Wednesday 19 October 2011

Cookbook Challenge Day VIII

Today the Cookbook Challenge seemed to be insisting that I had friends over for dinner with it's three easy to prepare ahead dishes that would all go together well as one meal. I'm not one to argue with the recipe generator so that's what I did!

My first recipe of the day was the Chipotle Lime Two Bean Hummus from Eat, Drink & Be Vegan. Hummus is usually pretty easy to throw together and this was no exception even though I had to open two tins of beans rather than just one!

The hummus is made from both chickpeas & kidney beans and the chipotle flavour comes from Tabasco. This isn't a recipe I'd have picked, there are a lot of hummus recipes scattered between my many cookbooks and as I never have Tabasco in the house, well, until today, I would have skipped it for a more pantry friendly recipe. I was worried this would be too spicy but even I couldn't really detect any spice, I might even add more Tabasco next time.

My next recipe of the day isn't actually from the cookbook challenge but as I was having friends over for dinner I thought I should pull out the big guns & make 4 dishes. I'm a firm believer that hummus should always be accompanied by pitta bread so I e-mailed one of my bff's for her recipe.

This simple flatbread recipe only contains five ingredients but I realised too late that the recipe calls for fresh yeast rather than either of the kinds of yeast I actually had, I decided to guess at active dry yeast & continue anyway!

These certainly didn't turn out as well as Kip's pitta bread usually does but I don't think they're half bad for a first attempt. They look more like a flat bread roll than a traditional pitta but they tasted great so who cares right?!

The second cookbook I pulled out of the hat for today was the The Complete Guide To Vegan Food Substitutions and the generator chose me page 178, Quinoa Lentil Pilaf.

This pretty dish is flavoured with orange juice and caraway seeds & I love that it uses roasted salted cashew nuts. It's also the perfect accompaniment to recipe number three the Quiche from You Won't Believe It's Vegan. I've made quiche plenty of times before using my go to recipe from Vegan Brunch but I have to admit that I've never made the pie crust myself before. I don't usually cheat completely & buy the pre baked pastry case but I do usually buy the pastry in a block & just roll it out myself & I'll admit that I was tempted to do that today...


...but I reminded myself that I was going to need to make pie crust when Isa & Terry's pie book arrives anyway & I also remembered that Nick & I had received some of those fancy ceramic baking balls as a wedding gift so I stopped being a wuss & got on with it! The crust is coconut oil based which I was surprised by, I was worried that my savoury quiche would turn out, well, coconutty, but it hasn't and the crust was perfectly crispy & didn't crumble when I cut it.

I decided to grate some of the cheese I made yesterday into this quiche & it definitely worked out well. It was really delicious, there's only one slice left and I think there might be some fighting over it tomorrow.

I also chopped up some veggies to go with the hummus & here's the whole spread...

I think I'll be making all of these dishes again and I'm happy that I'm no longer scared of pie crust!

18 comments:

  1. I'm a bit scared of making pie crusts too! The quiches looks fantastic, bet all your friends were well chuffed with that spread!

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  2. I'm getting less afraid of pie crusts. I'm hoping Vegan Pie will completely alleviate my fear. All that food sounds so good. Your bread came out beautifully!

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  3. Ooh, I like the sound of chipotle lime hummus, I'm going to try that for sure.

    And your pita bread looks awesome, you're a pro bread baker now!

    And I've never seen the cookbook, You Won't Believe It's Vegan! but it looks interesting. And hooray for besting the pie crust!

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  4. Wow, you certainly did pull out the big guns. I love your cookbook challenges! You Won't Believe It's Vegan is a book I have and like but haven't much used. I need to pick it up again! And the pitta looks fabulous.

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  5. That's a fantastic looking spread! The chipotle lime hummus sounds delicious, exactly the type of flavours I love. If you ever feel like trying a different pita recipe that is fried instead of baked, there is a recipe on my blog that I nabbed from a Sunday paper which I have made heaps of times.

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  6. Yay! I feel like once you conquer bread and pie crust, you can do pretty much anything.

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  7. Oh, I love quiche so much. Your bread turned out really great. And I love the idea of having other beans to hummus. Random: I have that same scale.

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  8. Your food looks so yummy but I love, love ,love those scales! Wish I had more space in my kitchen!

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  9. The quiche looks amazing. And all your different kinds of bread keep turning out so beautiful I really want to give it another try myself.

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  10. it look me a while to get pie crust down and just as i had it i found out i needed to be gluten-free. so now i'm working on perfecting xgfx pie crust. ha! it's kinda fun though! man, what a lovely spread, Jojo. i'm really digging your perfect look'n quiche and that beautiful pilaf - the hummus sounds pretty cool and HOORAY for pita bread. the first few times we made them ours didn't puff, but we also found that our flatbread was just as tasty! :D

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  11. Are you kidding? That pita looks awesome!!! So many store-bought pitas are thin and flimsy. Those look fluffy and sturdy! Way to go :)

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  12. Wow that all looks amazing. Those pitas are gorgeous!!!

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  13. whoa! what an amazing dinner. Lucky friends! Your pie crust looks totally great... success! Also, I totally love your system for generating recipes to try - it's awesome. :)

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  14. Beautiful! I wish I had come over for dinner! Your posts are inspiring me to do my own cookbook challenge after MoFo! I have so many books but still so many unmade recipes.

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  15. Love how you decided to use it as a practice run for when vegan pie in the sky comes out. My preparation will mostly involve eating lots of pie :p

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  16. Looks delicious - certainly adding to the list to try out :)

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  17. Great looking table of food!!! Congrats on conquering the pie crust.

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