WOW! This book is fantastic. A real artwork – in terms of culinary and photography. The day I got the parcel with the cookbook of food bloggers Susann Probst and Yannic Schon was a very happy day. Some days later, I took the time to leaf through the whole book while sitting on the couch and having a cup of tea. As I’m so thrilled about it, I absolutely want to present this book to you today. As always in our cookbook reviews, I’ll share a favorite recipe with you. This time it’s going to be the very best baked samosas.
Here is my review of Susann Probst and Yannic Schon’s cookbook “Krautkopf – Vegetarisch kochen und geniessen“.
Author: Susann Probst, Yannic Schon
Editor: Coppenrath
Susann Probst und Yannic Schon are a photographer couple living in Berlin. They run a vegetarian food blog called “Krautkopf”.
Who are Susann Probst and Yannic Schon?
Susann Probst and Yannic Schon are a young couple living in Berlin. They share their love for photopgraphy and cooking. In their blog called «Krautkopf» that exists since 2013 and is written in english as well as in german, they combine these two passions. They regularly post new vegetarian ans seasonal recipes that are illustrated with fantastic photos. As professional photographers they do a lot of wedding photography. You can get an insight into their work on their website called «Paul liebt Paula».
How are the recipes?
All the recipes in theKrautkopf cookbook are vegetarian. A lot of them are vegan and extremely versatile. There are so many ingriedients that all find their perfect place in one of the recipes of the book. Most of them are seasonal and local vegetables. But Susann Probst and Yannic Schon also like to cook international food. For example, you’ll find Japanese soba noodles with tofu or southern Indian pancakes called “dosas”. The recipes have influences from all over the world. The ingredients are as fresh and unprocessed as possible. In the samosa recipe I’m going to present you, the authors suggest to use fresh peas instead of preserved peas and fresh ginger instead of dried ginger powder. Nevertheless, they emphasize that it’s not important to follow the recipes 100 %. Instead, they encourage us to be creative. As sweetener, they never use refined sugar, but different alternatives. Their creations are simply brilliant. There are a lot of combinations and preparation methods I’ve never seen like this before. With each recipe you can impress your guests.
What else can you find?
All the recipes are illustrated with a wonderful photo, on which the food is arranged in a very beautiful way. Looking at the photos, you can learn how to present your prepared meal. In between the recipes, there are also many pictures that offer an insight into Susann Probst and Yannic Schon’s inspiring life. In a nice introduction, they present their food philosophy and give some tips. For each recipe, there is a personal introduction. At the end of the book, a few basic recipes are explained. The reader learns how to make his own vegetable stock, cashew cream, almond milk or curry paste. There are symbols that indicate if a recipe is vegan, lactose-free or gluten-free.
What is particularly good?
I love Susann Probst and Yannic Schon’s food philosophy. Entirely in the sense of “Real Life”, they try to combine enjoyment, creativity, health and sustainabilty, and they clearly succeed. In my opinion, their cuisine is really authentic and inspiring. As I said before, many creations are brilliant and unique. Despite the huge variety of different ingredients and combinations, the book has a red threat. For example, you’ll find different grains, fresh vegetables and special spices from the beginning to the end. The recipes are very well explained and leave enough room for experiments. The photographies are artworks that I could study for hours.
What could be better?
To be honest: NOTHING. You could criticize that a lot of ingredients are difficult to find if you don’t live in a big city like Berlin. However, the authors are conscious of this fact and encourage to look for creative alternatives.
For whom is this book interesting?
This book is great for all the gourmets that love food and also attach importance to health and sustainability. If you want to eat more diverse, the Krautkopf cookbook offers you some brilliant inspirations with the focus on plant foods. People who are interested in food photography are going to love this book. Actually, I recommend this book to nearly everybody, unless you really don’t like to cook (and I don’t say this about a lot of books…). It’s really high quality and made with a lot of love.
Recipe
As Prospi is the biggest samosa lover I’ve ever met, we decided to try the «Samosa Pies» out of the Krautkopf cookbook. I’ve already made baked samosas before, using Attila Hildmann’s wrap dough. As I think this dough works really well for samosas, I decided not to change it. Other than suggested in the Krautkopf cookbook, I didn’t want to make small pies, but classic triangular samosas. But I made Susann Probst and Yannic Schon’s filling with the homemade spice mix. And it was absolutely worth it! The samosas turned out so authentic and spicy. From now on, I’ll always use this filling for my samosas.
BAKED SAMOSAS
plant-based (vegan), soy-free, lactose-free, wholegrain
16 servings
Preparation time:
Level of difficulty: intermediate
Ingredients
Dough
- 420 g/14.8 oz wholegrain spelt flour (you can also use refined spelt flour, refined wheat flour or wholegrain wheat flour)
- 60 g/2.1 oz olive oil
Spice mix
- 2 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp cilantro seeds
- 1 tsp fennel seeds
- 2 tsp mustard seeds
- 1 tsp ground curcuma
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper (or black pepper)
Filling
- 750 g/26 oz potatoes
- 1 onion
- 3 garlic toes
- 15 g/0.5 oz fresh ginger
- 2 fresh green chillis (or 2 dried small red chillis)
- 12 fresh curry leaves
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 250 g/8.8 oz fresh peas (I’ve bought dried peas, cooked them and then used 300 g/11 oz of it)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice (or white wine vinegar)
Directions:
Peel and cook the potatoes for abouth 20 min until they are soft. Meanwhile, you can crush the spices together with 1 tsp of salt in the mortar. Then, you need to chop the onion, the garlic toe, the ginger and the chillis. Cut the cooled potatoes into small pieces. Now, take a frying pan and heat the coconut oil before adding the spice mix as well as the chopped ingredients. Stir well and add the potatoes, the peas and the lemon juice after a while. If you want, you can add more salt. For the dough, I didn’t follow the Krautkopf recipe. Instead, I used a simple wrap dough. In this video you see me making the dough. Take the double amount of the ingredients and follow the steps until you have formed 8 round and flat circles. This means that you knead the flour, the oil, 200 ml water and a pinch of salt into a dough. Then, you form 8 similar sized balls. Coat each ball with flour and roll it out to a round and flat circle using a rolling pin. Follow the instructions on these images to create perfect filled samosas. Put the samosas on a baking tray covered with baking paper. Optionally, you can coat them with oil so that they’ll turn out less dry. In the preheated oven, bake them at 200C/392F for 40 min.
This is how the “Samosa Pies” from the Krautkopf cookbook look like. I decided to make classical triangular samosas. In these miracle bags, there is a delicious filling!
Here, you can watch a video, in which the Krautkopf cookbook is presented:
And here you can buy the book:
Print: books.ch, buch.ch
, thalia.ch
, amazon.de, amazon.com
How do you like the samosa filling from the Krautkopf cookbook?
Do you have questions regarding the book? I’d love to answer them. Just leave a comment below.
Kind regards
Lisa
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