VeganMoFo Day 18 ~ C-C-C-CSA week 43, 2012

Lots of C’s in this week’s CSA haul. Elstars, leek and salad greens rich with vitamin C, and carrots, corn salad and cilantro starting with it… No-one’s laughing, I know. ;)

• Carrots
• Cilantro
• Corn salad
• Leek
• Elstar apples
• Fennel

My fridge is pretty full with open tins, leftovers and even more vegetables, so here’s my plan to use up as much as possible.

Menuplan Friday October 26th  – Tuesday 30th

• Noodles with leftover takeaway garlic tofu from Soy with additional vegetables (carrot, leek, yellow pepper, borlotti beans) and mushrooms. [Friday]
• Pea soup (freezer stash), pasta salad with leftover avocado pesto and sun-dried tomatoes, Caesar salad (dressing from La Dolce Vegan! p.93), bread and dip. [Saturday – DEXTER DATE]
• Leek & potato soup with cilantro (La Dolce Vegan! p.109), tasty tempeh chili for NVV-forum La Dolce Vegan! cookbook challenge (p.163) and bread.
• Potato salad with avocado pesto, balsamic vinegar, onion and sun-dried tomatoes, coconut-carrot soup with cilantro (La Dolce Vegan! p.112 half recipe).
• Fennel salad with tomato, basil and olives, roasted sweet dumpling pumpkins stuffed with Gyro seitan from my new Terry Hope Romero cookbook Vegan Eats World (p.54 & 253), leftover dill sauce.

Last night I went to the Terry Hope Romero cooking demo, Q&A and book presentation of Vegan Eats World (more about that soon). We got to taste the gyro seitan with creamy cashew sauce and a banana-chocolate ‘cheesecake’. Both were awesome so I bought the book and put the seitan on the menu right away! It’s my first time making seitan, so fingers crossed…

VeganMoFo Day 12 ~ A Vegan Taste of Greece Cookbook Review

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

Greek Briami, Turkish rice with chickpeas, cumin spiced quick bread and avocado salad

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

Seitan stroganoff with minted leek bulghur

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

Greek fennel salad with watercress & 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

Chickpea salad

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!

Planning Ahead (organic CSA vegetables week 39, 2012)

I’ve got a busy week coming up with the start of VeganMoFo on October 1st. I haven’t been able to blog much lately and now I’m supposed to post daily and share the wonders of eating without animal products for a whole Vegan Month of Food! But more about that later.

As usual I’ve planned my meals for the next few days so that I won’t have to think about that any more, nor run to the shops at the very last minute. Every little bit helps in finding time and peace to participate in the blogfest!

Now here’s our veggie haul.

• Red Batavia lettuce
• Leek
• Santana apples (hypo-allergenic)
• Rucola (rocket)
• Corn cob
• Patisson pumpkin
• Fennel

Other stuff in/around my fridge: carrots, chickpeas, roasted paprika, cauliflower, coconut milk, pumpkin & butternut squash, zucchini, cabbage, mushrooms, cilantro and some leftovers.

So here’s the menu.

Menu plan 28 September – 3 October

• Lettuce soup, leftovers lentil-beetroot salad and Greek chickpea salad, bakeoff bread [Friday]
  
  
• Seitan stroganoff, minty bulgar with leek (A vegan taste of Greece p.76) or Oven-braised potatoes and leek (p.67) [Saturday]
  
• Dal Tarka with cauliflower (possibly peas) but without sweet potato, roasted butternut squash with coriander seeds (Veganomicon p.112), basmati rice and (prefab) papadums. Maybe some mint dip [Sunday]
  
  
• Patisson soup and casserole with potato mash, leftover sautéed cabbage & roasted pepper, blue ‘sheese’ and a nutty crumble on top [Monday]
  
  
• Something improvised from the pantry, leftovers, takeaway – what ever’s easy [Tuesday]
• Stuffed courgette, fennel-avocado salad (A vegan taste of Greece p.89), bakeoff bread [Wednesday]
• Sometime during the week I also hope to make some roasted pepper houmous.

You’re welcome at our table if you see anything you like! :)

I edited last week’s menu with photos of my meals.

