Thai Omelet
We'll start off with a recipe that is different to mess up: a Thai-style omelet. The description in the book says something about how most restaurants serve something more like a "frittata with veggies". I think Thai restaurants have better authority on a Thai omelet than a random chef, but whatever. Pretty much you take tofu, jalapeños, cabbage, scallions, and a few other things, stir fry them, then place them inside an omelet. Pretty straight-forward.
I, of course, made a bunch of substitutions (I hate carrots. Seriously), and then made too much filling. And adding that much cheese on top of the omelet made it look disconcerting. Regardless, though, the meal was a success. I've made this before and knew it was good, and found once again that the instructions for making the omelet are very helpful. I'm hopeless when it comes to maneuvering eggs; I can't even boil them correctly. So for me to be able to made a foldable omelet is nearly miraculous.
Taste-wise, it's an omelet. No complaints. 8/10; it's a good hearty meal, but it's nothing special.
Sweet Coconut Empanadas
Oh, this recipe. I have a bone to pick with this recipe.
In addition to bragging about omelets, this book spends the page before the dessert recipes talking about how people always assume vegan dessert recipes are dry and flavourless, and how the average baker is confused or some such by having to make desserts without eggs or lard. That's a load of crap, but I haven't tried many of the dessert recipes, so I gave this one a try.
Sad trombone.
It is not the sheer ugliness of this recipe that gets me. Oh no. I ran out of freakin' filling. I NEVER run out of filling. I always have too much. I followed this recipe exactly, and I was not even HALFWAY THROUGH making the empanadas when I realized I was about to run out. I don't know how in the world that happened. The recipe said 2tbsp of filling per empanada, which was a lot, so I wonder if it was a typo or something. You'd think someone would catch it. Those pretty strawberries are there because I last-minute substituted strawberries to fill the remaining empanadas. And made too many, of course.
And their method for making the actual empanadas (make a cone of the dough and put the filling it)? Totally useless; the dough is too sticky and flimsy, so I pretty much had to put the filling on there, then just wrap the dough around it. No cone was happening here. Finally, the "coconut caramel" sauce was NOT caramel. It was much too liquidy. Maybe I didn't cook it long enough, but I don't think that was it. Thug Kitchen has a very good caramel coconut sauce recipe that I've made successfully, so it's not the concept that is off. I think the recipe just sucked.
As for the taste, meh. I preferred the strawberry ones, to be honest. And -- surprise, surprise -- the empanadas were much too dry. Another recipe I've tried from this book -- Upside-down mango cake -- had the same problem. Go figure, considering the boasting about moist vegan recipes.
My coworkers really enjoyed the recipe, so I guess it wasn't an utter failure. I still don't plan to ever make it again. 4/10.
In conclusion: you can probably skip New Vegetarian unless you want the challenge of five billion substitutions. I may try a few more recipes to put up here, but I really don't use it much compared to my other, easier books.
I hope to make something tonight since it's a long weekend and I've been utterly lazy, so maybe you will see something up here soon!
Tschüß.
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