I made the pickles first, and right away ran into trouble. Here are the ingredients listed in the recipe: lotus root, rice vinegar, water, sea salt, and garlic. Uh, where is the saffron? Not listed at all. I had no idea how much to add, but since a little goes a long way with saffron I just used a tiny pinch. I hate when this kind of glaring error makes it into cookbooks, because it makes me distrust the rest of the recipe. Were any other essential ingredients omitted? Are all the quantities really correct?

While the pickles were chilling for a couple of hours I got started on the eggplant caviar and sesame buns. Once again I didn’t have the right kind of eggplant. The recipe called for globe eggplant. I went to the Asian supermarket to get the lotus root and some other stuff and they only had the skinny kind of Asian eggplants, so thats what I got.

The eggplants were roasted with sesame oil and salt, and then pureed, and then sauteed with garlic, ginger, red pepper flakes, szechuan pepper, sugar, basalmic vinegar, and tamari. I’m not really sure why it’s called “caviar.”

On to the buns. They were a yeasted bun with sesame and olive oil, scallions, and black sesame seeds. They were quite easy to make.

After two hours the lotus pickles were ready. Since the recipe was for an appetizer but I was serving this for dinner I decided to add a few other vegetables- some bean sprouts tossed in a vinaigrette of agave nectar, ume plum vinegar, and white rice vinegar, and some snow peas sauteed with vegetarian oyster sauce.

Here’s everything all plated up. Oh yeah, I also added some vegetarian “duck” that I got at the Asian supermarket. It’s just layers of bean curd skin and mushrooms. The eggplant “caviar” is underneath the roll.

The verdict: I wasn’t terribly impressed with this recipe. The eggplant caviar had too much szechuan pepper for my liking- that’s pretty much all I could taste. Plus it was basically just eggplant goop, and I’m not really that big a fan of goop. I’m also starting to question if I’m really that big a fan of eggplant at all. It looked kind of gross and I think that’s why I hid it under the buns on the plate. I just wasn’t sure what to do with it.

The buns have potential for repurposing- they had a nice texture and flavor and would be good stuffed with sauteed mushrooms or something. I followed the recipe and shaped them into approximately “4 inches long by 2 inches wide” but thought this shape was pretty unappealing on the plate. It looks like a boring dinner roll. I’d probably make them more of a traditional circular bun shape if I made them again.

The lotus root pickles were the winner of this recipe- crisp and flavorful, salty-sour with a slight saffron flavor. I’m glad I made a double batch of this part of the recipe. I think they could actually work with Indian food as well, because of the saffron flavor.

Next up: Black rice cakes and grilled oyster mushrooms and pineapple. Hmm, I see that it includes the Asian Eggplant Caviar from this recipe as a garnish. I think I’ll be skipping that.

I finally got a chance to try another recipe from Artful Vegan. Even though the whole point of this project is to make my way sequentially through each and every recipe in the book, I finally decided to skip one after deciding that the primary ingredients are simply not to be found in this part of the country at this time of year. Roasted Baby Artichokes in Moroccan Glaze with Meyer Lemon Aioli will just have to wait. I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen baby artichokes at all around here actually. I know I saw some Meyer lemons at Reading Terminal Market once. I guess I could have tried the recipe with regular artichokes and lemon, but decided not to.

Next up was Miso Broiled Japanese Eggplant over Noodle Cakes with Walnut-Miso Sauce and Wasabi Cream. I couldn’t find Japanese eggplant, so I just bought a regular one and cut it into slices. They soaked in a marinade of garlic, ginger, scallions, miso, mirin, and sesame oil, and then broiled.

The noodle cakes were a bit of a failure in my opinion. Maybe I should have used more oil and done more of a deep-frying thing, because they weren’t especially cake-like. The directions said to sautee for 2-3 minutes on each side until light brown and crisp, but that never really happened, and they didn’t hold together very well. I’m sure this was due so some sort of failure on my part, but in the end I would have been happier with just serving the noodles as noodles and not as cakes.

