An Evening of Vegan Treats With Jackie Kearney

Last night I got to stuff my face with the most delightful vegan street food treats at Jackie Kearney’s book launch.

For those who haven’t heard of Jackie, she was one of the Masterchef finalists in 2011 and is a committed vegetarian.

Her latest book is called My Vegan Travels.  Jackie has travelled a lot in South East Asia and picked up a ton of great ideas for cooking vegetarian and vegan food.  Her previous book Vegan Street Food was along a similar theme, but her new book is focussed on super simple, comfort food recipes.

I got to munch my way through: shitake mushroom croquettes, bombay veg sandwiches, beetroot and watercress samosas and artichoke torta.  All rather lovely.  But the icing on the cake for me as a greedy sugar fiend, were the chai doughnuts with raspberry jam and soft pecan cookie ice-cream sandwiches (with a vegan malted coconut and blueberry ice-cream). Scrumptious.

The book looks absolutely superb, so if you want to buy an original Christmas gift for a cooking enthusiast, My Vegan Travels is a great shout.

All the photos were taken by the talented Paul Wolfgang Webster.

Shitake mushroom croquettes

Bombay veg sandwiches

Beetroot and watercress samosas

All Aboard The Grain Train!

I didn’t especially have an opinion on grains until I read Diana Henry’s A Change of Appetite in October last year.

The premise of Diana’s cookbook is finding really amazing cuisines that are incidentally delicious. Her recipes blew my mind, they were exotic, intriguing and obviously, incredibly tasty. I also loved the many articles in the book giving her interpretation on healthy eating. There are features on calories, the lessons we can learn from Japanese cooking, the miracle of broth, good fat and bad fat, dieting and grains. Her thoughts are measured, well researched and inspiring.

The section on grains really caught my eye.  Ingredients such as barley, buckwheat and farro are cheap as chips, packed with an astonishing amount of nutrition and prepared the right way, despite their rather dull reputation, are versatile and bloody gorgeous. Unfortunately in a Western diet we tend to eat a lot of processed grains (white rice, white bread, pasta) that have had most of their nutrients stripped away.

I was further convinced by Diana’s argument to get more grains in my life by the cracking recipes in her book.  Favourites included:

• kisir (an autumnal tabbouleh with pomegranite seeds) served with griddled aubergine, date, walnut and yoghurt salad
• a pilaf of mixed grains with sweet potato and fennel with avocado ‘cream’

Griddled aubergine, date, walnut and yoghurt salad and kisir

So a seed was planted in the back of my head ten months ago when I read A Change of Appetite. I decided to try to eat less white rice, white flour, pasta and to strive to eat more grains like quinoa, freekah and millet. However that’s easily said given I’m an experimental cook and I like eating out. I can’t say I succeeded. But, luckily I came across the Grains, Seeds and Legumes cookbook a couple of months ago by Molly Brown.  It’s packed with imaginative ways to use a wide range of grains, taking its inspiration from Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Indian and Spanish cuisines. We’ve had some stunning meals.  And the thing with eating grain fuelled meals is they are not only delicious, but leave you feeling full in a very satisfied, light way.  And sadly with refined carbohydrates like white bread you are hungry again quickly.

I’m still not treating my body as a temple, I eat a lot of cakes – although healthier versions, enjoy more than my fair share of wine and mainline diet drinks which are packed full of chemicals. However, I feel I’m at least moving away from a refined carbohydrate heavy diet and towards more grains in my meals.  And rather than feeling I’m on some miserable healthy eating regime, I feel like I’m on a tasty adventure!

Quinoa, chicken and black beans with avocado puree

Turkish barley and lentil salad with tahini dressing

Warm barley with roast pumpkin and feta

Cooking The Books: The Foodie Teen by Alessandra Peters

I bloody loved The Foodie Teen cookbook.  Apologies Alessandra, but I didn’t anticipate a teenager coming up with such brilliant recipes.   And they were all super healthy too.

