Vegetarian Day

Four - count 'em four - vegetarian dishes today. Two soups and two entrees. The two soups necessitated me making my own vegetarian stock a day before. I didn't have to do it the previous day, but I just thought it would make things easier. Both soups used beans that had to be soaked overnight and cooked for an hour and a half.

The first soup was a Brazilian Black Bean soup. It starts off well - black beans with garlic, carrot, celery, cumin and coriander - then takes a bit of a left turn with the addition of segmented orange and orange juice. It gives it an interesting sweetness, but I think this would be a dish that makes you go 'hmm' rather than 'wow'!

Next up, a soup called Gypsy soup. A colourful and flavourful concoction with chickpeas, peppers, tomatoes, squash, featuring appearances from paprika, turmeric, basil and cayenne. I can see this being made again, though I might cut down the spices a little, just to let the flavours of the ingredients come through more.

And so on to the entrees. I picked two fritters, the first being a Curried Sweet Potato Fritter. A mixture of eggs, cornmeal, curry powder and grated sweet potato, plus some other things, made this a pretty tasty dish. Served on a bed of baby spinach, this is also a low calorie meal (less than 200 calories for two fritters and spinach). I liked this, but I wanted to like it more than I actually did, if that makes any sense.

And, finally, my favourite for the day: an Asian Vegetable Cake with Cabbage Salad. The vegetable cakes comprise cornmeal, split pea soup, carrots, sugar snap peas with ginger, soy sauce and green onions. The salad was fresh and crunchy, though I had to experiment with a few Asian dressings before I got one I kind of liked. I also made a tangy sour cream dip to go with it. This one I will definitely make again!

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Thanks to Serena and Serena's camera for the photographs!