Fun to make flavour feast

Colada Toddy

from Terre à Terre: The Vegetarian Cookbook, Amanda Powley with Philip Taylor, Absolute Press, 2010.

This book is such a lot of fun to cook from—but you need time. The recipes are totally different from anything I’ve seen in any other cookery books.

For a start, the names of each dish are somewhat humorous and don’t give any real insight into what the dish is going to be. The name of this recipe is Colada Toddy. This is a warm coconut and rum drink that accompanies the dish and, while an acceptable drink, it doesn’t in any way explain the meal which is an explosion of different tastes in a collection of parts.

There were six elements (including the toddy) to make up the whole. Each would stand alone easily to make a satisfactory eat; together they were a feast of flavours and textures.

The gazpacho, which to me is really a salad, was a mixture of green chillies, green capsicum, fennel, and celery. And then it was dressed with a mixture of wasabi, oil, galangal and lime. A crunchy salad with a bit of bite to it.

The Thai red relish turned out to be pickled shallots in a herb and vinegar mix. They’d make a nice nibble with cocktails.

The charred aubergine and umeboshi plum hash was a softly textured mix of aubergines, smoky and flavoured with a salty plum hash with added bits of fresh mint, red chillies and garlic. Eggplants are frequently lacking in flavour but make a good host for any you might add. This was a flavoursome delight.

The hero of the dish was the rice sausages. The recipe made more than were needed and I kept nibbling at them for a couple of days. Hot or cold they were an excitement of flavour. As you chewed you kept finding different tastes. They were hot and spicy, partly from the spice mix that was made prior to the sausages. This spice mix I am still using, sprinkling it on various dishes to give them an extra kick. The sausages themselves, as well as having the spice mix, had a mixture of herbs added (basil, mint, kaffir lime leaves) to add to the tastes.

When all of the six parts of the recipe were put together there was a flavour feast on a plate.

All in all it was a very time consuming meal to make—but well worth the time spent. As well as that I had a lot of fun making it—and even more so eating it. I am looking forward to when I have time to make something else from this book.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