The dishes weren’t just good, they were inventive and challenging. The cakes in particular (all made from non refined sugar) were exotic and had incredible depth of flavour.  I would 100% cook from this book again.  Although I have two very small complaints: 1) a lot of the dinner recipes don’t have carbs which you do need to feel full and 2) there are too many cake recipes in the book, and despite my obsession with cakes, I craved more dinner options. But overall, my goodness, what fabulous, flavourful recipes.

Here’s my rating on the recipes:

Favourites

1. Spiced chocolate chilli with coriander spiked avocado.  This was so rich and delicious.  I might even go so far as to say it’s the best chilli I’ve eaten in my life.  We ate it on a friday night and I enjoyed it so much I couldn’t wait to eat the leftovers for lunch the next day.
2. Pineapple carrot cake with passion fruit coconut frosting. This was an indulgent piece of tropical heaven.  The coconut passion fruit topping was sweet and creamy and the cake was so moist.
3. Crunchy nut banana loaf.  The pecan nut and coconut oil crumble on top of this banana bread made it a real treat.
4. Mexican burgers with all the toppings and raw beetroot-carrot slaw.  I’m not sure how Alessandra did this, but the burgers were juicy and the slaw, salsa and guacomale were so fresh, the combination absolutely hit the spot.
5. Sweet potato vegetable pad thai with lime tahini and ginger dressing.  I was sceptical about whether this would work until I shoved a mouthful in my mouth.   The peanut dressing coating the vegetables was gorgeous.

Spiced chocolate chilli with coriander spiked avocado

Carrot and pineapple cake with coconut and passion fruit frosting

Crunchy nut banana loaf

Mexican burgers with all the toppings and raw beetroot-carrot slaw

Sweet potato vegetable pad thai with lime tahini and ginger dressing

The Also Very Goods

1. Spicy red thai curry soup with prawns.  Exactly what it says on the tin, an excellent red thai curry soup, full of flavour and kick.
2. Pea and pepper beef curry.  This was made with thai curry paste and was a fresh tasty curry.
3. Blueberry and almond crumble slices.  Crunchy, crumbly and juicy with tart blueberries, they didn’t last very long in our house.
4. Egyptian dukkah crusted chicken fillets wth cauliflower taboulleh.  The dukkah crust was a winner, providing a lot of spice and flavour to the chicken and the pomengrates in the taboulleh complimented the chicken beautifully.

Red thai curry soup with prawns

Pea and pepper beef curry

Blueberry and almond crumble slice

Egyptian dukkah crusted chicken fillets wth cauliflower taboulleh

As I said at the beginning, I bloody love this book.  It’s bursting with imagination, colour and flavour and it’s all incrediby healthy.  I always love a cookbook that will take me on a culinary adventure yet not leave me worrying about my arteries or my waistline.  Well done Alessandra, I could just about cook at basic bolagnaise at your age, so hats off to you for being so clever!

Cooking The Books: Ottolenghi ‘Plenty’

Ottolenghi’s Plenty has been an absolute pleasure to review.  This man makes you fall in love with vegetables. He serves them in unexpected and delightful ways. Cooking from Plenty made me very happy. And at no point did I feel that there was anything missing due to lack of meat or fish.

So here’s my run through of the eight recipes we tried out, starting with the favourites.

Favourites

1. Aubergine and lemon risotto. Ottolenghi may cook with vegetables but that doesn’t mean his dishes are low calorie.  This dish had a lot of butter in, but it tasted so good. Incredibly rich and creamy as you scoop out the goo of a charred aubergine to mix in with the risotto rice.
2. Courgette and hazelnut salad.  Admittedly we deviated from the vegetable theme here and ate it with roast chicken, but hey we would have been hungry without a bit of protein.  Griddled courgettes combined with roasted hazelnuts, parmesan, basil leaves tastes superb.
3. Tomato, semolina and coriander soup.  So semolina is a rather fascinating addition to this dish.  It thickened the soup and even provided it with a few accidental potatoey like dumplings. Tasty.
4. Mee goreng.  Apparently this is a really famous Malaysian dish, but I’d never had it before.  I am now an official fan.  Stir fried tofu, pak choi, french beans, noodles and a chilli and soy sauce. Salty and interesting.
5. Crunchy parpadelle.  A lovely creamy pasta dish made with double cream, sprouting brocolli, mushrooms and an exciting topping of crunchy panko breadcrumbs and lemon zest.  I really loved this one!

