Sweet Potato-Pear Tzimmes

First of all, for those of you wondering how to pronounce this, it's si-mi-s. Not 'zimmus' or 't-zimes' as I was saying all week before making it. More about tzimmes can be found here.

This was probably one of the strangest things I've made in a while for dinner, but it was surprisingly good. This was the side for the Tangerine Baked Tofu which I made several months ago already.

I also learned that although I knew sweet potatoes and yams were different, I didn't know that sweet potatoes were much lighter in color. At least the ones I bought were. They were just a little more brown than a regular potato, but nowhere near the orange color of yams. And their flavor seemed a bit more subtle, too.

The final result was excellent. It was a nice blend of salty, sweet and spicy. For my own extra spice spin, I added some cayenne pepper for good measure. I pretty much put cayenne on everything and I thought the pears would be a great use for it.

The potatoes were tender and lightly sweet, the pears were sweet and still a little crisp (I wouldn't mind them being a bit more tender, but they were great they way they were) and the pecans were very crunchy and a little sweet.

All the flavors were well balanced and it heated up great as leftovers.

I forgot to buy the raisins, but it turns out that was fine since Bryan hates hot raisins and I can't say I'm a huge fan either.

Aside from leaving out the raisins, no other modifications were made.

The cost of the dish was about $6-7, but since it was just a side, it was a tad pricey, relatively speaking. But worth the cost in my opinion.

This recipe is on page 156 of Veganomicon.

Pasta Della California

There isn't a pasta dish I don't like (although I bet there are lots of unholy pasta dishes with cilantro in them). This one didn't change that, but it'll probably go on one of the lower rungs of the goodness scale.

It was fairly easy to make. The sauce was light and a tad refreshing, thanks to the lime zest and juice. And I even liked the avocados, despite being a little wary of them. But overall, there was no real depth of flavor or strong flavor. I love my pasta served with a sauce that has either strong flavors or richness.

So in the flavor sense, I still rate this as good, but on my health factor scale, I'll give it an excellent, thanks to the broccoli, arugula and avocados (with their good fats). Between the health factor and easy prep and cleanup, this one will probably be made again in this house.

The expense of this dish was a bit prohibitive, however, running around $14 (yikes...that's more than I realized at the time of buying the ingredients). So then again, maybe I won't make this again. I'm just so cheap cheap cheap.

The recipe is on page 192 of Veganomicon.

Spinach Linguine With Basil-Cilantro Pesto And Artichokes

I love pesto. I love spinach fettuccine. I love artichoke hearts. I liked this dish.

I figured a dish that combined so many things I loved would be something I loved, but I came away thinking of this as just a good dish.

I have my own pesto recipe, which I partially used to make the pesto for this dish. I followed their recipe, except I replaced parsley for basil and didn't use cilantro (don't make me say how much I hate cilantro again). But it was the lemon juice that I think, at least for me, took this from a great dish to a good dish. I actually sometimes use a little lemon juice in my pesto recipe, but this one has two tablespoons, which took it from a background flavor to the foreground. I like my pesto to taste garlicky, but I could barely taste the garlic here.

The red onions were a great addition, adding some nice sweetness and crunch. I may even try that in my own pesto sometime. And I will say that the next day leftovers were better. The tanginess had faded and the garlic flavor was allowed to come forth.

Oh, a couple of additions I made: the toasted almonds on top and some sauteed rainbow chard. You can't ever go wrong with toasted almonds. I also wanted an extra nutrition boost, so I added the chard, which I had never made before. That was the best surprise of the night, as it was a perfect balance between soggier spinach and tougher kale.

In the end, I won't be craving this, as the authors said, but I think it's a dish that should at least be tried once. You may have a different reaction to it than I did.

Price-wise, this was about $8. Not bad at all.

This recipe is on page 191 of Veganomicon.

Kasha Phyllo Pie

One word: boring. No, three words. Boring, boring and boringer. There is a but, however.

The but being, I actually didn't make this dish correctly. Put another way, I totally screwed up the phyllo dough. Because I had forgotten to thaw it out, I decided it would be just fine to defrost it in the microwave. Despite taking precautions to protect it from drying out, not only did it dry out parts of the dough, but it made other parts meld together into one large piece of dough.

Thus, no picture here.

Instead of throwing the filling away, I decided to make some of the biscuits from the Leek and Bean Cassoulet With Biscuits recipe and serve those under the filling, topped with the sauerkraut.