I also tossed some chanterelle mushrooms in with the eggplant to broil, since I had them sitting around. They turned out to be the star of the dish. The eggplant took much longer to broil than the recipe called for, possibly because I didn’t use the right kind of eggplant. It was ok, but I’m not really a huge eggplant fan anyway. The marinade was tasty though and I’d definitely repurpose it for something else. I also added some of the carrot-daikon pickle I made for xmas gifts. The walnut-miso sauce was another winner. The wasabi cream was ok, it just tasted like wasabi and I didn’t think it went that well with the other things. Final verdict- I wouldn’t make this dish again as per the recipe, but I’ll definitely be doing something in the future with the miso marinade and the miso-walnut sauce.

At this rate it will take me a year to get through this book! Finally got around to making the third recipe from the appetizer section-”Morel-Caramelized Onion Rolls with Truffled Beet Salad and Pinot Noir Reduction.”

First of all, the wine. I decided to make this recipe on a whim this morning, and happily there is one liquor store in my area that is actually open on Sundays. Stupid PA liquor laws- in any number of less puritanical states I could just go to the grocery store and get my wine. Anyway, I know about as much about wine as I do about trigonometry or the Chinese language, and my usual modus operandi for selecting wine involves looking at all the labels and picking the most interesting or appealing one. Silly, I know. This is what caught my eye this time, and it was actually pretty good. Not that I know enough about wine to distinguish a good wine from a great wine. All I know is if I like it or not.

Here are the ingredients for the pinot noir reduction, the dried morels, the reduction simmering, and the beets cut up. The beets are from the CSA. I was surprised to find that they were stripy on the inside!

I only used 4 morels for the reduction, but rehydrated the rest for the rolls since I couldn’t find fresh ones. I also added some portobello mushroom (which the recipe said would be a good substitute for the morels). When I first went vegetarian, I kind of overdid the portobello thing and I’m not really that enthusiastic about them anymore. I think I ate way too many portobello sandwiches. But they worked out well for this dish. In fact, I wish I had just used portobellos and left out the dried morels. The dried ones were good for lending flavor to the reduction, but just tasted a bit bland in the rolls.

Here are the roll ingredients, garlic browning in olive oil for the mashed potatos, the erstwhile portobello, and the red onions and mushrooms sauteeing. The recipe called thyme, which I (wrongly) assumed I had somewhere on my spice shelf. I substituted marjoram instead. The onion/mushrooms seemed a bit bland, so I added a splash of the pinot noir and some tamari.

Oh phyllo dough! Maybe sometime when I cook with you I’ll remember to take you out of the freezer and let you thaw for the recommended two hours. You might be more cooperative if I treated you better, instead of remembering right when I need you that you are still firmly frozen, and sticking you in the microwave with a little dish of water in an attempt to sort of steam you un-frozen. It worked out well enough I suppose, but was a bit messy and I ended up with lots of little crumbly bits of dough that had to be thrown out.

After the rolls were all wrapped up in the oven, there were still two more things to tackle- the Horseradish Tofu Cream and the Truffled Beet Salad. These were the easiest parts of the recipe so I left them for last.

One thing that is potentially annoying about the recipes in this book is that the preparation of each part is listed separately, instead of taking each step in the order that makes the most sense in terms of prep and cooking time. For instance, the last thing listed in this recipe is making the pinot noir reduction, but it is the thing that takes the longest and it can be started simmering while you are cooking the filling for the rolls. It takes careful reading and thinking about how you’re going to do everything to get through these recipes successfully. If you went straight through it as written, you’d end up with everything prepared and find you still had 40 minutes or more to go for the reduction. In that sense (as well as the general complexity of the recipes and obscurity of some of the ingredients) this is definitely not a book for a beginning cook!

Here are the finished rolls. The recipe called for garnishing with chives, but I forgot to buy those so I just used some scallions and roasted red pepper from a jar instead.

