World Vegetarian : Soft Polenta Mixed with Cheese and Spring Greens with Garlic

Imagine silky soft polenta with a hint of cheese underneath gently blanched spring greens that were then sauted with garlic, mustard seeds, and onions. Mmm.

The spring greens should have been broccoli di rape, but Tescos didn't have any of that, and a quick google showed that broccoli di rape looks a bit like spring greens so I thought eh, close enough. This would also work with curly kale, and I think the curly kale would mimic the slightly bitter taste of broccoli di rape that Jaffrey mentions in her introduction to the recipe. At least it would if I liked curly kale. Oh another thing - halve the amount of oil/butter that Jaffrey lists in recipes. I didn't, and that's why the greens are so shiny.

I used the oven method of cooking cheesy polenta - you mix polenta with water, bring a pan of water to a boil, add the polenta mix and grated cheese, bring to a boil until it starts to thicken, then bung in a pre-heated 200C oven in a greased baking dish for 50 minutes. Jaffrey recommends 60g of parmesan, but since that's not vegetarian I swapped it for Northumberland oak smoked cow's milk cheese, which is made with vegetarian rennet and has a lovely delicate smokey flavour. The recipe made a lot of polenta and it only had a slight taste of cheese, which is due to me swapping the cheese as the oak smoked isn't as strong a cheese as parmesan. However I 'tidied up' the leftovers to make a neater line in the baking dish (ahem) this afternoon and it tasted a bit stronger, so it's one of those recipes that improves with a little age.

We're eating the leftover polenta with a kidney bean and quorn mince chilli tonight, yum!

World Vegetarian - Green Pepper and Cucumber Salad

I wanted to try a nice, simple salad for my lunch today to show that World Vegetarian doesn't just include curries that take hours to prepare. The green pepper and cucumber salad is a your bog-standard common-or-garden salad and has all the ingredients you can see in the picture above as well as a bit of olive oil and a rather precise 4 tsp of lemon juice. I juiced half a lemon and after using this there was a fair bit of juice left, which is annoying because I hate waste, so I popped the rest in some hot water and drank it while blogging. I can understand why you're only supposed to use 4 tsp because it would have been too lemony and acidic if I'd used all of it. However next time I may throw caution to the wind and use 5 tsp of juice.

It was very tasty eaten with a toasted brown pitta bread filled with halloumi cheese (when I lived in Syria we called this squeaky cheese) and home-made pickled beetroot on the side.

World Vegetarian - Green Bean and Potato Curry

Green bean and potato curry

This curry took ages to make. I had the whole evening, but it took two people good 40 minutes to chop the shallots and green beans needed. Apparently in Sri Lanka they cut green beans 'at a steep diagonal into 5mm wide pieces' - wanting to do this properly I tried to do just that. I didn't include the full amount of beans and it still took ages. When I make it again I won't bother and just chop them roughly. The crunchy green beans and smooth potato did work together very well.

Either way it was tasty, but not delicious. The recipe calls for the juice of 1 lime and 3 chillies. I couldn't taste the lime much and the chillies' heat overpowered the curry powder somewhat, which is something I referred to in my post about making the curry powder, and made it taste a touch bland. The coconut milk did make it lovely and creamy. When I make it again I'll include the juice of 2 limes, only 2 chillies and more salt or a bit of vegetable stock to emphasis these flavours.

World Vegetarian - Sri Lankan Raw Curry Powder and Green Bean and Potato Curry.

This dish was good, but time-consuming and rather expensive to make. We already had most of the spices, but there were quite a few in the curry powder we didn't already have.

Sri Lankan Raw Curry Powder

I'm not sure why it's 'raw', maybe because it's only warmed at 60 degrees C rather than being toasted. It was easy to make - pre-heat oven to 60C, bung ingredients on a tray, leave for an hour, allow to cool, and grind. I ground it in the food processor, and it came out well. It filled half a washed-out old 250g salsa jar.

Warmed spices

Ground curry powder surrounded by a halo of its own foodie yumminess!

