Carrot and Oatmeal Soup

From The Vegan Diet: True Vegetarian Cookery, David Scott and Claire Golding, Rider & Company, 1985.

I had not cooked from this book very often though it has been on the shelf for quite a long time. Browsing through the books standing on my cookery shelf I came across it again and thought it was time to look at it once more.

The soup was easy to make. Onion, garlic and chopped rosemary were sautéed for a few minutes. The chopped carrots and some curry powder were then added to the pan along with water (the recipe calls for water and not stock). Once this all came to the boil the oatmeal was added. When the carrots were cooked the mixture was puréed with the stick blender and seasonings were added.

This soup ended up exactly as it sounded from its name: an ordinary, rather dull eat. I wonder why I decided to actually make it. Sometimes a decision is made because of what is available in the pantry; sometimes this is not the best decision.

Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Watercress Soup with Toasted Almonds

From The Meat Free Monday Cookbook, Kyle Books, 2011.

This book has a definite purpose: that of gradually making inroads into the meat-eaters, encouraging them to eat less meat. The introduction sets out the reasons behind the campaign. It is not only for reasons of health, though these are strong. It is also for the environment; livestock production is responsible for a huge amount of greenhouse gas around the planet. Of course, it is also a way to cut your weekly spend on food. These are only some of the reasons discussed, though possibly the predominant ones.

The campaign for the Meat Free Monday was launched by Paul, Stella and Mary McCartney back in 2009. They have supplied a foreword to the book. And there is also the occasional recipe from Paul and Stella. Recipes are also included from a wide range of celebrities who support the campaign.

The book supplies complete menus for every Monday in the year, organised into spring, summer, autumn and winter. The lunch menu also includes one for a packed lunch. The mix of recipes is varied, for example for Week 01 breakfast is soft-boiled eggs with asparagus soldiers; lunch is sweet potato gnocchi with rocket pesto while the packed lunch is a Middle Eastern tabouleh salad; dinner is a spring vegetable tarte fine with a spring herb salad and dessert is pink rhubarb sorbet. This one day manages to range through several cuisines.

My first delve into the book had me making a watercress soup. This was simply made by frying onions and garlic until softened, then adding potatoes for a few minutes longer. Stock was now added and the vegetables cooked until the potatoes had softened.

The watercress was added and cooked for a couple of minutes more. This was puréed and cream was added with seasonings. All was then reheated and served with toasted flaked almonds—and a swirl of crème fraîche, that I did without. Both cream and crème fraîche seemed too much for me. The recipe included garlic toasts that I did not make.

This was a pleasant soup. I do enjoy the peppery flavour of watercress and do occasionally make a soup with this vegetable. This was not the best one I’ve had. I was a little unsure of using both potato and cream as a thickening agent. Potato by itself would by fine or cream but the use of both was overdoing it a little I felt.

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Marinated Summer Radishes with Currants, Mint & Chive Dressing

From The Urban Cook, Mark Jensen, Murdoch Books, 2011.

Does urban mean dark?

This must be the most unappealing cookery book in my collection. The photographs are dark; some of them so poor that you would not even consider cooking the dish. The print is never on a white background but always on olive-brown backgrounds making it difficult to read on some pages. I am surprised that the design team would think that people busy trying to follow a recipe would want to compete with small print on dark pages with overprinted images.

The author obviously has a message about the environment. I could tell this from the section headings but didn’t bother to attempt to read the text on pages that were uninviting and at times not very legible.

Why they bothered with contents pages for each section I can’t understand when they are designed so that they are almost illegible. I am surprised that a book like this would come from Murdoch Books which are generally so well designed.

It took me some time before I decided to try cooking something from the book but since I had it (it came cheap when I bought another item) I thought I’d better try and see whether the food was better than the wrapping.

The first thing I did was to soak the currants in hot water so they could plump up a little while I prepared the remainder of the vegetables: radishes, celery and yellow baby squash. When cut into small pieces they were put in a bowl together with the drained currants.

The dressing was now prepared: Dijon mustard, lemon juice and olive oil with seasonings. Sliced chives and mint leaves were added to the dressing and it was folded through the vegetable mix. It was then left for about 30 minutes before serving when some thinly sliced chillies were added to the top.

This was a crunchy salad with a bit of bite though not a dish I would go back to. It did, however, reintroduce me to radishes which I don’t seem to have had for several years now. I must use them a little more often

Taste: ✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Aubergine Parmigiana

From River Cottage Veg Everyday!, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Bloomsbury, 2011.