Good Vibrations! (MoFo#8: CSA vegetables week 42, 2011)

As I was planning on baking a chocolate-beetroot cake this weekend (!), I was hoping immensily for red beets among Wednesday’s CSA vegetable loot. And YAY — a wish come true!

Other nice veggies too, like fennel which I needed for a fennel-bean dish I meant to make that evening for my visiting brother: a surprisingly good recipe from the new Puur Plantaardig (‘Purely Plant-based‘) cookbook that I mentioned in my Cookbook Sunday Salon.

Here’s the complete list of this week’s greens.

• Dill
• Fennel
• Silver-stalked Swiss chard
• Bundel of young beetroot
• Lollo Rosso lettuce
• Goudreinette apples

I’ll leave you with a preview of my unfinished beetroot pie: only the chocolate couverture topping left to do. That’ll have to wait till morning — so you must have patience as well. I hope you can handle the suspense..? I know I’m finding it difficult! ;P

This food-related post is also submitted to Beth Fish’s Weekend Cooking!

There’s Something Missing in this Picture… (CSA vegetables week 30, 2011)

• Basil
• Turnips (white & golden)
• Fennel
• Prunes

If you’re thinking we came off badly this week, rest assured: we didn’t. There’s just something missing from this picture… Since we changed pick-up points this CSA season, we have to bring our own bag and select the vegetables we’re in title to instead of just grabbing a pre-packaged selection. That’s fine with us because it’s greener that way! But you have to pay attention… and that doesn’t always go well. ;) So I had to make a second run this week. Collecting:

• Red Batavian lettuce
• Broad beans — yay!

Menu plan

The beans went into a potato salad right away. Tomorrow we’ll be having a dinner guest and I plan to make taco’s with Mexican frijoles, salsa picante, guacamole, tri-coloured veggie mix (corn, courgette & red paprika) and fennel-tomato salad. The turnips will go into salad (grated) and I want to try mamichan’s spicy crispy umami salad. It’ll be Wednesday again before we know it!

Invasion of the Endive Heads

This week’s organic vegetable packet did not bring us one, not two, but THREE heads of endive!

Wow. I guess it’s obvious what we’ll be eating this week… ;)

• lollo rossa lettuce
• pumpkins
• endive
• topinamburs
• fennel
• Elstar apples

I considered changing plans and serve yesterday’s guests potato mash with endive for dinner instead of the planned hutspot but decided against it: the idea of cooking the dish I hated so much as a child was way more exciting! Up until this week I have never, ever made it myself. So it felt like a real challenge to try this new recipe.

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer: I liked it! We caramelized some onions and toasted some pecan nuts for topping, and had vegetarian ‘meatballs’ and fennel-tomato salad as side dishes. (*) There’s just one BUT.. If I’m completely honest I wouldn’t really call this dish hotchpotch: the carrot and potatoes aren’t mashed together — it’s just a mix of cut up parsnip, potatoes and carrot, like my oven-roasted root vegetable dish with honey. I even used honey instead of the required maple syrup since my cupboard lacked the latter. So I’ll need to re-challenge myself another time ;)

Do you have a dish you hated when you were young and still won’t eat today?

(*) Side note for Dutch readers wanting to make the hutspot recipe: it took the vegetables 45 minutes at 200 °C (gas oven: 5) instead of 30 to get done.

Menu planning

Some people have asked me why on earth I make a menu plan.
Well, here’s what happens when I don’t.

We got this nice batch of veggies last week.

Amelishof organic CSA loot, week 41 (2010)

• leek
• bok choy
• curly red leaf lettuce
• pears (Conférence)
• choggia beets
• basil

But after picking up our new vegetables yesterday, we still had to use most of previous week! Yep, even the fresh basil. Beetroot. Lettuce. Pak-choi cabbage. Some pears. And except for the fruit it all has to fit together in our refrigerator — which is not an American-sized model ;)

Amelishof organic CSA vegetables, week 42 (2010)

• endive
• red Batavia lettuce
• fennel
• grapes
• green beans

So, after a delicious lunch of toast with fennel-tomato salad with fresh basil & black olives, I set myself to the task of making this week’s plan including as many of the greens as possible.

