A lot of recipes in The Complete Vegan are based on basic techniques from French Cuisine, only without all the fat and crazy bits of animals- this one even more than most. It followed the sautee onions, add garlic, a cup of white wine, 2 tbsp tomato sauce and herbes de provence (tarragon and friends), cook 5 minutes, sprinkle in 2 tbsp flour, stir, cook some more, add turnips, cook some more, add carrots and cauliflower, cook ’till tender, add cooked white beans, frozen peas, heat through, add parsley and serve pattern of French recipeing.
The result? It tasted like spring, which is mighty tough to achieve in January.
In my haste to devour the tastiness, I forgot to snap a photo, but if you can imagine a pot full of vegetables that are mainly white, with orange as a gentle secondary colour, accented by green for contrast, that’s what we’re dealing with.
The small amount of tomato paste in a whole cup of white wine came as a pleasant culinary surprise to me, as did the broth, thickened only just un petit peu by the scant quantity of flour.
I served mine over barley and the Delightful Rapper’s over brown rice because we only had so much barley and he wasn’t at all choosey.
It generated about 6 servings, but we ate 4 right there on the spot just because it was good. The recipe is not to be faulted for this. We are gluttons.
At $2.47, the cauliflower was the splurge of this recipe, but well worth it given the springy taste. And to think, I don’t even like cauliflower. Not on the official record, anyway.
| What it’s cost so far: | |
|---|---|
| beans | $1.27 |
| mushrooms | $2.00 |
| carrots | $1.27 |
| onion | $0.67 |
| turnip | $0.70 |
| cauliflower | $2.47 |
| garlic | $0.46 |
| TOTAL: | $8.84 |
I did also use up some ingredients that aren’t on this list that I already had in my cupboard. Rather than try to figure out the cost of ingredients I already had, I’ll count the cost of ALL the groceries I buy in connection to these beans for the week, and then average it out per serving at the end of my experiment. (So here, for instance, I only used a couple cloves of garlic, but I’m including the expense for three whole bulbs.) I figure that’ll be pretty close to realistic, especially if I keep it up for a few weeks in a row.
Comments
Comment from Katie
Time: January 12, 2006, 9:02 am
Jill, can you post some more detail for this recipe? It sounds awesome! How much broth? How many beans? I don’t generally drink white wine (total red wine snob here) is it worth buying a bottle for this recipe, or could it be substituted with something else? And what about the beans? You used white kidney beans - could you use another variety?
Mmmmmm barley . . . back to the bulk store I go!
:)Katie
Comment from Jill
Time: January 12, 2006, 9:18 am
I guess I totally lazied out on that one, didn’t I? If I were to transcribe every recipe that ever worked from that book, I would end up copying out the whole book, the thought of which makes me feel very tired. Also, I don’t want to republish that much of someone else’s work, so it feels a little like Pandora’s box. Most of the recipes I copy out in detail here are things I made up or modified myself.
The “broth” I speak of is just made of the cup of wine plus the 2 tbsp of tomato paste. I’d recommend using white wine and white beans because both the colours and flavours of this recipe are very delicate. You could buy a cheap white wine and freeze the leftovers in ice cube trays to use in other recipes. Failing that, you might be able to get away with improvising something using 1/3 cup sherry and 2/3 cup vegetable broth if you’ve got sherry in your liquor cabinet.
If you changed the beans and the wine, it would still work, it would just be something else. Might be fun to work out a “dark” version of this recipe using red wine, black beans, broccoli, beets… Hmm. Maybe I’ll try that next week.
The Herbes de Provence are 1tsp fennel seed, crushed finely, 2 tsp dried oregano, 2 tsp thyme, 1 tsp dried lavender flowers (I omitted these) 1 tsp dried rosemary, 1 tsp dried tarragon and 1/2 tsp ground sage.
Comment from Katie
Time: January 12, 2006, 10:43 am
Thanks Jill. This sounds really tasty. I think I’ll buy a bottle of white, and maybe freeze it. That’s a good idea - I’m a big fan of having portioned out things frozen in my freezer, for example, I’ve got about a dozen 1/2 cup portions of frozen apple sauce for my muffins.
Maybe I’ll see if the library has this cook book, and check it out for myself.
Comment from Jill
Time: January 12, 2006, 10:45 am
Or you can get them to order a copy. That’s a good way to support books.
Comment from Jill
Time: January 12, 2006, 10:46 am
Pesto is another thing that’s good for freezing in ice cube trays. You can just pop it out and microwave it over your pasta in single serving portions, if you’re not deathly afraid of the evil micro wave rays.
Comment from Katie
Time: January 12, 2006, 11:38 am
I’ve frozen pesto in ice cube trays, and tomato paste as well, since 1 cubes worth seems to be about right for most recipes. I think it’s wise to have a seperate try for this use, so your beverages don’t taste like pesto.
Comment from Jill
Time: January 12, 2006, 11:39 am
Hmm… somewhere in there, there’s a cocktail waiting to be invented, though.