Herbivores' Heaven

Back in November I showcased what I’d made from the first half of Isa Chandra Moskowitz’s latest tome, The Superfun Times Vegan Holiday Cookbook.  And here’s what I made from the second half!

10.Cinco de Mayo

Unsurprisingly, this is another celebration we don’t really have in the UK.  Still, it was a fantastic chapter in the book – everything looked delicious, and I made a fair few of the dishes.

I knew as soon as I saw the picture that I had to make the burrito potato salad, and it certainly didn’t let me down!  I made a couple of changes:  kidney beans instead of black ones, because that’s what’s available here, and crushed Pom Bears instead of tortilla chips on top because I forgot to put the latter on my shopping list.  It was a great salad – we had it for lunch rather than as a side.  The dressing was fantastic, with the creamy avocado and zingy lime and coriander.  Definitely recommended!

The tomatillo posole with pintos and avocado was also heavily adapted.  Tomatillos aren’t really a thing here, nor is hominy, so I used regular tomatoes and chickpeas instead.  And the less said about pinto beans, the better.  My finished product may not have had much in common with Isa’s vision, but it was a nice spicy, hearty soup I’d have again.

I hadn’t been planning on making the spinach-mushroom quesadillas, but the inviting picture lured me in and I couldn’t resist giving them a try.  The cheese sauce I made was a bit too solid, so it wasn’t oozing as temptingly as in Isa’s photo, but it was delicious – there were a lot of good flavours in this dish.

I had high hopes for the seitan de mayo carnitas, but it wasn’t quite as exciting as I’d hoped.  It was quite reminiscent of some vegan kebabs I’ve had, but not quite as good as them, so perhaps it was just suffering in comparison.  It was nice, but not spectacular – the potato salad and quesadillas above were much better.

I played things a bit too safe with the spicy chocolate cupcakes with hot candied pecans – I didn’t put enough chilli/cayenne in to give it a good kick.  Still, they were delicious cakes.  At first I was worried that the glaze was too thin and runny, but it had such a great texture when set.  The candied pecans were excellent too, of course.

11.Mother’s & Father’s Day

The theme here didn’t work that well for me, because I don’t know what makes these dishes match these occasions, but there were a few things I was keen to try regardless.

I’m not crazy about sandwiches, but I wanted to try the pan bagnat.  I was too lazy to go and buy nice bread buns, but this wasn’t actually for a special occasion so I think I got away with it.  Dr HH really enjoyed it, and I liked it as much as it is possible for me to like a sloppy sandwich!

I didn’t have any truffle oil for the truffled almond alfredo with really garlicky broccoli, but even just with regular old olive oil it was really nice. The sauce was so good and creamy, and the excess of garlic really worked well with it.  It was really quick and easy to make too, so this definitely gets the thumbs up from me.

Bouillabaisse is fun to say and fun to eat!  It’s meant to be garnished with roasted half moons of yellow squash, but I just threw some roasted butternut squash chunks into the stew, and I was quite happy with that.  It’s an easy stew, though personally I’d tone down the grated orange zest – a little goes a very long way!  I found this to be pretty standard vegetable stew fare, not really special occasion-worthy.

I made the Elvis cupcakes for Dr HH’s birthday.  The banana sponge was easy to make, though I had to add extra milk to the peanut butter icing to get it spreadable.  The coconut bacon cooked in ten minutes, rather than the 25 suggested in the book, and it had already started to burn a little, so I almost chickened out of adding it to the cakes.  I’m so glad I stuck with it though – it was a great addition in terms of both taste and texture.  Although these seemed a little time consuming because there were various elements, I would definitely make them again.

12.Fourth of July

Most of the recipes in this chapter either didn’t appeal to me so much (so many chilled soups!) or were impossible to make as we don’t have a grill. But I made two things!

The bow tie and butter bean salad with fresh dill was surprisingly bland in my opinion.  It was an unremarkable pasta salad. I ditched the cucumber because I hate cucumber, but I wish I’d replaced it with something else green for a nice splash of colour.  You can’t win ’em all though!

The spicy tempeh-stuffed avocado was much more like it!  There was so much flavour packed in the tempeh:  sesame oil (the greatest oil of them all, surely), soy sauce, hot sauce…it was delicious.  And obviously heaping it into an avocado wasn’t a bad idea either.  We’ll certainly revisit this one.