Aubergine and lemon risotto

Courgette and hazelnut salad

Tomato, semolina and coriander soup

Mee goreng

Crunchy pappardelle

Also very goods

1. Mixed beans with many spices.  Jamie chose this and I thought it sounded a bit boring.  I was wrong.  Beans can be very delicious in the right spicy sauce.  So tasty that I had two enormous plates full of the stuff.
2. Butterbeans friend with feta, sorrel and sumac.  Jamie wasn’t such a fan of this dish, but I love butter beans and feta and dill so I was happy as larry!  It was lovely and creamy and comforting with the dill and feta adding a bit of intrigue.
3. Soba noodles with aubergine and mango.  An unusual  and enjoyable dish.  The mango gave it an interesting sweet and sour flavour.

Mixed beans with many spices

Butterbeans friend with feta, sorrel and sumac

Soba noodles with aubergine and mango

I loved cooking from Plenty.  Ottenlenghi is a creative genius – the dishes are so colourful and imaginative – they really lit up our evening meals. Although sometimes there’s a lot of butter and cream in his recipes, I think they cancel themselves out because all the vegetables and other ingredients are so healthy. I will definitely be returning to this book for more vegetable worship.

Cooking The Books: Dale Pinnock’s ‘The Medicinal Chef’

I’m a sucker for a good healthy cookbook, but the recipes need to be delicious too.  On first impressions the title Medicinal Chef is a bit off-putting – it sounds rather clinical and dull, but in fact it really delivered.  The recipes were not only incredibly fresh and tasty, but they were quick and easy to knock together.

Here are the favourites:

1. Prawn and salmon skewers and citrus quinoa salad – this was such a hit for us.  I thought it looked a bit plain in the cookery book, but it was far from it.  The quinoa was mixed with parsley and the juice and zest of a lime and really lit up the meal.
2. No cheese chocolate cheesecake – made with avocados, a nut base and honey instead of sugar.  It was not particularly sweet, but once you got your head around that you could enjoy the subtle earthy flavours of the cake and feel smug for being so healthy.
3. Immune-boosting king prawn curry – as good as any curry we ate in Goa.
4. Sweet potato and spinach curry – a really delicate curry – and I loved the toasted almonds on top.
5. Grilled mackerel with sauted fennel and leek – the photo of this below does not convey how good this dish was.  Fresh, fragrant – you felt virtuous while you were eating it but thoroughly satisfied by the excellent flavours.

Prawn and salmon skewers with citrus quinoa salad

No cheese chocolate cheesecake

Immune-boosting king prawn curry

Sweet potato and spinach curry

Grilled mackerel with sauted fennel and leek

And as we liked absolutely everything we cooked, here are the also very goods:

1. Vegetable crumble with cheesy oat topping – a great way of using up all the leftover veg in our fridge.  I thought the oaty cheese crumble mix on the top was genius.  Especially the oaty twist.
2. Thai green vegetable curry – our motivation again was to get rid of old veg and what a delicious way to do it.
3. Mackerel marinated with beetroot and horseradish – I choose not to put a photo up as it looked revolting. It did however taste very nice – the horseradish with the beetroot was a great blend and I love the taste of mackerel.  And did you know mackerel is super cheap?

Vegetable crumble with cheesy oat topping

Thai green vegetable curry

Dale Pinnock’s Medicinal Chef may not be as sexy and on trend as Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food, but is the same premise.  Delicious, easy to make healthy food.  I marginally prefer Jamie Oliver’s book – perhaps it is because the photography is so good and the dishes jump out at you from the page.  But Dale’s recipes are quicker to make and require only a few ingredients – so I’d big Dale up for convenience.  I’d thoroughly recommend giving Medicinal Chef a go – I’ve really enjoyed it and it’s helped keep my waistline in check in the lead up to Christmas!

