I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t been cooking as much as I should have this week. I can attribute this to two things. Firstly, I’ve been sick. High body temperature and high weather temperature aren’t a good combination, and combined they make me far less inclined than usual to stand over a hot stove to make dinner. Secondly, I don’t actually have this week’s cookbook challenge book, Urban Vegan. I’ve been relying on tracking recipes down online, but my luck has been fairly limited.

However, so far I’ve been able to tackle two recipes. The first was orecchiette con broccoli.

Orecchiette con broccoli

This was super simple, and well-suited to an under the weather cook wanting to keep away from hot cooking implements as much as possible. I love garlic, so with ten cloves in it, I was always going to enjoy this. And I really did enjoy it, at the time. But I reheated the leftovers at work during the week and it reheated so horribly and tasted so awful that I’ll forever associate that experience with the recipe. Kind of like the time I was sick when I was in my teens and decided to eat my weight in yoghurt, and then vomited yoghurt for the next two hours. I couldn’t eat yoghurt again for probably six years. So I probably won’t be making this one again, at least any time soon.

The second recipe though, remains a winner.

Spätzle with chickpea paprikash

When visiting my family in Germany as a vegetarian, spätzle was often the only dish on the menu at traditional German restaurants that I could eat. Not that I minded, because I loved the stuff. So when I realised that Urban Vegan had a vegan spätzle recipe, I knew I would have to try it. And apparently the universe agreed, because when looking for a cheap potato ricer to make these little noodles, I instead came across a marked down spätzle press. I picked it up, as well as an assortment of dinosaur-shaped cookie cutters, and ran home (or rather, sat complaining about the heat in the air-conditioned car) to make these.

I loved this meal. Chadwiko was (and I think still is) a little perplexed about it, but approving nonetheless. The chickpea paprikash was delicious too, super rich and creamy, and perfect with the spätzle. My only complaint with these recipes was the inconsistency with serving sizes. Both recipes claimed to serve six to eight people, so I halved both. The paprikash made a good amount for the two of us, but the spätzle recipe made barely anything. Either one of us could easily have eaten the full two serves on our own (okay, maybe me more so than Chadwiko).

With one hit and one miss, the future of Urban Vegan’s status on my cookbook shelf all rides on the third and final dish. Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion to this culinary adventure.