13.Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

This is another section that was full of unfamiliar recipes for me.  But any celebration that involves fancy bread is alright by me!

I was really keen to try the challah, despite the fact that I’m the world’s worst breadmaker. Fortunately, Dr HH is an expert in this field, so we worked together and produced a masterpiece! I prepared the ingredients, Dr HH did all the kneading, and I plaited and glazed the finished loaves. They had a lovely sweet flavour from the banana, and while I usually hate the crusty parts this time they had some beautiful sweetness from the maple glaze.  I could eat one of these loaves every day – but apparently Dr HH found it a bit more exhausting than I did, so he’s not keen on making it quite so often.

Naturally, we also had to make the challah French toast.  Again, Dr HH was at the helm for this one, and as you can see by that delicious golden brown colour, he knows how to make French toast!  He was a little worried that there was no sweetener in the batter, but I reminded him that the bread was banana-based and we’d pour on some maple syrup, and all was right with the world!

Dr HH even surprised me with challah French toast stuffed with chocolate spread.  I feel like Isa would approve.

Making the chocolate babka was quite the saga.  I’d never even heard of babka before, so I wasn’t really sure what I was aiming for.  As such, the assembly instructions made little sense, and I truly feel that the lack of images here was a mistake – a series of step-by-step pictures would have been very beneficial!  And for any Brits considering this recipe, please be aware that “chocolate wafer cookies” have absolutely nothing to do with wafers. At a bit of a loss, I got a packet of Oreos and scraped off the cream. I didn’t finely grind them either, and I think doing so would have definitely improved the texture of the filling. Honestly, there was so much filling and it was so runny, it just oozed out everywhere while we were trying to roll and slice. Again – photos would have helped! One other point on ingredients: the recipe calls for coconut oil at “room temperature”.  In Central Europe in December, room temperature coconut oil is solid and you can’t exactly knead it into a dough, so we had to melt it to make it workable.

Also a note on timing – this book is great for giving you the total recipe time, along with total active time.  However, this recipe timing misses out the two hours of the third and final prove, so bear that in mind if you try it – there’s a total of four hours proving time.

After all the time and effort we put into it, I would have cried if it turned out terribly – fortunately, it was delicious!  It doesn’t look too different from what I saw on Google Images, so I think we’ll call it a success.  And we actually made it again two weeks later, just using shop-bought chocolate spread for the filling.  This was much easier and cleaner, and is also recommended!

14.Halloween

There were some really creative, visually appealing dishes in this section, but I just didn’t have time to make them.  I’ll revisit this section next Halloween, but for now I’m happy with the one I tried.

I couldn’t resist this monster mash shepherd’s pie!  It’s a pretty standard Isa shepherd’s pie, which is to say it’s delicious, but this time it’s topped with a coriandery mash.  I wasn’t convinced coriander would work with the more traditional filling ingredients, but it was a very exciting combination and definitely worth trying!  After serving these monster portions, I used the rest of the filling and mash to make a normal shepherd’s pie to be warmed in the oven, which was also delicious, if less fun visually.

15.Thanksgiving

As a Brit, this is another occasion that I don’t celebrate – I used this chapter as a practice run for Christmas.  It was one of my favourites from the book. I love the fact that a lot of the side dishes are completely alien to me, it was really fun to try some new things.

This cream of porcini mushroom soup was a huge hit!  The dried porcini were blitzed to a powder and blended with a cashew cream, which gives the soup both it’s wonderful texture and it’s incredible earthy flavour.  There were some sliced mushrooms in there too. It was so flavoursome and filling, and made me feel quite fancy.

Isa described this caramelised onion and cauliflower casserole as like a quiche but without the pastry, and this was definitely true.  I really loved it, and I think the tahini was a great addition, flavour-wise.  However, I’m not sure it’s a good side dish for a roast dinner. I’ll definitely have it again, but I’m not sure what it would go with – maybe just in quiche form then!

The super traditional stuffing was much better than expected, as I grew up absolutely hating the smell of Paxo boxed stuffing.  Appearance-wise, this doesn’t resemble any stuffing I’ve seen before, but it was packed with flavour.  This was one of the big hits of the book.

The fancy/not fancy mushroom gravy is so-called because you can choose which kind of mushrooms to use and they will determine the fanciness of the gravy.  I went for non-fancy, and I was very impressed.  I love a good, mushroomy gravy, so this was bound to be a success. If you’re not keen on slices of mushroom, I reckon straining or blitzing would work.

