May Recipe: The New Vegan Cookbook

In May I made a recipe from the New Vegan Cookbook. This book has some really creative ideas. Creative as in... a bit far out there for my taste (e.g., tomato-chickpea curry in eggplant shells, baked beet and brown rice salad), but Abe has tried a couple other things from it and enjoyed them. The book itself is very colorful and photo-heavy - leading to rather definite decisions on my part as to what looks worth trying - or not!

I picked the phyllo triangles filled with kale, pine nuts, and currants - essentially a spanakopita type of thing. No cheese (which always makes anything good!), but a flakey carb, so that made it sound pretty good to me.

I ended up subbing dried blueberries for the currants (couldn't find), and just a basic cheap white wine for the sherry, but otherwise followed the ingredient list and directions. 


Phyllo triangles filled with kale, pine nuts, and currants blueberries

Filling

Difficulty: 4 of 5. No one thing that difficult, but lots of steps - toasting the pine nuts, cooking the kale, sauting other stuff, folding the triangles. If it tasted absolutely amazing maybe it'd be worth the work, but something that's just fine, not necessarily worthwhile. On the plus side, the instructions, while lengthy, were quite clear and easy to follow.

Enjoyment: 3 of 5. It was fine. I was concerned a bit because I'm not a fan of lots of things mixed together (yes, I basically have the taste buds of a 5 year old); but the various textures and tastes actually melded together quite well. I'd totally order it in a restaurant. But not completely spectacular.

Likelihood to make again: 2 of 5. Again, fine, and even kind of fun to make once and have the chance to use phyllo dough, but not necessarily worth the work of making again.