Cooking the Books: Diana Henry’s ‘A Change of Appetite’

I found Diana Henry’s ‘A Change of Appetite’ knocking around at a friend’s house and had a little nosy.  I was quickly transfixed as the theme of the book is Diana’s own personal quest to discover beautiful inspiring food that is coincidentally healthy too. I liked her writing style – it was honest, funny and elegant.  Diana wrote it at a time when she herself had been told by her doctor to lose weight and lower her blood pressure so she’s not preachy at all.  Her writing remains inquisitive and passionate throughout – she just wants to educate herself as to how to eat incredible food that is good for her, and she is generous and charming in sharing her journey.

So I bought myself a copy and this book is an absolute cracker! The dishes are inspired by many cuisines, but the Middle East, Far East and Scandanavia feature regularly. Every dish felt like a food education in delicate flavours and quite different to anything I’ve ever eaten before.

But as per usual, reluctantly I will have to divide the meals into ‘favourites’ and ‘extremely goods’, so here goes:

Favourites

1. Pilaf of mixed grains, sweet potato and fennel with avocado ‘cream’.  A sophisticated, subtle and uplifting dish.  You really don’t miss having meat with this dish, there’s so much going on.
2. Shawarma chicken with warm chickpea puree and sumac onions.  This was an indulgent and exotic plate of food and the chickpea puree was the star player – beautifully rich, nutty and flavourful.
3. Burmese chilli fish with hot and sour salad. The fish was excellent and spicy, but the salad just blew our minds – the sweet and sour was so fresh and just right.  I loved the way Diana has taken very common English ingredients (savoy cabbage, radishes and cod) and created a Burmese dish!

Pilaf of mixed grains, sweet potato and fennel with avocado ‘cream’

Shawarma chicken with warm chickpea puree and sumac onions

Burmese chilli fish with hot and sour salad

The Also Extremely Goods

1. Smoked haddock with Indian scented lentils. Inspired by kedgeree but made healthier by using lentils – a creamy, spicy, hearty and wonderfully warming dish for a chilly autumnal evening.
2. Mackerel with hazelnut picada.  Basically a croutony, hazelnutty, orangey topping on fried mackerel.  Yum!
3. Skewered chicken, with lime, chilli and mint salad.  Gorgeously fresh and zesty with Thai flavours.
4. Chicken and squash with soy and star anise. A lovely Asian style dish, I loved the sweetness of the star anise and the orange zest.  It was a warming, comforting dish and the chicken was super tender.  Shame we managed to under cook the squash which was rather hard!
5. Scandi salmon burgers with dill and tomato sauce.  A fresh and tangy dinner – the delicious yoghurt, dill and tomato sauce enhanced the flavours of the salmon burger.

Smoked haddock and Indian scented lentils

Mackerel with hazelnut picada, scandi salmon burgers with dill and tomato sauce, chicken and squash with soy and star anise, skewered chicken, with lime, chilli and mint salad

I recently reviewed Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food which I raved about, but Diana Henry’s ‘A Change of Appetite’ took healthy eating to another level for me. The food I experienced during this book was exotic, intriguing, surprising and incredibly delicious.  I felt I learnt a lot about different flavour combinations from this book – particularly the joy and subtlety of sweet and sour. I found the recipes a little intimidating on initial browsing – they sounded very grown up and sophisticated and a little out of reach.  But once you actually looked at the ingredients properly and read the recipes, they were very straight-forward.  Do buy this book and cook from it – it will make you happy and accidentally healthy.