The creamy whipped potatoes were quite a bit more work (and washing up) than regular mash, and not really worth it in my opinion.  It was fun having super creamy mash for a change (there’s cashew cream in there!), but this approach didn’t really elevate the potatoes for me.  I’ll stick to smashed.

Green bean casserole isn’t really a thing in the UK, and Dr HH and I agreed that this would have been better without the green beans! The beans were fine, but the casserole was so creamy and the mushrooms were so delicious that the beans were basically an afterthought.  It was a really good dish, so thanks to everyone who posted a picture of it at Thanksgiving and inspired me to give it a try!

The stuffed Thanksgiving burgers were easy to make, and I froze them before cooking.  They cooked perfectly from frozen, and we both loved them. They had a really good, strong flavour from the mushrooms and held together very well.  We agreed that we would skip the cranberries next time – I’m not a fan of cranberry sauce, so I found the berries a slightly weird addition.

I was quite worried about the chocolate pecan pie, which I made for Christmas Day dessert.  When I was making it, the caramel hardened before I could blitz the silken tofu, so I had to call in backup to keep mixing it – I’d recommend getting the blitzed ingredients ready before the chocolate caramel. Then I was worried that the pie filling was going to be rock hard after setting.  We got it out of the fridge first thing on Christmas morning, so that by 4pm it was comfortably room temp, and really soft and delicious.  It was very decadent, and I heartily recommend trying it.  Ignore the gigantic pastry crust,the tin didn’t quite work out – also, I used shop-bought pastry for ease.

16.Hanukkah

This is essentially the deep-fried section, which is no bad thing!  There were a few delicious-sounding latkes that I wanted to try but just didn’t get around to.  Still, I tried a few things and enjoyed them.

The superyum baked potato pancakes were really good!  After mashing the potato I popped it in the fridge for a few hours, because I have a bad track record when it comes to this kind of dish completely falling apart.  They held together perfectly. They were really simple (just potato, spring onion, breadcrumbs, oil and seasoning), and I liked the fact that they were baked rather than fried.  I was worried that the crumbs weren’t going to hold on the outside, but they were terrific!

Dr HH is a big believer that falafel should be full of herby green flecks, so I had to try the green falafel.  I wasn’t very satisfied with the texture, as I had to use an immersion blender which doesn’t really give you much of a pulsing option – some bits were pureed, some still had huge chickpea chunks.  No complaints about the flavour though, all that green was definitely a good addition!

The cholent was a nice, easy one-pot dish – something that’s in short supply in this book, unsurpisingly.  It was pleasant but unremarkable, for me.

17.Christmas

Christmas is my favourite holiday, and I was really excited about trying some of the dishes from this section.  There were plenty of sweet things, which is always good, and some quite impressive-looking dishes.  I would have liked a great roast potato recipe, because every Brit has roasties at Christmas, but I’ll forgive the American slant!

I think Dr HH had already made these gingerbread waffles, assuming it’s the same recipe from Vegan Brunch.  This time I made them, and of course I made them in pancake form – no adjustments to the ingredients were required.   As with all Isa panacake/waffle recipes, they were easy to make, thick and delicious!  The flavours were great, you can’t go wrong with gingerbread.

I added seitan to the bean bourguignon because I feel like I’ve had that before and love it.  It certainly didn’t hurt!  This was comfortably the best of the one-pot dishes I tried here (bouillabaisse and cholent being the others) – lovely flavours, and super comforting.

I made the sorta classic pot pie for Christmas dinner, and it was a great hit!  I used a mixture of seitan and smoked tempeh for the meat, rather than just seitan as suggested, and I used a vegan chicken stock cube, which had a lovely flavour.  And I used shop-bought, accidentally vegan puff pastry.  It was easy to make and suitably impressive.

I had to defer to Dr HH when it came to this epic eggplant lasagna, because lasagna is a Christmas staple in his family.  They don’t celebrate this holiday, but the closest thing they have to a festive tradition is devouring his homemade vegetable lasagna.  As usual, he did a fantastic job.  Next time we would double the seasoning in every element of it, but it was still tasty.  The aubergine slices were especially good, and I liked the white sauce on top too.

