The recipes came from The Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health and The Moosewood Cookbook (1992 edition–I’ll address the one-star reviews for the 2000 version on Amazon further down).

Mashed Cauliflower

Cauliflower is still on sale, so when I came across this recipe I figured why not. It’s out of The Moosewood Restaurant Cooking for Health: More Than 200 New Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes for Delicious and Nutrient-Rich Dishes, which is also where I got the recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash, as well as Quinoa and Roasted Sweet Potato, and Tunisian Chickpea Stew. Oh yes, the forgettable Baked Fruit was from this cookbook too. Also, Maple-Glazed Root Vegetables.

Aaaaanyway.

This cauliflower recipe is supposed to have fewer carbs than mashed potatoes. It certainly doesn’t taste like mashed potatoes, but it’s easy enough to make (overcook cauliflower and mash with sauteed onions, more or less) and tasty enough to repeat.

Roasted Butternut Squash

I had to find something to do with butternut squash left over from the soup I made (I know if I stick it in the fridge I will inevitably forget about it until it goes bad). This recipe is actually part of a larger recipe for making a roasted vegetable salad, I think. This is quick and easy and the squash comes out firm rather than mushy (I hate mushy squash).

Basically, chop up a butternut squash into 1″ chunks, add a few teaspoons of olive oil and a 1/4 teaspoon of dried thyme. Mix it up, put it in a pan in a single layer and cook at 400F for 20-25 minutes.

This recipe is my default for butternut squash. Easy and tasty enough to remake. Also, it’s likely to go with whatever else we have kicking around for dinner.

Quinoa and Roasted Sweet Potato

Sweet potatoes were on sale and just about anything you make with them turns out yummy. Usually I just stick them whole in the oven for about 40 minutes at 400F and then let them cool a bit before peeling off the skin (leftovers are good on pizza). I’ve done that a lot lately though, so I was looking for something else to do with them.

I found this recipe kind of bland (although, now that I haul out my cookbook, I see that I marked it as ‘good’ when I made it). It wasn’t bad, but it certainly didn’t attain the requisite “Yum, I have to make this again!” level of enjoyment. Cooking is enough work that if I’m going to bother to follow a recipe, the results better routinely hit “Yum–must make again.” I don’t need a cookbook to achieve “Meh, it’ll do.” I can accomplish that by ad-libbing on my own, thankyouverymuch.

Part of the disappointment is that the sweet potato is steamed on the stovetop rather than roasted. Roasting brings out the sweetness of sweet potato in a way that steaming doesn’t, so that was a letdown. And the leftover spinach rotting in the fridge because I hate cooking with spinach is mocking me, daily. Eh, your mileage may vary.

Maple-Glazed Root Vegetables

I have to admit: I screwed up preparing this recipe so I can’t really honestly review it as it was supposed to be baked. I love roasted root vegetables in the winter, but usually recipes call for an oil/herb mix that you coat the veggies in and then bake. This recipe has that oil/herb mix BUT it also has a glaze that you add later in the cooking. I may or may not have added everything at once.

*cough* Oops *cough*

I wasn’t trying to modify the recipe. I was just having trouble holding the cookbook open and was going more by the ingredient list than the instructions. I have made this before, but I didn’t take any notes and I don’t remember if I screwed it up the last time too (I am nothing if not a creature of bad habits).

Obviously, it wasn’t memorable the first time I made it, so I suppose that says something.

Tunisian Chickpea Stew

I’m somewhat on the fence about this recipe. It’s not bad, but I’m not sure it’s thrilling enough to offset the amount of work it is (most of which is hacking up the squash, but with chronic pain issues in the my arms, shoulders, and upper back, that’s a consideration).

I’ve had much better stews from my vegetarian slow cooker cookbook … which I’ll not link to just yet because the Amazon reviews remind me of why I cook so rarely from that book.

Baked Fruit

This is another recipe I wasn’t thrilled with. Basically it’s sliced apples in maple syrup and lemon juice baked in the oven. It’s okay, but I can’t see making it again unless we use it as a hot topping for vanilla ice cream or lemon sorbet.

Hmm, now that I look back on it, so far this cookbook isn’t particularly great as far as keeper recipes go. I was not expecting that.

The other cookbook I cooked from was The Moosewood Cookbook. I have the 1992 edition, which was the first revision of the 1977 book. Apparently there is a 2000 version that sucks (based on the one-star reviews). Keep that in mind if you decide to buy this one. The 1992 revision is lower fat than the 1977 original–I have no idea what they did to the latest version.