The powder has a mild, delicate flavour of coconut, curry leaves, coriander and fennel so you have to be very careful not to overpower it with other flavours. It can be used in any vegetable curry and although World Vegetarian only uses it in 2 curries this isn't really problem because the recipe only makes around 120ml. The recipe I used it in required 4 tsp and this used up about half of the powder so you won't have loads left sitting in the cupboard. It still took an hour to make though. It's going to be a staple in my kitchen, but only on special occasions.

Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian

I turned vegetarian a few months ago and, getting bored of trawling the BBC Good Food website for veggie recipes, bought two vegetarian cooking bibles  Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian, and Rose Elliot's New Complete Vegetarian. I'm going to be trying them out over the next few months and giving my verdict.

I had a flick through World Vegetarian yesterday.

First Impression
At first I felt a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of recipes in the book as there a quite possibly thousands of them. I bit my lip and worried it would be relegated to my bookcase shelf and never be used. But then as I flipped through the pages I began to make a mental note of all the recipes I wanted to try and it grew and grew and grew and grew. These recipes sound delicious, and Jaffrey's introductions are charming and personable without being whimisical or irritating - Sophie Dahl I'm looking at you - and it sounds like she's stood in the kitchen with a cup of tea chatting about where she first heard about this or that, or giving tidbits of advice about presentation.
 
Presentation
It's well laid-out. There aren't any mouthwatering pictures to pour over, which is a shame. It would have been nice to have seen the beautiful cover design mirrored in the book's contents.

Oraganisation
It's fairly well organised. The chapters are Vegetables; Dried Beans, Dried Peas, Lentils and Nuts; Grains; Dairy Foods; Added Flavourings (by which she means chutneys, sauces, and spice mixes etc); and Soups Salads and Drinks.

The recipes are then organised alphabetically by the main ingredient and at the beginning of each section there's a short introduction to the vegetable touching on Jaffrey's experiences and how to prepare them, where a picture or two of a dish would be nice. Each recipe has a short introduction as well for example giving advice on how to chop the ingredients, or what kind of an effect the spices will have.

There is a list of special ingredients that the reader may be unfamiliar with information on how to prepare it, where it comes from or what effect the ingredient will have on the dish. There's also a list of necessary equipment and of suppliers of hard-to-find ingredients.

Finally at the end is the index. It's comprehensive but could be organised better. The recipes are listed by the main ingredients and often duplicated in both sections if there is more than one main ingredient - so asparagus with pine nuts comes under Asparagus, pine nuts with and Pine nuts, asparagus with. Recipes are also listed under the type of food and also again by what part of the world they're from. So for example, Turkish bread appears under breads and later on under Turkish-style recipes. The index, unsurprisingly, is a little hard to navigate at first because everything's in a tiny font size and the only difference between entries is that non-English words are in italics. It would be easier to navigate if different types of entries were differentiated somehow.


Recipes

I've tried a few recipes and will blog them. I must say I'm impressed. The recipes vary from curries that require you soaking ingredients over night or toasting and grinding a special spice blend to simple salads that can be chucked together in seconds. So far they seem to work, although it's hard to go wrong with a curry and I haven't tried to make any of the breads yet.

Some are very simple and economic to make from readily-available ingredients or store-cupboard staples. Some require pricey, specialist ingredients and Jaffrey occasionally notes good substitutions. Generally the recipes are fairly healthy, but there are exceptions with lashings of coconut milk and oil or cheese. Some recipes have 3 or 4 ingredients, some have a whole shopping list's worth.

There is incredible variation in where recipes are from. From what I've seen there are recipes from China, Japan, India (including Gujarati, Kashmiri, and Rajasthani recipes), Sri Lanka, Trinidad, Tunisia, Morocco, Iran, Ethiopia, Italy, Macedonia, Bangladesh, Australia, Latin America, Mexico, Spain, Lebanon, Cyprus, Greece, the Ukraine and the list goes on...

The recipes could be written a bit better, however. How many servings it makes comes right at the end, which is mildly annoying. The recipes don't explicitly state how long it will take to prepare and cook, which is fairly aggravating. Word of warning - if it is a curry it will take ages regardless.

Summary

The sheer variety of ways to prepare common and rarer ingredients means it's not going to languish unused. There is something for whatever mood you are in and for whatever your tastes. It's great for when you're in a food rut, or need to eat something up and aren't feeling inspired by that very full bag of polenta skulking in the cupboard.