#mc_embed_signup{background:#fff; clear:left; font:14px Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; }
/* Add your own MailChimp form style overrides in your site stylesheet or in this style block.
We recommend moving this block and the preceding CSS link to the HEAD of your HTML file. */

Subscribe to the Katya’s cake hole newsletter

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

Cooking The Books: Jamie Oliver’s ‘Everyday Super Food’

I was pleased about reviewing Jamie Oliver’s Everyday Super Food cookbook.  I could be confident that the recipes cooked wouldn’t result in me bulging out of my trousers as can be the case when I’m testing recipes. All the dishes looked around the 500 calorie mark which calorie wise would fill me up without jeopardising my waistline.

We really really enjoyed cooking from this book.  It’s beautiful to look at and the photos are so tempting – it was fun picking dinners and largely fun cooking them too.  I would say that it’s more of a weekend cookbook – although the recipes are easy they are a little fiddly and you might not be in the mood for that after a long day at work.  My other caveat is that the recipe descriptions occasionally gloss over a process without giving  full instructions.  For example – when making samosas you are told to put your filling onto the filo pastry and ‘make samosa shapes’.  Well it ain’t that easy! Even after watching a few videos on YouTube I was still struggling! So we had samosa lumps.  Oh yes, my very final piece of advice is use more spices than Jamie Oliver suggests. Our curries would have been a bit bland if we hadn’t.

I can honestly say every recipe we cooked was a blinder, so sorting the 8 we cooked into ‘favourites’ and ‘runner ups’ is going to be hard, but here we go.

The Favourites

1. Harissa roasted aubergine, pomegranate and pistachios – this dish was MAGICAL! Firstly it looked magical with the jewelled effect of the pomegranate seeds, but the taste was exquisite, the smoky aubergine with the sweetness and tartness of the pomegranate was something else.
2. Skinny carbonara, smoky bacon, peas, almond and basil.  You can’t argue with a guilt free carbonara.  I’d go as far as to say this was better than the heavy overly creamy classic.  The pea puree, bacon and almond provided all the flavour you needed without the heaviness of the traditional cream. And you still get a creamy kick from the yoghurt and egg that are thrown in at the end.
3. Beef, onion and sweet potato samosas – I was delighted that we actually made samosas (however lumpy they were!) – what an achievement.  And the spicy meat mix was so tasty.
4. Delicious squash daal and  special fried eggs – I loved this – the egg was fried in garlic, chillies, mustard seeds, cumin seeds and curry leaves – and I agree  – the egg really was special  – it was alive with flavour.

   

   Harissa roasted aubergine, pomegranate and pistachios

   

   Skinny carbonara with smoky bacon, peas, almonds and basil

Beef, onion and sweet potato samosas

Squash daal and special fried eggs

The Runners Up

Truthfully, nothing really deserves to be a runner up, I should really have done 8 favourites!

1. Mighty mushroom curry – a superbly creamy and spicy curry – absolutely no sorrow here about having no meat – the flavour and wholesomeness of the dish was quite enough.
2. Seared golden chicken, mint sauce and spring veg fest.  This was gorgeous and fresh and I loved the creamy saltiness of the feta that was sprinkled on at the end. My only complaint is where are the carbs? I was still hungry after.
3. Crumbed pesto fish, roasted cherry vines, spuds and greens – just plain excellent – fish and veg can be a pretty bland and virtuous dish.  Not this one! The crunchy breadcrumbed pesto took all the worthiness of this dish away and twisted it into something exciting.
4. Bombay chicken and cauli, rice and spinach – this was very tasty and cauliflower roasted in cumin and black mustard seeds was a revelation.

Mighty mushroom curry

Golden seared chicken, mint sauce and spring veg fest

Crumbed pesto fish, roasted cherry vines, spuds and greens

 

Bombay chicken and cauli, rice and spinach

Writing this up has made me extremely sad that this review is over and that I have to move onto another cookbook – Jamie Oliver Everyday Super Food I will return to you I promise! I’ve been flicking through and there are too many recipes I still want  cook.  Every recipe we tried was inspiring, colourful, beautiful, delicious and healthy.  You can’t really ask for more.