cookery calendar challenge - February cooking

It has been a while since I participated in Penny's cookery calendar challenge. I'll try to join in a few times this year but I can't promise. We'll see how it goes, shall we?

We had a family vegan week back in February. For reasons unknown, Annie wanted to try and be a vegan for a whole week it seemed easier to cook the same for all rather than cooking multiple meals. We have a couple of vegan cookery books and also a good selection of vegetarian ones and it was not difficult to find inspiration to feed the crowds. We also had on loan from a friend  "Deliciously Ella" by Ella Woodward. I chose to cook a couple of meals from this book because I knew I had to return it soon. The book contains a section that explains Ella Woodward's rationale for following her particular take on the vegan diet, if you are interested. There are pretty images of beautiful dishes and happy families glowing with health. There are several different sections for soups, hearty meals, breakfasts etc. I enjoyed browsing the book and I was looking forward to cooking with it.

I chose the spiced lentil soup and the creamy sweet potato risotto from the book. I chose both based on personal experience with risotto and soup: easy and quick meals because that's all I can handle just now, quick and easy meals.




The spiced lentil soup recipe seemed unnecessarily complicated and resource intensive. It asked for a baking tray, a pan, a blender and a frying pan. That's right, four separate cooking containers for a pot of soup. The soup contains a large amount of carrots, which need to be roasted in the oven. The lentils are cooked separately. For flavour, an assortment of spices needed to be roasted in a frying pan. To make the soup, carrots and lentils and spices were combined in the blender and blitzed to a smooth puree. The last step involved frying mushrooms in the spice frying pan. These were a topping for the soup, to be added to each bowl. By the time we sat down to eat our soup, I was a bit fed up. I am glad that it tasted really nice. I'd happily eat it again - if someone else cooks it for me. The soup was liked by all but the mushrooms were not. What is it with mushrooms? I love them but three out of four children think they a parental torture instrument. They have obviously never tasted the truly disgusting mushrooms of my childhood, the sliced and tinned variety. I actually quite liked them then but now the thought of piling tinned mushrooms on my pizza makes me shiver. The soup was a partial success only. I followed the recipe closely because I am a bit silly that way, assuming cookery book authors have a reason for writing a recipe they way they do. Having cooked this soup once, I know now this is not the case. Here is is my amended method: roast carrots and mushrooms on same tray. Roast spices in the soup pan, then add lentils and water and cook until soft. Add roasted carrots and blitz with the stick blender. Add roasted mushrooms to bowls before filling them up with soup.



After the time and resource intensive soup I didn't fancy cooking the creamy sweet potato risotto but Annie likes to stick to a plan when she has one and I went ahead, making sure there was plenty of space in the kitchen sink for all the cooking utensils that I was expecting to wash. I couldn't see an immediate way to reduce equipment use and once again, a one pot meal turned into a four pot affair. First, I started cooking the brown rice with coconut milk and vinegar. I am not sure what the vinegar was for but I added half of the required amount anyway. I used butternut squash instead of sweet potato on this occasion. Three quarters of this had to be roasted with pine nuts, the remainder steamed. The steamed portion was then blended to a puree with all the flavourful ingredients. To finish the dish, all was combined with the rice, together with a generous amount of fresh spinach. Unfortunately, the rice didn't need as much cooking time as the recipe said and by the time the other parts were ready to be mixed in, it was already getting cold. The spinach didn't wilt and the final dish was unpleasantly cool. We popped each plate in the microwave to heat it up again. Apart from being cold, it also strongly tasted of vinegar and it stuck to the palate. It is fair to say that the dish was not a success. The irony of it all is that Annie ended up having dinner at her friend's house and Sam was away, too. There was a lot of it and none of it was reheated the next day.

Would I use this book again? I doubt it. Not unless I acquire a small army of minions to clean pots and pans and I suddenly find myself with too much time. The borrowed book is going back to its rightful owner. I find the vegan diet too restrictive to be sustainable long term for us and Ella Woodward is making it more restrictive still. She doesn't use onions for example. We use lots of them, such a versatile and flavourful vegetable. This cooking experience made me feel a bit annoyed, I felt like being preached to when all I wanted is cook a meal for a hungry family. I feel a smidgen of guilt about plenty of things in my life but I really don't want to add the guilt of not providing wholesome enough meals to my children. I know that food and diet are very emotional topics and everyone thinks they know best. I do, too but I tend to keep this fact to myself. Being a science geek, I try to back-up my emotional food choices with science but I am still vulnerable to food beliefs that come attached with no evidence whatsoever. However, this is a topic for another blog post maybe. Before I sign off, I would point you to a blog post I recently read, you can find it here. Lynda talks about the connection of the the gut microbiome and its connection to mental wellbeing. I really enjoyed reading the post and I am sure you will, too.

Side note: Annie by the way gave up on veganism on Thursday of the vegan week. I don't think we'll become a vegan family but of course we do cook vegan dishes on a regular basis, just like many people do.

In other cooking related news, I am now asking both teenagers to choose a recipe a week and cook it for the rest of us. In reality, it will probably be less than once a week but it is worth a try. Sam set the bar high with his saffron spiced chicken and home made flatbread chosen from Persiana. He was too busy with these two things to make the salad that he had planned. The flatbread was pure amazing! Annie is up next. I think she wants to make a seafood pasta dish, which I know I will hate but I shall try and chew the squid rings without tasting them. I am not sure if I can handle biting into a mussel, may just have to swallow it whole, or smuggle it under the table for Jack.

What have you been cooking lately? Have you popped over the Penny's yet for a wee peak? Thanks for stopping by. xx