More Isa Chandra Creations

This is just a quick post to share two more Isa Chandra recipes I've been enjoying:

The first is her Everyday Chickpea-Quinoa Salad with a balsamic vinaigrette, both from Appetite for Reduction. I'm not a salad person, however the salad section of this book shows just how diverse salads can be and I'm really looking forward to trying some more, especially her Strawberry-Spinach Salad once it's strawberry season again.

The recipe calls for romaine lettuce, however I subbed baby leaf spinach, as well as adding sweetcorn and some capers.  It was delicious! One batch make three to four portions, depending on how greedy/restrained you are.  This was the first time I have tried quinoa, and I gotta say I'm impressed. Quinoa is quite pricey compared to other grains but you only have to do a quick Google search to realise just how diverse it is and in addition it is also a complete protein. However, Isa does suggest that you can use other grains if quinoa is out of your price range.  Perhaps couscous? Or giant couscous? I'm just saying that because it looks similar to quinoa!

The second recipe, is Chickpea Cutlets- OMG these are divine! I've made them twice now, both times as part of Sunday lunch.  Both times I've had to improvise as I was missing one ingredient.  The first time I was missing the soy sauce, so used a little extra veg stock and a bit of extra salt.  The second time I had the soy sauce, but was missing Olive oil, so I used regular sunflower oil.  The second batch tasted better, so I've come to the conclusion that the soy sauce is quite important, however it's still nice without.

I'm really a bit obsessed with Isa's recipes at the moment. What are your favourites?

Amazing Vegan Carrot Cake

I have to admit, I've always avoided carrot cake, I don't know why, maybe something to do with being suspicious of vegetable based cakes.

However, when my friend over at Flash-Gordonette (visit the blog, it's awesome!) posted this recipe for carrot cake with whiskey 'buttercream' I thought I would face my demons.

I replaced the whiskey in the buttercream with brandy, as I had some in from making mincemeat (yes it's took me a while to blog about this, the poorly taken picture below was from November) and I put the oven up to 180 instead of 170 (which is the temperature for a fan oven). But apart from that I kept to the original recipe, I was a bit puzzled by the instructions to weight the oil, however I'm informed this is because you need half the amount of oil that you would margarine- after that was made clear it made more sense!

Wow! I'm a carrot cake convert, and this cake is now in high demand by The Boy and his family.  So far I've made this cake 5 times!

The only thing to watch out for is that I've found the cooking time to vary quite a bit, I think it's something to do with the carrots or maybe it's just my crappy oven. So before you take it out after the allotted time, give it a gentle shake to see if it's set, if not put it back in, I had one that took an hour to cook, however maybe I did something wrong there.  Another tip is to make it the night before you're planning to eat it (if you have the will power), it's fine to eat the same day but we've found the flavours develop overnight and the ginger really comes out if you wait a day.

So what you waiting for? Go and get the carrots and make this baby!

Chickpea Picatta

It's after Christmas, everyone is a little skint and trying to lose that extra few pounds they gained over the festive period.

So last weekend when I arranged to meet up with a friend, instead of spending money on a meal out I decided to cook. This happily gave me the opportunity to try my new cook book-  Isa Chandra Mosowitz's Appetite for Reduction and having seen positive reviews, I decided to have a go at her Chickpea Picatta.

The recipe itself is pretty easy to follow, takes 30 minutes and is only 190 calories per serving.  In case your wondering arugula is 'salad rocket' according to wiki, however as I would have no other use for rocket, apart from this recipe, I subbed in baby leaf spinach and as I had no dried thyme I used some mixed dry herbs  (which gets used in any occasion that I find myself without any type of dried herb!). Isa also suggests serving with caulipots, which are mashed cauliflower and potato.  I decided this was too much effort and opted to serve mine with penne pasta.

The picture below is actually of the leftovers I had for lunch the next day, as I was too busy nattering to take a photo the first time! The only difference was that the first time I remembered to follow Isa's suggestion and put the spinach at the bottom of the bowl, then layer with the cooked pasta and chickpea picatta which wilts the spinach without having to cook it (clever!) however I reckon this looks more artistic :-)

The overall dish was lovely, the sauce was thick and almost creamy, but the addition of the lemon made it a refreshing dish. The only change I would make is to serve it with conchiglie pasta, so that you could easily get a mouthful of pasta, sauce and chickpeas, which was quite difficult with the penne! I could see why Isa recommends serving this with caulipots or mashed potato, as the potatoes would soak up some of the delicious sauce whilst allowing a good forkful of chickpeas and spinach.

I will be submitting this post to Book Marked Recipes on Tinned Tomatoes.

New Year

Happy belated New Year everyone.

It's always the case when looking back at this time of year to only see the negatives and 2013 is no exception.  HOWEVER a lot of positive things did occur - one of my friends got married, I met lots of new people, The Boy graduated and started in the world of work and we went to New York!

2014 will not be without it's challenges, the education reforms will mean further redundancies at work and with David Cameron still PM this year will not be plain sailing.  However, unless the revolution starts this year, there's not a lot I can do about that so I'm concentrating on the small things:

1. Be More Vegan: This is something I started last year, and aim to continue this year.  I'm not going to go into details on why I've decided to cut down on dairy and egg products, there's enough information out there for you to figure that one. However, I'm not too sure if  ready to go fully vegan yet.
2. Get up everyday at 6am, even at weekend: Probably the most controversial of all my resolutions, however I'm sick of sleeping my weekend away and feeling stressed that I don't have time to do all the things I want to do.  Then of course there is the situation you find yourself in on a Sunday night, trying to go to sleep early for work the next day but not being able to because you slept in until 11am and then spend all of Monday feeling knackered.  I've kind of softened the blow a bit by allowing myself one lie in a month!
3. Blog more: Will hopefully be helped by point 2!
4. Stop being my worse critic:  I often find myself comparing myself in a negative light to other people.  It's not helpful, I'm not that person and never will be.  Instead I will try and concentrate on the things I do achieve.

I think the second resolution may be the hardest, but I'll give it my best shot.  What are your resolutions? Have you managed to keep them all so far?