Vegan food at Keltfest and Castlefest

[EN/NL]

Week 4 of the Vegan Month of Food was about special occasions and holidays. This got me reminiscing about my favourite meals of the summer, so I thought I’d share the excellent vegan food I had at Keltfest and Castlefest earlier this year. These are two separate festivals (Keltfest is smaller and focuses on Celtic culture, while Castlefest has more of a medieval/fantasy theme) but they’re similar in a lot of ways — and both events have great vegan food. :)

Keltfest food

I’ve been to Keltfest three times now, and I’ve always found plenty of vegan options. Here’s what we ate this year:

My boyfriend and I shared a falafel plate from Bakblik, which included some incredibly delicious beer-battered mushrooms. I believe the sides were hummus, smoked tomato sauce and a beetroot & bulgur salad.

We also shared this delicious tofu satay bowl and a plate of deep-fried bananas. According to Keltfest’s website, the name of this stall was Grill-Zilla. They’re not exclusively vegan but they did have a separate stall serving vegan Indonesian dishes. These were both so good!

Wietse’s pies offered two vegan options: a mushroom pie and a curry lentil pie. I’ve tried and enjoyed both. This was the curry pie.

Finally, I bought a fruit salad from a smoothie stall and a slice of red velvet cake from another stall (unfortunately I don’t remember what they were called). I always love a fruit salad, especially on a hot day, and I was excited to find vegan cake!

Castlefest food

This was my second time visiting Castlefest. Last year, I remember having a delicious vegan kapsalon by the Seitan Chefs. This year, we mainly ate at a German stall called Vegan Spirit. I’d tried their food a few years ago at Keltfest and I really like them! These dishes were all from Vegan Spirit:

This was a cheese and spinach toastie served with mango sauce and tomato sauce (because I couldn’t pick one). The filling was nice and melty — I think they used Wilmersburger cheese — and the outside had been battered and fried, which, it turns out, is an excellent idea. This was a delicious lunch/snack.

For dinner, I had Vegan Spirit’s paella plate and my boyfriend had their Thai curry. Other options included chilli, falafel, and an Ayurvedic plate.

Market stalls and other activities

But of course we weren’t just there for the food! There’s always music, workshops, demos, a big market, and probably lots of other activities that I haven’t discovered yet. I feel like I could spend hours just browsing all the different market stalls selling art, clothes, books, board games, and more. This year, we participated in a fun one-off D&D session at the Jack of Dice stall at Keltfest and tried out various board games in Castlefest’s games tent. The above picture shows some of the goodies I picked up at Keltfest: loose-leaf herbal tea from Eleoflora, a set of dice I got as a birthday gift for my boyfriend, and a tote bag, a calendar and cute donkey-shaped soap from Melief (an animal sanctuary in Sögel, Germany).

Both events have already taken place this year, but in case you’re interested in visiting them in the future: Keltfest is held in Vijfhuizen at the end of May, and Castlefest takes place in Lisse during the first weekend of August. There’s also going to be a Castlefest Winter Edition on November 24th and 25th, 2018.

Tiny tomatoes, sushi bowls, and pumpkin naan + VeganMoFo 2018

It’s that time of year again. Today is the first day of the Vegan Month of Food! In case you’re not familiar, VeganMoFo is an annual blogging event that challenges you to post about vegan food every day for a month. There are weekly and daily themes to inspire you. The prompt for day one: introduce you!

My name is Bonnie, I live in the Netherlands, and this is my eighth (I think?) time participating in VeganMoFo — although I’m pretty sure I only managed 31 blog posts during one of those years. This year I’ve decided to participate through Instagram instead of my blog, hoping this will give me lots of time to check out other people’s posts in addition to making my own. I had meant to plan ahead and photograph lots of meals in advance, but I’ve been ill and have had very little interest in food — not ideal. So we’ll see how this goes! You may just be seeing a lot of pictures of vegetable soup. :) Luckily, I also have a little backlog of photos I haven’t shared before.