Marinated Chickpeas

We usually have the same salad every night, made by the other half (that’s the extent of his “cooking”). It’s your basic tomato, lettuce, celery deal. It’s nice to have, but gets a bit bland sometime so if we have extra chickpeas hanging around we toss them on top. But even that is a bit bland.

The chickpeas in this recipe are marinated with fresh ginger, raw garlic, raw onions, and oil (there’s probably salt and pepper in there too). I really like these on salad. Actually, I really like these as a snack as well. This is definitely a recipe I’ll make again: quick, easy, tasty, and versatile (dump them on rice, salad, whatever floats your boat).

Cream of Asparagus Soup

This is actually the first recipe in the book. I’m generally not a fan of cream soups. The canned ones are vile–the less said about them the better. I took a chance though since asparagus was on sale and the recipe said low-fat milk was fine for the recipe.

The soup was actually pretty good. Cooking the asparagus was a bit finicky, but I think that’s more asparagus-related than recipe-related. It’s a bit too finicky to make regularly, but definitely a good cream of asparagus soup recipe.

In case anyone is wondering, I’ve tried a lot of recipes in this cookbook and have been happy with most of them. But I have an older version than what bookstores are selling.

If you’ve cooked these recipes or from these cookbooks, what did you think? And if anyone has the 2000 version of the Moosewood Cookbook, I’d be interested in your experiences with it. Apparently it’s different enough that they call it The New Moosewood Cookbook (whereas mine is simply a revised edition of the 1977 version).

This week I had to find a use for a cheap bag of onions, cheap cauliflower, and a dessert that was under 200 calories. The recipes I ended up trying were Roasted Caramelized Balsamic Onions, Cauliflower Steak, Pineapple Sorbet, and Lemon Sorbet. Whew! I don’t normally manage this many new recipes in a week.

I was going to try to take pictures, but I didn’t manage it this week. Maybe next week. It would be nice to have pictures in my recipe binder to remind me of what a dish looks like.

Roasted Caramelized Balsamic Onions

Bags of onions were on sale for $1 so I bought first and figured out what to do with them later. I came across a recipe for roasting onions with butter, balsamic vinegar, and thyme in Moosewood Restaurant New Classics (p. 125). Why not!

I lined the pan with parchment paper (this significantly cuts down on whining from the other half who does the dishes) before putting the onions in and covering them with the butter/vinegar/thyme mixture. The recipe called for two large onions, but I only had medium and small so I put in four of those instead.

They turned out pretty tasty and got a “You can make this anytime” from the other half.

It looks like the recipe is over on Food.com, if you’re curious.

Cauliflower Steak

This is a recipe that my Mom got from Vij’s at Home: Relax, Honey: The Warmth and Ease of Indian Cooking cookbook (you can also find the same Cauliflower steak recipe over on Straight.com). I very rarely buy cauliflower because I’m not very fond of it steamed and I really don’t have any recipes for it (well, I’m sure I have recipes, somewhere in my collection of cookbooks, but I haven’t come across any that feature cauliflower yet).

Since this recipe was passed on from my Mom who had already made it, I didn’t make any changes other than cutting the salt in half (which is a default in our family since we’re not used to a lot of salt). Basically, this is a tomato masala sauce that you cook “pie-shaped” pieces of cauliflower in for about 15 minutes.

I found it a bit oily (it calls for 1/2 cup of oil but I would halve that next time) but other than that it was nice and spicy. The other half declared it the best cauliflower he has ever had, so the recipe is definitely a keeper with less salt and less oil.

One thing that I didn’t realize until I figured out the calories per serving, is that cauliflower is very high in Vitamin C (each serving, or 1/6th of a cauliflower head, is 120% of the daily Vitamin C requirement). Huh. Who knew?

Pineapple Sorbet

We’ve been eating ice cream lately since it has been on sale, but milk products do unpleasant things to my stomach so I had the brilliant idea of making sorbet (commercial sorbet around here invariably has milk products in it so buying it is out). Since pineapples were on sale, I looked for a pineapple sorbet recipe. Conveniently enough, the instruction booklet for my KitchenAid stand mixer ice cream attachment actually has one.

