Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Cookbook Challenge: Week 1

My Week 1 cookbook was Eat, Drink & Be Vegan by Dreena Burton. I actually purchased this for the spring cookbook challenge and did make some stuff out of it, but haven't really cracked it since.

As tomatoes are looking pretty lovely and are from Ontario fields right now, not just the hothouses, I decided to go with Roasted Tomato and Fennel Pasta with Pine Nuts and Capers.
















The recipe is super easy, since it pretty much just involves throwing the fennel and tomatoes on a baking sheet and roasting them for a while. You boil your pasta and when it's done you add the roasted vegetables and some capers and fresh basil and chow down! I thought I had pine nuts but apparently I got rid of them in the last round of kitchen clean up so I was missing that element; bet it would have been great with them though. Although I don't really have 'staple' foods per se, I will definitely be making this recipe again. The smell of the roasting vegetables was phenomenal and alone is enticement to make it again!

















I made my own balsamic dressing for the salad, an old stand by my mom taught me. It's balsamic, olive oil, a clove of garlic, a spoon full of dijon mustard, salt and pepper. Beat together with a fork until it forms a nice emulsion and voila!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Cookbook Challenge!

A website I frequent regularly has 'Cookbook Challenges.' Everyone votes on which cookbooks to choose, and those books are assigned to a week. The challenges are usually 12 weeks long and each week a thread is started wherein everyone posts which recipes they have made (we try for a minimum of three for the week) from the selected book that week and awesomeness ensues. The idea is to pull out books that you maybe haven't cook from in a while, or to choose recipes that you haven't ever used before.

The last challenge was more of a challenge than most since I had a young baby to tend to and I kind of crapped out part way through, though I did get some of it done but never blogged about. The pictures are still in Ian's black hole of food pictures which may never see the light of day, by the way. The current challenge includes a ton of cookbooks that I do not own and, as I have now once again relegated myself to the realm of poor-studentness, I do not plan on purchasing any time soon.

Therefore, I've decided that I will do my own challenge with the books I do own. The one currently getting the most use is Appetite for Reduction, which, while it's awesome and totally deserving of the spot light, means the rest of my collection is gathering dust on my shelf. Time to do something about that.

Part of the challenge happens to coincide with Vegan Mofo, which this year is the month of October. Last year I vowed I would work on veganizing favorite dishes for MoFo. Since the challenge will take up a good part of my time and 'blogging energies' as it were, I will veganize one dish / week. Plus I've only managed to veganize two dishes ever anyway. This could be a disaster. Wish me luck!