Roasted Portobello with Eggs

Spent most of today cleaning... Fun times as an adult!

Roasted Portobello with Egg

So I love portobellos, and so the idea of pairing them with eggs with tempted to me. Hence me trying out this recipe. It's extremely straightforward, and in a fantastic fit of laziness, I just microwaved some scrambled eggs to go with it.



The bowl I made them in perfect fit the mushroom. Which makes for a very amusing picture.

As for the dish?

Meh. So very meh.

The thing is, the mushroom had almost no flavour; you can't even tell I ROASTED it. Maybe I just got a freakish portobello, since they are usually fantastic, or maybe it should have had a marinade.

Paired with the eggs, it really wasn't the most fantastic meal. Maybe it would have helped if I made the scrambled eggs the nonlazy way, but since the two are cooked separately, then thrown together, I doubt it would have mattered much.

It's possible that it may test better with eggs with a liquid yolk, though; then maybe the yolk would give the portobellos a boost. Or just try marinating it. As it is, though, there are way better uses for portobellos.

5/10. Giving it some benefit of the doubt since microwaved eggs are not exactly gourmet or fantastic. Otherwise, though, not going to try it again.

And that's about all I have to say about that.

Tschuess.

Pasta with Tempeh and Roasted Garlic Sauce

It's a warm day today -- and it has my apartment humid and kind of unpleasant. It probably doesn't help that I just deep cleaned the bathroom, which leaves me wanting to just lay around and be like "See, I did work, I can play Sims the rest of the afternoon right?"

The answer is no.

Pasta with Tempeh and Roasted Garlic Sauce

So this is a bit awkward. I've been meaning to put this recipe up for ages, and now that I'm finally getting to it... the blog is gone :(. So you all can have SOMETHING to check out, I quickly found this recipe which looks very similar... Once I got to the recipe. However, the original recipe was based mostly on just tempeh, tomatoes, and roasted garlic, without the extra veggies.



It also looks pretty unflattering when paired with green pasta.

It's been a while since I made this recipe, but I still recall that I found it kind of meh, at most. It was a bit watery, hence why it doesn't seem to be covering the pasta very well at all, but I've found that true of many homemade sauces. I actually cut back on the amount of tomato used, so perhaps it was partially my fault; the tomatoes I had were huge and I didn't think I needed both of them.

The tempeh itself still retains a lot of the original flavouring that I think is from preservatives or SOMETHING. Basically, it just didn't seem to cook all that well in the sauce. If I recall, the leftovers that I microwaved with some pasta fared a bit better than fresh, which really is just bizarre.

So overall, I think adding some tomato paste could help give the sauce some body, while perhaps cooking the tempeh then adding it to the sauce would help with the flavour. I'm noticing that the recipe I linked as a substitute has you BOIL the tempeh which strikes me as a bit "Huh?". I don't know how the texture of that would be.

Overall rating? 5/10. It wasn't that impressive but it wasn't awful either.

Bonus Rating! The spinach noodles you see up there are Garden Time Fancy Spinach Ribbons, which is really just a ridiculously pretentious name for cut wide spaghetti. They brag about their pasta on the bag, and it's expensive stuff.

It also doesn't taste any better than Target brand. Raw it has a odd texture but I can taste the spinach, but once cooked? Pretty bland flavouring. I'm pretty neutral on recommending it, really. I guess that's another 5/10? 6/10? Something around there.

Until next time...

Tschuess.

Arabic Lentil Soup with Mushroom Schnitzel

So to kick off going through the recipes I have saved, I decided to make TWO of them last night using ingredients I had available: Mushroom schnitzel with some arabic lentil soup. I've actually made both of these recipes before, but things didn't work out as I wanted, so I tried them again.



Tada.

Mushroom Schnitzel

So when I was in Germany, I fell in love with schnitzel. The problem is it is a meat dish, and while Germany had some great vegetarian options for it, The US does not. I found this recipe to my delight and was like "OMG FINALLY."

I didn't have scallions so I just subbed pearl onions that I managed to haphazardly chop up, while the matzo meal is actually matzo ball mix. Also, no lemon, and egg whites instead of whole egg.



I'd love to sing this recipe's praises. But honestly? It really didn't do much for me. First, do not cook mushrooms for 10 minutes! They will become gross! I cooked them for only a few minutes and got them to be tender but still able to hold form, same with the onions. But I had to use twice the amount of matzo ball mix recommended to make the patty stick in any way decent, and so in the end the flavour was sort of odd -- kind of salty, a bit dry. Most of the flavour seemed to come from the butter.

I imagine some more spices may be able to help it out, but I'm not sure which, and honestly, I'm willing to just let the recipe go and search out another vegetarian schnitzel. All the same? It wasn't horrible, just rather meh. Thus, 5/10.

Arabic Lentil Soup



This recipe is from here, and it was followed exactly except pepper instead of carrot, and also I forgot to add the cumin in until half-way through cooking (whoops).

I'd like to sing the praises for this recipe too, as I love lentils, and soup, and lentil soup. But unfortunately? It's very watery and the only real flavour is the earthy lentils. I did not find that mashing the lentils up added any sort of thickness, and I did not add any water from the initial 3 cups, and it STILL doesn't have good body to it.

However, I think this could be easily fixed if a) some additional cumin, along with a bit of pepper and salt, was added and b) if less liquid is used. The option of chili flakes that she recommends sounds like a good idea, and I'd try halving the amount of water, and just doing what she recommends and adding some as needed. Also, instead of water, using a high-quality broth should add some great flavour.

So basically, I think this soup recipe is a good starting point, but needs some changes to make it truly slurpable. These changes are pretty easy, though, so I'll still give it a 6.5 or a 7/10. I may keep a hold on the recipe and try fiddling with it again later, and report if it helps.

There should be another post from me later today or tomorrow, as I am currently making some Coconut Farro Porridge, another recipe I needed to use. Stay tuned!

Tschuess.