New Cookbooks, Recipe Planning, and the Definition of Stew

I received a copy of The Vegan Slow Cooker  (thanks, Sandy & Bill!) and of course, thus type of cookbook is chock full of soups and stews. I was actually a phantom tester for this cookbook. Kathy Hester (author) put a call out for testers for her new recipe book on a message board that I followed. Although I agreed to test, there weren’t structured ‘assignments’ per se (how I imagined it would be), so I was a slacker and only tested 1 recipe (which I didn’t love…but then again, that’s the point of testing, right?). In any case, I’m excited to see the book in print and more excited to try recipes from the book that passed the taste-testing phase!

I’m had mixed results with slow cookers in the past. I really hate certain vegetables overcooked (green pepper, I’m talking to you…), so know that recipes with offending veggies won’t be a good for me in the slow cooker. Also, my old slow cooker was too hot and had too few cooking time/temp. options (can only set it to low on 8 or 10 hours, and then it will go to warm, but can’t go directly to warm—annoying). I got a new slow cooker about a year ago (this one), and I can now select the time in 30 minute increments and select high, low, or warm at the push of a button. The low setting on this cooker is truly low (whereas the low on the last cooker was way too hot!). In any case, I’ve made quite a few dishes for Mike (not veggie though…), but it is time for me to turn the slow cooker on for my kind of dishes.

Here are a few of the recipe titles that sound appealing to me from the new book:

·      Golden Borsht

·      Creamy Vegan Corn Chowder

·      Asparagus Tarragon Soup

·      Thai Coconut Pumpkin Soup

·      Hungarian Mushroom Soup

·      Split Pea & Apple Soup

·      Delicata Squash & Pear Soup

·      Hard Cider & Cabbage Stew

You will have to wait to see if I get around to all of these… but I’ll certainly try a few! Right now the Split Pea & Apple is sounding best to me, but we’ll see where I end up starting.

I also got a cute little pocket-style Vegetarian cookbook (thanks, Jenn!), and there are also some really interesting sounding soup recipes in there too. Sometimes those mini-cookbooks are just cute, but not really strong in the content. This one appears to be both cute and useful- so I’ll report on any planned recipes from that one too!

Tonight I’m making a veggie curry dish. This begs the question, is a curry a soup/stew? Therefore, does it ‘count’ for my 50 soup plan in 2012? Although when I think curry I don’t immediately think stew, when I stop to think about it, curry does have the characteristics that might fit the bill: veggies, simmering in a liquid for a while in one pot, good served over rice/noodles...Naturally I turned to the premiere source for my pressing questions to validate my curry-stew definition: Wikipedia. The Wiki definition of stew makes my curry-stew definition legit: A stew is a combination of solid food ingredients that have been cooked in liquid and served in the resultant gravy. The definition even goes on to say that the liquid, although often water, can be just about anything—including broth and beer. I figure if beer ‘counts’ then coconut milk does too. As such, I’ll count curries as stews in my upcoming cooking quest.