Recipe Round-Up: Nut Butter Universe

Nut Butter Universe by Robin Robertson is a fun book full of, you guessed it, a range of recipes using nuts and nut butters. This title is now out of print, but has been revised into The Nut Butter Cookbook. Any nut butter other than peanut butter is super expensive here, and buying the nuts themselves to make a butter is not much cheaper, so I have used this book sparingly so far as a result. You can see my other recipe round-up from this book here.

Fire Ants on a Log: This is a fun take on the regular ants on a log. The celery is filled with a mix of almond butter, maple syrup, and cayenne (I just used the tiniest smidge), and then topped with cranberries. I had three sticks of celery, and made 1/4 of the filling, which was the perfect ratio. This was a great snack.
Rating: :)



Vegetable Cashew Korma: This recipe was delicious - big servings that were super creamy and super yum. This recipe uses homemade cashew cream, and a homemade onion/ginger/garlic paste. You were also meant to add some jalapenos to the paste, but I didn't. It was a bit odd, because when I started blending the paste, it turned turquoise! Was I about to poison myself? The internet said no, and the colour didn't come through in the final dish. This is full of potato, broccoli, chickpeas, spinach, and peas. So good!
Rating: :D



Penne Primavera with Avocado Cashew Cream: Another winning recipe! The avocado cashew cream is amazing, though the flavour gets a bit diluted with the hot pasta. But I would make this cream for all sorts of things. Salads, nachos, dipping, whatever. Because avocado sauces don't tend to last well as leftovers, I halved this recipe to serve two. I also, as per usual, downsized the amount of pasta I use. The original recipe calls for 12-16 ounces, I used 8 ounces. I also added some peas and spinach to the vegetables (which included carrot, broccoli, and zucchini). I didn't have any fresh basil for garnish, so I used parsley.
Rating: :D



Szechuan Stir-Fry with Fiery Peanut Sauce: Regular readers know, this sauce was more a smolder than a fire. The strong flavoured sauce is based on peanut butter, with a bunch of other tasty condiments and seasonings added. Cooling it down was easy, just cut back or omit the red pepper flakes. The stir-fry itself is full of tofu, onion, broccoli, shiitake, cabbage and carrot (in place of capsicum).
Rating: :)



Buckwheat Noodles with Ginger-Peanut Spinach: This is an easy recipe, with a peanut butte rand ginger based sauce served with buckwheat soba and wilted spinach. Instead of 12oz of buckwheat soba, I used 8oz of regular soba (with wheat, as I don't need to worry about gluten). I also added extra spinach, peas, and some Japanese marinated tofu because that is how I roll.
Rating: :)



Mushroom-Cashew Breakfast Burritos: This lovely creamy tofu and mushroom scramble is cooked in a sauce cashew butter and almond milk (though I used oat) mix. These worried me a little as it starts off looking very soupy in the pan, but it did cook down to a great sauce. However, it did take a bit longer to get there then the 10 minutes the recipe stated, I started at higher heat and then decreased it as it started to thicken. I served mine wrapped in a large wholegrain wrap, with some spinach stuffed inside as well. Apologies for the terrible photo, I suck at photographing wraps to begin with, and this mix was delicious but not photogenic.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Dim Sim sleeps under the covers with me every night, and often doesn't get up until after me. Then she emerges, with a series of small mrows. Here she is, fresh out of the covers, fur a little ruffled, and her little morning face. I love her!

Vegan MoFo 2014 #23: Robin Robertson Rocks: Nut Butter Universe

And so we come to the final day of MoFo (at least in my timezone). When I started my Robin Robertson Rocks theme, almost all of the photos had been accumulating in my folders so I had lots of material. However, I realised that there was one book from the list in my first post that I somehow had not used at all, Nut Butter Universe. So over the past week I tried to make several things from this book so I could make it my final MoFo post. I ate a lot of nut butter (particularly for sandwich snacks) in order to make this happen. The things you do for MoFo.

