Random Vegetable Curry

Does that sound like kind of an apathetic title? Because this is kind of an apathetic recipe. Luckily it was delicious.

Ingredients

• 1/2 eggplant, chopped
• 1/2 sweet potato, chopped
• 1 large zucchini
• 1 1/4 blocks baked tofu, chopped
• 1 tin chickpeas
• 1 tin nuoc cot dua (coconut cream or coconut milk)
• 1 T. red Thai curry paste
• 1 T. brown sugar
• 1-2 T. soy sauce
• 1 handful spinach
  

Methodology

1. Put veg in pot with a little oil. Add coconut milk and let it simmer.

2. Add curry paste and brown sugar. After a while, add in the tofu and the chickpeas. Cover and let everything boil until the sweet potato is tender.

3. Add the soy sauce (to taste). Throw in a handful of spinach at the end and let it wilt.

4. That's it.

Notes

*This came out well. Good with toasted pita.

*About 250 calories if serving 6, if 8 about 192.

*Needs more curry paste.

Cabbage rolls

Recipe from the FatFree Vegan Kitchen.

Ingredients

• 1/3 napa cabbage
• 5 baby carrots
• 2 sheets nori seaweed (sushi type)
• 2 oz. baked tofu
  
• 1 T. soy sauce
• 1/2 T. black vinegar
• wasabi paste, to taste
• sushi rolling mat

Methodology

1. If you are starting with a head of cabbage, cut it in half, then cut one half into thirds. Take two of the thirds (2/6 or 1/3 of the entire cabbage) and put them in your steamer (it's helpful if you don't cut the bottoms off, so they're still connected). Cut the carrots into strips and add them to the steamer. Steam until tender, about 5 minutes. Put in refrigerator for 10 minutes or so. Cut tofu into long strips.

2. Get your equipment ready, by covering the sushi rolling mat with plastic wrap, etc. Mix the soy sauce, vinegar, and wasabi in a small bowl and set aside (for dipping later).

3. Put down a piece of nori and cover with the leaves of cabbage in a single layer, leaving about an inch free at one end. You will probably want to blot the cabbage with a paper towel before you put it down, as napa (bai cai) holds a lot of water. At the end towards you, about two inches in, make a row of carrot slices and baked tofu.

4. Roll the sushi tightly. If it doesn't seal, dip your fingers in water and moisten the end. Cut into sushi, as wide as you prefer your sushi to be.

Notes

*Tasted mostly like cabbage, but very good anyway. Next time perhaps I will try stir-frying or roasting the vegetables.

*Too much wasabi may give you stomach trouble. But it is delicious.

*1/7. Very easy, minimal clean up.

Korean Vegetable Stir Fry with Pasta

A lot of the recipes I post here are things I've come up with knocking around in the kitchen with veggies to use up. This one is not only not mine, but almost entirely unaltered (well, a few changes, but not many). I'm posting it here mostly to help myself keep track of it, since it was delicious.

Original from the Fatfree Vegan Kitchen, found here.

Ingredients

• 1/4 box (2 servings) whole wheat pasta
• 2 oz. baked Thai-style tofu (it comes pre-made with peanut sauce on it) cut into bite-sized pieces.
  
• 1 T. dark soy sauce mixed with 2 tablespoons water
• ~1/4 teaspoon sesame oil
• 1 yellow summer squash and 1/2 zucchini, halved and sliced into half moons.
  
• 1/2 onion, chopped
• handful matchstick carrots
  
• one bok choy, chopped
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 tablespoons gochujang
• 3 tablespoons water
• 1/2 teaspoon brown
  
• ~1/4 teaspoon sesame oil

Methodology

1. Start water boiling and cook the pasta. I broke it in half before I cooked it. Whatever, it's pasta. When it's done, drain and set aside.

2. Mix the red ingredients and set them in a dish with the tofu. When you're done chopping the veg, cook the tofu in a large pan until brown on one side, then flip. Add in most of the sauce. After a few more minutes, remove and set aside (you can put it with the pasta); not all of the sauce had boiled away yet.

3. Add the squash, onion, zucchini, and carrots to the pan and cook for a few minutes, until they start to soften. Add the rest of the veg plus the garlic and about 1/4 c. water and cook until everything is starting to soften and the bok choy is wilting a little. Mix the green ingredients and pour over the veg, then add in the pasta and the tofu and mix it all together, stirring until everything is heated.

4. Eat while reading The Corpse in the Koryo[1] by James Church. Get small flecks of gochujang paste on the pages. Feel this is somehow appropriate.

Notes

*Needs more tofu. I only used the one piece because it was left over from the week's salads, and everything else was frozen. The baked tofu came out quite nicely, though I think regular tofu would also have been fine.

*0/7 on the disaster scale. Delicious. Also not bad for the clean-up, despite the number of dishes used - the longer veg cook time gave me time to do the dishes mid-project.

*Excellent pre-race fuel.