Obviously I didn’t make the gingerbread people at Christmas – I’m sure Superfun Times Vol. II will have a chapter on Star Wars Day!  I’ve been using Isa’s gingerbread recipe since before I went vegan, so I knew it was going to work a treat.  I bought Dr HH some Star Wars cookie cutters for Christmas 2014, surprised him with a batch of cookies on May 4th 2016, and this year he was expecting another batch.  He did the cutting and stamping this year and had a whale of a time!

Isa described the big, soft chocolate chip cookies as the kind you see in a kid’s cartoon thought bubble.  A picture really would have been useful here, as these did not look at all like I was expecting.  They tasted just right though!   I think I prefer Ms Cupcake’s flatter, perfectly chewy cookies, but I certainly wouldn’t say no to these.

The peanut butter chocolate chip cookies were delicious!  I made them with normal spread instead of coconut oil, because that was all I had in when I got the cookie craving, so they may be even more delicious if you use the correct ingredients.  The texture was great too.

I couldn’t find any candy canes for these candy cane fudge cookies, so they look a little barren – but thanks to the mint chocolate bar I used, they still have that festive taste! They were really good soft cookies, and I loved the minty taste.

The first time I made these cranberry spice oatmeal cookies they oozed and burned around the edges.  The second time they turned out much better, but still didn’t really resemble the picture in the book.  I wonder if there’s a mistake in the recipe, or if I just keep doing something wrong?  Anyway, the flavours are festive and comforting, and that’s what really matters.

So, there we have it.  This book is an absolute masterpiece!  Besides my complaint about lack of pictures (or smarter choices about which recipes require pictures), there’s nothing I’d change about this book.  Although I generally prefer my books organised by meal type, I found the chapters here really fun.

What recipes have you tried and loved?  Which dish would most likely convince you to buy this book?

Like any vegan cookbook enthusiast, I have a lot of love for Isa Chandra Moskowitz.  Her recipes are always flavoursome and well-seasoned, and even the more ambitious ones seem somehow achievable thanks to Isa’s no-nonsense approach.  Her latest book was published in back in 2016 and I got it as a gift last Christmas.  It’s a hefty tome, divided into sections based on different holidays throughout the year, and first glance told me there were far too many good recipes here to try to squeeze it in as a standard cookbook of the month.

So I decided to do a cook-along through 2017, hitting all the big celebrations.  Of course, I did cook some of the recipes at other times as well, but I made sure to make something here for every special occasion.  Here is what I’ve cooked from the first half of the book (roughly!), taking in all the holidays from New Year to Passover.

And I’ll get my main (only?) complaint with this book out of the way – why so few pictures?  I want more, dammit!

1.New Year

I’ve never really cared for New Year – staying up till midnight on 31st December is a challenge for me, and my family has never done anything special on 1st January.  We’ve started a new tradition of Dr HH cooking a huge Indian feast on 31st (and he’s attempting to make a ‘New Year, New Cage’ tradition where we watch a Nicholas Cage film to start every year – I’m putting up the expected resistance), but with no other food traditions to guide me I was happy to turn to Isa for some early January inspiration.

Like most people I follow on Instagram, I made the hoppin’ John bowl for New Year’s Day.  I’d heard of eating lentils on 1st January because they resemble coins, but black eyed beans was a new one for me.  I find bowls quite stressful to make because they involve so many elements and so much washing up, but the end result is always so good that it’s probably worth it.  The highlight of this dish was the sauce which was absolutely delicious and I will definitely make again.

We made these orange pecan sticky buns for breakfast on 2nd January.  It was a real team effort, as I’m terrible at making bread.  Dr HH did all the kneading, while I mixed the dough, made the topping and filling and managed the kitchen (a role I excel in, incidentally).  I was somewhat concerned about inverting the dish after cooking, but fortunately they just dropped straight out. These are the best cinnamon rolls we’ve ever made:  the dough was perfect, and the topping was deliciously sticky and sweet.  The orange and cinnamon flavours are perfect for Christmas as well as New Year.

Who could resist tempeh sausage-stuffed mushrooms?  Not Dr HH and me, that’s for sure!  Dr HH flew solo on this one and, as usual, did a splendid job.  There was so much flavour in the tempeh mix, it was incredible.  Salting the baking tray was a good idea from Isa, as it gave the mushroom a good kick of seasoning too.  These would be delicious little party nibbles – or you could eat a whole plate of them for dinner, like we did.