This was pretty tasty overall, but not overwhelmingly impressive or anything. I didn’t really like the horseradish cream too much- it was very lemony/acidic. I even added some extra horseradish but it didn’t help. I think maybe some sort of garlic aioli might be better suited to the dish. I would have liked some roasted asparagus with this. The pinot noir reduction was delicious. The rolls were good but as I mentioned before I wasn’t thrilled with the dried morels. I think a variation with either oyster mushrooms or a blend of wild mushrooms could be interesting. The beet salad was ok. I’m really not a big fan of beets, and I’m still undecided about truffle oil. I did use black truffle oil instead of the recommended white truffle oil, because that’s what I had and that stuff is expensive! I don’t know if there is a significant flavor difference between the two. I’ve read that they’re all made with fake flavorings anyway.

At this rate it will take me a year to get through this book! Finally got around to making the third recipe from the appetizer section-”Morel-Caramelized Onion Rolls with Truffled Beet Salad and Pinot Noir Reduction.”

First of all, the wine. I decided to make this recipe on a whim this morning, and happily there is one liquor store in my area that is actually open on Sundays. Stupid PA liquor laws- in any number of less puritanical states I could just go to the grocery store and get my wine. Anyway, I know about as much about wine as I do about trigonometry or the Chinese language, and my usual modus operandi for selecting wine involves looking at all the labels and picking the most interesting or appealing one. Silly, I know. This is what caught my eye this time, and it was actually pretty good. Not that I know enough about wine to distinguish a good wine from a great wine. All I know is if I like it or not.

Here are the ingredients for the pinot noir reduction, the dried morels, the reduction simmering, and the beets cut up. The beets are from the CSA. I was surprised to find that they were stripy on the inside!

I only used 4 morels for the reduction, but rehydrated the rest for the rolls since I couldn’t find fresh ones. I also added some portobello mushroom (which the recipe said would be a good substitute for the morels). When I first went vegetarian, I kind of overdid the portobello thing and I’m not really that enthusiastic about them anymore. I think I ate way too many portobello sandwiches. But they worked out well for this dish. In fact, I wish I had just used portobellos and left out the dried morels. The dried ones were good for lending flavor to the reduction, but just tasted a bit bland in the rolls.

Here are the roll ingredients, garlic browning in olive oil for the mashed potatos, the erstwhile portobello, and the red onions and mushrooms sauteeing. The recipe called thyme, which I (wrongly) assumed I had somewhere on my spice shelf. I substituted marjoram instead. The onion/mushrooms seemed a bit bland, so I added a splash of the pinot noir and some tamari.

Oh phyllo dough! Maybe sometime when I cook with you I’ll remember to take you out of the freezer and let you thaw for the recommended two hours. You might be more cooperative if I treated you better, instead of remembering right when I need you that you are still firmly frozen, and sticking you in the microwave with a little dish of water in an attempt to sort of steam you un-frozen. It worked out well enough I suppose, but was a bit messy and I ended up with lots of little crumbly bits of dough that had to be thrown out.

After the rolls were all wrapped up in the oven, there were still two more things to tackle- the Horseradish Tofu Cream and the Truffled Beet Salad. These were the easiest parts of the recipe so I left them for last.

One thing that is potentially annoying about the recipes in this book is that the preparation of each part is listed separately, instead of taking each step in the order that makes the most sense in terms of prep and cooking time. For instance, the last thing listed in this recipe is making the pinot noir reduction, but it is the thing that takes the longest and it can be started simmering while you are cooking the filling for the rolls. It takes careful reading and thinking about how you’re going to do everything to get through these recipes successfully. If you went straight through it as written, you’d end up with everything prepared and find you still had 40 minutes or more to go for the reduction. In that sense (as well as the general complexity of the recipes and obscurity of some of the ingredients) this is definitely not a book for a beginning cook!

Here are the finished rolls. The recipe called for garnishing with chives, but I forgot to buy those so I just used some scallions and roasted red pepper from a jar instead.

