Herbivores' Heaven

It’s been a while since I posted part one of this review, but better late than never – after the longest month of my life, we finally got a new oven and I recovered from my cooking fatigue. It has been wonderful getting back in the kitchen, and with a shiny new oven no less, and I was really delighted to return to this book. I’d found the dishes I tried in January to be really flavoursome, and I’m happy to say that trend continued.

I would have liked a few more soups in this book, so I turned the chickpeas in peanut butter sauce into a soup by adding more stock.  It was just my cup of tea (metaphorically speaking, of course): coconut milk, peanut butter, chickpeas, and a good spicy kick! Lovely.

I was really excited about trying the teriyaki tempeh with butternut and cauiflower sauce, but the teriyaki sauce I made was a little thinly stretched over all the veg I roasted. This was my fault rather than the recipe’s – next time I’d probably make a double portion of sauce just to be sure I had enough. The sauce was tasty, but it didn’t come through strongly enough because there was too much veg and tempeh. Still, it was a quick, easy and pleasant meal.

I tinkered with the cauliflower and chickpeas in berbere sauce a bit too – again, I wanted to make it into a soup, so I added quite a bit of extra stock, and I was a little heavy handed with the fenugreek seeds in my berbere sauce (possibly because I was so excited about finally finding them in Prague!), which upset the balance of flavours a little. I’d still like to try this as it actually should be served.

The firecracker cauliflower bites sounded a bit scary to someone with a pretty low tolerance for spicy food, but I went bold, and I’m glad I did! This recipe brought together a few different components: crunchy baked cauliflower, firecracker sauce and ranch dressing. We simply dipped the cauliflower in the firecracker sauce rather than coating the pieces, and this definitely helped to retain the crunch. I loved all components of this dish -the cauliflower was really well coated thanks to the batter layer, and cooked perfectly, the firecracker sauce was spicy but was complemented by the cooling and well-seasoned ranch. We make some variation on buffalo cauliflower pretty regularly, and I think this is now my preferred recipe (though there’s  lot to be said for the blue cheese dip from But My Family Would Never Eat Vegan!).

Both the firecracker sauce and the ranch dressing popped up again in this firecracker chickpea salad with peanut dressing. It was a really tantalising balance of flavours, and I just loved that peanut dressing. I added smoked tofu along with the fiery chickpeas so it would keep us going all day. With the firecracker sauce, ranch and peanut sauce it turned out to be quite a sloppy salad, but it was definitely a winner.

I couldn’t resist the cover photo of buffalo chickpea tacos, though we made ours as extremely messy wraps. Although it was really tasty, I felt that those chickpeas needed warming up. The sauce was delicious though, and it was another chance to use that ranch dressing.

These sweet potato, peanut and chickpea burgers had been sitting in the freezer taunting me throughout our whole oven-less spell, but they were worth the wait. The patties held together really well, and they were really flavoursome.  Initially I thought they were a little too sweet and nutty when paired with the almond-sriracha sauce – but then I got that fiery kick! I would have liked a few more recipes that used this sauce – I just used it as a sauce on some rice, smoked tofu and roasted peanuts, which I would definitely recommend.

Also recommended: making these cauliflower shawarma wraps every day. They’re that good.  Dr HH added some potato chunks to roast with the cauliflower, and he increased the oil as well, because you might as well do these things properly. The spice blend was really good, and Dr HH has suggested using it on seitan as well…but that would mean missing out on this tender, tasty cauliflower! Everything came together beautifully as well, with hummus, salad and that incredible tahini garlic sauce that I talked about last time. Oh, so good.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with bowls, in that I love eating them, but hate all the washing up they entail. I found this Buddha bowl with nacho-spiced sweet potatoes to be surprisingly light on labour and dishes, and very tasty to boot. I really enjoyed the nacho seasoning, and it was a chance to wheel out the ranch dressing again, along with a quick and easy barbecue sauce. I’d definitely make this one again.

For our anniversary back in January, Dr HH and I had planned to have a pizza night. We don’t often collaborate in the kitchen, but pizza would be the perfect opportunity to do so, with Dr HH working his magic on the dough and mozzarella while I took care of the toppings. Alas, our oven was broken at the time, but in March we finally got to make the two pizzas we’d been thinking of. We made the mushroom-jalapeno white pizza with chilli flakes rather than jalapenos, but otherwise followed the recipe. The easy pizza dough was relatively easy, but needed a lot more flour than recommended to get it to come together. I’d already made the white garlic sauce for the lasagna in January, but it was nice to really get to enjoy the flavour in isolation this time -it was delicious. I must have thickened it up too much though, as there’s no way this would have been enough for a second pizza, as the recipe intended. It was a really garlicky, delicious pizza.

