VEGANesp
A while ago I bought a copy of The Artful Vegan, pretty much as food porn. I’ve made a few things from it, but honestly, it’s so involved and I end up wasting so much food because almost all the recipes call for 2 or 3 other recipes, which get used in exactly zero other dishes the rest of the week. Don’t get me wrong, the food is amazing, it’s just not really a cooking for 2 sort of book. Maybe of you’re having a dinner party of 6 or 8 people and want to spend the day in the kitchen. Still, there are a few gems in there that I actually use pretty frequently. One of those is a red lentil dal recipe that is meant to be part of some insanely complex appetizer. I just make the dal, serve it over basmati rice & call it an entrée. It’s quite tasty, not complicated to make and since it’s supposed to be a portion of an appetizer, it makes just the right amount for dinner for two, with a little left over for lunch. We wanted a vegetable side, so I decided on the Curried Cabbage and Peas in Appetite for Reduction (largely because it’s yummy, not complicated and could simmer while I worked on other things). I’ve made this one before and while it’s not quite as good as a similar recipe I have in and Indian cookbook, it’s much easier and is very tasty in its own right. This time, I used my mandolin for getting the cabbage extra thin and it worked out really well. The star of the meal though, was the naan. Seriously, it’s worth buying Vegan Eats World just for this recipe. I normally buy naan that’s made a local bakery, but it is much thinner than the restaurant-style I truly love. I tried making a vegan version once before from a different recipe and it just came out too dense – more like sandwich bread than naan. The recipe in Vegan Eats World uses vegan yogurt, which I happily had on hand, and bread flour, which I did not. I consulted the interwebs and decided it would be ok if I used all-purpose flour instead and it worked out totally fine. The bread is a little bit of work, but it makes a lot (hello freezer!) and is soooooo worth it. I pressed a few cloves of garlic into mine and next time I’ll use more, because we like it garlicky. The only issue I really had was when I brushed the loaves with a little vegan butter before flipping them, the buttered sides got burnt spots on them. I ended up buttering them after they came out of the skillet and it was fine. We were both blown away by the naan and couldn’t stop eating it. We rounded out the plate with Sukhi’s brand samosas (frozen at Whole Foods).
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