This was pretty tasty overall, but not overwhelmingly impressive or anything. I didn’t really like the horseradish cream too much- it was very lemony/acidic. I even added some extra horseradish but it didn’t help. I think maybe some sort of garlic aioli might be better suited to the dish. I would have liked some roasted asparagus with this. The pinot noir reduction was delicious. The rolls were good but as I mentioned before I wasn’t thrilled with the dried morels. I think a variation with either oyster mushrooms or a blend of wild mushrooms could be interesting. The beet salad was ok. I’m really not a big fan of beets, and I’m still undecided about truffle oil. I did use black truffle oil instead of the recommended white truffle oil, because that’s what I had and that stuff is expensive! I don’t know if there is a significant flavor difference between the two. I’ve read that they’re all made with fake flavorings anyway.

The rest of the recipe took a while to make, as you might expect for something that involves two separate sauces. Here are the ingredients of the Tamarind Sauce, Coconut Curry, and the innards of the vegetable rolls:

The tamarind sauce was salty and sweet, and the coconut curry sauce had a nice complex flavor to it, much like a Thai yellow curry. The veggies were all julienned or shredded, then quickly sauteed in a wok for just a minute with some sesame seeds and umeboshi plum vinegar. The vegetables tasted slightly seared but were still crispy. Then they were wrapped up in phyllo dough and baked until crispy. My phyllo dough seemed a bit past its prime and was a bit crumbly but it worked out all right. I think I might try this again with yuba skins instead of phyllo. I also added a little salad of frisee and grated radishes, dressed with a simple dressing of rice vinegar and agave nectar. I really liked this dish and would definitely make it again.

The only ingredient I do not have is “brick pastry sheets,” since I could not find them in any shops I looked in, and internet searches revealed that one can purchase it from Amazon for a mere $98!  I found a cooking forum where someone offered to bring some back from France, and someone else said they have found it in their local Arabic and Indian groceries. Since I don’t feel like shelling out that much money for some dough, do not know anyone in France, and do not feel like schlepping to all the tiny Arabic and Indian groceries in the area, I’m going to deviate from the recipe and just use phyllo dough instead. I’m sure it will be close enough.

The recipe consists of several parts- “Millennium Seven-Secret Chile Oil,” “Sweet Tamarind Sauce,” “Yellow Coconut Curry,” and “Crisp Shredded Vegetable Rolls.” Tonight I made the Chile Oil, since it needs to sit overnight.

Here’s all the ingredients (the green stuff in the measuring cup is grapeseed oil):

Here are all the ingredients in the pan, ready to simmer for 30 minutes:

And here it is after cooking:

I tasted the oil at the beginning of cooking, and the dominant flavor was definitely the sesame oil. After cooking it became a bit more complex. The smell is smoky and citrus-y. For some reason it reminds me of Italy. The flavor is interesting- the initial impression is of citrus and a slight smokiness, but then there’s a little tingly afterburn of heat from the chiles. It now sits at room temperature overnight, and I’m really curious to find out what it will taste like in the morning.

It took me a while to assemble the ingredients, the most difficult of which was the yuba skin. I knew I would likely find it at the big Asian supermarket, but it took a while to feel like driving there. Eventually we needed a bunch of stuff from there anyway. Then we wandered around the store for a while looking for yuba. I once bought what I thought was yuba there, but it turned out to be a thicker kind of skin that was pretty gross. The yuba skin was eventually found in the freezer section, not far from the yummy soy ham. It’s HUGE!

That was probably my only complaint about the recipe- it didn’t specify what size yuba skin to use. It said to place a sheet of nori on top of the yuba to make a roll, and that wouldn’t work at all if I used a whole sheet of this, so I cut one sheet into four pieces and made one roll with each piece. There is a lot of yuba left over, but I know I have a couple of other recipes in other books that call for it.

One of the ingredients was barley, which I cooked in advance last night in a pressure cooker. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, I definitely recommend one. They cook beans and grains super-fast. I have this one, which I also use for canning (mine came with a bunch of canning tools too. I haven’t cooked barley in ages because the last time I did I just boiled it and it took a really long time. But cooking this recipe made me realize that I like barley and should use it more often. I have about two cups of cooked barley left over so I’ll have to think of something to use it for soon.

