Sunday 10 June 2018

Recipe Round-Up: Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking

A while ago I bought Minimalist Baker's Everyday Cooking by Dana Shultz after seeing a bunch of Instagrammers do a cookbook challenge from it. The recipes I saw looked good, though once I got the book it took me a while to get inspired by it. However, eventually inspiration hit,and I have made many lovely recipes from it, with many more marked to make. This is the first proper round-up I've done of this book, though I have blogged about a few individual recipes in the past past

Carrot, Potato & Chickpea Red Curry with Cauliflower Rice: This is a hearty, comforting curry. The recipe calls for a quarter cup of red curry paste, plus more to taste. So cute. I used a tablespoon and got a nice mild heat. Because there is no coconut milk in this curry to mellow out the heat a bit (it is a tomato based curry rather than a creamy one), I increased the amount of sugar to use two of the larger Australian TBS (20mL each), rather than the standard US one (15 mL each), and also added a squirt of lime juice. I got a lovely sweet, tasty curry with just a very mild heat. I served this over cauliflower rice, which was just cauliflower processed up and sauteed in a little oil. Cauliflower rice will in no way replace real rice for me, but as there was a lot of potato in the curry for carbs already, it seemed like a fun thing to try. I think this was my first cauliflower rice!
Rating: Curry :) , Cauliflower Rice :)

Carrot, Potato & Chickpea Red Curry; Cauliflower Rice


Crispy Baked Tofu: This recipe is so simple and so easy and barely a recipe, basically just involving baking plain tofu cubes until they are crispy. But sometimes the simplest things are the most perfect. And I do really love tofu. I made this for another recipe, but I also just snacked on a bunch as well.
Rating: :D

Crispy Baked Tofu


Super Green Juice: I don't have a juicer, but this is a blender juice. It has parsley, coriander, spinach, kale, celery, ginger, cucumber, apple, lemon and either banana or pineapple (I used pineapple), that is blended up with water and strained. I am a rebel, so I had mine as a smoothie rather than a juice, because sometimes I am too lazy to strain. It was post sweaty yoga, so I used coconut water instead of regular water. It makes a lot of juice/smoothie! It was... OK. Not my favourite mix of greens. The texture was also a bit strange, though that is my fault for making it as a smoothie rather than juice. But the flavour was just not quite there for me.
Rating :|

Super Green Juice


Beet & Green Apple Yogurt Smoothie: So pretty and pink! Also very refreshing. This uses raw beet, a green apple, and vanilla soy or coconut yogurt, I obviously went for soy. It has berries in it as well as the beet and apple, and some lime for tartness. A great mix of earthy beet, sweet apple and berries, and the lime.
Rating: :)

Beet & Green Apple Yoghurt Smoothie


Super Powered Chocolate Shake: I know this looks more like hot chocolate than a shake. I styled this for a MiniMoFo challenge about warming up over Christmas. Of course, in Australia, Christmas is hot! So even though it is in a mug, that is one icy cold smoothie and the marshmallows are actually ice cream. I made a few changes to this simple recipe. I used peanut butter instead of almond butter (almond butter is just so expensive here, plus chocolate and peanut butter is a perfect match), oat milk instead of almond milk, and LSA mix (linseed/sunflouwer/almond meal) instead of flaxseeds (aka linseeds). The cacao powder, chia seeds, and banana I had as written. I also left out the date, because I knew this would be sweet enough for me without it.
Rating: :)

Super Powered Chocolate Shake


Garlic Cheddar Herb Biscuits: I haven't made a lot of biscuits, but these are the best I have ever made. They are salty, garlicky, cheesy, and delicious! I made a half recipe and for 4 biscuits using a 2.5 inch cutter. The cheddar flavour comes from lots of nutritional yeast. I loved these.
Rating: :D

Garlic "Cheddar" Herb Biscuits


Chickpea Fesenjan: I wasn't sure exactly what this would taste like before I made it, but it was a runaway hit. Roasted walnut meal is mixed into a sauce with pomegranate molasses and simmered with chickpeas. I am not always the biggest fan of walnuts, sometimes they can be bitter, but after the simmering there were no issues. The sauce had such a great flavour, including some lovely sweet onions as well. I served this over basmati rice, and we got 3.5 serves from it. The recipe calls for 1.5 cups, or 180g, of walnuts. My 1.5 cups was less than 180g.
Rating: :D

Chickpea Fesenjan


Masala Chickpea Curry: This comes together easily, and is a very lovely sauce. The recipe calls for 4TBS of garam masala, which seems like a lot. She does have a note to make a quite GM blend, though I used my regular store-bought one. My one was nothing like her one, and I decreased the amount to 4 tsps. It was quite peppery! As well as simmering chickpeas in the sauce, it is topped with some spiced chickpeas as well. I reheated these garnish chickpeas just before I put them on. I served this with rice and baby spinach, garnished with parsley and with a little lime juice squeezed on. It says it makes 4 serves, but really it is 3.
Rating: :)

Masala Chickpea Curry


1-Pot Chickpea Noodle Soup: I scaled this recipe for six down to a recipe for one, when I was under the weather and needed something soothing. I used 1 carrot (instead of 5), 2 celery sticks *instead of 4), 2.5 cups of stock (instead of 7-8 cups), and a 70g bundle of ramen (instead of 225g of spaghetti). After simmering for 10 minutes, a lot of the liquid had absorbed. It made one big serve, for one not so well girl. And it definitely hit the spot.
Rating: :)

1-Pot Chickpea Noodle Soup


Butternut Squash, Kale & Quinoa Bake: I had to use silverbeet (swiss chard) for this recipe because the kale in the store was no good. As well as butternut a kale, this also has onions and mushrooms. I could have decreased the dried quinoa from 3/4 cup to half a cup, as I would have preferred a heavier vegetable ratio. I got three to 3.5 servings out of this. I used a shallow rectangular baking dish, rather than an 8x8 inch one, and it was the perfect size. I served this over some more silverbeet.
Rating: :)

Butternut Squash, Kale & Quinoa Bake


Cute Kitty Photo of the Post

Burm brothers


Look at these two ridiculous Burmese brothers. They love snuggling!

8 comments:

  1. The chocolate smoothie sounds really good, and the biscuits look perfectly delicious! Cute cuddling kitties! :)

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    1. They were such snuggly brothers, they spent all day together.

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  2. Baking tofu is my favorite way to prepare it. It' so easy and hands off, and turns out perfect every time!
    I really, really love your recipe round-ups!
    OMG the snuggling brothers, so cute!!

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  3. I'm glad you liked that potato curry because I HATED it - it tasted like a curry made with ketchup to me, or something. Blarg!

    That chocolate shake looks delish, though!

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    1. I can see how it could, it threw me a little when there wasn't any creamy component to it.

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  4. I've had mixed results with minimalist recipes. Sometimes they are just perfect, and others they end up lacking something. So it is nice to see that you got some good results!

    That juice sounds like it would of been yummy- EXCEPT for the cilantro. I am alway a little suspicious when herbs are put into juices, particularly cilantro and parsley. I just don't think their flavors go so well with a juice.

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    1. I have heard similar reports, particularly with recipes of her blog. So far, so good with the book for me.

      I don't mind parsley in smoothies/juices if the rest of the flavours are right, though coriander is definitely a bit odd!

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