the dried peppermint that was also in it, and the leeks were so overcooked that they’d lost most of their flavour. I like leek, so it was another disappointment. I would consider making this again though: as an idea it’s more exciting than just wheat, it’s easy to make and a great way to add more vegetables to a meal. Next time I’d bake the veg separately until just done and combine everything at the end. It was a good combo with the seitan stroganoff though!
Green salad: fennel and avocado
I’ve got this surprisingly good fennel-tomato salad recipe and avocado is one of my favourite fruits, so I was eager to try a Greek recipe combining them. The biggest differences between the two are that the fennel is cooked first in the new recipe and it doesn’t have basil & black olives but watercress (and avocado) instead.
You can probably guess by now… Another flavourless dish. I expect Mediterranean food to be tasty! Furthermore, all ingredients were soft (not to say mushy) and I rather like a crunchy salad. My ideas for improvement? Keep the fennel raw, add olives & basil and maybe a little ouzo or other anise-flavoured drink. Of course having alcohol with your meal decreases the body’s ability to absorb vitamins, but sometimes there’s something to say for taste too. ;) But to be honest, I think I’ll stick with my regular fennel salad recipe.
Bean salad: chickpea
The last recipe, chickpea salad, was a small hit — the best of the bunch anyway. Especially considering it’s rather basic: a mix of cooked garbanzos, cucumber, a variety of peppers, red onion, black olives and a dressing made of skinned and finely chopped tomatoes, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, crushed garlic, fresh thyme and black pepper. I added a little salt as a flavour enhancer too. Yes, I will make this salad again when I have an open can of chickpeas!
The verdict
It will come as no surprise that I’m not really enthusiastic about A Vegan Taste of Greece. I’m considering discarding it, but first I’d like to try some recipes from other sections, like…
- A mezé ~ walnut-stuffed mushrooms? Yellow split-pea spread fava? Courgette critters? Or jumping into the deep end with gyros made from scratch, finally using that bag of seitan starter I purchased?
- Dessert ~ baked nectarines or orange glazed peach slices, almond & apricot pastries… They make my mouth water. :) But all require the purchase of a new ingredient: orange flower water.
- Baked goods ~ sesame cookies, almond cakes, semolina & lemon slices… No? ;)
- And the baked beetroot in the vegetable chapter sounds like good too.
So there’s more to explore before the curtain falls. I’d like to try one each from the categories above before my final judgement. Still, there’s a whole series of A Vegan Taste of… (France, India, East Africa, et cetera) by Linda Majzlik. Getting me to try another would require a copy to literally fall into my hands again.
I hardly dare finish with one more flaw of the book.. :\ I think it’s partly a regional problem and doesn’t apply to Americans. MANY of the recipes use vegan cheese or yoghurt. I haven’t been able to find a good cheese substitute and feel reluctant to buy and use the varieties available here. In the US there’s Dayia… Reviews are raving so I’d love to get my hands on that!
And soygurt… It lacks the sour freshness of its animal equivalent, which cannot be fully compensated by adding (extra) lemon. I just purchased a tub though, so I do plan on trying one of the recipes containing yofu too.
To be continued?
If you’ve got one of Majzlik’s books I’d love to hear you think!
– – – – –
Join Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking with a food-related post!
9 reacties
Comments feed for this article
zondag 14 oktober 2012 bij 20:11
Beth F
What a disappointment that the dishes were bland (dull). Greek food is usually quite flavorful, but I wonder if much of the flavor is from the cheeses. I like the sound of the recipes you tried, so it’s a shame that they weren’t a bigger success.
zondag 14 oktober 2012 bij 20:54
Bonnie
Aww, I’m sorry all these dishes were so disappointing! :( Unfortunately I’ve heard similar things about all the books in that series so I don’t have any myself. Which makes me sad, because it would be great to have vegan cookbooks of all those cuisines! When I’d just gone vegan and didn’t have many cookbooks I kept considering buying them but deciding against it because of the bad reviews :( I’m glad that at least the chickpea salad was tasty, though! I hope you’ll find a few other good recipes if you decide to try more. The ones you mention do sound nice, especially the pastries! I love your presentation of all the dishes, by the way. Especially the chickpea salad – flowers make such a pretty garnish :)
zondag 14 oktober 2012 bij 22:42
Uniflame
Aww it is too bad that you didn’t like much from the book. I actually looked into this series myself and ordered a few from the book depository. I sure hope that I manage to find something tasty in there, hehe.
zondag 14 oktober 2012 bij 22:49
Joy Weese Moll
Beth F might be on to something. I kept thinking “I’ll bet some cheese would be good with that.”
maandag 15 oktober 2012 bij 10:57
Joanna @ CreateYourWorld
Shame that the dishes you tried were so bland! Greek food can have so much flavor to it!
dinsdag 16 oktober 2012 bij 21:15
Chinoiseries
Too bad that the recipes lacked flavour :( Perhaps the author likes her food more on the bland side? Yet, the titles of the dishes sound appetising, as do your photos!
As for the soygurt (or yofu, as I’m calling it :D), Alpro Soya has a new kind, creamier or something I think, from a pack? Have you tried that one yet?
zaterdag 20 oktober 2012 bij 20:53
Patty
I’m very sorry to say but these are not Greek recipes… If I just take the briami recipe, it should be potatoes, onions, courgettes, tomatoes and olive oil (which gives the taste together with the herbs). it’s a shame that simple recipes are twisted and left tasteless. Hope you have better luck with the remaining recipes!
dinsdag 23 oktober 2012 bij 13:05
Missie Courgettekoekjes geslaagd! « Kookgrrls' Blog
[…] week schreef ik een niet al te enthousiaste recensie over het Griekse kookboek A Vegan Taste of Greece van Linda Majzlik. Maar voordat het boek in de […]
woensdag 24 oktober 2012 bij 16:00
Playing VeganMoFo Elsewhere ~ Day 16 « Graasland
[…] This weekend two events came together: a ladies only family weekend and the Greece-themed Kookgrrls’ cookalong. Oh, and VeganMoFo of course. ;) Efficient woman I am, I combined as much as possible and chose a courgette fritters recipe from A Vegan Taste of Greece. […]