One week cooking from The Asian Vegan Kitchen

Starting off my week cooking from The Asian Vegan Kitchen with a Scrambled Tofu might not seem the smartest choice - how exciting can scrambled tofu get after all? Hasn't every vegan cooked a million of them? But to me, it's the absolute perfect way to start off - if a cook book can make a good fist of a scrambled tofu, maybe do something new with it, then it's got to be doing pretty well.

Here's The Asian Vegan Kitchen's take on it, a dish with ginger, shiitake, spring onions, chilli, soy and ginger.


The classic Asian flavours were surprisingly subtle - the shiitake added some nice chunky flavour, but none of it overwhelmed the squidily comfortingness of a good scrambled tofu. One dish in, one thumbs up to The Asian Vegan Kitchen.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, take a good look at the dish below - it is a freak of nature. It's a curry that I made - a Spicy Roasted Eggplant Curry, to be precise - that I made that was just amazing. I mean amazing amazing. This was something of a surprise (can you tell?) because I thought I'd been born without the gene that allows a person to make a wonderful curry. This proved me wrong - charring the eggplant over a naked flame gave the curry a delicious smokey depth.

I also made some Saffron Rice with Almonds and Cashews which was lovely, if a bit gently flavoured considering the amount of heady spices I chucked into it.


Apologies for the quality of this photo - it looks like the world's worst Instagram filter. Peer past the yellow patina, and you'll see a Fiery Potato Curry. I thought the last curry might be the exception to my general inability to make a decent curry. When I was putting together this curry, I thought it just tasted grim. The sourness of the poppy seeds was made worse by a fair whack of vinegar, and an experimental taste here and there was met with a moue of disgust. Turns out, that's because I forgot to add in the sugar. Not an ingredient I normally add to savoury food, the sugar confounded me and brought the whole curry together.



This was Braised Potatoes and Onions. As the name might imply, it was potatoes and onions, braised in dashi with a bit of chilli and soy to keep it company. Nice, but you're not going to be telling your grandkids about this one.


Of course, it wasn't all beer and skittles - there had to be a duff dish in there somewhere. I was suprrised to find it was the Sweet Corn Cakes though.

They're a classic Thai dish, not to mention one of my favourite foods of all time from when I was a kid.

I approached them without trepidation, expecting a slightly more flavoursome version of the pillowy fritters that I ate by the shedload as a wee 'un. No such luck. The batter was too thin, or there just wasn't enough of it, but it was all corn and just a whisper of fritter that turned an unappealing greasy shade of brown. It did taste fine, and the sweet-sour cucumber relish that went with it helped rescue the fish from total disaster. The fact I didn't take a picture of it should tell you everything you need to know.

The last dish started off under worse auspices - the beansprouts I'd had in the back of the fridge had turned somewhat funky. Handily enough, once you boil them for a few minutes and douse them in the simple dressing from the Bean Sprout Namul recipe, they can be rescued.


I also made a Simmered Potato Chorim but I tripped over when I was carrying it to the table, so no pic of that, nor a comprehensive review. From what little I tried before I upended it over my kitchen, the soy sauce had boiled down to make a thick almost syrup like sauce - interesting, but a little too strong for me.

So would I recommend this book? Oh yes indeed. The Asian Vegan Kitchen is one of my favourite cookbooks, period. The recipes have the highest hit rate of any book I've used, and they're unendingly interesting. If you're a vegan and you don't have this on your shelf, you need to fill  that gap sharpish.

Comments

  1. Great review, not got this book but has been on my list for a while. Sorry to hear about the spill, so annoying after you've spent time cooking. I dropped a wellington that I was making for Christmas dinner last year as I was putting it in the oven and it was unsalvagable. Luckily there was a bit of filling and pastry left so I was able to make a mini one!

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    1. oh no! How did you manage to keep your temper?! I nearly went nuclear when I lost the spuds - but a wellington would be a whole different beast!

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  2. Love the sound of the scramble. Were the mushrooms fresh or rehydrated? You're right; there are so many scramble recipes out there but I don't think I've heard of one like this yet.

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    1. They were fresh, I think, but I suspect dry would work fine too!

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  3. This book has been on my wish list for a while but I haven't really heard much about it so thanks for this review. I've been creating several different flavoured tofu scrambles recently and it was only last night that I was thinking about adding an Asian flavoured one to my list!

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    1. Definitely recommend the book - it seems to be a bit of a sleeper hit!

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  4. I love that book! My favourite recipe is probably the laksa -- have you tried that one?

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    1. Funny you should mention it, but that was on my list of ones to cook - no idea why it didn't make the cut. I must have been lacking some key ingredient when it came to cooking time or something. Cheers for the tip though - I'll give it a try out this week

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  5. A good curry recipe, for realz? I thought I was missing that gene too! And when I went to food school back in the day, I learned about the importance of a little sugar to balance flavors - it really does make a giant difference! And I've never heard of this cookbook, but I love me some good Asian food - thanks for the review!

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  6. It's so interesting that a certain ingredient can be responsible for an entire meal! I was often confused by sweet recipes that called for salt, and now sugar in a curry! I'll have to check out this cookbook, I love the look of these dishes.

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    1. It really surprised me too - I often find in Japanese recipes that call for sugar that you can leave it out and it doesn't seem to affect the taste much, but with the curry you can totally tell the difference

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  7. I love a good Asian twist on familiar foods. This book sounds great!

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  8. I would never get tired of scramble tofu! Usually it's just what I have in the fridge rescued into a scramble with the tofu. :) Nice review of the book, I haven't got it. I need to expand my vegan cookbooks collection, I'm so badly missing a lot of them.

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