Individual Pot Pies and an Avocado, Quinoa & Broad Bean Salad

Individual Pot Pies

from Gourmet Vegetarian. Jane Price, Murdoch, 2007.

This cookbook looked to have a large range of inviting recipes. I chose to make these pot pies.

There are basically three separate parts: steam the vegetables, make the sauce, fix the puff pastry. Each section was quite easy. The result was a quite acceptable pie.

It was a bit on the difficult side to eat. Cutting through the puff pastry was not that easily accomplished. It would, I think, have been much better with a short pastry.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Avocado, Quinoa and Broad Bean Salad

from Plenty, Yotam Ottolenghi, Ebury Press, 2010.

This is a handsome book with a title that doesn't give much away but the inside looks extremely promising. While I was not terribly taken with this recipe there's lots more to try and I look forward to getting into them soon.

The author, incidentally, is not a vegetarian but does enjoy meals with good strong flavours. He runs his own successful restaurants.

I do like broad beans but I totally dislike having to skin the beans even though the result looks a wonderful green.

I’m a little undecided about quinoa. It may be extraordinarily good for you but I’ve yet to find it an eating experience I would seek out.

Avocado is always great

.

To find a recipe with all of these ingredients in it persuaded me to give it a go. After the drudge of broad bean peeling, and the pre-cooking of the quinoa, putting it all together was a breeze.

The salad also included radishes and rocket and a flavoursome dressing.

The final result was different and edible but not that exciting. It didn’t even give that feeling that you were a fraction healthier from the experience.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