Recipe Round-Up: Chloe's Kitchen

Time for the final installment of the current Chloe's Kitchen recipe round-up, see previous posts about this book here.

Southern Skillet Black-Eyed Peas with Quick Buttery Biscuits amd Garlicky Greens: I used tinned black beans in this recipe as they are easily available. This is a lovely sweet BBQ sauce recipe that as well as beans has cauliflower and celery (which I used in place of capsicum), I also used paprika in place of the chili powder. I scaled down this recipe to make half, but accidentally mucked up when making the biscuits by intially not adding enough flour... so I had to mix in more at the end. They still tasted great, but maybe not as flaky as they should have been. The biscuits are slathered in Whipped Maple Butter, which is a combination of butter (Nuttelex) and maple syrup that are whipped to be light and sweet. I took a slight deviation in the garlicky greens recipe by using broccolini instead of a leafy green, there was a real shortage of greens earlier this year.
Rating: Beans with Biscuits :), Whipped Maple Butter :), Garlicky Greens :)



Peanutty Perfection Noodles: Who doesn't love peanut sauce and noodles! I glutened this recipe up by using linguine rather than rice noodles, and I only used half the amount. The recipe itself has carrots and scallions as the vegetables, but I added broccoli florets, peas, tofu, and spinach! I used a mix of light coconut milk and water in the sauce, and left out the sriracha, and I also added alittle bit of tamarind paste as I found myself out of lime juice.
Rating: :)



Penne alla Vodka with the Best Garlic Bread in the World: The only reason I ever buy vodka is to make vodka sauce, and this was a nice one with lots of basil and cashew cream, though the overall flavour fell a bit flat. The garlic bread is easy to make and tastes food, though is not the best in the world. Chloe loves to be dramatic when naming her recipes.
Rating: :)



Spaghetti Bolognese: This uses a blend of walnuts, mushrooms, and beans. Blending it to be crumbly and chunky without being mushy was difficult given the bean component of it, and once it hit the frying pan and I was stirring it around, it tended to clump together anyway, which you can see. It was quite a sweet recipe, Chloe uses maple syrup in her sauce recipe, which I would recommend leaving out because why?
Rating: :|



Wild Mushroom Strogranoff Fettuccine: This uses a mix of fresh (crimini and white, in my case as I couldn't get all creiini) and dried (porcini) mushrooms in a creamy roux-based sauced. I used linguine and cut the amount from 450g to 250g to get my preferred sauce to pasta ratio. I also added peas and served it over spinach.
Rating: :)



Herbed Polenta Cutlets with Marsala Mushroom Ragout: I cannot find a vegan marsala where I live to save my life, so I consulted the internet and used a mix of white wine and brandy for this gloriously mushroomly ragout. It has both crimini and shiitake mushrooms! I was making this one night when I was on my own, so I scaled down the recipe to 1/4 of the polenta but 1/2 of the mushrooms, because I love mushrooms! The polenta is easy to make and filled with herbs, but does need to be made ahead so it has time to set. I poured it into a little remakin to set so it came out as a circle, rather than spreading it onto a pan and cutting a circle shape later.
Rating: :)



Hot Fudge Sundaes: This includes a recipe for mint chip ice cream, but I don't like mint ice cream so instead I used the vanilla ice cream recipe that is also included in the book. For the ice cream I used Flora Professional Plant Cream instead of coconut milk, which is my new favourite substitute when making vegan ice cream. This had a beautiful vanilla flavour, and was very creamy. The hot fudge sauce is made with yet more Flora cream (instead of coconut milk), chocolate, and sweeteners. As you can see, it did set up pretty quickly when it hit the ice cream, rather than staying hot and fudgy, but it still tasted great!
Rating: Ice Cream :), Sundae :)



Thsi ends this round of round-ups from Chloe's Kitchen! I still have a lot in the book I have not cooked, so I will come back to it one day. In about ten years after I finish working through and rounding up the rest of my cookbooks alphabetically. LOL.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



A little flash back photo of our beautiful family boy Possum.

Midweek Munchies

It's a Wednesday, so it is time to reflect on some munchies.

I had tried the Leftfield Provisions Brie from Coles earlier in the year, so was keen to try the Camembert. I regret to inform you that this one was not great. It was quite dry and hard and the flavour was just... meh. I will stick to the Brie.



Veef came out with some premade meatballs in sauce, which I used to make a very quick dinner with spaghetti and Follow Your Heart parmesan. I realised after I bought it that the tomato sauce has coconut cream in it, sigh, but thankfully it was not enough to make it taste coconutty or to make me feel sick. The meatballs themselves were fine.



I made this Pan-Fried Teriyaki Tofu Bowl from Just One Cookbook, a Japanese recipe blog, and it was lovely. Look at the glaze on that tofu! I was doing this as a very pantry friendly meal, so I served it over some rice and some steamed frozen green vegetables.



Alas, Sunrice no longer makes their incredible Smokehouse BBQ chips, and instead make these Smokey BBQ, Tomato, and Herb. The good new is they are still delicious, though not quite as delicious as the original. But I am very happy to eat them.



