Recipe Round-Up: Vive Le Vegan

Viva Le Vegan! is Dreena Burton's second cookbook. But one I have not used very often. I decided recently to change that, so here are some of the things I have made. This is the first time I have done a recipe round-up for this book, but I have posted about one other recipe from it before here

Molasses Baked Beans, Miso-Curry Roasted Potatoes, and Creamy Orange Poppy Seed Dressing: This was a delightful dinner! I made a half recipe of the baked beans, and streamlined it by using 2 tins of white beans instead of cooking them from scratch and baking for four hours to get finish cooking them. This has ketchup and blackstrap molasses in it, which gave it a great flavour. I cooked mine for an hour and a quarter in total, but because my beans were already fully cooked it ended up being very liquid. So I uncovered it after the first half an hour of baking and also increased the heat to 200dC for the last 20 minutes and it thickened up. I'd suggest reducing the amount of water in the sauce if you are making these with tinned beans. The roasted potatoes were so delightful! They have miso and curry paste (I used red curry paste, but I decreased the amount). I actually halved the amount of potatoes, but made the full amount of coating. It is a very thick coating, so I did add a smidge of hot water to loosen it up so I could easily coat my potatoes. I finished off the meal with some steamed green beans and the dressing. The dressing is creamy thanks to silken tofu! I used garlic powder instead of fresh garlic, and used maple syrup as my honey alternative. This had a lovely sweet citrust flavour.
Rating: Beans :), Potatoes :), Dressing :)



Creamy Raspberry Oatmeal: This says a full recipe will make 3-4 serves, I made a half recipe and got a reasonable sized serve. This is made with frozen raspberries, which gives it a beautiful pink colour. It has a bit of nutmeg and allspice in it for some lovely flavours. I also stirred in a bit of LSA meal (that is linseed, sunflower, almond meal), and I topped it with flaked almonds and pepitas.
Rating: :)



Hemp Power Shake: This is a very simple smoothie, consisting of non-dairy milk (I took the chocolate option - mine was an almond milk), frozen banana, and either hemp butter, hemp seeds, or hemp protein powder. I used hemp seeds. I also added a sprinkle of cinnamon, because cinnamon. This was not too rich, which was good, but also was not very filling. I served it with a persimmon, which was a nice contrast.
Rating: :)



Diane's Stork Muffins: The story with this recipe is that Dreena's sister delivered her a batch of these 'baby' muffins to her when she had recently given birth, and they were a great snack. So I made them for my friend that had just given birth. I made a half batch, for 12 small muffins. The recipe uses a blend of oat, kamut, and barley flour, and I just happened to have all of those in my cupboard because I collect and hoarde flours. They also have dates, coconut, and cranberries in it as well as spices (I forgot the fresh nutmeg, what a dope, but made up for it with cinnamon). These are tasty little snacks, but are very soft and a bit crumble especially when first out of the oven. You need to let them cook completely before trying to take them out of the tin.
Rating :)



Creamy Hummus: A perfectly good hummus recipe. It has the usual suspects of tahini, lemon juice, and garlic.
Rating: :)



Chickpea Ratatouille: This is the sort of dinner where you mix a bunch of stuff together, and pop it in the oven (I uncovered it for the last 15 minutes of baking). Easy peasy. I used zuchinni instead of capsicum, garlic powder as my garlic had gone gross, and I used agave as the honey alternative. I made a half recipe for three serves, served over baby spinach and mashed sweet potato.
Rating: :)



Veggie Stir-Fry with Spicy Almond Sauce: The sauce for this is based on almond butter, but I removed the spicy part of it by leaving the crushed red pepper out of it. I also used carrots instead of capsicum in the veggie saute, which also had celery, zucchini, broccoli, silverbeet, and mushrooms (I had a blend so I used shiitake, black fungus, and oyster). I used a bit more of the veggies than specified as well, to use stuff up. The other part of this is some tofu, marinated in rice vinegar and soy sauce and sauteed to brown and crisp before adding the the stir-fry. This was great, with nice big serves and tons of veggies.
Rating: :)



Fudgy Brownies: These brownies live up to their name! They have some ground chocolate chips in the batter, that melt during baking. I cooked for an extra 10 minutes.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Dim Sim would like to know when you will be giving her scritches.

VeganMoFo 2019 #6: D is for Dreena Burton

I thought it would be fun during MoFo to highlight a few vegan cookbook authors and show a recipe I have made from each of their books, or at least each of the books that I have. Starting off with Dreena Burton, a well known vegan cookbook author who has published a number of cookbooks. I came to know her through her earlier cookbooks, and I have her first four, and I also follow her blog (which has a lot of recipes). I'll post the recipes in order of book publication. For two of these books (her first two), this will be their first appearance on my blog!

Orange Ginger Miso Vinaigrette from The Everyday Vegan (which seems to be out of print in a lot of places): This is a simple recipe that came together quickly. The recipe calls for dry ginger, but I used a big chunk of grated fresh ginger because fresh ginger is amazing! I did find it a bit sweet, and had to add a bit of extra tamari. The recipe calls for agave (or any sweetener of your choice), but I think it only needed the slightest smidge. At least if you are using fresh ginger. I used this to mix through pasta, veggies, and tofu puffs and it was great. Works well on a warm dish as well as chilled!
Rating: :)



Homestyle Chocolate Chip Cookies from Vive le Vegan: You can't go wrong with cookies, and Dreena loves making cookies. While a lot of her cookie recipes tend towards wholegrain flours or natural sweeteners, this recipe is 100% classic cookie (well, she does call for raw sugar, but whatever you feel like using). It has the smallest touch of blackstrap molasses, which gives a really lovely flavour to it. All up a quick and easy recipe that will have you cookies in no time.
Rating: :)



Acai Antioxidant Smoothie from Eat, Drink, and Be Vegan: When life gives you those little frozen packets of acai, you make a smoothie. This book is my favourite Dreena book, and I have posted extensively about other recipes that you can see here. This smoothie was a lovely start to my morning, though I made a few changes. I decreased the amount of oatmilk to 1 cup, because I like my smoothies thick. This smoothie has frozen berries, bananas, and acai in it so it is nice and cold. The frozen packet of acai was in a rectangle that would fit in my blender, so I left it out for 20 minutes to defrost so I could break it up. But it half melted in that time, so remember it really only needs a few minutes to soften! This smoothie also has some cocoa powder, which gives it a nice undertone.
Rating: :)



Creamy Barley Risotto with Thyme and Star Anise from Let Them Eat Vegan: I have made many things from this book, including the famous Berry Patch Brownies, and you can see those round ups here. As for this recipe, I love star anise and this sounded like a perfect dinner for a cold evening. I love barley, and I feel it often gets forgotten with all the fancy grains available now. But barley is easy, tasty, and filling. I always soak mine for a few hours before hand to make sure it cooks in the allotted time. This was a lovely dinner, and I served it with some roasted broccoli for greens.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Sahara in her favourite basket bed again, as you can see she is sleeping a bit more comfortably this time! She really was the most perfect cinnamon scroll.