The Brighton Jotter

"Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." – Mary Oliver

Tenderheart Cook #39, #40 and #41

I’m cooking my way through the Tenderheart Cookbook.

Lo Bak Gao

This is not something I would have cooked if not for this challenge, plus the fact that I had a daikon in my veggie box.

The Quick Lowdown:

  • Ingredients: daikon, dried shitake mushrooms, five-spice powder green onions, small brown onion, rice flour. I had to go out and buy the mushrooms, the rest of the ingredients I had in my pantry.
  • Prep work: This was fiddly. The recipe takes up two pages.
  • Dirty dishes: Cutting board, knife, bowl, dutch oven, frypan
  • Taste: OK
  • Family-friendly: Not in terms of time to cook.
  • Regular rotation worthy: No. It’s just not my type of dish, and as I said, it was very fiddly.

Cabbage and Kimchi Okonomiyaki

A confession: I don’t really like kimchi much so I left it out. Recipe here.

The Quick Lowdown:

  • Ingredients: rice flour, baking powder, white pepper,sugar, eggs, vegan dashi, white miso, cabbage, green onions, mayonnaise to serve, tomato ketchup, soy sauce, sesame oil
  • Prep work: Minimal cutting and then the batter is mixed in a bowl. It was an easy recipe.
  • Dirty dishes: Cutting board, knife, bowl, frying pan
  • Taste: I liked this, the seasonings in the batter added flavour
  • Family-friendly: I think so.
  • Regular rotation worthy: I already had my own version on rotation and the additions to the batter make this one tastier, so yes.

Roasted Wombok with Sesame Sauce

The Quick Lowdown:

  • Ingredients: wombok, oil, sesame seeds, tahini, garlic, rice vinegar, mirin, soy sauce, white miso, white sugar
  • Prep work: This was very easy. Cut the wombok. Mix the sauce . I shake it in a jar to get it mixed.
  • Dirty dishes: Cutting board, knife, jar, roasting tray.
  • Taste: I love the sauce. There are a number of tahini-based sauces in the book and this one is particularly tasty.
  • Family-friendly: I think so. I dished it up at family dinner.
  • Regular rotation worthy: Yes.

Recipe here.

Have you ever tried to cook every recipe in a cookbook? Which one of these would you like to try?

Comments

10 responses to “Tenderheart Cook #39, #40 and #41”

  1. Kyria @ Travel Spot Avatar
    Kyria @ Travel Spot

    I have never tried to cook every recipe in a cookbook, but I really enjoyed the book Julie and Julia and always thought it would be a fun challenge. I do love to cook and love learning how to cook new things. Are all of the recipes in the book Asian inspired or is it in international sections?

    Reply
    1. Melissa Avatar
      Melissa

      There are a lot that are Asian inspired, maybe 2/3 or so. The books is organised by vegetable in alphabetical order.

      Reply
  2. Tobia | craftaliciousme Avatar
    Tobia | craftaliciousme

    No not a single one of my cookbooks has gotten that fame. Usually it’s only a handful of recipe I like. Hence my plan to go through all the recipes and decide what I can get rid of and just ad the couple from the book into my digital database.

    The wombak one sounds tasty. I have a quarter savoy cabbage in the fridge and wonder if I could do something like that with it.

    Reply
    1. Melissa Avatar
      Melissa

      U did a big clean out of my cookbooks when we moved so now I just have a little shelf in the kitchen with my favourites.

      Reply
  3. J Avatar
    J

    I have a lot of cookbooks, mostly gifts I have received over the years. Like Kyria, generally each one has only a couple of recipes that I make. We have a lot of diet restrictions around here, so unless I found a ‘low carb vegan cookbook’, I couldn’t do a challenge like this.

    Reply
    1. Melissa Avatar
      Melissa

      I hate getting a ocokbook and only liking a few recipes. They don’t stay in my house for long.

      Reply
  4. Diane Avatar
    Diane

    Lo Bak Gao is one of my favorite dishes, but I’ve never tried to make it because it even tastes like it takes a lot of steps. I was so excited when I saw it in the Tenderheart cookbook, but I never got around to making it before I had to take the book back to the Library – it probably would be a “cooking project” for a cold winter day. The Lo bak gao I ate growing up had dried shrimp and pork in it, and I was really curious about how a vegetarian version would compare.
    I had to google Wombak. We call it Napa Cabbage. How interesting the way things get different names in different regions/countries!
    I’ve never cooked a whole cookbook, but I’ve cooked a lot of Meera Sodha’s East. Do you know that one? It’s a lot of Asian/Indian inspired flavors and very family friendly/fast.

    Reply
    1. Melissa Avatar
      Melissa

      Yes, it is certainly a cooking project. I panfried it so after cooking it you needed to let it set for at least two hours I think but preferable overnight, so it’s more like a weekend project. I’ve just put East on hold at the library so I can check it out.

      Reply
  5. ernie Avatar
    ernie

    I’ve never cooked every recipe in a cook book. That sounds overwhelming. I’m not all that adventurous, was raised on a meat and potato type diet. I’ve come a long way – as in, I eat peppers and avocado, etc. My mom stopped by once while I was cutting an avocado to put in my salad. She wanted to know what the thing was that I was cutting. I rest my case. I’m not into fish. I wish I was, because of celiac disease. Anyway, I could not even recognize half of the ingredients in these recipes. I enjoyed your use of the word fiddly.

    Reply
    1. Melissa Avatar
      Melissa

      When we were young we mainly had meat and three veg but mum and dad travelled quite a lot and through that developed an interest in food so mum leanrt to cook all sorts of different dishes and we also went out to restaurants reasonably often.

      Reply

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