The biscuits were great. And I always love sauerkraut. But that filling was one of the most bland things I've made. It was so boring, I couldn't even eat a second serving, opting instead for a biscuit with jam. Bryan was able to shove a serving down the next two days for lunch, but I know there were not an ounce of enthusiasm about that.

And that kasha stuff...yeah, a little funky if you ask me. Not as in disgusting, more like just too earthy.

So, in all fairness, I can't say this dish wouldn't be totally wonderful if made with the phyllo dough. It's hard for anything, even this, to probably taste bad (or boring) with phyllo dough. Does that mean I'll try it again? Highly unlikely. But I will try to find a substitute filling to use with the phyllo dough sometime. I simply must make something with phyllo dough, not only to correct my wrong but also because it's so damn good.

This recipe is on page 165 of Veganomicon.

Double Pea Soup With Roasted Red Peppers

This soup falls into the category of one that we liked and will probably make again but we won't get too excited about it. It is pea soup, after all. And on top of that, it's just soup, and I'm sure I've mentioned before that I'm not a soup person.

With that said, it was good enough for me to eat it as leftovers twice after the main event, which for soup, says a lot. And it was really colorful and festive, too.

The flavor was less "pea-like" than usual, which to me is a good thing. It had a nice depth of flavor and was just the right thickness. I actually cheated a bit on that front by using an immersion blender the blend up about half the soup to make it creamier.

The herbs were probably one of the best things about the soup, besides the fact that it was really healthy. Not being good at identifying flavors from herbs, I can't put my finger on which one (or ones) really stood out. Nor am I good at describing the flavors, but it was one of those spicy spice flavors (the ones I think of as fall spices, such as cinnamon and allspice). It was probably the coriander. In any case, chalk one up for the herbs.

Price-wise, this was probably in the $8-$10 range, but it was extremely plentiful, so per serving it was probably one of the cheapest dishes of the book so far. On the plus side, it was also easy to make and clean up.

This recipe is on page 141 of Veganomicon.

Chickpea-Noodle Soup

Update: I made this soup again and this time remembered to take a picture. And as last time, it was just as good. I also put a little bit of sauteed kale to go on top of the soup. It was a great addition. We now call this Thanksgiving-Asian soup.

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I was bad and forgot to take a picture of this. But I can tell you it was one of my favorite soups I've ever made. Oh, and it was so damn easy to make, too.

This simple soup of noodles, chickpeas, veggies and herbs was brought to life with the addition of the miso at the end. I have never used miso before, although I'm sure I've had it many times. But I had no idea how much flavor it was going to add to the soup. For me, it pretty much made the soup amazing.

The consistency was a little less soupy than I think it should have been. I did add 2 oz. more of the noodles than the recipe called for, but I also added another cup of water. I'd say it could probably use a bit more water, but it's not necessary. I like a thicker soup anyway. However, for leftovers, you probably want to add a bit more water to desired thickness as the noodles definitely soak up most of the broth over time.

Because this was quick, easy and so tasty, I'll definitely be making it again.

The recipe is on page 139 of Veganomicon.

Almost All-American Seitan PotPie

Bryan said this was probably one of the best potpie's he's ever had. I had to agree with him. The crust was crusty and chewy, the filling hot and savory and the seitan meaty and dense.

But if you're going to make this, either plan it out over two days or prepare to spend 3 - 3 1/2 hours making it in one day. The good news is that although it took that long to make from start to finish, nothing was that difficult and a lot of the time was waiting time.

Although we've had our own seitan recipe for a while, and it's one we actually love, the one in the book (page 131) was even a little easier and the end result we thought a little better. It was more dense and meaty than our other recipe. However, I just made this again yesterday for Thanksgiving and it was a lot more soft and wet than the first time. I probably just had too much liquid. But after squeezing some out after cooking and then sauteing it the texture was much more solid.

I loved the filling with the hint of mustard flavor and the background of the sage and thyme. It was the a great consistency, too, with the small dice to most of the veggies, to me, a better derivation of potpie.

The only thing I had trouble with was rolling out the dough. But I've done very little of that and once Bryan helped me out I saw how easy it was to get it shaped the way I wanted. I ended up using a smaller casserole dish (they say 3 quarts, but I'd recommend something smaller...maybe 2 quarts) but rolled the dough out to fit a bigger one, so I just doubled it up on top. It made a thick crust, which we both really like.

We will be making this one again, but most definitely on a quiet and chilly weekend.

This recipe is on page 159 of Veganomicon.