A Shining Star Amongst Failures

This week was marred by a couple kitchen failures. The silver lining is that one dish was incredible and I can't wait to make it for my mom when I'm home next.

I made orange chipotle tempeh wings from Hearty Vegan Meals for Monster Appetites. My wings looked nothing like the appetizing photo in the cookbook. I served these with steamed broccoli, which got over-steamed unfortunately. However, the oven baked onion rings from Appetite for Reduction were amazing! They were the star of this meal. I only made onion rings from one onion (half of the recipe), but I needed many more bread crumbs than the calculated amount based on the recipe. The recipe calls for cold almond milk, but I used cold Silk creamer since it was in the fridge. I like to think the creamer is more reminiscent of buttermilk than almond milk.





The other bust was the Thai bowl from Yellow Rose Recipes. The sauce recipe was just ... unpleasant. It called for rice vinegar and mirin, which I thought were the same thing. I ended up mixing up the measurements for these two ingredients, but I don't think that is what doomed the dish. The flavor combination was unusual - rice vinegar, mirin, peanut butter, soy sauce, peanut oil (used sesame, but whatever), chili oil, mint leaves, and lime juice.... Gross unfortunately. I trashed the noodles that I tossed in the sauce, but ate all of the veggie toppings and fried tofu that I made to toss in the dish. I hate wasting food, but luckily the noodles were super cheap (less than $2) from the Asian market.