Pineapple Sorbet Recipe

• 1 cup cold water
• 1 cup sugar
• 5 1/2 cups chopped pineapple
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 Tbsp lime or lemon juice

1. Mix water, sugar, corn syrup and salt together in a bowl until all the sugar is dissolved.
2. Finely chop 1/2 cup of pineapple and set aside.
3. Puree five cups of pineapple and lime juice in a food processor.
4. Mix sugar mixture and pureed pineapple.
5. Freeze in ice cream maker.
6. Add chopped pineapple in last few minutes of mixing or mix in after.

Tasty. Easy to make. It calls for 1/2 cup of chopped pineapple (the rest is pureed) but I found I don’t like frozen chunks of fruit in my sorbet so I think I’ll just puree it all next time. Uses about one pineapple. Apparently the same recipe can be made with peaches so I’ll have to try that this summer if we get some good ones.

Lemon Sorbet

I found this recipe online at Cuisinart after I made the pineapple sorbet and the other half was looking a titch forlorn since he hates pineapple.

Tasty, but a little tart (I may have added too much lemon juice; I did lose count). The other half didn’t like the first spoonful (too tart), but it grew on him after a few mouthfuls and he’s now happily making his way through the container.

See you next week.

This is my cookbook bookcase (doesn’t everyone have a cookbook bookcase?):

Most of these are vegetarian or pescatarian, including an almost complete collection of Moosewood cookbooks (95% of the recipes I’ve tried from Moosewood cookbooks have been worthwhile which is a pretty good track record for a cookbook). I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to blog about this. Right now I’m thinking a weekly post of what I tried, how it turned out and which cookbook the recipe came from.

And if anyone else wants to join in, that would be nice too.

Thoughts?

The Book

Sugar-free Gluten-free Baking and Desserts: Recipes for Healthy and Delicious Cookies, Cakes, Muffins, Scones, Pies, Puddings, Breads and Pizzas by Kelly E. Keough is a collection of recipes for those who can tolerate neither wheat nor sugar. Although these recipes are likely of most interest to those with celiac disease or diabetes, no one else in the family will mind eating from this cookbook–as long as you can find the ingredients and don’t mind the frustrating index.

The Ingredients

I’ve had this book for several months. What kept me from trying it earlier was tracking down ingredients used throughout the book. Most of the recipes use flavoured liquid stevia, agave nectar, and Swerve. The flavoured stevia drops were an easy find at health food stores in both Alberta and British Columbia (yes, I went shopping in TWO provinces). I could not track down agave nectar where I live in Alberta, but found it fairly easily in British Columbia.

Swerveis another story. This crystalline sweetener replaces the bulk of sugar in many recipes. As far as I can tell (the manufacturer did not answer my e-mail), Swerve is only sold in the United States. No health food store I went to had ever heard of it. I did find erythritol once (a component of Swerve), but at $16 for half a kilo I opted not to experiment.

Even some of the ingredients that sound easy to find, like unsweetened carob chips, were hard to buy (sweetened carob chips are a cinch to find, not so for unsweetened). It’s not just me. In British Columbia I went shopping with a local and it still took us an entire day and six or seven stops to hunt down the ingredients to try a couple recipes (I don’t believe in just eyeballing recipes when I review cookbooks ).

The author says that you can find the ingredients at her website, but her site isn’t particularly helpful when it comes to Swerve, even if you are inclined to buy ingredients online (which I am not).

The Recipes

Sugar-free Gluten-free Baking and Desserts has a glossary of ingredients at the beginning which is helpful as well as some sourcing information if you need it and are willing to shop online. There is also a cravings-versus-recipes list where you can look up what you are craving and pick a recipe in the book that is supposed to address it. I could have done without the page on prayer and food (I dislike finding religion in books on secular topics) but that’s a small peeve since it doesn’t show up anywhere else in the book. There are recipe sections for:

• Brownies and Cookies
• Breads, Pancakes, Cereals, and Bars
• Muffins, Scones, and Bagels
• Cakes and Cupcakes
• Pies, Tarts, and Crisps
• Puddings and Kantens
• Ice Cream and Sorbets
• Candy
• 30-Second Snacks
• Baby Food

The index in this book is a bit frustrating. My mother and I kept having to flip through the book to find the recipes we had chosen because the index was unhelpful at best. Wicked Awesome Peanut Butter Waffles doesn’t appear under Peanut Butter (but other recipes do), but they do appear under Wicked. Vegan Blueberry Pancakes suffer the same fate, showing up under Vegan, but not under Blueberry. This makes the index near useless as the same thing is repeated with a number of recipes. It’s a good thing the recipes are good.