Earth has come out with a few new frozen meals lately, so I tried this Satay one after assessing that it was not full of coconut or chilli. It was fine... it uses sunflower butter to make it peanut free. But my heart and my brain and my tastebuds were crying out for a peanut sauce.



After trying some incredible brownie hummus from Aldi over Christmas, I found this in Coles. It is nice, but not as good as that Aldi stuff (which was limited edition, I hope they bring it back again). Good for dipping apple slices in or smearing on toast.



Cute Kitty Photos of the Post



Please enjoy a random throwback photo of Dim Sim and Gizmo actually close to each other enjoying the sunroon.

Recipe Round-Up: Chloe's Vegan Kitchen

More things I made from Chloe's Kitchen by Chloe Coscarelli. See previous posts about this cookbook here.

Tofu Scallopini with Mashed 'Potatoes': I took a few liberties here, the biggest being that the scallopini recipe was meant to be made with seitan, but I used tofu. I always have tofu on hand, and I prefer it. I made a half recipe with six thin slices of tofu. The slices are battered before being fried, and I did find my batter turned out very gluggy. But I enjoyed them once the lovely herby mushroom white wine sauce was added. The mashed potatoes are a mix of potato, parsnip and cauliflower. The recipe calls it 'Guilt Free', but I don't believe in attaching guilt to food, and especially not potatoes. This mash was lovely for what it was, but you could definitely tell it was not all potatoes. But it had a nice sweet earthy flavour.
Rating: Scallopini :), Mash :)



Maple-Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Toasted Hazelnuts: I turned this side into a meal by serving it over a rice and quinoa mix alongside some sliced Field Roast Apple Sage sausage. This is very simple to make, and I love anything with roasted Brussels sprouts. I could do with less hazelnuts in the end, I think just a few chopped to sprinkle on top. I made a half recipe of this, which was enough for two side serves.
Rating: :)



Sea Salt and Vinegar French Fries: A ridiculously tiny pile of fries, because I had a little potato I felt like using up alongside a burger. The fries are baked, which I like because I am too scared to deep fry. The fries themselves were good, they actually went nice and crunchy! But as soon as you sprinkle them with the malt vinegar, they went soggy. Alas. But they still tasted good, I love vinegar. I think a bigger pile of fries would hold up better.
Rating: :)



Chloe's Award-Winning Mango Masala Panini: This requires a few components, including a tamarind-mango chutney, a spiced chickpea masala, and a serve of the roasted cauliflower curry I mentioned in my last round-up from here. It also has some spinach added. It is a lovely combination of flavours! I initially made it as a curry to serve over rice, and used the left overs to make the sandwich.
Rating: :)





Moo Shu Vegetables with Homemade Chinese Pancakes: Making pancakes seemed tiring for a weeknight, so I initially served this as a stir-fry over rice! It is a lovely mix of tofu. mushrooms, cabbage and carrot with a lovely housin sauce. Heaven! For the leftovers, I scaled down the pancake recipe and just made two pancakes when I had a bit more time and energy. The dough was a bit hard to work with, and they ended up a bit thick and tough (I do not have the right skills yet), but they were nice.
Rating: :)





Best-Ever Baked Macaroni and Cheese: This is a big claim, when I have had a lot of mac and cheeses over the years. It uses a roux-based sauce with a lot of nutritional yeast, also some tomato paste which made it look so orange! I half the amount of pasta but all of the sauce and cooked it in a 20 x 20 cm baking dish (that is 8 x 8 inches for my non-metric friends). And the result?? It was a perfectly fine mac and cheese. Not the best, but not bad, but I have other recipes I prefer. Be careful about making big claims!
Rating: :)



Pasta Italiano: This pasta is coated ina white bean sauce, made by blending cannellini beans with some non-dairy milk, oil (though I used less oil and made up the quantitiy with more oat milk), lemon, and herbs. The pasta is mixed with the sauce, asparagus, and cherry tomatoes. Rather than boil the asparagus with the pasta at the end of cooking time, I roasted it for maximum flavour. I also used half the amount of pasta, extra cherry tomatoes, added some more whole white beans, and some spinach for fun.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Finishing off my trio of Cloris Create's portraits with Sahara.

Midweek Munchies

Some random things.

I got this teriyaki sauce on clearance sale and it is pretty good as far as bottled teriyaki sauces go. A lot of them are way too salty, but this has a nice blend of savoury and sweet. I served it with some charcoal noodles (and also some beet noodles I had to use up), some tofu, and some frozen green vegetables for a super pantry/freezer friendly use stuff up meal.





These chickpea chips were kind of meh. They had a weird flavour, just a hint of vinegar, and the rosemary was like an aftertaste rather than an actual flavour. Would not try again.



It's been a while since I've shared any silly drinks, so here is a silly juice that I bought. While it has many ingredients, it sadly mostly tasted like apple juice. They need to make the greens more prominent!



A random lunch of salad topped with a burger patty and melted cheese, plus some tomato relish and caramelised onions.



Another silly juice. This juice had a beautiful colour! Again, it mostly tasted of pear but definitely had the earthiness of beetroot coming through. Not sure I could really taste the strawberry. It was nice for what it was.



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Gizmo's cute portrait by Cloris Creates.