As you may know, one of my favourite ways to cook is to go to the outdoor market, pick up beautiful and inexpensive fruits and vegetables, sit down with all my cookbooks to decide what I’m going to cook throughout the week, then prepare a bunch of new dishes and take pictures for my blog. In reality, of course, I don’t always have the time — so I often end up making the same recipes again and again. Still, I love trying new things when I get the chance! Here’s a market haul from two years ago (oops) that I didn’t get around to posting at the time:

Kabocha pumpkins, avocados, small courgettes, yellow tomatoes, red onions, fresh parsley and coriander, dried oregano, risotto/paella rice, tiny red tomatoes and mushrooms. It’s been so long that I don’t remember the total cost, but it’s usually €1 per vegetable.

I loved these tiny tomatoes so much! They’re small enough that you can stir them into a dish without chopping them, and I just think they look so festive. In the picture above, I used some to top my avocado crispbread next to a bowl of pumpkin soup.

On the left: I roasted some of the tomatoes to concentrate the flavour and make them last a little longer. On the right: risotto with more tiny tomatoes, green lentils and roasted courgettes.

My favourite thing I made were these sushi bowls. This was vinegared rice (I think I used the paella rice from the first picture), sliced avocado, baked tofu, pumpkin kinpira made from one of the kabochas, roasted tiny red tomatoes, marinated yellow tomatoes, and sliced courgettes tossed in rice vinegar. I just loved this combination of flavours — especially the avocado, pumpkin and tofu.

I used some kabocha puree to make this flatbread. I call it pumpkin naan because I think I just used a naan recipe and replaced the yoghurt with pumpkin puree.

Finally, we turned some of the flatbread into sandwiches filled with guacamole, lettuce, seitan crumbles and tomato salad. The seitan was a variation on the Seitan Chorizo Crumbles from 500 Vegan Recipes, one of my favourite recipes because it’s super quick and versatile.

I’m hoping to write a few more blog posts this month — otherwise, maybe I’ll see you on Instagram?

Links of the day

– Not everyone is following the themes provided by VeganMoFo HQ. This page has a list of participants with their own themes. I’m looking forward to reading more!
– YouTube kept recommending this kitten live stream (and this one) from a feral cat rescue organisation so I couldn’t resist. Of course now I can’t stop watching. I’ve found the kittens especially soothing being ill and stuck on the sofa, and I’m also learning new things about feral cats. Check them out if that sounds interesting to you too! :)

Five bento lunches

(Nederlandstalige versie)

It’s day 19 of VeganMoFo! Today’s topic is “lunch on the go”. I have this adorable bento box with rabbits on it that I love, but I don’t eat from it very often, so I went through some old bento photos in an attempt to motivate myself to use it more. They’re over a year old, but I’ve never posted them on here, so I hope you still like them!

On the left: orange and rocket salad with poppy seed dressing.
On the right: small twice-baked potatoes stuffed with peas, leeks, and Proviand bacon cubes; carrot sticks.

On the left: cucumber, radishes, carrot.
On the right: pizza leftovers (vegetables, tomatoes, rocket, tofu ricotta) and roasted chickpeas.

On the left: cucumber; cinnamon apple pancakes; chickpea flour pancakes with tofu ricotta, sweet potato, and parsley pesto; seitan nuggets; radishes; tofu ricotta in a cucumber cup; tiny carrot sticks; courgette; yellow pepper; tomato.
On the right: some kind of curry that I don’t really remember the ingredients of; apple pieces with cinnamon.

(If you’re wondering why this lunch seems more elaborate than the others, I was participating in the Dutch ritual of gourmetten, so when I’d eaten enough I just kept making little dishes to add to my bento.) :)

On the left: tofu and parsley dip with cucumber, radishes, and yellow peppers; seitan bits to add to the salad on the right.
On the right: quinoa salad with rocket, fennel, orange segments, and pomegranate seeds.