Pasta with Cauliflower-Cashew Alfredo had me at the world cauliflower. I deviated from the recipe slightly by roasting the cauliflower rather than steaming it. Because roasted cauliflower!!! The sauce is made from cashews, stock, cauliflower, non-dairy milk (the book called for almond, keeping with the nut theme, but I used oat), wine, nooch, lemon and seasonings and is creamy and tangy. I made my sauce in the food processor rather than the blender, so maybe it was not as smooth as it could have been, but the taste was still great. II used about 10oz of linguine (the recipe calls for 1lb, I got about 5 servings from my 10oz), and you also add leftover cauliflower, olives and tomatoes. I served this with broccoli and some precious Field Roast I brought back from the US.
Rating: :)



Quinoa and Black beans with Cashew Queso Sauce ticks off several of my favourite foods. The cashew queso sauce is totally amazing, I would highly recommend making a double or even triple batch so you can drown everything in it! I didn't have any pickled jalapenos, so I used a fresh green chile that I chopped. However, adding it towards the end (unlike other recipes where I have sauteed the chili) meant that it retained a bit more heat than I usual like. But the sauce was there to make it all better.
Rating. :D... seriously... the sauce!




Brocolli and Rice Noodles with Hoisin-Cashew Sauce has a major error in the recipe - it makes no mention of the broccoli in either the instructions or the ingredients!! I added a head of broccoli when I was stir-frying the vegetables, as well as some peas for more green (my broccoli was pretty small) and I used sliced carrot instead of capsicum. I also added a couple of sliced and sauteed 'vegan gluten rolls' I had bought in a fit of curiosity at an Asian grocery store for some more protein. This is a sweet and rich sauce, and is great with the chewy noodles.
Rating: :)



My Favourite PB&J is a pretty simple 'recipe' - bread, peanut butter, jam is nothing new. However Robin's favourite PB&J is made with lime marmalade as the jam, and this is why I like it. It is easy to get stuck into a PB&J rut, but this reminds us that there is a whole world of jam out there. I didn't have lime marmalade, but there was some mandarine marmalade open in the fridge (which I disovered is insanely sweet, normally I use fruit-juice sweetened jams but this was full of sugar). Really any jam could have a turn at being the J.
Rating: :)



Flower Power Almond Butter Sandwich is a mix of almond butter, grated carrot, sunflower seeds, raisins and maple syrup on bread. I also added some baby spinach leaves. I found this quite sweet, so next time I would leave out the maple syrup. I took this to work to be my easy to eat lunch when I was working a half day at our bigger clinic, and it was surprisingly filling.
Rating: :)



Grilled Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwich is a nice snack. I made this in my panini press rather than in a frying pan, so I didn't use any butter on the outside of the bread. The only thing is that the flavour of the peanut butter and the banana is lost a little when it is hot. I think that either some vegan bacon or some blueberries and cinnamon would be great in this.
Rating: :)



Open-Face Peanut Butter and Tomato Broil had to make the list for MoFo, given the curiosity that the PB and tomato quesadilla from Quick-Fix Vegetarian generated in the comments. I still like the combination! Though I think it is more fun in quesadilla form.
Rating: :)



Peanut Butter and Banana Smoothie was a change of pace from my usual green smoothies. It said serves one or two, and I made a half quantity - you can see it is tiny, so I would say a full recipe would really serve one. The flavour is classic, though for me I would view it more of a snack smoothie rather than I breakfast smoothie, but that is because I really am addicted to greens in my morning smoothies.
Rating: :)



So, here ends Vegan MoFo for 2014. I am so glad I decided to participate (inspired by my upcoming trip to VidaVeganCon next year... I can't wait!!). I have had such a great time reading through everyone's blogs as well, I tried to comment as much as I could! The other great thing about participating was that it has given me my blogging buzz back again, yay! I know I won't be posting as often, but I think I will aim for a few times a week, especially now that I am in the habit of writing posts in advance to keep as drafts when I have a day off. I will be bringing you many more recipe round-ups from cookbooks, as well as stories of my recent trip to Seattle, vegan places I have been eating at and maybe something else every now and again. And, as always, cute kittens! Thanks a lot MoFoers, I love you! I hope to meet lots of you in Austin in 2015!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



I couldn't end MoFo without posting a photo of my beautiful Gizmo. It is two and a half years since she has been gone, and I miss her every single day. Although these days I have to say that I only have two kitties, I will always have Gizmo as well.