Menu plan for October 21st – 26th

• Stir-fried bok-choy, greens bean salad with sesame dressing, noodles & egg [today]
• Fennel soup with green bean tortilla and eggplant-lentil salad [weekend]
• Indian potatoes, Indian takeaway leftovers and spicy beet salad [weekend]
• Eastern beet soup, toemis andijvie (Indonesian stir-fried endive), nasi goreng (fried rice with leek)
• Veggie burger, sweet ’n sour beets with dill, endive-couscous rolls with goat’s cheese
• Friday: eating at my mother-in-law’s (so no need to plan anything :)
• Lunch today: my favourite tomato-fennel salad with fresh basil & olives, with some added lettuce for the occasion (although it’s better without)

Recipes are coming from several of my vegetarian cookbooks and 1 or 2 websites.

Fennel-tomato salad with fresh basil & olives

This may sound weird to you but I’m not really a fan of fennel. Still, this salad with tomato, fresh basil & olives is awesome! And darn easy. Just throw together the following ingredients:

• some cleaned and chopped up fennel,
• sweet tomatoes (the original recipe calls for cherry tomatoes but any ripe sweet tomato will do),
• fresh basil,
• black olives,
• ground pepper,
• and (white) wine vinegar.

You may choose to add some salt, depending on how salty your olives are. You can also sprinkle on a bit of extra virgin olive oil but there’s really no need.

Just a note on the side: eat this salad right away, do not let it sit for too long.

Enjoy!

I’ve submitted this post to Midnight Maniac’s Meatless Mondays!

Oh Goody! (Amelis’Hof vegetables week 31, 2010)

Lately it seems to be dark & rainy when I need to collect our bag of local organic produce on Wednesday afternoons. I don’t mind getting (a little!) wet that much — the Amelis’Hof vegetable garden needs its fair share of water for us to get a nice loot — but I hate how gloomy my pictures turn out!

Luckily the sun broke through shortly after I had returned — just in time to make a picture! Hey, if the weather gets better once I’ve stashed everything neatly away I’m not crazy enough to unpack the fridge again for a make-over ;)

• lettuce
• sweetheart cabbage
• red berries
• fennel
• zucchinis (at this small size they’re at their best!)
• basil
• Tokyo turnips (or navet)

I haven’t planned my menu yet, but a dish I do want to cook is polenta ‘pizza’ with homemade pesto and courgettes. And I’ll probably make some more kinpira of the turnips because it’s a nice and easy bento stash.

Root kinpira made of carrots, French turnips and fennel

Some good news from the Amelisbode, a leaflet accompanying the veggies: they’ve started a blog too! On preceding Mondays the contents of Wednesday’s packet will be ‘virtually’ unveiled. I admit it’ll be less fun checking out our ‘surprise package’, but it provides me with a more relaxing timespan for menu planning!

Veggies! Veggies! Veggies!

Het groentenpakket van deze week (37):

• venkel
• bloemkool
• maïskolf
• ijsbergsla (wel 2 kroppen!)
• boterbonen (wasbonen)
• platte peterselie

Ik maakte nog nooit eerder boterbonen… Wat zeg ik, ik heb ze zelfs nog nooit gegeten! Wie wel?

De Tas Van De Week

* The picture on Flickr has English notes about the veggies! *

De groentetas van week 32 daagt ons weer uit om nieuwe recepten te zoeken. In plaats van Christmas in July kregen wij meiknolletjes in augustus.

• meiknollen
• groene bataviasla
• sperziebonen
• venkel
• prei
• bosje tijm

Met de tempeh die we nog in huis hebben wordt dat in ieder geval een keertje nasi goring (prei) met sambal goreng boontjes eten. Jawel, ook dat is een all-time favourite die regelmatig op tafel verschijnt. En dan kunnen we meteen dat restje kool uit de koelkast opmaken. Met de boontjes die overblijven maak ik dan boontjessalade met tomatensaus, yummy! De rest van het weekplan moet nog worden uitgedacht, dus suggesties zijn welkom!