Cooking my way through the Tenderheart Cookbook. Kale Dumplings with Brothy Butter Beans I’m not a fan of butter beans; I usually find them too dry and chewy, so I made this with cannellini beans. The Quick Lowdown: Sweet Patatas Bravas Salad A familiar story … I had a bunch of sweet potatoes, the family were coming over, and I didn’t want to head out to the shops. I made this with buckwheat instead of barley because I didn’t have any barley, and a mix of sweet potatoes and potatoes to keep the family happy. The Quick Lowdown: I was thrilled with both these recipes because they are different from the…

Cooking my way through the Tenderheart Cookbook. Kale, ginger and green onion noodles I picked this because these were the veggies I had floating around in my fridge at the end of the week. The Quick Lowdown: Tomato and Coconut-braised Cabbage and Lentils I had some cabbage and needed to use it. The Quick Lowdown:

One thing I love about the Tenderheart Cookbook is that it is organised by vegetables. If I have a lot of one vegetable to use up, I can turn to the appropriate section and pick out a recipe. This recipe is in the broccoli section, but I mainly chose it because I also had lettuce to use up. To make it a complete meal, I added some precooked chicken from our local small grocer. Charred Broccoli Reuben Salad (p64) (with chicken) The Quick Lowdown: This is what I did (including my additions/ changes): Ingredients: Method: Preheat oven to 190C. Tear or cut the bread into chunks, toss in olive oil,…

This is the next update on my challenge to cook through the Tenderheart Cookbook. The cookbook is divided up into chapters for each vegetable which came in handy this week as I was getting to the end of our veggie box, and I had lettuce, cabbage and Choy Sum to use up. Stir-fried Lettuce (p54) I somehow ended up with a large portion of two iceberg lettuces plus gourmet lettuce that came in the veggie box. The first iceberg I used up in some fried rice, the fancy lettuce in a side salad which left one more iceberg lettuce … a perfect opportunity to try this recipe. A simple stirfry…

I bought Tenderheart: A Book About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds by Hetty Lui McKinnon before Christmas and hadn’t had a chance to cook anything out of it … and so begins a new series where I plan to cook every recipe in it. I won’t be posting every recipe here, you’ll need to buy the cookbook for that, but I will give you the quick rundown on each recipe across all the points that are important to me: are the ingredients usually found in my pantry or fridge, how much prep-work (I can get bored if I need to do a lot of chopping), dirty dishes, taste, family friendly…