Recipe Round-Up: Great Gluten Free Vegan Eats From Around The World

Another of Allyson Kramer's books is Great Gluten Free Vegan Eats From Around The World. This is a fun book, that is divided up into chapters for Africa, Europe, South and Central America, Asia and Oceana, and North America. This is my first round-up of this book.

Easy One-Pot Rice (Jollof) with Cinnamon and Curry: The cinnamon taste is very subtle here, if you are a cinnamon fiend like I am, add more. Often with stove-top rice dishes, I find that they take a lot longer to cook than stated. Happily, this cooked perfectly in the allotted time! It is a mix of rice, vegetables (I left out the capsicum, and used drained tinned tomatoes rather than blanching, peeling, and chopping fresh ones) and spices (I left out the chili), and I also added some chickpeas in the final 5 minutes of cooking. This makes a fair bit, but not quite the 6 servings it claims. I got four and a half servings.
Rating: :)



English Cottage Pie: I love a good saucy, savoury pie filling. Unfortunately this was a bit dry and a bit bland. It is based on TVP and vegetables, but needs to have a lot more sauce in the filling. The addition of ketchup on top definitely helped! I made a half recipe of this, which made 3-4 serves.
Rating: :|



Russian Salad: While originating in Russia, this is a popular dish in South America. It is a fun salad - potatoes, mayo, hot dogs, cheese... definitely not a health food! I used Field Roast hot dogs, Daiya Monterey Jack cheese, and Vegenaise. I left out the shallots, but added in some peas (there seem to be peas in the photo in the book, but not in the ingredients). I didn't have any dill relish, so used some gherkin relish with dried dill added, and I used dry thyme instead of fresh.
Rating: :)



Farinata Pizza: This is a super quick pizza to make. The pizza sauce is particularly lovely, and is so fast! It makes more than you will need - I made a half recipe and still only used half of it, but it would be great to have some in the freezer for pizza nights. The chickpea flour base is thin and crusty, and makes for a substantial and filling pizza. It is topped with spinach, mushrooms, onion, and cheese (also capsicum, but no thanks). I used Follow Your Heart Mozzarella shreds.
Rating: :)



Pomegranate Soup: This is an unusual soup, foll of peets, herbs, rice, split peas and pomegranate juice, and topped with some gluten free meatballs. The balls have soy curls, white beans (it was meant to be chickpeas, but I'd run out), cooked rice, and chia seends in them. I made a half recipe of everything, which gave me to smallish serves of soup, and 12 meatballs. The full recipe is meant to serve 10 or more, with 2 meatballs per serving, so that seems a bit dd to me. I served this over some wilted greens, and it was quite a unique and tasty dinner.
Rating: :)



Minted Green Salad with Oranges, Lentils, and Tomatoes: I this for a refreshing lunch to use up some lentils and herbs. It is meant to use cooked green lentils, I used tinned brown lentils. With the amounts I had left, I made a 2/3 quantity of the recipe. Very precise, I know! I liked the sweetness of the orange and the fresh burst from the mint. Very nice!
Rating: :)



Spinach Mushroom Curry (Saag Mushroom): This is a very subtle and slightly sweet curry, but I liked it. The sauce is thickened using mashed butternut rather than any sort of cream replacement, which is a nice change from coconut. The recipe calls for fresh spinach to be wilted, drained, and pulsed in the food processor. I skipped this step by using a box of frozen, chopped spinach. Thawed and drained, of course. This recipe says it makes four, but I only got two servings with rice.
Rating: :)



Bulgogi-Style Tofu: There are some great flavours here, it is quite rich. Thinly sliced tofu is marinated in a delicious mix overnight, before being browned and then simmered in the marinade until it becomes dark and sticky. I got 4 filling serves from this, served with rice and some roasted bok choy. My mum loved this!
Rating: :)



Baked Poutine: Baked potato fries, a rich gravy, and cheese = yum! The gravy ended up being a bit of the salty side, I would back off a little on the soy I think! The fries cooked up well, though did not go quite as crispy as I would have liked. I used Daiya cheddar shreds for the cheese. I am not a huge fan of cold Daiya shreds, but the heat from the potatoes and the gravy made it all melty and good. There is some broccoli underneath as well, for greens.
Rating: :)



Avocado, Tomato, and Cheddar Soup: Half a recipe of this made two large mugs. It is a lovely cheesy and tomato soup, though I think you could easily just use nooch rather than melting cheddar shreds into it. I left out the chilli powder to make it nice and mild. The only thing I wasn't a huge fan of was the avocado - it is chopped and added in the last few minutes of cooking. Time to accept that I just don't enjoy warm avocado.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Last week we had electricians running all over the house, so Dim Sim came to work with me for the morning to avoid the fray. She was less than impressed, but at least she didn't have to have any procedures or stay overnight! Well, I lie a little. I did check her blood pressure, which was good. I got the rest of her results back yesterday - they still can't 100% rule out small cell lymphoma, but the most accurate test came back as inflammatory. And given her complete lack of clinical signs, that is what we are going with. Starting some anti-inflammatory meds and rechecking bloods in a month.