Paella with Roasted Tomato Sauce and Garlic Aioli (Cookbook Challenge)

from Voluptuous Vegan

I've wanted to make paella for a long time. I'd never even tried it anywhere and it seemed like a really fascinating dish. With the Cookbook Challenge going on over at the PPK, it was time.

The recipe looks like a lot of steps, but it really isn't as complicated it looks. The sauce is mostly just roasting tomatoes and onions, the tempeh is roasted and so are the cauliflower and chickpeas. That leaves making the rice and sauting the other vegetables and throwing it all together. Oh, and the aioli! Definitely make that. Once the garlic is roasted it only takes a few minutes.

I only changed a couple tiny things about the recipe. For the tomato sauce, I seeded my tomatoes when I cut them and didn't bother putting the finished sauce through a sieve. It really didn't need it. The other thing is the rice. My rice took twice as long to cook as the recipe said. The recipe calls for it cooking without a lid except for the last five minutes. I've never cooked rice that way before and it took a looooong time and a lot of extra liquid. That said, it makes incredible Spanish style rice. But I think that's more due to the extra ingredients than it is to the cooking style.

This cookbook has a lot going for it. There are loads of techniques that can be adapted to other ideas, parts of recipes that you can apply to any meal. I'm looking forward to making more from it now that I finally tried my first recipes. The book really seems intimidating, and I speak from experience. I've had it for months before ever trying anything. But now I'm looking forward to making several of the recipes. It's like a new cookbook all over again!