Wednesday, July 01, 2009

A few more recent meals.

These ones nearly got lost in the mess of my pictures file at home, so lest they be lost forever I will do another mostly-photos post.

This is Urban Vegan's recipe for Cameroon Mafe from her upcoming cookbook. Testing has officially been over for months, but we really love a lot of the dishes we've made so we keep revisiting them! I can't wait for the cookbook to come out. You may recall that I've made this once before; that time I used TVP chunks, this time TVP mince. I think I prefer the chunks.

For breakfast one lazy Saturday morning, we whipped up a batch of pancakes with raspberry-apple sauce. A great way to start the day!

Deconstructed sushi salad--for that delicious sushi-ness without all the rolling. This was my first attempt at making sushi rice, and I followed the method provided in The Tropical Vegan Kitchen cookbook... and it was a bit of a dud. Maybe dud is too strong a term, but the rice was still super sticky. I've downloaded some instructions from an authentic looking website for my next attempt. The sushi rice was mixed with roasted nori flakes and then topped with avocado, shredded carrot, cucumber and pickled ginger. I made a salad dressing from mayo, wasabi, brown rice vinegar and soy sauce that accompanied the salad perfectly.

More fried gnocchi. This time, prior to adding the gnocchi to the skillet, I sauted some onions, mushrooms and seitan. After the gnocchi fried for about 8 minutes I added some baby endive and a splash of balsamic vinegar. Very quick but delicious.

This last meal was a joint effort. I made the brown rice. Andy made a rendition of 'Chickpeas and Lentils' from The Alternative Vegan. And I made eggplant bharta with the addition of radish greens at Andy's request. The chickpeas and lentils combination was SO good. The smoky spices and tomato were subtle yet sexy, and made love to my tastebuds. The bharta was only okay. From now on we'll leave out the radish greens.

If anyone needs proof that a non-vegan can survive on plant-based meals, I'll leave you with Andy's opinion of our vegan lifestyle:

8 comments:

Amy said...

I can't wait for the UrbanVegan cookbook......

I love the pic of Andy licking the plate (we do that too - though I REALLY shouldn't do it at work!).

Have you ventured into homemade gnocchi yet? It takes ages, but is soooo much better than the packet stuff. I'm generally too exhausted to make anything other than tomato pasta sauce to go with it! ;)

x said...

I love the pancakes, the sauce looks particularly good!

And the idea of deconstructed sushi is great, I often feel like sushi but don't want to have to roll 'em out!

nora said...

that sauce for the pancakes looks awesome!

vegan.in.brighton said...

Those raspberry - apple sauce pancakes look delicious.

Vegan_Noodle said...

Definitely can't wait for UV's cookbook to come out!

I love the idea of deconstructed sushi... rolling it up is just too time consuming when I'm hungry.

Love the photo of Andy!

Miss T said...

They look great! But mostly I'm giggling at that photo of Andy. Buzz is also eating mostly veg food, both from choice and default, and I'm really pleased and proud.

Vaala ◪ said...

Again it all looks so good and warming! Loving the photo of Andy!

Liz Ranger (Bubble Tea for Dinner) said...

can I come to dinner every night? I promise I'll lick my plate of every bit of eggplant bharta! And I don't even know what Cameroon Mafe is, but everything I've seen of Urban Vegan's looks so intriguing, I'm definitely getting her book!