Millet-Sunflower Croquettes with Smoky Black Bean Sauce

Our library has a pretty slim selection of vegan cookbooks, but it does have The Voluptuous Vegan, which I checked out a few weeks ago.  The recipes in the book are arranged into menus of three to five recipes each, which makes it sort of a special occasion cookbook in my eyes.  I guess you could always just make one dish from each menu if you felt like it, but I like doing what the author tells me to do.  She probably wouldn't have been thrilled, however, with the fact that I went through and made photocopies of a few of the menus before I took it back to the library.  I wanted to try some things before committing to purchase, though, and our library has a draconian two week lending policy.

Anyway!  The first thing I decided to make were millet-sunflower croquettes with smoky black bean sauce, ginger sour "cream" (tofu-based), and a salad of romaine with radishes, jicama, carrots, and avocado dressing.  She also said to roast some asparagus but I was getting pretty tired so I skipped it.

I thought I had already uploaded the photos for this dinner but, alas, I had not, and for some reason deleted them all but one.  You can kind of see the salad over there in the back.

This meal was the best thing I have made in ages.  Each of the elements is pretty good on its own, but together they work absolutely perfectly.  I was a little concerned with the saltiness of the black beans by themselves but the croquettes have a really mild, nutty flavor so they balanced each other out perfectly, and the ginger sour cream was fantastic on top.

I'm pretty excited to try the other things from this cookbook, but it may be a few weeks before I feel like making six separate things for a single meal.  We'll see!