PRETTY LITTLE THINGS

The 2010 February Daring COOKs challenge was hosted by Michele of Veggie Num Nums. Michele chose to challenge everyone to make mezze based on various recipes from Claudia Roden, Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Dugid.
For me, this challenge was the equivalent of finding oneself at the perfect place at the perfect time, in a way that a vegan friend was going to come over for lunch the weekend after the challenge was announced. Even though me and my BF eat vegetarian meals 5 days out of 7, cooking vegan is another pair of shoes altogether. No cheese, no cream, no eggs, no honey .... I know, there're substitutes, but the only one I can stomach is the veg cream. I don't consider tofu an adequate substitute for cheese or eggs, even if it may help with the consistence, but surely not tastewise. So, usually vegan lunches/dinners are quite a challenge in themselves. For this particular occassion I have chosen to make not only the required hummus and pita, but a whole lot more from Michele's site, and some more still :)


So, on the menu that day were:
-being in Italy, a pasta dish is obligatory, so this time I made wholewheat strozzapreti with walnut-thyme sauce (adapted from here, made without cheese)
- Hummus (I was not very happy with the recipe, as it was a bit too lemony for my taste, but it was Ok)
-Pita (made on the stovetop and really delicious)
- Yogurt-Cucumber Raita (not new to me, always refreshing and tasty)
-Cucumber-Yogurt Salsa (variation of the raita, but without yogurt, as I have realized at last second only that yogurt was not vegan.....)
-Baba Ghanoush (eggplant roasted in the woodstove which gave it a realy fantastic smoky taste. In fact, this was the best part of the meal!)
-Lentil salad with roasted veggies and mustard vinaigrette
-Felafels (baked in the oven, not fried - still delicious


And, to put th cherry on top of all this, a Upside-Down-Orange-VEGAN CAKE (Adapted from here)! Made with Muffin-like batter without diary/eggs and baked over a layer of melted brown sugar and sliced oranges, it was actually really delicious and a keeper even for non-vegan occassions.

All in all, I would give this challenge a 10 out of 10 - the best and timely challenge ever! Hip-hip-hooray fo daring Cooks!

This month is my first Daring Cooks Challenge, and it's been quite a challenge, really. I've completely forgotten about the deadline until, well .... until this morning. Fortunately this month's recipe, brought to us by Simone from Junglefrog Cooking, is quite last-minute friendly. Shopping, cooking, taking pictures and eating - it all took no more than 2 hours. I cheated on the pastry, using store-bought puff pastry, and had to chop the spinach instead of pureeing it given the lack of the necessary equipment. The spinach-arugula-cream cheese-mix got some dill and lemon to spice it up and made great leftovers, too, baked in individual ramekins. (I love dill and suffer tremendously the fact that it rarely can be found in Italy and doesn't grow well here, too...so every time I go back home I bring a huge bunch of dill, freeze it and use on very special occasions only :))



The salmon en croute turned out to be quite delicious, and rather photogenic, too. You can get the the recipe here.