“Take out your stovetop smoker and smoke the tomato” go the instructions for the ‘nox’ element of these bagels and nox with wild mushroom caviar. Perhaps I’m a bad vegan, because I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a stovetop smoker.  As such, I replaced the smoked tomato slices with some smoked tempeh, and this was a delicious breakfast. I was worried about the cream cheese, which was made from beans rather than cashews, but of course, I should have trusted Isa:  it was delicious.  The mushroom caviar was also sublime.

2.Super Bowl

If you are aware of the time difference between the USA and Europe, you will not be surprised to learn that I did not make lots of party snacks for watching the big game.  But there were lots of good recipes in this section, and I’d say the sports connection is optional.

I simplified the buffalo chickpea pitas by ditching the dollop of ranch dressing on top, which made them very quick and easy to whip up.  Well, easy except for the fact that chickpeas are pretty difficult to mash, in my experience.  Anyway, they made for a good spicy, creamy bite.

Sticking with the buffalo theme, I made the buffalo cauliflower on the day of the Super Bowl itself, but we ate it while watching the ‘big game’ from the UK:  Manchester United vs Leicester City.  The food was delicious (and Dr HH was delighted with the result), and perfectly suited for pecking on at a party or gathering.  It seemed a bit of a shame to me to go to all the trouble of breadcrumbing the cauliflower and baking it till crispy, then get it all soggy from the sauce, but I’m just assuming this is the American way.  I’d make it again regardless.

I’m considering the warm artichoke dip for our Christmas Eve Party Tea, so I decided to give it a test drive.  As usual, I was hindered by having just the one huge oven-safe dish, so it was an extremely thin layer of dip, but it was absolutely delicious!  It had a slightly fishy flavour to it which I really liked, and was very enjoyable indeed. I’m thinking about making a half portion and cooking it in little ramekins for Christmas.

I toned down the spiciness of the chipotle mac and cheese with roasted Brussels sprouts, just using chilli flakes for personal preference.  The cheesy sauce was perhaps the best I’ve ever made (I think the miso is the key ingredient), and the roasted sprouts provided a nice colour and texture contrast. It was delicious!  I’ve made this at least once a month since its debut in January.

The half-time meatball sliders were adapted into a more regular dinner!  I used the same meatballs and marinara sauce from the recipe and served them with pasta and store-bought pesto.  The meatballs were really good (though I’d forgotten to get an onion in), and I liked how they held together.  Tempeh meatballs are the best meatballs, in my opinion.

I made the Cincinnati spaghetti on the day of the Super Bowl itself.  It was really easy to make and the chilli was delicious – but it seemed a bit weird eating it with spaghetti!  Truthfully, I think next time I would just serve it with rice, unless I was trying to confuse someone.

The Philly cheesesteak casserole was really tasty!  It has a creamy cheese filling with lots of sliced up seitan, and is topped with bread crumbs and lined with sliced bread on the bottom. I won’t put the slices on the bottom again though – it was a nice idea to recreate a sandwich, but it made cutting it up a bit of a faff!

When we moved abroad we resolved to spend as little as possible on kitchen utensils and equipment because we already have loads of kitchenware in storage in the UK. As such, we only have one dish that we use for everything baked or roasted, and it was far too big to hold the batter for these peanut butter brownies:  you can see how the mixture doesn’t even spread to the edges, making it oddly misshapen.  They turned out very flat, but really delicious, and I will make them again one day when I have a full array of tins to choose from.

3.Chinese New Year

When I lived in Asia, I loved celebrating Chinese New Year.  This was mostly because it meant a holiday from work, but also due to the impressive fireworks, lion dances and general mirth.  I haven’t celebrated it since leaving Hong Kong, and I almost never cook Chinese food, so it was nice to experiment with this section.  I hadn’t expected to enjoy the recipes quite so much!

Hot and sour soup was a completely new dish for me, and I’m not sure how I felt about it.  The white pepper was perhaps a bit too hot for my tastes, and it was difficult to eat a full portion, so it might be nice for a small starter as part of a Chinese feast, rather than a lunch.  It was nice, but a bit weird.

Another entirely new dish for me was General Tso’s seitan:  deep-fried seitan chunks in a spicy sauce.  Perhaps mine was saucier than it should have been, as I used a full portion of sauce with a half portion of seitan, but I enjoyed that ratio.  The seitan had a lovely crispness around the edges, and the sauce was lovely, if a bit spicy.  The recipe called for chilli flakes on top of the sriracha, but I wisely decided that one dose of heat would be enough.  It was a great dish.