Taste Testing

So, on with the taste-testing! I made No Guilt Brownies, Wicked Awesome Peanut Butter Waffles, and Vegan Blueberry Pancakes. None of the recipes I tested used Swerve for reasons already mentioned.

The No Guilt Brownies were easy to make (mostly adding ingredients to a food processor–make sure you have a family size one). This recipe uses a can of black beans. Although most people said that they couldn’t taste the beans, I could tell they were there because I’ve eaten Chinese sweets with bean paste in them (there’s nothing wrong with the flavour, but if you’re familiar with the ingredient you’ll recognize it). This make a dense, high cakey-type brownie that isn’t crumbly and stores well. It was tasty and I would make it again (especially since the other half scarfed it down with no prompting–he’s the one with the gluten issues).

My batch of No Guilt Brownies (I've already taste tested them in the upper right corner).

Since I was in a house with a waffle maker (something I don’t have at home), I tried Wicked Awesome Peanut Butter Waffles. These were tasty though not as peanut buttery as I expected. The lone waffle that survived to the next day was more peanutty though.

A rare glimpse of the Wicked Awesome Peanut Butter Waffle (they kept getting eaten). The one left over tasted much more peanut-buttery the next day than when freshly made.

The Vegan Blueberry pancakes were tasty as well. The fact that all three recipes were tasty suggests that the others should be as well. There are recipes for cookies and bars that are made in a food dehydrator, which is technique that I haven’t seen or tried before.

Vegan Blueberry Pancakes--I'll make these again.

Verdict

If you can find the ingredients, the recipes (at least the ones that I tried) are tasty and not particularly complicated.

You can find Sugar-free Gluten-free Baking and Desserts: Recipes for Healthy and Delicious Cookies, Cakes, Muffins, Scones, Pies, Puddings, Breads and Pizzas (previously published as The Sweet Truth) at amazon (US, Canada), as well as at other online and retail booksellers.

The Book

Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine by Annalise G. Roberts is a collection of bread machine recipes for those who can’t tolerate wheat (with a section for those who also can’t tolerate dairy and egg either). The book begins with a section on working with gluten-free flours and some gluten-free baking chemistry which is useful information for the uninitiated especially if you have plans to adapt recipes.

The Ingredients

I’ve just started baking gluten-free (with or without a bread maker) so I had to go looking for many of the ingredients used in the book. The good news is that the flours for the base mix used in this cookbook are fairly easy to find at health food stores: millet flour, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, cornstarch, and potato starch. Those and xanthum gum are used in many of the recipes. Some recipes call for rye flavour which I couldn’t track down although they do give a source if you’re willing to buy online. Other than that the ingredients are fairly standard bread ingredients that you can find in most grocery stores.

The Recipes

Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine has two main types of recipes: Breads with egg and dairy, and those without. The latter are mostly artisan bread recipes, while the former are more sandwich breads. I haven’t tested any of the egg-free/dairy-free recipes so I can’t comment on those, but the cookbook helpfully lists results from the test kitchen that tell you what to expect and tips on getting the best outcome. There’s a note that dairy-free milk alternatives work well with the egg and dairy recipes which gives you a lot more choice of recipes if you’re avoiding dairy.

Taste Testing

So, on with the taste-testing! I don’t believe that you can review any cookbook simply by looking at the recipes. What looks good on paper sometimes tastes like the book it was printed in so I always pick a few recipes and give them a test run. I made the Basic Sandwich Bread first. I was surprised at how much the loaf rose. The loaf was easy to cut and stayed together well. It was a little bit more crumbly than the wheat breads I’ve made but not much. The Basic Sandwich Bread worked well in sandwiches and even survived being used for French toast.

Basic Sandwich Bread Recipe made in my Cuisinart bread machine on the gluten-free cycle.

The second recipe I tried was Cinnamon Swirl Bread. I used to make cinnamon buns with my bread maker but since the other half has discovered that wheat causes him digestive issues I haven’t made any. Cinnamon Swirl Bread is a loaf rather than buns, but the flavour of cinnamon buns is there. In fact, this loaf didn’t survive long enough for me to take a picture of it. It disappeared in one evening between the two of us!

The recipes I tried were a definite success and certainly easier than trying to make gluten-free breads by hand (of course, I’m a hands-off kind of baker which is why I have a bread maker in the first place).

