It is fair to say that I am a bit of a cookbook junkie. I have a great selection and have been known from time to time to sit down and read them like one would read a novel.
Up until recently I had never heard of Oh She Glows. I heard about it from another blogger, Dairy Free Betty (http://dairyfreebetty.com) as it is one of her favourites. After looking at the Oh She Glows blog I could see why. I immediately ordered the cookbook.
3 days later it arrived on my doorstep.
Angela Liddon, the author, says that she tried to create recipies that even meat eaters would enjoy. I decided to test this out on my meat eating husband.
The first night I made 2 things – Cream of Tomato Soup and the Perfected Chickpea Salad Sandwich.
I started off with the chickpea salad. After going through my fridge and pantry, I realized I had all of the required ingredients on hand. Score one for Oh She Glows! I have to admit, I was not 100% convinced that a chickpea salad sandwich would be tasty. I like chickpeas enough, but in a sandwich? Using a recipe that claims to rival a chicken salad sandwich?
You use pretty much the same ingredients that you would in a chicken salad sandwich (onion, pepper, celery) and you mash the chickpeas to get an almost flakey texture. The hardest part was mashing the chickpeas. I imagine if you had a food processor you could use that, but you would really need to be on the ball so as not to puree the chickpeas.
I threw all the ingredients together in a bowl and mixed it up. It resembled chicken salad, but how would it taste?
Let me tell you, this dish is amazing!! I was blown away. It is so flavourful, it has a great texture and is just so fresh. I served it for dinner with the cream of tomato soup (more on that later) and my hubby devoured it. I don’t think he even chewed it, his sandwich was just gone. He even asked if there was any leftover for his lunch for the following day!
The recipe says it makes enough to serve 3, but unless you really load it on, it makes much more. I gave some to my mom and sister to try, they feel that it is stong enough to stand alone as it’s own dish. My mom even asked if I would make it in the summer to be eaten as part of a salad plate.
To make the cream of tomato soup, the only thing I had to buy was some raw cashews. I sauteed some onions and after soaking my cashews overnight, wazzed them up in the blender with some vegetable stock. I don’t have the high speed VitaMix blender the book recommends, so the broth had a bit of a grainy texture. If I would have taken the time and run it through a mesh strainer I’m sure it would have had more of a creamy texture. The grainy-ness worked out though, because once I blended up the onions and tomatoes it worked to thicken the soup. It had a bit more of a texture than I normally enjoy, but the flavour was fantastic. My husband downed his bowl of soup and much like the chickpea sandwich, requested it for his lunch the following day.
The next night I made the Cauliflower Mashed Potatoes. I am a fan of potatoes in any form. I also enjoy cauliflower but had never thought of mixing them together. Again, I had all the ingredients to make this. After peeling the potatoescIput them in a pot to boil. I added the cauliflower and cooked them both through, and mashed them up. They were really good although next time I am going to use my hand mixer to blend them to try and make them fluffier. There was enough left over for dinner the next night so I made potato cakes and fried them in a pan. They cooked nicely with a crispy crust on them and tasted even better than the previous day. This is a recipe I would make for the sole purpose of having leftovers.
The Portabella Mushroom ‘Steak’ Fajitas were next on the menu. The only items I had to buy for this was the mushrooms and flatbreads. I found that the marinade doesn’t make quite enough to coat all the mushroom slices and I had to make another half batch of it, which was easy. I sliced the mushrooms and got them in the marinade, and cut up the veggies for the stirfry.
I didn’t have a grill pan like the recipe calls for so after marinating the mushrooms I sauteed them in a pan on the stove. While they were heating I made the stirfry. By the time that was done the mushrooms were cooked. I layered them on a tortilla and served it with some salsa and a side cesar salad.
The filling was really tasty although my husband didn’t care for the texture of the mushrooms, while I wasn’t huge on the corn tortillas I accidentally picked up instead of the flour ones. Overall it is a good recipe, easy to make and as long as you don’t mind mushroom texture and get the right wraps, is really quite yummy.
Tonight I made the Chickpea Masala. I had all the ingredients in my fridge and pantry, so there was no need to do a grocery store run. This is a 2 pot meal that is super easy to make. I sauteed the onions, added the spices, the tomatoes and the chickpeas. All in all it took about 20 minutes to put together and another 10 to simmer through.
The recipes in this cookbook are really easy to follow, and the prep time and cook time is accurate. The recipies call for ingredients that can be found in your local grocery store or that you would normally keep in your pantry and fridge. All of the recipies I tested I was able to make in under half an hour and while looking after my newborn, which was pretty impressive. The boom has really nice photos, and the end result of the recipies I made looked similar to that in the photo, minus the food styling. The dishes were flavourful and often made more than the amount the recipe said it would make. They all seem easy to cut in half or to double, and with the exeption of the fajitas, pleased my meat eating husband, with him going back for seconds.
I would reccomend this book to anyone looking to try some different meal ideas.
My hubby gives the recipies 5 spoons out of 5, and I give this book the same. Definitely worth the money paid, I will use this book a lot. More
Vancouver Island Vegetarian 