We ate the mu shu pancakes on Chinese New Year itself, and they were time consuming (it does tell you how long each recipe takes, but somehow I didn’t quite believe it would be a two hour affair).  Forming the pancakes was a wee bit fiddly, but everything else was quite straight forward. I followed Isa’s suggestion of adding some seitan to beef it up into a main course, and the final result was lovely.  I’d never had mu shu pancakes before, so I wasn’t really sure what I was aiming for, and I’d describe them as burritos with Asian flavours.  The dough was really dry at the start and needed a good kneading, but it turned out fine.  I would definitely make these again.

Dr HH’s face lit up when he saw the tofu short ribs with gingery root veg mash, so I had to make this over the Chinese New Year period in January. I wasn’t sure how well the mash would work with the ribs, but actually it was a good combo (I’ll still probably just serve them with rice next time, for ease).  The sauce on the ribs was the real highlight, it was sweet and sticky and wonderful.

I served the Peking portobellos alongside the ribs, and found them a very good match.  The mushrooms were so good, and they soaked up the flavour from the sauce very well.  We don’t have a grill, so I just roasted them instead, and I don’t think they suffered.

4.Valentine’s Day

Dr HH and I are not romantic people in the hearts and flowers sense, but we certainly use food to show our devotion to each other and to celebrate our special events.  As such, I really enjoyed trying the recipes in this section.

The almond-crusted French toast was semi-successful. The first slice I fried was golden brown, crisp and perfectly cooked. All the subsequent slices were slightly blackened and also underdone.  Isa warns in the instructions not to burn the nuts, but I don’t understand how to achieve this. Cook them at a lower heat and sacrifice the texture of the toast?  Once I’d pulled off a lot of the blackened nuts, it was delicious.  I’d like to eat it again, but need to refine my technique, clearly.

The broccoli strata was my choice for our anniversary breakfast.  I fried the veg and made the custard the night before, and assembled it in the morning.  Unfortunately, I think the custard thickened a bit overnight, so there wasn’t quite as much liquid as I would have liked.  But it was delicious nonetheless!  There were some nice crispy bits of bread on top, and the softer, almost omelettey bottom contrasted wonderfully.  For fairly minimal effort, it was a fancy and impressive breakfast.  Usually my special-occasion-breakfasts are sweet, so Dr HH was pleasantly surprised.

I was a little anxious about making the sweet potato soup, as I feared the addition of vanilla would make it nauseatingly sweet.  This is yet another example of the importance of always having faith in Isa:  the lime juice and generous helping of chilli flakes maintained the perfect balance.

I made the green lasagna rolls for our anniversary meal in January.  I liked the fact that there were lots of little tasks I could do throughout the day, rather than one huge chaotic cooking session in the evening:  I made the white sauce nice and early, did some shopping, made the pesto, had a lunch break, made the ricotta…it was a pleasant way to cook.

The rolling, however, was less pleasant.  It turns out that when you cook a load of sheets of lasagna, they all just stick together.  Fortunately I had enough supplies to start afresh.  Even the sheets that tore held up fine in the dish.  I popped the leftover pesto on the top for the last five minutes of cooking time.  It was a delicious dish! The pesto and the garlicky spinach were wonderful together.  This was one of those dishes where I really wish there’d been a picture as I had absolutely no idea what I was aiming for.

I only just got round to making the porcini-crusted tofu, and I wish I tried it sooner – it’s fantastic!  I’m currently wondering if I can persuade my family to try this for Christmas dinner.  The tofu is marinated first and then coated in ground porcini and breadcrumbs and fried to perfection. It is so flavoursome, I really couldn’t get enough of it!  The gravy was surprisingly bland, but there was enough flavour in the tofu to balance it out anyway.

I made the arancini for Dr HH’s birthday feast, and they were a huge hit.  I made arancini before in my non-vegan days, and they used to fall apart quite a bit, so I took some extra precautions to make these hold their shape.  I made the risotto bright and early in the morning, and left it to cool for hours, then formed the arancini an hour or two before cooking so they had plenty of time to hold their shape.  I was worried that they wouldn’t cook right the way through when frying as they were so hefty (the recipe alternately calls for 16 and 8 balls, and I ended up with 13), so I popped them straight into the oven after frying to keep them nice and warm.

