Recipe Round-Up: Appetite for Reduction

I love to eat, and I love to eat whatever I want. And sometimes what I want is delicious, low fat, healthy meals. This is why I love Appetite for Reduction by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. Loads of flavour, delicious meals and healthy as well!

Spicy Blue Potato & Corn Salad: I used purple potatoes because I have never seen blue potatoes here. Purple potatoes are hard enough to come by as it is! This is a colourful twist on potato salad, with potatoes, corn and pinto beans. The spice comes from canned chipotles.
Rating: :)



Soft Broccoli Polenta and Black Beans in Red Velvet Mole: AFR has lots of suggestions for recipe pairings. The polenta is creamy and warming, with small bits of broccoli studded all the way through it. It comes together very quickly. The beans are very saucy, which soaks into the polenta beautifully. The mole is a great sauce, with several suggestions of how to use it in other ways in the book. One of the suggestions is serving it with steamed zucchini, so I roasted some zucchini (so much yummier than steaming it) to serve it with this meal.
Rating: Polenta :), Beans :)



Big Fat Taco Salad: This salad itself was just OK for me. Cos lettuce (romaine for my US friends), black beans, Fresh Tomato Salsa Dressing, tortilla chips, fresh coriander (cilantro for my US friends) and Guacamame sound like they should be good, but it was just a bit underwhelming for me and I was hungry really quickly afterwards. The Fresh Tomato Salsa was very nice though, very fresh and tangy. According to my notes, when I was making this I chopped the tomatoes coarsely and then pulsed on low speed in a food processor to chop finely because I must have been feeling lazy. The Guacamame was also fun, made from a mix of avocado and edamame. I am love avocado like life itself, and I am pleased to say that this still had a great avocado flavour.
Rating: Salad as a whole :|, Salsa Dressing :), Guacamame :)



Basic Baked Tofu, Sauteed Escarole and Lemon-Dill Caulipots: A simple but fabulously tasty meal. Anyone who knows of this book knows of the famously delicious caulipots, and the lemon-dill variation is delightful. Escarole can be a bit hard to come by (sold as curly endive here), but when I do find it I always snap it up. This cooks down very quickly though, so you may want to make a big batch if you like lots of greens! The basic baked tofu is absolutely amazing, it is simple but comes out so very tasty. It makes a great addition to any meal.
Rating: Caulipots :), Escarole :), Tofu :D



Unfried Fried Rice, Five-Spiced Delicata Squash and Lettuce Wraps with Hoisin-Mustard Tofu: This was a pretty amazing dinner. First of, the un-fried rice... how does it end up tasting so deliciously FRIED? The flavour is fabulous and you will be gobbling this up. The hoisin-mustard tofu is very tasty, and would be great just served over the rice without the lettuce, but I had to make the recipe because of the fun of lettuce wraps! I did use cos lettuce leaves instead of iceberg lettuce because I am not a fan of iceberg in general and didn't want to have lots leftover I would have to use up. But the real star of this dinner was the Squash. I have never seen delicata squash here, so I just used butternut. I don't know what happens when it is baking in the oven, but it ends up so deliciously soft and buttery tasting. How?? Just eat it.
Rating: Rice :D, Tofu :), Squash :D



Vietnamese Rice Noodle Salad with Grilled Tofu: Such a great salad for a hot day. Grilled soy-marinated tofu joins rice noodles, cucumber, beans, greens and mint. I left out the red onion because raw onion tends to give me a bit of a belly ache. For the dressing I only used 1tbs of chilli sauce instead of 3 tbs, which gave it a nice mild Susan-friendly heat. It is topped off with a great peanut and mint gremolata.
Rating: :)



Garlicky Mushroom & Kale: Three of my favourite things right there. This is simple, but still tastes great. I served it over pasta when I made it for dinner, but had some left over to serve over a baked sweet potato for lunch the next day. This is excellent with a sprinkle of nooch.
Rating :)





Braised Cabbage with Seitan is another simple dish, which was a bit bland ultimately. I served this over some mashed sweet potato, and got three fairly light servings out of this.
Rating :|



Black Bean, Zucchini, & Olive Tacos: I couldn't find salsa verde anywhere for this recipe, and tinned tomatillos are not easily available for me to make my own, so I just used some mild regular salsa (of course, two weeks later a new brand of green salsa hit the shelves!). The yoghurt dressing is very lemony and garlicy, which complements the other flavours nicely.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



I just took this photo the other night. This is a bit grainy (it was taken with the zoom on my camera phone), but I just love it. Dim Sim gives Sahara the evil eye because Sahara is on the bed. If you can't see Dim Sim straight away, just look for those yellow eyes peering out from the desk chair.