New Vegetarian: Omelets & Empanadas

Okay, first off, omelets and empanadas are obviously not new, magical vegetarian recipes.  Instead, New Vegetarian refers to one of the first vegetarian cookbooks I ever bought.  Let me start off by saying that the title is deceptive, unless in fact they were referring to how this is some sort of new-age vegetarian book.  The recipes are not for beginners, or really even your average cook.  Almost every last recipe has some odd, can-only-be-found-online ingredients, and figuring out how to substitute them can be a massive pain.  But I've done it.

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.

Strawberries & Cream Cake Roll

Whoa now, what's this? A post, from Brittany, onto Dinner Time?

I make no guarantees this will happen again, but I seriously keep taking pictures of food and never talking about them. So it's about time I do so it doesn't look like I have a food fetish.

Strawberries & Cream Cake Roll

It's been so long since I updated that I'm pretty sure I have never mentioned Farmers' Market Desserts, a lovely book chocked full of recipes involving fruit. I am a huge fan of fruit, but especially of cooked fruit, because I love things that are warm and juicy (maybe I do have a food fetish). I've made various recipes from this book with general success, but then I had a bumpercrop of strawberries I knew I could not finish on my own.

And thus I decided to try out a recipe that appears on the back of the book and generally looks gorgeous: the Strawberries & Cream Cake Roll. This required me to dice, slice, bake, roll, etc., and I'm sure anyone who followed this blog knew that presentation was not my strong point.

Well...



Boom.

It's been a long time since I made this, but I remember it being a hell of a lot of work -- I may have halved the recipe or something because I remember being worried about the cake part, and also I probably substituted Greek yoghurt for the creme fraiche/sour cream, because I never have either around. I remember the actual cake roll part being a massive aggravation because I used the technique suggested by the recipe and it just did not want to work for me. Yet when I saw how lovely it looked on the plate, I had to share it on Facebook.

And taste-wise? Massive success. My coworkers (that photo was taken at work, hence the different surroundings) devoured it within an hour or so, and it's hard to go wrong with strawberries. I don't remember much about it, probably because I made it in August 2014 and I barely remember to refill my car's fuel tank. I think this was a recipe that actually was worth the massive effort and overhaul, unless the one I am taste-testing right now (it'll show up on here eventually. New Vegetarian, you have betrayed me once more!)

Rating: 9/10. Apologies this post isn't full of my usual snark and knowledge, but I was chopping strawberries because I ran out of FILLING for the recipe I'm testing (NEW VEGETARIAAAAAAAAN!) and wanted to make a quick replacement. Which sadly, may have been a better choice than the original recipe.

Tschüß.

Cookies. Two Batches of Them.

So apparently I was planning to put these cookies, baked and eaten weeks ago, onto the blog. I forgot until I found their pictures on my Photobucket account again.

Both of these recipes come from the same book, Green & Black's Organic Ultimate Chocolate Recipes: The New Collection. Green & Black's Organic is a fantastic chocolate company that offers fair-trade, organic chocolate bars and products. The recipe book was given to me by a friend, and since then, I've been trying a recipe or two here and there.

A few weeks ago my coworkers were planning an event, and I offered to bake for it. I brought two recipes: a new one I had never tried, and then one I've been trying and trying to get to work the way it does in the book. I'll introduce them both.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe calls for muscovado sugar, which I certain do not have, so I substituted brown sugar. Otherwise, it's exactly the recipe offered in the book.



This recipe is supposed to make 16 cookies. It so doesn't. I can't recall the exact amount but I think it was like, 12, maybe.

They were, however, quite good! I thought the oats would make them taste like weird quasi-oatmeal cookies, but instead the cookies were quite chewy, while the chocolate chips were still very gooey. Furthermore, they stayed this way for quite some time; I forgot about the cookie leftovers I had after the event for over a week, and after that time, they were not stale. So I recommend you seal them in tubberware for long-term storage, since that seemed to work.

So yeah, I'm giving them 8/10 for being tasty, just wish the recipe made as many as it said.

Truly Gooey Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies

I've struggled with this recipe before, so I tried following it EXACTLY this time around...



Yeah, that title is such a lie.

These cookies are not "truly gooey". They are more like brownie-cookie hybrids. The cookie itself is very brittle, and so full of chunks that it's more like a pile of hazelnuts and chips barely held together by chocolate. This probably because the "dough" is basically just chocolate, and so while cooking it just spreads out ridiculously in the oven.

Adding more flour did not help, the last time I tried it. Perhaps you need to add more than I did. They are pretty tasty, don't get me wrong. The taste is fine, but the texture is not what it's supposed to be, and there's a bit too much filling (two types of chocolate chips AND hazelnuts). I much prefer the chocolate chip cookies, above.

It's possible baking these for a shorter amount of time may help, I have no idea. Giving them a 6.5/10 for being okay-tasting, but the wrong texture and all brittle. ALso this didn't make 16 either.

So that's about all I have. Short post, kind of too unfocused to go on and on. Next time: more food and probably more silliness.

Tschuess.

Mini Peach Tarts

I had a busy day on Sunday baking, churning, and cleaning. Unfortunately, the only thing that really went right was the cleaning. Nonetheless, I present...

Mini Peach Tarts

This is another one that my boyfriend found, and I accepted it whole-heartedly. Peaches are delicious after all, and mini peach pies? Yes, please. I didn't have any graham crackers though, so none of those are in it.



The Pepto-Bismol is actually plum ice cream. It had too much sugar :(

And now for the poor tarts. I want to say they were delicious and the greatest use of my peaches.

But no. Even with a homemade, from-scratch pie crust, no. And I know exactly why.

The recipe calls for WAY too much cinnamon and nutmeg. My two peaches actually made twice the amount of tarts the recipe called for, which means I used half the amount of cinnamon and nutmeg the recipe technically wants, and yet the spices completely overpower the peaches. I can barely even taste them, and when I can, it's not a mind-blowing flavour. It doesn't help that I had to cook them for roughly 30 min to get the pie crust to brown, which may have burned the tips of the peaches.

The homemade crust is okay, crispy, not too flavourful but it IS just a crust. The filling? Meh. So meh. Cinnamon and nutmeg are very strong spices, using 1 tsp each of both is so inappropriate. I should have known better.

It MAY be possible to salvage these by significantly lowering the amount of spice (by half at least). It's also possible my peaches just sucked (They were still hard and not ripe/soft after over two weeks of owning them). But honestly I'm so off-put by how it turned out that I don't really want to try it again.

4/10. Sorry peach tarts. Even a sprinkle of salt did nothing.

I MAY be able to manage to wake up in time to make a good breakfast that I could post to here. Until then...

Tschuess.