And they were so delicious!  The crumb coating was lovely, the flavours were simple, the cheese didn’t really get gooey, but it was nicely cooked just the same.  Most importantly, Dr HH was very impressed.

On February 15th, while Dr HH was on half-term holidays, he whipped up the cauliflower tikka masala and pistachio lentil biryani.  Tikka masala is famously a dish that was invented to placate British taste buds, and as such Dr HH had never actually tried it before (he has Indian roots, so he eats the real deal).  Even he really enjoyed it though!  It was very flavoursome and creamy, and the balance of spices was just right.  He also said it was very easy to make.  We’ll certainly be revisiting these two!

My bundt tin is buried somewhere in my mum’s loft, so I when I made this chocolate yoghurt bundt cake I made them in little cake cases, with the bonus that they were suitable for packed lunches. They were pretty rich cakes – there was a lot of cocoa and chocolate in there – and I found them a touch dry, but they were really tasty.  Probably not an everyday bake for me, given how decadent they were.

5.Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras is Pancake Day to most people in the UK, so I was very disappointed to find no pancake recipes in this section.  All of these dishes were unfamiliar to me, as I had no real idea what people usually eat for Mardi Gras, but I enjoyed some fun flavours.

The recipe for the corn fritters with tomato jam claimed to produce 18 fritters.  I made six.  They didn’t seem particularly huge either, but I’m no fritter expert.  I was worried they would be a little bland as the fritters themselves are only seasoned with salt and pepper, but there was plenty of flavour from the tomato jam to keep them interesting.  I was definitely a fan of these.

I love savoury scones, so I was excited about trying the biscuits and white pepper gravy.  As someone who favours dry food, I was worried that the gravy would make the scones sloppy or detract from their loveliness, but this was in fact a winning combo.

I had no idea what cauliflower and shiitake etoufee was meant to be, but hopefully it’s meant to look something like this!  It was a little spicy for my taste, so Dr HH was a bigger fan than I was, but generally we both found it to be a tasty stew with good textures.  There was no serving suggestion, so we just scoffed it with some bread.

The andouille and cannellini jambalaya was really delicious and easy to make. I managed to get hold of some spicy Veganz sausages, but red rice is not really an option here so I used regular old long grain.  I’m sure red would have looked prettier, but this was still extremely tasty, so who cares?!

6.Oscars Party

I love the Oscars, even though most of the big contenders haven’t been released in the UK/Europe at the time of the ceremony.  Of course, I can never watch live with a table full of nibbles because of the time difference. This year, the ceremony was ending just as Dr HH and I were having breakfast and I was checking the live BBC updates on my phone.  “Ugh, La La Land won best film,” I told Dr HH as the latest update came in.  “Ugh!” he agreed, and I put my phone down. When I checked back ten minutes later, all hell had broken loose and I frantically tried to catch up on the chaos:  “Moonlight won!  The La La Land people were mid-speech and they had to stop and give the award to Moonlight! Yes!”  Oh, how we rejoiced. Anyway, this is a roundabout way of saying that we haven’t tried much from this section yet.

I find making pesto quite stressful, due to our inadequate blender, but nevertheless I resolved to try the pesto chickpea salad bruschetta.  Actually, the pesto worked a treat – it blended easily, and had loads of flavour. The coriander was a really nice touch. Please note they were much greener in real life than in this photo!

The salted caramel corn with peanuts wasn’t especially successful – I scaled down the recipe to serve two, and the caramel did not scale down particularly well (probably due to careless measuring on my part).  Also, I didn’t scale down the cooking time well and the caramel was a wee bit burned. In the end the popcorn had that pleasant sweet and salty flavour, but there wasn’t enough of the caramel and there was that slightly bitter burnt taste.  Not a great hit, but I’ll have another crack at it one day.

7.St Patrick’s Day

It seems like St Patrick’s Day is an excuse to wear green and get drunk, neither of which I’m particularly keen on.  However, I liked this section of the book because it’s mostly hearty, comforting recipes, and I am very keen on them.

I was inspired to try colcannon for the first time, and I loved it!  Dr HH and I enjoyed this the day after St Patrick’s Day, in our pyjamas, watching The West Wing, which seems like a good way to enjoy such a comforting dish.  Truthfully, mashed is one of my least favourite forms of potato, but this was a nice simple dish and I probably would have it again as a side.