On the left: dill hummus with purple carrots; lentil samosas with pineapple chutney.
On the right: fennel, carrot, and chickpea salad.

Just a note in case you’re curious: I actually ate all of these at home, so I didn’t really worry about the calorie content or how filling these meals would be. They were just a fun way to get a few extra vegetables into my day.

Links of the day

More lunches on the go! I wish I could try this vegan ploughman’s lunch with Tyne Chease nut cheese by Joey from Flicking the Vs. These two lunches on Instagram come with beautiful views: piri piri falafel and hummus by Amy and spring rolls and sushi by Pepa Jobo.

Vegan bitterballen with mushroom filling

(Nederlandstalige versie)

The 17th topic for this year’s Vegan Month of Food is traditional local dishes! This seems like the perfect occasion to post my vegan recipe for Dutch bitterballen. These crispy fried snacks are usually filled with a thick meat-based sauce, and you’ll often see them served as snacks alongside a drink (hence the name: they’re balls that you serve with bitters).

If you’ve never had a bitterbal before, here’s what they look like on the inside:

Standard recipes for bitterballen (I’ve used this one as a reference) are actually surprisingly easy to veganise. I make my roux with oil instead of butter, I use cornstarch slurry instead of eggs in the breading, and I fill my bitterballen with mushrooms instead of meat. I’m sure this recipe would also work with seitan, TVP, or certain vegetables, but I like the mushroom version so much that I haven’t gotten to other variations yet.

I’ve got a full recipe at the end of this post, but it may look more complicated than it is, so I’ll talk you through it first.

Start by chopping the mushrooms. The pieces should be relatively small so the filling is easy to roll into balls and the mushrooms won’t try to poke through the breading.

Fry the mushrooms with garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper. Adding a splash of white wine and letting it evaporate near the end of the cooking time would probably make these even more delicious, but I haven’t had the chance to try that yet.

When the mushrooms are nicely browned, transfer them to a bowl, and use the same pan to make a roux: melt the oil, stir in the flour, and let them cook until bubbly. Mix in the vegetable stock.

Once the sauce is smooth and glossy, mix in the mushrooms, parsley, and nutmeg.

Now you have your filling! Chill the mixture before you shape it into balls. You can speed up the cooling process by spreading the sauce out over a baking sheet lined with baking paper.

When the mixture has cooled completely, you can start shaping and breading the bitterballen. Take three shallow bowls (I used small bowls in some of the photos, but bigger ones are better if you don’t want to make a complete mess) and fill them with flour, breadcrumbs, and a cornflour/cornstarch slurry.

Take a tablespoon-sized portion of the filling, coat it in flour, and roll it into a ball.

Submerge the ball in the slurry and cover it in breadcrumbs. Do this twice to ensure a good, sturdy crust. Repeat these steps until you run out of filling; then you can freeze the balls to fry them later.

Here’s a quick (and rather messy) video of the breading steps.

I’ve found the filling to be really easy to work with when I made it with coconut oil or margarine. When I used sunflower oil, however, the roux would soften and I’d end up with flat-bottomed bitterballen. That’s why I started storing them in this ice cube tray I bought at the market for €1:

It keeps the bottoms of the bitterballen round and it also makes sure that they don’t stick together in the freezer. I imagine a cake pop mould would work as well. You don’t really need one, though — my ice cube tray only holds 13 ballen so I put the rest in a regular container and they’re fine, especially when I make the recipe with a solid fat.

Now, on to the recipe! Wait, just a few more notes:
– The worst thing a bitterbal can do, in my opinion, is to burst open and leak filling all over your deep fryer. I haven’t had that happen with this recipe, as long as I 1. freeze the balls first so they’re firm when I go to fry them; 2. apply a double layer of breading; and 3. chop the mushrooms small enough that they don’t poke through.
– As I said, the filling is much easier to roll into balls if you use fat that solidifies as it cools, like coconut oil or margarine. I’ve also made these with sunflower oil, though, and they were delicious too, just a bit harder to shape.
– Deep frying is really the best way to cook these. I’ve also had good results cooking them in a frying pan (more tips at the end of the recipe). I’ve tried baking them too, but the results weren’t pretty.

Vegan bitterballen with mushroom filling (makes 26)
Adapted from the Van Dobben recipe

Ingredients

For the mushrooms:
1 tablespoon oil
400 g white mushrooms, chopped into cubes no larger than 1 cm (1/2 inch) (about 5 cups after chopping)
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried thyme
a pinch of salt
a pinch of black pepper

For the filling:
4 tablespoons oil (preferably coconut oil) or margarine
60 g (1/2 cup) plain flour
500 ml (2 generous cups) salted vegetable stock
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh parsley
a pinch of nutmeg

For the breading:
120 g (1 cup) plain flour
120 g (1 cup) breadcrumbs
50 g (6 tablespoons) cornflour (cornstarch) or chickpea flour
180 ml (3/4 cup) water

Oil for frying
Mustard for serving

Instructions

1. Over medium heat, preheat a wok or frying pan with the 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the mushrooms and fry them for 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the garlic, thyme, salt, and pepper, and continue to cook until the liquid has evaporated and the mushrooms are lightly browned — 10-15 minutes. Transfer the mushrooms to a bowl and put the pan back on the heat.

2. Turn the heat down to low. Add the 4 tablespoons of oil or margarine to the pan, let them melt, then stir in the flour a tablespoon at a time to make a roux. Let the roux bubble for a few minutes, then gradually add in the vegetable stock. It may be lumpy at first, but keep stirring until you have a smooth and glossy sauce — 5 minutes or so.

3. Take the pan off the heat and mix the mushrooms, parsley, and nutmeg into the roux. Taste for salt and pepper. Now let the mixture cool completely: either transfer it to a sealed container to refrigerate for later, or spread it out on a baking sheet lined with baking paper and cool for 10 minutes, then transfer to the fridge to chill for at least an hour.

4. Once the filling has chilled completely, prepare your breading ingredients. Take three shallow bowls. Place the flour and breadcrumbs in two separate bowls, then mix together the cornstarch and water in the third. You may want to start with a smaller amount of flour and breadcrumbs and add more as needed. Get a flat container ready (or a mould with round indentations) for your finished bitterballen.

5. Now it’s time to shape the bitterballen! Use two spoons to scoop up a tablespoon-sized blob of the filling and drop it into the bowl of flour. Dust it with flour, then use your hands to shape it into a ball. Submerge the ball in the cornstarch slurry and transfer it to the breadcrumbs, using a spoon to coat it completely. Cover it in cornstarch slurry once more, then give it a final coating of breadcrumbs. Place it in the container or in the ice cube tray while you prepare the rest of the bitterballen.

6. Repeat step 5 until you’ve used up all the filling: flour, cornflour slurry, breadcrumbs, slurry, breadcrumbs. Freeze the bitterballen until solid — at least a few hours. If you don’t want to cook them all right away, store them in a sealed container in the freezer.

7. To fry the bitterballen in a deep-fryer, heat the oil to 180°C (350°F). Add them to the oil a few at a time (depending on the size of your fryer), and fry them for 6-10 minutes, or until they’re nicely browned and hot all the way through to the middle. You definitely don’t want them to have frozen centres, so take one out and cut it in half if you want to make sure.

If you don’t want to deep-fry, I’ve actually had pretty good results cooking these in a frying pan as well. You probably won’t be able to keep them perfectly spherical, but you can still get them nice and crispy. Use a good layer of oil, add a few bitterballen and gently tilt the pan to coat them in the oil. Then turn them often enough to get the outside nice and browned. I like to cover the pan with a lid to make sure the insides thaw completely, but make sure you finish cooking them uncovered to ensure maximum crispiness.

If you know in advance that you’re going to cook them in a frying pan, though, I actually recommend making burger shapes instead of balls:

The flat patties are easier to cook all the way through and easier to manage with a spatula. I’ve also used this recipe to make kroketten (the sausage-shaped versions pictured above), but I’ve found that to be the hardest shape to work with, so I wouldn’t recommend those if you’re making the filling with a liquid oil.

Links of the day

Long post, I know, but I have to tell you about a few dishes that bloggers from other parts of the world have veganised! I loved this Bakewell tart from Derbyshire by Emma from Walks, Talks and Eats; this Bavarian plum cake by Sonja from Tartes and Recreation, and these Chicago-style deep dish pizzas by Kelly from Seitan Beats your Meat.

Apple tarte tatin, beer-glazed carrots, salads, and soup with leftovers

(Nederlandstalige versie)

I missed a few days of VeganMoFo, and I still have photos of market finds & meals that I hadn’t posted yet, so I’m going to combine them in an attempt to catch up. :)

I bought this back in July so I’m not sure what everything cost, but we’ve got rainbow carrots, courgettes, fennel, turnips, daikon, fresh herbs, lettuce, apples, strawberries, and cherries …

… which brings me to Wednesday’s prompt: favourite late summer foods. Stone fruits are definitely one of my favourite things about summer! In July it was cherries, recently it’s been nectarines; I love them all, and I hope I’ll get to eat a few more before summer is truly over.

On the other hand, it’s been raining for days and I’m also starting to crave cold-weather foods. Like roast potatoes. In this picture I served them with tempeh, a salad of lamb’s lettuce with apples and walnuts, and beer-glazed purple carrots and turnips.

Let’s talk about omega-3s for a minute! (Day 11: specific nutrient.) You can get your alpha-linolenic acid by eating foods like flax seeds, chia seeds, or my favourite: walnuts. The walnuts in the salad pictured above were extra delicious because they’re from my aunt and uncle’s garden. (They gave me a big bag of them for my birthday. Aren’t edible gifts the best?) For more on omega-3s in a vegan diet (It’s also in full-fat soy products! But do you need a supplement?), read this post from The Vegan RD.

Day 14 was about sharing something vegan with a non-vegan, so here are some leftovers I shared with my boyfriend. We had flatbread, chickpea flour scramble, hummus, some kind of fresh coriander sauce, harissa, falafel, shaved fennel and courgette salad, pan-fried courgette, rocket, and fennel soup. (His plate probably had less salad and more bread, scramble, and falafel, but it still counts as sharing!) I imagine this plate would be a nightmare for people who don’t like their foods to touch, but I kind of love meals like these.

Finally, if you haven’t tried the tarte tatin recipe from Vegan Eats World, you absolutely should. (It’s also on Terry’s blog.) I mean, I didn’t even follow the recipe properly and it still tasted fantastic. This might even be good enough to serve to Obama (day 15).

Links of the day

Reading the other posts for this prompt, though, maybe I’d better send Obama over to someone else’s home. I’m sure he would love these grilled cheese sandwiches by Lazysmurf, these portobello steaks with parsley basil pesto by Jessica from Sprouts & Chocolate, or this tomato and mushroom pizza from Emily/la.vida.vegana.

Kitchen tour!

(Nederlandstalige versie)

Day 13 of VeganMoFo* means it’s kitchen tour time! I knew this would be one of my favourite prompts because I love looking at other people’s kitchen and I actually really love my own kitchen too. I’ll show you a few pictures and point out my favourite things along the way.

First, here’s a short video! Can you spot the disappearing plants?

This is the right side of my kitchen. Here we’ve got the fridge (with frog magnets!), a wooden trolley that holds our oils and vinegars and also provides a little extra working space (currently occupied by my cookbook stand), three shelves (more on those below), rails for spatulas, ladles, and kitchen towels, and aprons hanging in the doorway. All the way in the back is the washing machine with a giant cutting board on top, and the oven is hiding behind the fridge.

And here’s the other side. Originally our only countertops were the white unit in the back, so you can imagine how much I love the black shelf in the front that my Dad put in. It pretty much doubled our working space, and there’s another big shelf underneath where we keep our pots and pans. (Oh, and I think I was a little too enthusiastic in my tidying up for this post because the counters look weirdly bare to me. They’re usually a bit messier!)

These shelves hold things we use relatively often, like oats, lentils, salt, pasta, breadcrumbs, chickpeas, rice, as well as small bowls, cups, plates and saucers …

… and lots of reused apple sauce jars. Can you tell my boyfriend likes apple sauce?

The top of my fridge usually has onions, rice, quinoa, and popping corn. Today we’ve got tomatoes and aubergines up here too.

Here’s the oven/microwave, with cutting boards to the left and baking tins and sheets on top, and more smaller jars on what I believe used to be an egg rack. The basket holds all of the herbs and spices that don’t fit inside my spice drawer.

And here’s my spice drawer! I used to want to do that chalkboard-painted lid thing you see on Pinterest, but you know, masking tape works too. The lids with the little red pointy hat are from a tomato and sunflower seed spread my boyfriend loves. Again, we must have eaten a lot of tomato spread! But I like the jars for my herbs and spices.

Finally, one of my favourite things about my kitchen is the little balcony attached to it. So far my container gardening attempts haven’t been very successful so the balcony itself is quite plain, but it’s still nice to be able to open the door and go outside. As you can see from the picture, our balcony also attracts visitors — and not just gulls and pigeons! This adventurous young cat actually lives quite a few houses away and walks all the way along the roof to visit balconies on our street. Unlike human guests, he never gets anything to eat, but he still seems to enjoy coming over. And he’s super cute and friendly, so he’s always welcome in our kitchen. :)

* I know, I’m running behind! 

Links of the day

I’m loving all the elaborate tours! I would have liked to make a longer video to really show you around, but I just couldn’t make that happen this weekend. I’m currently catching up on everyone’s blogs, so here are a few of my favourite kitchen posts I’ve seen so far.
– Jo’s beautiful kitchen with original 19th-century features on Hello Seedling.
– Julie’s kitchen on My Apologies for the Novel: breakfast nook! Cats! Plants! Mutts comics! And so much space!
– Cookbookvegan’s kitchen in the middle of the cooking process. (Makes me wish I’d done that too – isn’t it even better to see a kitchen in action?)

Veganomicon by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero

(Nederlandstalige versie)

I missed Friday’s MoFo prompt (may make up for it later), but I had to come back to tell you about my favourite cookbook! You probably know about it already because it’s a vegan classic, and it definitely deserves all the love it gets: my favourite is Veganomicon.

This may be the book that’s taught me the most about cooking. It was one of my first cookbooks when I went vegan back in secondary school, and I’ve cooked from it more than from all my other beloved books. I’ve even used it in my BA thesis! (It was on recipe translation.)

The book

Thankfully, this book was built to last. The pages in mine are stained, and the cover may have accidentally been used as a cutting board (Once. Maybe twice?) – but it’s not even close to falling apart.

The book isn’t picture-heavy (the only photos are inserted in the middle), but I still find myself wanting to try every single recipe when I leaf through it. Isa and Terry’s writing is so entertaining that I’m inspired just reading their descriptions, and I can always find pictures of the final dishes on forums and blogs.

The recipes

Veganomicon has been so useful to me while learning how to cook. It starts with basic techniques and cooking times for vegetables, grains, and beans. The mix-and-match chapter provides simple ways to flavour those foods and to pair them with vegan proteins like tofu, tempeh, and seitan. But this book definitely doesn’t consist of basic recipes only – it provides full menus with everything from spicy tempeh nori rolls and chestnut-lentil pâté to heart-shaped apple galettes and jelly donut cupcakes. To give you an idea, these are some of the recipes I’ve tried.

My favourites: Walnut-mushroom pate (page 64), Quinoa salad with black beans and mango (page 84), Snobby joes (page 98), Marinated Italian tofu (page 128), Chickpea cutlets (page 133), Pumpkin baked ziti with caramelized onions and sage crumb topping (page 194), Tofu ricotta (page 206), Cashew ricotta (page 206), and Fresh rosemary focaccia (page 220).

Others I’ve loved: Grilled yuca tortillas (page 49), Acorn squash and black bean empanadas (page 55), Samosa stuffed baked potatoes (page 60), Curried carrot dip (page 62), Sun-dried tomato dip (page 62), A hummus recipe (page 67), guacamole (page 69), Chocolate chip brownie waffles (page 74), Blueberry corn pancakes (page 76), Black bean burgers (page 98), Cornmeal-masala roasted Brussels sprouts (page 107), Eggplant-potato moussaka with pine nut cream (page 164), Leek and bean cassoulet with biscuits (page 172), Red lentil-cauliflower curry (page 186), Lasagne marinara with spinach (page 196), Almesan (page 207), Backyard BBQ sauce (page 207), Poppy seed-cornmeal roti (page 221), Carrot-pineapple sunshine muffins (page 226), Chewy chocolate-raspberry cookies (page 234), Fudgy wudgy blueberry brownies (page 242), Lower-fat deep chocolate bundt cake (page 256), and Chocolate ice cream (page 261).

Roasted eggplant and spinach muffuletta sandwich

I’ve posted about recipes from this book before, but I wanted to try another one just for this review. The roasted eggplant and spinach muffuletta (page 100) is a huge sandwich stuffed with spinach, roasted aubergine/eggplant and peppers, and olive and sundried tomato relish. I’ve always wanted to try it but I’ve never had exactly the right ingredients, so this time I decided to just make it with what I had.

I used all green olives instead of half kalamatas and I chopped them by hand instead of using a food processor, I left out the celery seed, and I roasted my own tomatoes and yellow peppers. I also couldn’t find a good round loaf of bread that wasn’t way out of my usual price range, so I made my own – which meant I made two smaller sandwiches instead of a single big one.

What a sandwich. I was planning on serving it with a soup, but once we’d tried a bite of the muffuletta we decided it would make a fine dinner on its own. I still think it would be nice with a lentil soup for a bit more protein, but I was surprised by how filling the sandwich was with just vegetables and olives.

This muffuletta works best if you make it well in advance so the olive relish has plenty of time to soak into the bread. I took mine out a little early so I could take a picture, but I have leftovers steeping in the fridge so I can’t wait to go and eat them.

Sample recipes

If you don’t have Veganomicon and you’d like to try a few dishes before buying it, these are recipes from the book (some slightly modified) that are available on the PPK blog.
– Potato latkes
– Seitan piccata
– Eggplant potato moussaka with pine nut cream
– Quinoa salad with black beans and mango
– Chickpea cutlets

Links of the day

Picking a favourite cookbook is hard! I was happy to see fellow MoFo bloggers highlighting some of my other favourites, including Appetite for Reduction (on Vegan Eats & Treats) and Vegan Brunch (on Kelli’s Vegan Kitchen). I also loved seeing recipe recommendations for books I want to use more often, like Authentic Chinese Cuisine (on Dandelion Vegan Blog), Isa Does It (on Vegan Crunk), and Vegan Eats World (on Vegan à Montréal).

And of course I’ve read many reviews of wonderful cookbooks I don’t currently own – but I expect everyone’s added lots of cookbooks to their wishlists after today, so I’m not going to tempt you by linking to more of them. :) Instead, check out Zsu’s round-up of the second week of VeganMoFo!