I love flicking through Bon Appetit magazine for its up-to-date food trends and inspiration, however they can be slightly unreachable due to the hard-to-find ingredients or time involved in making them. In an effort to get The Hubby to eat more veg - especially veg he doesn't like has been hard. I knew the cheese would be a major swaying factor, and even though I have cut out cheese from my diet, it would be worth it to convince him.
I chose Bon Appetit's Best Eggplant Parmesan recipe as on the surface it didn't require a gazillion ingredients and it seemed simple enough to follow. No fancy techniques or blowtorches needed - plus I've never made anything like this before. We usually go to his parents for Italian after all!
Yay or Nay: Yay on taste, Nay on workload!
This was delicious and was given a huge thumbs up from The Hubby. I just did not anticipate the amount of work required - it took two hours from start to finish! I mean, I had to make the marinara sauce from scratch, it was worth it for the taste and it was pretty easy, but it added to the washing up pile which I definitely did not enjoy! I guess you could use store bought marinara and do the rest of the recipe and it would still be tasty.
I ran out of flour so used cornmeal instead but it just added to the crispiness, also I didn't have enough basil from my now, dead, winter garden so just used parsley in the cheese mixture and it didn't take away from the recipe. In addition to these subs and changes, I couldn't be bothered to make three layers or properly encourage the water out of the eggplant but again, it was still delicious!
I spotted cookbook Bowl at my local library and the premise is, pretty much meals in one bowl. Written by Lukas Volger, a veggie expert (as it states in the blurb) it was worth a flip through.
As the Hubby was out fishing for most of the day I wanted something fresh, healthy and most importantly made up of ingredients that he refuses to eat. I was planning to make something else from the book but I figured this would be easy and quick enough to whip up for lunch!
Yay or Nay: Yay
This was light, refreshing and smugly healthy! I didn't have some of the ingredients on the list so I omitted them or replaced them with similar items. Instead of buying 5 ears of fresh corn I subbed with canned corn, of which I used the liquid in the can as part of the broth as I couldn't get the corn milk that you would get from fresh corn. I'm assuming you'd get more corn-like flavour. I didn't add onion (none at home), togarashi, scallions or egg as I didn't think it would take away too much from the flavour profile - though I'd rethink the onion (for sweetness). I didn't have kombu (which I can't get my hands on here) so I subbed with some Korean seaweed/kelp.
After eating so decadently I needed a bit of a break from rich and moreish dishes. As soon as I was back home I spent most of the morning trying to save plants from the dead and unpacking. I realised that I had no food in the fridge so had to quickly think of some things to eat for the week. In the muddle of jetlag I flicked through Amelia Freer's book Cook. Nourish. Glow. and picked out a few recipes that I could rustle up without searching far and wide for ingredients.
The one plus of going away was that I came home to a jungle of herbs, berries, peppers and tomatoes which I knew I would utilise this week for sure. For the Mediterranean 'Pasta' I had 90% of the ingredients bar the courgette/zucchini and olives so I knew this would be easy, but would it be tasty?
Yay or Nay: Nay
I love the idea of zucchini/courgette noodles and all that but it never really lives up to expectations - I did have an amazing bowl of noodles in, of all places, Prague but I've never really had anything close to that since. There's always that weird taste when it is raw so knowing that this was cooked appealed a little more. Once the noodles cook down it does have a better aftertaste and the zest of lemon adds freshness but it was overall kind of bland and boring. Plus there was no mention of seasoning it! I'm not a big salt person but even I knew to add salt and pepper for at least some flavour!
I made a different version of this pasta salad for Mother's Day but I pretty much made it the regular way, i.e. buying a jar of pesto and adding it to cooked pasta. This time I wanted to make my own as I have an over abundance of basil from my windowsill garden and why not?! If it doesn't work out then at least I can say I tried right?
I found this recipe (and there are countless on Pinterest) in Ruby Roth's book 'The Help Yourself Cookbook For Kids'. Judging by how easy her other recipes are (I mean, they're for kids - how hard can they be?) I knew this could be a winner.
Yay or Nay: Yay
I don't know if you've tried other vegan/veggie pesto recipes but this is AMAZING! It really does taste like real pesto - which kind of makes me question what is actually in those supermarket jars of pesto. Don't bother with them, make this NOW!
TIP: I used cashews instead of the traditional pine nuts (which are extortionately expensive - why exactly?!) and Ruth does give other options for nuts.