One Caveat: The Bread Machine

If you’re all ready to make gluten-free bread with your bread maker there’s just one thing that you need to be aware of: not all bread makers can do gluten-free bread. The chemistry of gluten-free baking is quite different so the cycles of regular bread makers aren’t suitable. For one thing, gluten-free baking only has one rise cycle; conventional gluten-based bread baking has two rise cycles.

In order to make gluten-free bread in your bread machine you’ll need either a bread machine that allows you to completely program a custom cycle like Roberts uses in Gluten-Free Baking Classics for the Bread Machine or you’ll need a bread machine with a built-in gluten-free cycle (that’s what I have and the cycle is almost identical to the one that Roberts uses in the cookbook). Roberts uses the Zojurushi BBCC-X20 which has a programmable cycle option. For the life of me I could not find this brand being sold in Canada in retail stores (or any other bread maker with a programmable cycle). Good thing my Cuisinart Convection Breadmaker comes with a gluten-free cycle that seems to do the job. Americans might have more choices as might someone willing to buy small appliances online.

You can find this cookbook and other gluten-free cookbooks by Annalise G. Roberts at amazon (US, Canada, UK) as well as at other online and retail booksellers.

I can’t remember where I first came across The Hungry Scientist Handbook: Electric Birthday Cakes, Edible Origami, and Other DIY Projects for Techies, Tinkerers, and Foodies,  but as soon as I saw it I knew I had to get a look at it. After all, what science geek could resist?

Before I got a look at the book it crossed my mind that this might be a good book for exploring science with kids. If that thought occurs to you too, put it out of your mind right now. This is not a kids’ book Thankfully, this is made abundantly clear with the first recipe: Edible Undies (Lace Up Caramel Lingerie). Definitely not for the younger set. Even the LED lollipops require two AA batteries strapped to the lollipop stick.

Now, what about us older “kids”? Usually I test a cookbook before writing a review. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time (or energy) to test these recipes though the instructions are clear and have equipment and materials lists. There are pictures to help you along, but unfortunately they are in black and white. Also, there’s no way I’m wearing edible caramel underwear because, well, it sounds sticky and ouch-worthy (and while the other half was more than happy to contemplate me trying them out, he was not as quick to volunteer himself for the experiment–apologies for the mental images, especially for anyone who knows us).

I wasn’t particularly entranced by the dry ice martini, lemonade, and root beer. One beverage would have been enough for me, but then I’ve played with dry ice to my heart’s content and am over the novelty (I’m even over the novelty of scaring the bejeesus out of fellow lab rats by putting dry ice in snap cap tubes, hiding them in their desk drawer, and waiting for the tubes to blow their caps — yes, we had slow days in the lab). For those who still find dry ice interesting, the drinks might be worth a shot.

While many of the recipes can be done with ingredients easily purchased or found around the house, some are not so easy to come by. The one recipe that I desperately wanted to try (and have always wanted to try, even before this particular book) is the one for cryogenic ice cream. I’ve made ice cream the regular way, but I’ve always wanted to try it with liquid nitrogen. Unfortunately, I never was able to talk any of my bosses into authorizing ice cream making in the lab and now I no longer work in one. The authors of The Hungry Scientist Handbook admit that liquid nitrogen is one ingredient that may be difficult to snag because it is dangerous if not handled/transported properly and suppliers are reluctant to sell directly to consumers for this reason (but if you have access and try making ice cream, I want to hear all about it!).

While the book suggests it is for “techies, tinkerers, and foodies,” I suspect the first two will get more out of this than the last one. None of the recipes struck me as particularly tasty, though they were mostly novel except for the bread and the beer recipes which were fairly standard. Tinkerers will probably enjoy some of the projects more, like the camera made from a pumpkin, the smart coaster that lights up red or blue depending on whether you put a hot or cold drink down on it, or the iPod portable Tupperware boom box.

The Hungry Scientist Handbook is interesting to flip through though some projects seemed a bit boring to me (there’s a good chance I’m jaded though). In the end I didn’t try any of them because they looked like too much work for the end result. On the other hand if you wouldn’t mind spending an afternoon making a temperature indicating coaster or frying up some phyllo origami swans then it might be the book for you. And if you try to make the caramel edible underwear, please don’t report back. I really don’t want to know how that turns out.

Feeling brave? You can pick up a copy of The Hungry Scientist Handbook at amazon.com, amazon.ca, or amazon.co.uk.