We used the same dough for the deep-dish pizza, along with the red pizza sauce and the vegan mozzarella. This was very exciting to make and had a fascinating texture. It didn’t melt as much as the pictures suggested, but it was lovely.

The pizza was easy enough to assemble (though the dough started slipping down the dish when we put it in for a 5 minute bake while it was empty – we had to hook the dough over the top to save it), though a bit tricky and sloppy to serve up. The crust was really soft where it was filled, with nice crispy bits higher up – perfect. We were worried it wouldn’t hold the filling, but there were no issues. I don’t really understand how Richa got such a nice picture for the book of an intact slice of pizza, while ours was oozing out everywhere. But it was delicious, and that’s more important than being photogenic.

The black pepper cheesy mac and broccoli featured one of those cheesy sauces made from vegetables (in this case potato, carrot, tomato and onion). I’m not a huge fan of those sauces, as I don’t necessarily want my mac and cheese to taste of veg. It was fine, but was never going to bowl me over – I’ll stick to the smoky mac bake I made in January!

Onto the sweet treats! I made the blender peanut butter cake as cupcakes, and in a mixing bowl as I don’t have a blender that’s up to the task.  The recipe calls for a mix of dark and semi-sweet chocolate for the topping. I always assumed that semi-sweet was the American term for dark chocolate, so this left me a little baffled. I used milk chocolate alongside the dark, and I was happy with the result – the topping was smooth and glossy, and the sponge itself was delicious. I’ll certainly make these again.

I had high hopes for Richa’s brownies, but they turned out quite dry. I’m not sure what I did wrong – I didn’t bake them a second longer than necessary, but they were well past the still-slightly-gooey-in-the-centre stage the recipe told me to aim for. Perhaps my new oven is just too powerful! They were still tasty (again, I used milk in place of semi sweet chocolate), but they weren’t at all brownie-like in texture.

The brownie base for these almond butter cheesecake brownie bars was much more satisfactory – and these were all round delicious. The base stayed nice and sticky, and the cheesecake topping was really creamy, and much easier to make than expected. In fact, I’m going to keep this recipe earmarked for when I need something impressive but don’t have time to labour over it.

The lemon chia coconut muffins were not my favourite baked good from this book – they were solid, but not mind-blowing. Also,I forgot to sprinkle coconut and chia seeds on the top before baking. Doh!

And finally, who could resist one hour cinnamon rolls? Dr HH was in charge of these, and he reported that the name was quite misleading – there was about 50 minutes needed for proving and baking, which leaves only ten for all the mixing and assembling, which is quite ambitious! Ninety minutes was more accurate. The rolls were nice and full of cinnamon, but he would prefer to let them prove properly and potentially see an improved rise and bake. Good for emergencies though, and a fine way to end this roundup.

I would heartily recommend this book! There are some really simple dishes that you can throw together on a work night, along with more complex options for when you have time to put more effort in. I think it would also be appropriate for new vegans, as there aren’t too many expensive or unusual ingredients and it’s largely vegetable-based dishes. Also, it’s jam-packed with tempting recipes – there are still many more that I haven’t got round to trying yet.

The only downside for me was that many dishes had several components (usually a sauce from a separate chapter or page), which required flicking between pages – I find that kind of thing a bit of a nuisance (and it does make a mess of the book, when you have messy fingers like I usually tend to), but the recipes were so good that it was definitely not a deal-breaker. If you haven’t already got a copy of this book, you should definitely add it to your list right now!

As soon as I flicked through Vegan Richa’s Everyday Kitchen on Christmas morning, I spotted lots of recipes I wanted to try. We celebrate two special occasions in January (Dr HH’s birthday and our anniversary), and I immediately identified the dishes I wanted to cook for our fancy meals. And then…January turned into a bit of a culinary failure.

For one thing, our oven broke halfway through the month, scuppering all my plans for birthday cake and pizza night. And for another, I just lost a bit of my enthusiasm for meal-planning and cooking. Work has been sapping my energy, and the last thing I want to do is spend my free time hurrying to the supermarket and slaving away in the kitchen.  So about two weeks into January, I gave up – we’ve been living off some quick and easy staples, but not experimenting with anything further from this book.

This is absolutely no reflection on the book, which I’ve loved so far. I will definitely be returning to it for Part Two of this review, once we’ve got a functioning oven and a bit more enthusiasm again!

In the meantime, here’s what we’ve tried so far.

