Monday 5 February 2018

Recipe Round-Up: Forks Over Knives The Cookbook

The Forks Over Knives Cookbook is a solid book, that I frequently turn to. I have made a lot of things from it! It may not be as flashy as some other cookbooks, but it consistently provides tasty food that is a bit on the healthier side. You can see other things that I have made here.

Mean Green Smoothie: This is a simple smoothie with non-dairy milk, greens, berries, banana and dates. The recipe calls for kale as the green, but I used mostly spinach and a bit of kale. The recipe called for 1/2 cup of dates, but I only used three and it was still far too sweet like that. For the most part I use dates very sparingly. I used frozen strawberries for the berries, and I used frozen banana as well to make sure it was thick and cold.
Rating: :)

Mean Green Smoothie


Banana Cranberry Smoothie: This was so good! It is so pretty, and has an amazing tart and sweet flavour. If only frozen cranberries were not almost always impossible to find here, I would make this a lot! The recipe again calls for 1/2 cup of dates, and this time I used 5 small dates. But because the cranberries are so tart, this was a perfect balance for me.
Rating; :D

Banana Cranberry Strawberry


Basic Oatmeal: This is the simplest of recipes - oats, milk/water, a bit of toast. I used oat milk, because I like it creamy. I made a half recipe of this (the whole says it will serve 2), and it was an OK single serving. But I also added a bit scoop of peanut butter that I put at the bottom of my bowl to melt and stir through, and I also sprinkled on some cinnamon. This really is just a blueprint recipe, you can add anything you want!
Rating: :)

Basic Oatmeal


Savoury Squash Soup: You may recall from some of my recent market posts that there were a couple of times that I had given myself some painful mouth burns the day before, and this was one of the culprits. Unfortunately, for the pain it caused, the taste wasn't really work it. It was a bit thin and bland. I would definitely recommend using stock instead of water to cook it in. I must take a little bit of blame though, as I ended up with slightly more butternut and slightly less potato than the recipe called for, though it all balanced out. But perhaps the higher potato content would have made it creamier. It says to garnish with parsley, but I only had coriander so that is what I used. It had lime juice in it, so the coriander worked well.
Rating: :|

Savory Squash Soup


Eggplant Dengaku Stir-Fry: I love dengaku eggplant. This was a tasty stir-fry, though the flavour wasn't quite as strong as you would find with a traditional dengaku. You make a batch of the easy miso sauce, and then add it to some stir-fried eggplant. Technically also capsicum, but I used celery instead or some crunch. I also garnished with some sesame seeds rather than green onions. The miso sauce is a mix of kombu stock, miso, mirin and sake. Using the amount of eggplant specified, I got three serves with some rice and spinach.
Rating: Stir-Fry :), Miso Sauce :)

Eggplant Dengaku Stir-Fry


Vegetable Lo Mein: This is a quick and easy stir-fry, with onion, carrots, and snow peas. Also capsicum and mung bean sprouts, but I used celery and bamboo shoots instead. The sauce is a mix of soy and brown rice syrup, but needs to be doubled or even maybe tripled, by the time you add the noodles there is not enough to go around.
Rating: :)

Vegetable Lo Mein


Singapore Noodles: I love Singapore noodles, as long as they are not too hot from too much curry powder. Making them at home means I get to control this, and use mild curry powder. As well as noodles, there are a range of vegetables like onion, carrots, mushroom, and capsicum. I just left out the capsicum and didn't replace it with anything.
Rating: :)

Singapore Noodles


Five-Spice Noodles: Five spice is one of my favourite spices blends! This recipe uses the Chinese Brown Sauce as a base, and calls for just half a cup. I used the entire batch (so just over 3/4 cup), and increased the five-spice powder accordingly. I also added some Japanese flavoured tofu cubes to bulk it up. It did get a bit dry during the cooking of the vegetables, so I added a few splashes of water to keep things moving in the pan. This recipe gave me three good serves, using 200g of brown rice vermicelli. My dad really liked this as well.
Rating: :)

Five-Spice Noodles


Stir-Fried Vegetables with Miso and Sake: Another quick and easy recipe. No need to make one of the sauces from the book first, this recipe makes its own very easy sauce. It has lots of vegetables (I left out the capsicum), and made a great meal served with some brown rice and some... sort of marinated tempeh. I honestly have no idea what exactly I served it with.
Rating: :)

Stir-Fried Vegetables with Miso and Sake


Indian Spiced Eggplant: I had an abundance of eggplants to use up, so this seemed like an excellent choice of recipe. But it came out kind of bland, unfortunately. Onions and eggplants and tomatoes with some spices, it just needed a bit of extra oomph somewhere.
Rating: :|

Indian Spiced Eggplant


Cute Kitty Photo of the Post

Sink kitty


This beautiful green-eyed boy thought that if his slunk into the sink, we wouldn't notice him.

7 comments:

  1. I meant to buy some cranberries to freeze over the holidays and I forgot. I wonder why frozen cranberries are so impossible to find? It seems like every other fruit is available.
    I've never had Singapore noodles but I want to try some! I've seen this cookbook at the library, maybe I'll have to check it out sometime!

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    1. I think you'd like it, the majority is gluten free or gf-adaptable as well!

      For one year we could buy frozen cranberries in the supermarkets here, otherwise I have never seen them! And if they ever do have fresh, they are so expensive for such a small box that it is off putting.

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    2. I know that there are two ways to harvest cranberries, dry and wet harvesting (wet harvesting is when they flood the cranberry plants and the cranberries float- think of the cranberry juice commercials) The wet harvesting is MUCH cheaper but the berries get damaged, so they get made into craisins, juice, or jellies. When you buy a bag of frozen or fresh berries they are dry harvested, which is more expensive. I think it is something absurd like only 5% are dry harvested.

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  2. Wow! A half-cup of dates in one smoothie?! That sounds crazy! I typically just use one date, and that's enough!

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    Replies
    1. I know! I often see some recipes call for a lot of dates in smoothies. I wonder if it is because they think most people or new to green smoothies people need it to be so sweet that you can't taste the greens...

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    2. That's what I thought! So many dates, and it must be so thick! Can most blenders even blend them all the way?

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  3. I have been curious to try that cookbook out actually, I should do that.
    1/2 cup of dates in a smoothie???? I usually add 1. Damn. That would be sweet. Sounds good other than that.
    The look & sound of the 5-spice noodles sound so good. I think I would really enjoy that. The lo mein sounds good too.

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