Cookbook Challenge Week 28 - The Vegan Boulangerie

This week I have been cooking from The Vegan Boulangerie by Marianne & Jean-Michel.
I have been wanting to cook from this book for ages (I once made the profiteroles which were excellent), but I have to admit that I was a bit disappointed in some of the recipes that I tried:

Tomato & Herb Roule -
I was exited to try this recipe as I love tomato breads but I was disappointed, the herbs were too powerful and the texture was very doughy:

Sandwich Jardinier - this was actually quite nice, it was carrot, mushrooms, tomato, sunflower seeds, celery, soy sauce, mustard & chives.  It wasn't the best or tastiest sandwich in the world, but it filled a hole.

Sandwich Parisien - Gherkins, vegan ham, lettuce, marg & salt. Bit of a disappointment really, I expected something a bit better and found this very lacklustre:

Quiche Lorraine  - I was really looking forward to this and again was disappointed. It tasted overwhelmingly of French Mustard & nutmeg. However it didn't look much like the black and white photo in the book so I decided to try it again the next day. The recipe states you should layer the onions & fake bacon in the case, then put the quiche filling on top and bake, which led to the quiche having a big layer of egg style filling with a base of onion & facon. When I made it a second time, I mixed the onion & facon into the filling, placed it in the case, baked it and let it cool first. The result was far far better. Much more like quiche Lorraine.

Onion Tart - this was one of the recipes that I did like, it was a layer of pastry covered with a creamy tomato sauce, topped with fried onions and baked. It was delicious, very plain and simple but sometimes the best things are:

Croque Monsieur - this was my favourite recipe, I have made this sandwich before using my own recipe which I prefer, but this was still really good - fake ham, vegan cheese & pasta sauce between layers of "buttered" bread toasted:

Overall as I said before I found most of the recipes a bit disappointing, maybe thats because I had such high expectations for the book?  I won't be making any of these recipes again (with the possible exception of the last one) but I will be trying some of the other recipes  - some of the cakes look and sound divine, fingers crossed they turn out better.

Cookbook Challenge 27 - A Vegan Taste of France

This week I have been cooking from A vegan taste of France by Linda Majzlik.
At first look this book is very lacklustre, boring and uninspiring - there are no photographs whatsoever. However after making 4 of the recipes I have completely changed my mind, all of them worked out well and tasted great.

Mushroom, walnut and lentil pate - this was really good, full of flavour and very filling (while it was cooking I couldn't believe how good it smelled). What surprised me was how far it went, I made half the recipe which is supposed to feed 3 but it made enough for 5 decent portions:

Red onion, tomato & tarragon tart - I made 2 of these, the first I ate warm and was not impressed with at all. It tasted far too sweet and I really didn't like it, however when left overnight in the fridge it was wonderful, tasty, not too sweet and as it had a wholewheat crust it tasted hearty & healthy. Definitely one that I will make again:

Vichyssoise - this was another excellent dish, primarily consisting of potato & leeks the only change I made was to use Vegan chicken bouillon instead of veg stock as I think Vichyssoise usually has chicken stock in. It was a really great tasting soup, I served it hot but it was supposed to be served cold. I might try it that way next time:

Chocolate & Hazelnut Ramekin  - finally another tasty recipe! This was really simple to make (cornflour, cocoa, soy milk etc) and tasted divine:

I have to say that this book completely proved me wrong, I thought I was going to have a week of boring food but it ended up the complete opposite. If these books could just be improved with some photo's they would be far better.