Cookbook Challenge Day VI

The cookbook challenge is back for it's third week & I have to admit that cooking three new recipes a day is stressing me out a little. I'm tired & my arms are killing after chopping 8 tonnes of potatoes (slight exaggeration!) & lifting massive pans yesterday and I've actually been thrown out of the kitchen by Nick for being too stroppy! He's made me sit down, listen to Less Than Jake & drink this...

I'm not entirely sure what it is but it's incredibly alcoholic & it has three straws. Awesome. He's currently cooking the rest of recipe three for me so that I can tell you all about one & two.

First out of the hat was The 100 Best Vegan Baking Recipes and page 61, Garden Muffins. I had very high hopes for these, I love both zucchini muffins & carrot cake and these contained elements of both.

Sadly the muffins didn't rise at all, if anything they actually shrunk a bit. They were incredibly gummy too & I actually couldn't eat them at all. Muffins are definitely the thing I have the most trouble baking, I love the spelt zucchini muffins from the Babycakes cookbook though & I think I'll stick to them in future.

Second book outa the hat was The Complete Guide to Vegan Food Substitutions and the generator picked the last recipe in the book, Chococado Pudding.

Now, I have to say that I love every other Celine & Joni recipe that I've tried (Hello Seitan en Croute!) but I just don't think that avocado in a chocolate dessert is for me. I'm not usually a pudding fan (in the American sense of the word) but the texture was beautiful & it did taste great but I just couldn't get over the avocadoey aftertaste. It's a ridiculously quick recipe though so if you have the book give it a try, maybe you'll have a better tolerance for avocadoeyness in desserts than me.

The third book of the day & the book that Nick's currently reading on his chair in the kitchen...yep, he's taken a chair in there, why've I never thought of that, is Appetite For Reduction. Now after yesterday's football food feast I was pretty happy to see this book. It's one of my favourites & I've been cooking from it a lot this year so it took a few tries with the generator to come up with a recipe I haven't tried, we eventually settled on page 28, Sanctuary Chef Salad. Now to be honest I've never made this because I'm kinda lazy and it has a lot of steps. There are essentially 5 recipes in one here & you have to cook & cool the roasted cauliflower, baked tofu & eggplant bacon before you can dive headfirst into your meal. It's definitely not a quick weeknight meal the first time you make this but once you've made it you'll have dinner or lunch sorted for 4 days if it's just you eating.

This salad is totally worth the effort. It's amazing! It's also huge and has a tonne of fun things in it. The eggplant bacon is perfectly smoky & crisp, the roasted cauliflower is better than I'd ever imagined roasted cauliflower could be & the baked tofu was always going to be a favourite. I made a couple of changes, I hate raw onion so there was no point including it & I couldn't find the correct sprouts so I just went for a random mix that I found at my local co-op. The real surprise with this meal was the dressing, I usually hate dill but I was brave & threw it in there anyway and it's really really good, like, really fucking good, eat it with a spoon good. This salad also made Nick like eggplant! Crazy! We can't wait to make this again.