Review: Plant You: Scrappy Cooking by Carleigh Bodrug
Plant You: Scrappy Cooking by Carleigh Bodrug
(Balance, 2024)
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My latest cookbook collab is with friends Dawn and Dave, who are proving to be trusted cookbook companions on my bookish journey. Along with my spouse Alan, the four of us shared a dinner party cooking from PlantYou: Scrappy Cooking by Carleigh Bodrug. The subtitle is “140+ Plant-Based Zero-Waste Recipes That Are Good for You, Your Wallet, and the Planet.” This idea is enticing, and when Dawn suggested this book, I was all over it. She’d seen the author at a recent vegan event in Vancouver, and had been very impressed.
Trish: In a world where there’s so much food waste, Carleigh Bodrug is stepping up in an effort to bring recipes that use those leftover bits in our fridge to make yummy food. She says, “an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the ENTIRE United States food supply ends up in landfill, and a lot of this stems from household waste.” I believe it, and I’m sure Canada isn’t far off this number. She’s also vegan, so all together she’s given us a food-scraps vegan cookbook. That’s so appealing to me!
Dawn, how did you come across this book, and what do you like about it?
Dawn: I saw Carleigh speak at the Planted Expo last January. She was a spunky, fun mom who wanted to make a difference. She started out with a candied orange peel post on instagram that almost went viral overnight. Plant You is her first cookbook and Plant You: Scrappy Cooking is her second. After hearing her speak I immediately requested the book from the library.
Trish: I like that she has a section on some of the common household problem areas that lead to food wastage. Improper food storage and overbuying are obvious ones, but my personal favourites that she discussed were “best before” dates and imperfect produce. Best before dates don’t mean the food is bad, it's just past its “optimal” freshness, whatever that actually means. She says, and I agree, that common sense around assessing with your senses if food is “off” is usually adequate. And I love imperfect produce! It’s often sold at a good discount if you can find it, and tastes just the same.
Dawn: I ended up buying the cookbook as it speaks to my values of reusing food scraps. Carleigh has a section on regrowing vegetables from food scraps which I already do. You should see my green onions on my window sill–impressive! However she goes further as she regrows lettuce, carrots, and celery. She also talks about freezing your food scraps, which I also do to make soup broth with. She goes further still and freezes leftover coffee, red wine and coconut milk in ice cube trays to use later. Brilliant!
I have had a lot of fun making stuff in her chapter called Preserves, Powders, Ferments, and other fun stuff. Her pickled onions are quick and delicious. We always have a jar on the go. I really want to try the turmeric sauerkraut.
It was easy to find recipes I wanted to try in this cookbook but in choosing them, I wanted to find “new staple items in my weekly diet”. So we chose the Confetti Sheet-pan Tacos with the Flax Wraps; Summer Rolls with Rice Paper Wraps and Mango Peanut Sauce; and Sticky Date Pudding with Cocoa Caramel Sauce. I will definitely make all these items again, especially the Mango Peanut Sauce and the Cocoa Caramel Sauce. I loved the flavour on both these items but I especially loved how the caramel sauce was healthier with the substitution of coconut milk for butter.
Trish: I wanted to try something easy that I could whip up on a weekday afternoon for a family dinner, which led me to an orzo casserole. For a veggie side, I was so intrigued by the Whole Roasted Cauliflower. Dawn had cooked a similar recipe in a previous cookbook collab and I thought it looked impressive, so wanted to try this one. Finally, a dessert. There aren’t alot of traditional desserts in the book, so I chose an Earl Grey Tea Cake since I love that flavour.
The Recipes: Trish
I’m in love with the idea of a true one-pot dinner, but a delicious one can be hard to find. This fit the bill! There is some dicing and slicing, and I loved that the author suggests veggies to use but also notes you can use almost any veg that totals two cups. So versatile. It’s chock full of healthy ingredients, all mixed in the casserole dish. Add the orzo and broth half-way through the cooking time and you’re done. I found that the casserole needed an extra 15 minutes and more salt to taste as it should, but with the extra seasoning it was delicious. There were lots of leftovers, and this is one of those casseroles that was even better the next day.
I made Tofu Feta to go with this, as Bodrug suggested. I had high hopes for this tofu marinated in olive oil and spices, but it didn’t live up to my expectations. It wasn’t salty, like feta should be, and the addition of chopped whole lemon lent the “feta” a bitter flavour.
I’ve now realized that a whole roasted cauliflower brought to the table in a nice dish can’t be beat for “showstopper” quality. Bodrug’s take on this was absolutely simple, looked great and tasted fantastic. Dave didn’t love the boiled texture, and perhaps next time I’ll experiment with a shorter boiling time, but I liked the method. The author included the trimmed-off cauliflower leaves, and I put them in the bottom of my Dutch oven while roasting. My only regret is that my supermarket cauliflower didn’t have many leaves, because they were delicious! I will never throw them in the compost again. With a yogurt-y marinade and a tahini poured over top for serving, this was my hit of the night.
