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 :)



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



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 :|



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: :)



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: :)



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



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



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: :)



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: :)



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: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



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