The only ingredients that I could not find were “shichimi togarashi” (Japanese seven spice powder), and kumquats.  I looked for that spice powder in the Asian store and in two other stores with good selections of Asian stuff but no luck. The recipe said that you could substitute crushed red pepper flakes for the Japanese spices, so that’s what I did. I still want to track it down though. The kumquats were the biggest disappointment- I couldn’t find them anywhere! Maybe they’re not in season or something. They were for a “Spicy, Sweet, and Sour Kumquat-Lime Dressing” which I had made once before and really enjoyed. I tried substituting some orange peel for the kumquats, which was fine, but it wasn’t the same. Oh, and bean sprouts. The store I went to today to pick up some last-minute ingredients had mung bean sprouts but none of the other kinds that were in the recipe. So I added some radishes to the salad so it wouldn’t be only mung bean sprouts and carrots.

The rest of the preparation was pretty straightforward and not difficult at all. I love shiitake mushrooms, so I was happy this recipe contained them. I bought far too many of them, so I’ll be making some other shiitake stuff soon.

Getting ready to roll! The yuba was larger than the nori and a little bit stiff and difficult to roll but I figured it out well enough.

Into the oven, brushed with oil and tamari.

The rolls baked up nice and golden and crispy. Served with a vegetable salad, the lime (kumquat-less) dressing and some crushed peanuts.

Overall, I liked this recipe. The dressing would have been much better with the kumquats. I loved the crispy yuba skins combined with the nori. I think if I made this again I would alter the filling a bit to have much more shiitakes and barley and less seaweed. I love seaweed but it basically overpowered all the other flavors. Overall it was a tasty dinner though. Oh, I forgot to mention, this is listed in the book as an appetizer, but it worked well as a dinner.

I recently realized that I have far too many cookbooks that I have not used as much as I could.  I think there are a few that I haven’t used at all. For typical weeknight meals I usually don’t follow recipes. I have a pretty good repertoire of things I just know how to make. But this eventually leads to making the same kinds of things repeatedly. I’m always saying things like “I’m going to pick one new recipe per week from those cookbooks and make something new on the weekend.” But it never seems to happen. Sometimes I’ll pull down two or three books and there’s just too much to choose from and I get distracted. Even if I try to limit it to one book it still doesn’t work, I’m like “oh, maybe this! Or maybe that! Oh whatever, let’s just make pizza.”

I’ve realized that the way to get myself to focus on something in particular is to impose limits of some kind. So I have decided that I am going to methodically work my way through all my cookbooks, particularly the interesting ones that I haven’t made much from. I have some books that are very basic, the kind that I can glance at the recipe and think “well, that’s going to be bland! I’d add some garlic and ginger to that.” I probably won’t bother with those books. I’m talking about the ones with the fancy complicated recipes. I will start at the beginning, and make every single recipe, unless it contains ingredients that are impossible to get or just sounds completely unappealing.  I have a couple of books that are vegetarian not vegan and have some recipes that call for dairy or egg ingredients. If something looks like it’s going to be impossible to veganize, I’ll probably just skip those recipes.

First up- The Artful Vegan from Millennium Restaurant in San Francisco. D. and I ate there in May 2007, and it was quite possibly the best vegan restaurant meal we’ve ever had. We bought a hardback version of the book at the restaurant, and our waitress was awesome and got the chef to sign it for us. So I’ve only made one thing from it until now since I didn’t want to mess up the book in the kitchen. I recently bought a paperback copy though for the kitchen. If this sounds a little nuts, I should explain that we have little counter space and I am a bit of a messy cook and all my cookbooks end up with fingerprints and stuff spilled on them and crumbs in the bindings no matter how I try to keep them clean. I like to write little notes in them about alterations to recipes. Cookbooks are meant to be messy, but not nice hardback, signed-by-the-chef-souvenir ones.

Anyway, I think this is probably the most challenging cookbook I own so it’s a good place to start!