The book contains recipes for a number of aptly-titled awesome sauces, which can be used in several different dishes.  I love this approach! I used the tikka masala sauce to make the tikka masala chickpeas, which were very easy to throw together (or so Dr HH tells me – I can’t claim credit for this one!).  It was a really creamy dish, with a nice bite to the chickpeas. There were lots of delicious spices, but on the heat front it was quite mild – exactly as I like it! I’d happily have this again!

I used some tinga sauce to make the tinga black bean soup, using kidney instead of black beans.  Dr HH found it a bit too sweet, while I thought the spiciness was positively fiery!  Still, we agreed it was filling and tasty – there was plenty of sweetcorn, peppers and beans, making it good and substantial too.

The winter mushroom soup with spinach and chickpeas was a flavour explosion!  There was quite the range of textures and flavours, as it was kind of spicy and kind of sweet. It had a really good kick to it, and was perfect for wintry packed lunches.  It’s a shame there aren’t more soups in the book, because these were were really impressive.

Dr HH made the baked vegetable pakoras, and found them lacking in seasoning. He increased the seasoning once the first batch were out of the oven, and that was an improvement. The texture was lovely – I wasn’t sure how well they would work baked rather than fried, but they were delicious.  He served them up with tart and sticky tamarind chutney.

I laboured over the berbere tofu bowl with couscous for packed lunches. Every stage of the recipe was easy, but there were various elements and numerous pots created.  I made the berbere paste, which worked really well, but was pretty potent – and that was after I’d halved the chilli powder/cayenne measurements!  The marinated tofu was crispy and delicious, and the couscous was a simple, light accompaniment.  I also added the recommended tahini garlic sauce, which was so delicious I was tempted to just drink it all up!

I whipped up a double batch of flavoursome samosa potatoes and used them in two different recipes.

I made these samosa sliders (served with tamarind chutney again).  As you can see, I used red quinoa,so they perhaps don’t look as attractive as the ones in the book.  The quinoa gave them a nice texture, and the burgers were delicious thanks to the potatoes.  The tamarind chutney was a great partner.  We were a little worried about what to serve alongside them – is it acceptable to serve potato wedges alongside potato burgers?  We threw caution to the wind and did it anyway!

I also used the potatoes to make the samosa-stuffed French toast, which proved quite challenging.  When I hollowed out the end pieces of the loaf and stuffed the potatoes in as you see here, it was quite delicious.  When I tried to stuff the potatoes into thick slices from the middle of the loaf, it was a no-go. With the leftovers, Dr HH thickened up the batter and made pancakes which we topped with the remaining potato – much more successful!

I also made the mint-cilantro herb sauce to serve with the French toast, and it was a nice refreshing accompaniment.

I’m a huge fan of mac and cheese, so I indulged in the smoky mac bake.  The smoky cheese sauce was incredible, but I think the paprika I used was a touch too spicy (Dr HH approved though).  The bake was really nice, but it would be easy enough to make this as regular, non-baked mac and cheese too in a hurry.

I also tried the vegetable lasagna, using the red pizza sauce and white garlic sauce, both of which were really easy to whip up.  I find making lasagna a bit stressful as there are always so many elements to work on (and, again, so much washing up generated), so I always expect a lot from the end result.  I found Richa’s assembly method a little crazy (all the mushrooms in one layer?!  So many layers of pasta?), so if I made it again I’d freestyle that.  No complaints about the flavour, though!  I crumbled in some smoked tempeh, because I do that to every lasagna I make.

The almond butter snickerdoodles didn’t taste particularly almond buttery, but they were fantastic snickerdoodles.  The texture was perfect, they smacked of cinnamon, and they were easy to make.

My nut butter blondies turned out a little browner than they should have, because I used brown sugar.  It was my first time making blondies, and I’m really glad I gave them a go.  You could definitely taste the nut butter. I took a slice to work for my lunchtime dessert and spent the whole morning looking at my watch wishing it was time to eat already just so I could sink my teeth in.

I actually made the gluten-free chocolate chip cookies with gluten in – half chickpea flour, half plain flour – and, as you may have spotted, some marshmallows for added fun!  The texture was perfect, but I had to add a lot of flour after the chilling stage to get it to resemble a cookie dough.  These cookies reminded me of Ms Cupcake’s recipe, and there is no higher praise from me on the cookie front.

At least the first couple of weeks of January were full of delicious, flavoursome dishes!  I already feel quite confident recommending this book, but I should have an even heartier endorsement next month when I’ve (hopefully) got my culinary groove back!