This book is strongly promoting a meat-free diet and the author presents his reasons at the beginning of each section. These sections are easy to read and the light, informal writing is easily accessed, and tends to go someway towards convincing. The first section is concerned with comfort food and the first recipe is certainly comfort food and bursting with flavour.

Nearly every vegetarian cookbook has a recipe for an eggplant parmigiana and they are usually all very tasty. I like to try each new one to see how they compare.

The eggplants were sliced, sprinkled with salt and left to drain in a colander.

The next step in the recipe was to make a tomato sauce. It was almost identical with one I had made from a Jamie Oliver recipe and since I had some left I decided to use this.

The aubergine slices were then fried until tender. It took a little while to get them all done. A layer of them was placed in a casserole. This was covered with some of the tomato sauce. Over this went some mozzarella pieces. It was supposed to be buffalo mozzarella but my wallet was a bit short this week so it had to be the cheaper variety. Then some grated parmesan was sprinkled over this.  The layers were repeated until all the ingredients were used up and I had ended with a cheese layer. The oven did the rest of the job.

This is such an enjoyable dish. The flavours burst right out and the chewy cheese strands are fun to eat. The author classes it as comfort food and it fits that category extremely well. A recipe to go back to.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Nectarine and Pistachio Summer Crumble

From Market Vegetarian, Ross Dobson, Ryland Peters and Small, 2008.

There were some cheap nectarines at the local store so it seemed a good time to try out this recipe that I had recently been looking at. It was the season for this fruit and so it seemed to fit nicely into the philosophy that is promoted in the cookbook, a philosophy which I frequently overlook.

The recipe was such a simple one that it would be difficult to go wrong with it. The crumble was made from pistachios and almonds which had been processed roughly. These were mixed with butter and oatmeal. Flour and sugar were added next and they were all rubbed together until they felt right.

The nectarines were cut open and the stones removed. The ones I had had stones that resisted all effort to let go the fruit so I just cut around them. The crumble was sprinkled over the fruit and it was cooked in the oven for about 15 minutes.

It turned out to be a pleasant dessert though the nectarines were not overly juicy and so it was oddly drier than I had expected. Enjoyable but slightly disappointing.

 Taste: ✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Upside-down Red Pepper and Tomato Pie

From Market Vegetarian, Ross Dobson, Ryland Peters and Small, 2008.

Upside-down recipes are always, for me, slightly magical. You never quite know what it’s going to be like until you turn it over. Sometimes there’s no magic at all and you end up with a disaster but it’s certainly fun trying. So I was tempted by this upside-down pie.

The pastry was a cheese one. Flour, cheese and salt were mixed. Then melted butter, eggs and milk completed the mix. It was kneaded for a little and then left in the fridge for half an hour. The recipe calls for the dough to be made in a food processor but I usually tend to opt for hands.

While the dough was doing its wait, I put some onions, garlic and sliced red capsicum in a frying pan and cooked them for a good 10 minutes. A can of tomatoes was then added with seasonings and cooked for another 5 minutes. This was then left to cool.

The dough was now rolled out to about the size of the frying pan. This was placed over the mixture in the pan and placed in the oven for about 20 minutes until it had browned. When it was ready it was taken out and let cool a little. It was then upended onto a serving plate.

The result was rather like a pizza with a thicker than usual base. The savoury sauce was tasty and the slices were soon demolished.

While I don’t always stick rigidly to Ross Dobson’s recipes they can generally be counted on to work. For this one I did not use buttermilk in the dough and used hands instead of processor to make it; small variations which didn’t seem to affect the final product.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔

Cayenne Spiced Almonds

From Spice It, Murdoch Books, 2010.

I always like to have something to nibble on in the evening; it keeps me from falling asleep during dreary predictable TV shows. This recipe from Spice It looked as though it might just do the trick and it looked simplicity itself.

The spices were mixed in a bowl: cayenne, cumin, sugar, salt and smoked paprika.

The almonds were cooked in olive oil in a pan until they had turned a golden colour. They were then placed into the bowl of spices, mixed and left to cool.

While they were still cooling I tried a couple—couldn’t resist—and they were wonderfully spicy with quite a bite from the cayenne. After they had cooled they tended to lose some of the spice coating which dropped off. They were still really moreish and maintained the heat but did not have the full bounce of flavour that they had while still slightly warm.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔✔