Project Vegan Yum Yum continues!

This week’s recipe assigned to us by Elle from Lauren Ulm’s blog-turned-book of the same name, is “Aloo Matar” (Which I’m pretty sure means “dead potato”. Oh no, wait. That’s Spanish. Never mind.)

Aloo means Potato and Matar means Peas. This is a vegan turn on an already vegetarian Indian dish of potatoes and peas in a spicy tomato-based sauce, properly called “Aloo Muttar”. But that’s how she spelled it, so…

What’s really vegan about this recipe, is that there is no ghee (Indian clarified butter), and no yogurt. In order to create that creamy consistency, Lauren has you run cashews through a food processor and blend in water. A stick blender with a mini-chopper attachment will make short work of the operation (a couple of good ones are in the “In My Kitchen” section of my Amazon store, there in my sidebar. Plug.). While the consistency is by no means as thick as yogurt, the effect in the finished dish is pretty authentic. I noticed that she uses this little trick in several different recipes, but this is the first opportunity I’ve had to try it. I was initially skeptical, but I have to admit that it works!

Unless you cook Indian food on a regular basis and already have an extensive pantry of Indian spices, you’ll need to go shopping. Don’t expect to find asafoetida or fenugreek leaves on the shelves at your local megamart. But that shouldn’t discourage you! After all, the internet is a marvelous thing, no?

Other things I did differently:

I didn’t feel like going shopping and didn’t have any fresh hot peppers in the house, so I used one whole dried Indian pepper. I didn’t process the diced tomatoes – seemed like a waste of energy. The tomatoes break down and the sauce cooks just as beautifully without it.

My husband had recently boiled a bunch of new red potatoes that he was afraid might go bad soon, so I used those, with the skin on, and just quartered them. I probably used twice as many as the recipe calls for, and that’s a good thing. As much as I like spice, there’s a lot going on here, and the additional potatoes helps smooth that out a bit.

I served this over rice and it was delicious! And don’t jump all over me for not using basmati. This was already cooked and in the fridge, just waiting to be refreshed and used. I’m all about the easy, people. The leftovers also keep really well. A few minutes in the microwave and it was just as good as the night I made it. The second time, I served it with purchased whole wheat naan and it was equally tasty.

The fussiest thing about this recipe? All the spice batches. But frankly, a lot of Indian cooking is like that – six gazillion spices separated into batches that go into the dish at different times. But if you organize them ahead in small prep dishes, it makes the process go much smoother. So don’t use that as an excuse!

Verdict: I will absolutely make this again. It’s a keeper.

Want to cook along with us? Get yourself a copy of Vegan Yum Yum (in the “In My Library” section of my Amazon store, too. Yeah, I know. Another shameless plug.) and then click on the Project Vegan Yum Yum banner, below.

The PhotoHunt theme this week is “Average”

I know – doesn’t sound like a promising start to our Project Yum Yum cook-along, does it?

Let me ‘splain. This is Week One of Project Yum Yum – hosted by my friend, Elle of Elle’s New England Kitchen – a (hopefully) weekly challenge to cook and eat healthier by incorporating at least one vegan meal a week into our normally carnivorous diets, by cooking out of Lauren Ulm’s book, Vegan Yum Yum. Vegan Yum Yum is based on Lauren’s blog of the same name, and if you’re interested in trying some of these recipes yourselves, you can either purchase the book (very reasonable on Amazon) or visit her blog.

This is not the first recipe I’ve made out of this book, but it’s the only one I thought to photograph, so in the interest of time, this will be my “Free Week” post: Pepita Fettucine With Spinach & Cranberries:

Honestly? I would have to rate this dish as Average (hence the PhotoHunt theme reference, and yes, I am stretching it a little. Again.).

It tasted good, but we found the cranberries in this a little overwhelming. And while we appreciate the juxtaposition of sweet and savory flavors in food, here, the sweet part kind of overtook the savory. Otherwise, we really enjoyed the pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and spinach, and this was very quick and easy to put together.

And yes, I know that’s not fettucine. It’s actually whole-grain thin spaghetti. It’s what I had in the house, okay?

Let me repeat – I’ve cooked about 6 or 7 things out of Vegan Yum Yum so far, and we’ve loved everything so far. This is the first recipe in this book that didn’t knock us over and that we found merely Average.

Can’t wait to find out what our first assigned dish is!