This recipe had Everything Tahini Dressing to serve, which was a very simple, slightly sweetened tahini with garlic that proved a great accompaniment.
Ok, I swear I followed the recipe. Earl grey tea steeped in oat milk mixed with oats that I ground myself in my Vitamix to a flour consistency, some applesauce and yogurt. I mixed it all together and it had a very thick cornbread consistency, and I said to my family, “I don’t think this is going to work.” I double checked my ingredients and I hadn’t missed any liquids. I baked it, and it smelled heavenly, but was pretty hefty for a cake. Anyway, I made the Earl Grey icing, which was amazingly delicious, and decorated the cake beautifully, if I do say so myself! As the four of us gathered round, I sliced into the cake with the knife and…oh, I had to push that knife hard to cut through the cake. Not good. So, we didn’t like this much. It was oaty and very dense and didn’t seem like cake or a dessert.
Ever the pragmatist, and in the spirit of the Scrappy Cooking no-waste ethos, I took it home, and cut it into small bits and froze it. It has taken on new life as a crumble to top ice cream, and it's surprisingly hearty and yummy as a bedtime snack in small amounts, kind of like an oat-based slightly crumb-y protein bar. Never fear, it will all get eaten and not a crumb thrown out.
The Recipes: Dawn and Dave
I LOVE a true sheet pan recipe and was excited about these tacos, but the execution fell a little short of excellent as the veggies did not cook evenly. The cauliflower and yams cooked beautifully but the peppers burned. I think the idea of strips just didn’t work and I will leave the peppers in quarter chunks. I really liked the flax wraps. They were easy to make and apparently they freeze well, though I haven’t tried that yet. I have a goal of getting more flax into my diet, as it's full of antioxidants and they counter the effects of eating other oils. This recipe is great in my opinion, with only two ingredients: Flax and water plus herbs and or spices.
The summer rolls were fun and very versatile. I did not follow the recipe exactly as I thought it would be too bland, so I added pickled carrots and radishes instead of plain. They were delicious, crispy and crunchy and I think you could add any veggies and the dish would be a hit! We loved the Mango Peanut Sauce and the Sunflower Cream Sauce. Although the sunflower seeds needed to be pre-soaked, both recipes just required throwing everything into the food processor and voila: Yummy sauces. I liked the idea of using sunflower seeds as they’re cheaper than cashews and the flavour was great.
Ok, the cookbook was sparse on desserts but wow–extra yum on the Sticky Date Pudding and Cocoa Caramel Sauce. The caramel sauce was creamier than the traditional recipe I use and I felt better eating it, knowing I wasn’t consuming a half pound of butter. I didn’t think the recipe for the sticky pudding was correct as the recipe only asked for 1 ½ cups of flour but it was moist and delicious. We will definitely make it again!
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Trish: All in all, this cookbook was a mixed bag. I love the idea of focusing on cooking and baking with the food that you have, and to avoid food waste when you can. I tend to be frugal by nature, and I try to be environmentally-minded, so it all makes sense. That it’s vegan as well jibes with the direction that I’m gradually moving towards with my own dietary choices. There were some real hits with these recipes but I did feel that some of the dishes were under seasoned, and the All the Earl Grey Tea Cake made a much better dense bedtime snack than dessert. What were your overall impressions?
Dawn: I love the cookbook and use it regularly but I wonder if all the recipes were tested before they made it into the book. Knowing this, I am hesitant to try every recipe.
Dave: The sauces and icings were all amazing, especially the peanut mango sauce. The Sticky Date cake with that coconut icing was to die for. The biggest disappointment of the evening was the oat tea cake: even though the icing was excellent, it was far too heavy. So inedible, in fact, that we wondered if the cake was supposed to be made with cooked oatmeal instead of oat flour…
Trish: The contrast between the two cakes was hilarious: The oat cake looked so much better than the sticky date cake, but it was entirely opposite in terms of taste. I’m looking to try a few more recipes from this book, and I’d love to try the Mango Peanut Sauce too–I can see that becoming a regular in my house. Thanks again for an excellent cookbook collab and a wonderful dinner party!
Dawn: I love the cookbook and use it regularly but I wonder if all the recipes were tested before they made it into the book. Knowing this, I am hesitant to try every recipe.
Dave: The sauces and icings were all amazing, especially the peanut mango sauce. The Sticky Date cake with that coconut icing was to die for. The biggest disappointment of the evening was the oat tea cake: even though the icing was excellent, it was far too heavy. So inedible, in fact, that we wondered if the cake was supposed to be made with cooked oatmeal instead of oat flour…
Trish: The contrast between the two cakes was hilarious: The oat cake looked so much better than the sticky date cake, but it was entirely opposite in terms of taste. I’m looking to try a few more recipes from this book, and I’d love to try the Mango Peanut Sauce too–I can see that becoming a regular in my house. Thanks again for an excellent cookbook collab and a wonderful dinner party!
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