Saturday, November 3, 2012

Weekend Cooking: A Vegan Taste of Greece

Title: A Vegan Taste of Greece
Author: Linda Majzlik
Publisher: Jon Carpenter Publishing
Release date: April 2004
Length: 128 pages
I got this book: bought it

Summary:
From the Book Depository:
"This collection of cookbooks interprets the savory flavors of international cuisines for the animal-free, vegan diet. Each region's most famed dishes are detailed or redesigned to be meat- and dairy-free. With recipes for appetizers, breads, salads, main courses, desserts, and drinks, each cookbook covers the entire culinary palate. Vegan cooks can reproduce the traditional flavors of Greek cuisine with this book, which includes recipes for walnut-stuffed mushrooms, chickpea soup, gyros, and baklava."

Personal opinion:
I like cookbooks that focus on world cuisines. I actually have a lot of those little cookbooks in my collection. But because these are all from my pre vegetarian period, I don't use them as much anymore. So I was happy to discover these low budget vegan cookbooks that focus on just one area, in this case Greece. The book doesn't contain any pictures, but it has a lot of recipes. From what I can see, most of the recipes are fairly simple to make and not that time consuming. I didn't think the recipe I tried really had traditional Greek flavours, but then again, I am not sure if I really know how Greek food normally tastes. I reckon that the Greek food served in Dutch restaurants is also adjusted. However, I did expect more flavour. To me it isn't really a problem because I am used to playing with herbs and spices until I get it the way I like it. But if you just want to follow a simple recipe and are not that big on expermenting with spices, I wouldn't recommend buying this book. A real shame, because the recipes are otherwise easy enough for beginners. Recipes I want to try from this book include the sesame bread (or cookies), Gyros, Briami and lemon and garlic roasted potatoes.

Purchase links: The Book Depository
Challenges: Foodies Reading Challenge, Cookbook Challenge
Other reviews: Graasland,
If you have reviewed this book and want your link here, please leave a comment with the link, and I will add it :)

I made the Savoury Stuffed Pittas from this book. It isn't listed as a main dish, but I served it as such. The original recipe uses mini pittas, but those are a bit hard to come by here. So I just used regular pittas. 2 stuffed pittas each with a salad on the side, make a good main meal to me. Of course it can also be made as a lunch dish. I adjusted the spices a bit to my taste.


Savoury Stuffed Pittas (makes 4, or 8 mini)
- 250 gr eggplant, finely chopped
- 100 gr tomatoes, chopped
- 100 gr minced textured protein
- 1 spring onion, chopped
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 1 dessertspoon tomato puree
- 175 ml vegetable broth
- 3 tsp dried oregano
- 1 tsp dried basil
- black pepper
- 4 pittas
- lettuce
- soy yoghurt

Fry the eggplant, oinion and garlic in oil for about 15 minutes. Add the other ingredients except for pittas, lettuce and yoghurt. Bring to a boil, then cover and let it simmer for about 10 minutes. Then uncover and simmer for 10 minutes more, stirring occasionally, until the liquid has been absorbed and the mixture is thick.
Warm the pittas and fill them with some lettuce and the stuffing. Serve with the yoghurt.

This post is part of Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Please check out the other participants for more weekend yummyness.

Also part of the Cookbook Challenge hosted by myself. We are cooking from hardly used cookbooks. See the banner in the left sidebar for more info.


11 comments:

  1. I too like books that focus on a particular country or region. Fortunately I always adjust the herbs and spices to my liking, so that wouldn't be a problem for me. The pitas look delicious and prove that vegan doesn't have to be boring.

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  2. Your pitas sound wonderful, thanks for sharing.

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  3. Your pitas look delicious. Sounds like the other recipes may have potential after a little tinkering...

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  4. Looks like a delicious meal. Hopefully you'll be able to successfully spice up the other recipes to make them more to your liking as well.

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  5. Well, that is certainly a niche book! Thanks for telling us about it. Have a good week.

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  6. Looks good! Can't wait to see the baklava! ;)

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  7. I love Greek food, and I adore pitas. May have to try out this recipe. Thanks for sharing!

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  8. Yum, those pitas look so good. Love eggplant!

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  9. Thank you for sharing-this sounds like an interesting book.

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