For Vine and Dine we’ve returned to where we began – Horizons, only this time we chose the first book. As you know by now, I love these books but do find there to be a few errors or vagueness about the recipes. Rich and Kate, if you’re reading this I’m available to test for your third book!! In this one, for example, it calls for 2 packs of baked tofu, but it doesn’t say how big the packets are or how to cut it up. Since I can’t buy packets of baked tofu it was a moot point, but it would have been nice to get an idea.
I made my own baked tofu, using the recipe in Appetite for Reduction as a loose guideline. I paired the tofu and sauce with the spinach, garlic and pinenuts from the same book and some baby potatoes from my Dad’s garden.
Horizons has some amazing tofu recipes, so while this one was very good it wasn’t my favourite. But it has a lot to live up to so that’s not a problem. I love horseradish and don’t use it enough so it was great to get some here, and it made a tasty crust. I only made half of the red pepper sauce and it was still more then we needed for the two of us.
The spinach was a bit odd because it seemed to deliberately have a lot of liquid in the bottom. That would probably have worked well with mashed potatoes but here I drained most of it away.
This wasn’t my favourite Vine and Dine so far but then we’ve had some amazing ones! Don’t forget to go to Vegan Appetite to see who else joined in.
Matthew didn’t get chance to review the wine this time, so it’s my (far less well educated) observations on the wine match this time. He spent quite a bit of time deliberating but decided on a Cabardes Chateua de Brau from Vintage Roots., which is a blend of cabernet, merlot and syrah. The first bottle he pulled out had wine dripping through the foil – not a good start. When we tasted the second at first we thought it might be faulty because we drink this wine fairly frequently and it wasn’t as good as usual – but then we noticed the vintage had changed, so we’re yet to see if it’s just not as good a year as the previous one. It was a pretty good choice though with enough tannin to support the garlic and fruity enough for the sweetness of the red pepper sauce.
Cooking the Vegan Books 
Liz, you did well on wine write-up! You’re so right that we’ve had some amazing V and D’s. I’d make this again, but probably not immediately like i want to do with some of them.