I used chorizo for the pepperoni potato soup with kale, so I’m not sure how Irish it ended up being (though how Irish is pepperoni, anyway?), but I am sure it was delicious!  Actually, it would have been great without the meat slices too – the soup was really thick and flavoursome, and I loved the little flashes of green kale and orange carrot in the yellow broth.  A great spring dish!

I loved the Irish stout stew, though I made it without the stout (finding vegan stout in Prague seemed like it would be a bit of a hassle, largely because I couldn’t even be bothered googling to see what stout even is).  The potato scones were the highlight, of course, though they seemed a little underdone to me even after 25 minutes in the oven – they looked perfect on top but were still a little doughy underneath.  Maybe this is normal for potato dumplings?  The stew itself was flavoursome, and this was a good filling dish.

I was a little disappointed by the shade of my shamrockin’ shakes – not nearly as vibrant as I’d hoped.  But taste-wise, I have no complaints!  Actually, I like my shakes a little sweeter than this usually, but I’d drink it again.  Possibly with more mint, just for the colour!

8.Easter

I don’t associate Easter with any food besides chocolate, so this wasn’t a chapter that particularly called to me on my initial flick through. In the end I did make some good food from this section though!

Making the eggplant caponata bruschetta was a spur of the moment decision, and I’m really glad I went for it.  It was really easy to make, though it took a while to roast the aubergine and let everything cool to room temperature at the end.  The flavours were simple but beautiful, and caramelising the onions was a wonderful touch. We didn’t have any fresh basil in, so I just chucked some dried into the pot – less visually pleasing, but still delicious.

I wasn’t too sure about trying the devilish potatoes, never having tried devilled eggs before.  I’m glad I gambled though, because they were delicious!  The potatoes are halved and roasted, then a spoonful is scooped out and mashed up with cashew cream, turmeric and black salt for a lovely eggy bite.  I could have eaten a million of these!

The glazed tofu ham looked spectacular, but I’m not convinced it was worth the effort.  It’s in such a huge block that the marinade doesn’t get very far.  Likewise the glaze on top doesn’t have that huge an impact on the overall flavour (and how are you meant to glaze something with cloves poking out, eh?!).  It was nice when I had a flavoursome end piece, but probably not something I’d make again just because of the long preparation time.

We wolfed down the so veggie pastitsio on Easter weekend.  I’d never so much as heard of this dish before, and I would describe it as a kind of baked bolognese dish. The lentil and vegetable sauce was really nice, though I’m not sure how Isa’s photograph had such a vivid red pool of sauce underneath.  The cheese on top should be made with pine nuts, but I’m not a millionaire so I just used cashews.  I also added some nooch to the cheese sauce, as it was a little bland.  I’d also recommend sprinkling some oregano and thyme on top to give it a good flavour boost.

I transformed another cake recipe by making it as cupcakes/muffins, in this case the classic carrot cake.  It was really easy to make, and as there was quite a lot of sugar in the batter I decided not to bother icing them.  This was a good call – they were sufficiently sweet, and a beautifully spiced and sticky cake.  I’ll certainly make these again!

I tweaked this recipe a bit.  First, as you can see, I made the glazed blueberry and meyer lemon scones using raspberries, because I hate blueberries.  And second, I made big misshapen scones rather than the nice neat triangular ones, because I was making them for breakfast and I didn’t want to waste time shaping any dough.  They were delicious!  They baked really well, and the icing was a real nice addition – the lemon juice in there really packed a punch!  I regularly use this basic recipe now to make chocolate and hazelnut scones, which I would also heartily recommend.

9.Passover

I also don’t know very much about what people eat at Passover, and I don’t really know what matzoh is or where to buy it, so that ruled out a lot of recipes here.  But I did try one!

I love both tempeh and shepherd’s pie, so the tempeh shepherd’s pie with whipped sweet potatoes was a must!  I sprinkled cheese and thyme on top before popping it in the oven and I’m glad I did, as I found the topping a bit too sweet. Maybe I’d use half sweet and half regular potatoes next time.  The filling was spot on though!  You can’t go wrong with tempeh!

Not a bad start, eh?  At the end of December I’ll post part two – there are still numerous Thanksgiving and Christmas dishes I need to try!  It’s been a promising start though, and hopefully you’ve already got the impression that I loved this book.  The Super Bowl section alone is worth the money. If you haven’t got your copy yet, there’s still time to stick it on your Christmas list!