*[1]: Fact for the day: the word Korea comes from the name Koryo, which in turn comes from Goryeo (Goguryeo), which was the most powerful of the 3 kingdoms which ruled the area we now call Korea in the 5th century CE. Koreans call their land Chosen, the land of morning calm. (How nice does that sound? I want to visit Korea now.)

*I picked up the gochujang paste at a little Korean grocery store (on South Park street). It was fairly cheap ($4.99 for a big tub) and it keeps forever; plus, I hadn't realized until I bought it that I'd been missing the taste. 很好吃！I totally recommend hanging around Asian groceries anyway, because they tend to be family-run (and so need support), and the food is often much cheaper than at big chain stores, plus it's not just Asian food that they sell. Also they sometimes have really neat stuff (this one had radish kim chi, so I bought some of that). So let me end this by encouraging you to check out your local Asian grocery store. Yay.

Chinese Peanut Noodles with Gingered Vegetables

I've had China on my mind lately. (Claire pointed out that I always have China on my mind, so perhaps it would be more accurate to say I've had Chinese food on my mind.) This recipe isn't really Chinese, or at least it's not like anything I had in China, but it is delicious. Get your mates to help you cut stuff up, because it takes forever.

Adapted from here.

Ingredients

Peanut Sauce:

• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
  
• 2 to 3 tbsp stock
• 2 tbsp peanut butter
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• ½ tsp chili oil

Noodles recipe:

• 1 tablespoons sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons minced fresh ginger
• 8 ounces broccoli, tops cut into florets, stems peeled, cut into
  thin strips
• a bunch of small carrots cut into matchsticks
  
• 1/2 onion
• 1/2 medium zucchini
• 1/ medium size summer squash
  
• 1 red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
• 2 tablespoons Chinese cooking wine
  
• 10 ounces Chinese tofu
  
• ~ 8 oz. buckwheat noodles (soba, e.g.)
• 1 cup lightly salted roasted peanuts

Tofu marinade

• 1 T. soy sauce
• 2 T. water
• 1/2 T. garlic oil

Methodology

1. Make tofu marinade in shallow dish. Blot tofu dry, slice into 1/2" thick "steaks" and put in marinade. Set aside. Make peanut sauce and set aside. Put water on to boil. Chop veggies.

2. Cook the tofu until brown, then flip and brown the other side. Set aside, retaining marinade. Put the ginger in the wok with about 1 T. of sesame oil. After a few minutes, add the broccoli and carrots and stir fry until almost cooked. Add the other veg, the cooking wine, and the tofu marinade. When cooked, add the tofu and stir until everything is warm. Cook pasta.

3. Drain pasta and put in a bowl. Mix in the peanut sauce, then put the veg on top. Top with peanuts.

Notes

*There wasn't really enough ginger in this, despite the fact that I cut up too much. Maybe it needs to be sliced smaller? I guess I chopped it kind of roughly. But the peanut sauce was extremely delicious and made up for the lack of ginger.

*It could use more chili oil or maybe some hot pepper. Something to give it a little more of a kick.

*2/7. Also it used a lot of dishes. Oh man.

Thai-style Ichiro's Rice

Who was Ichiro? My hypotheses aside, the rice dish that bears his name is an excellent way to use up leftover rice. And since I wanted curry, I changed it up a little bit.

Ingredients

• 6 oz. tofu, marinated and cooked
• 1 baby bok choy
• 1 sweet potato
• 1/2 summer squash
• 2 dried crimini mushrooms
• 2 cloves of garlic
• a trickle of oil
• 1 tin coconut milk (I used "lowfat organic", but I recommend the one that says "nuoc cot dua" or "coconut cream" for maximum goodness)
• 4 tsp. red Thai curry paste
• about 1 T. brown sugar
• about 1 T. of the marinade from the tofu (see above)
• leftover brown rice, about 3/4 c. (or however much you have)
• a sprinkling of ginger and cumin
  

Methodology

1. Heat garlic and mushrooms in a deep pan with oil (maybe a tablespoon or two, not much). When they sizzle, add the curry paste and the coconut milk. Heat until it boils, then add the veggies. Cover, stirring occasionally.

2. When the sweet potato is cooked, add in the brown sugar, the rice, and a bit of the marinade. You may also want to add some salt. Cut the "steaks" of tofu into bite-sized pieces and add those, too.

3. When everything is warm, taste and add a sprinkling of ginger and cumin. You may want to add more sugar or salt as well. It's done! Enjoy!

Notes

*I recommend serving with Sri Racha sauce and sweet chili sauce on top. If you use the lowfat coconut milk, this has very few calories. Actually, it probably doesn't have that many even if you use coconut cream. So go all out.

*0/7. This was delicious, and an excellent way to use some vegetables.

Veggies and Tofu in Brown Sauce （红烧豆腐蔬菜）

How do you tell someone you don't want to go on a date with them because they write awful poetry? What do you make for dinner after karate when you're really tired and out of sorts? When do these rhetorical questions become ridiculous?

I call this "brown sauce" because that's how it's always translated, but a closer translation is "red baked tofu and vegetables". Based on this recipe.

Ingredients

Tofu marinade

• 1/2 block tofu, cubed
• 1 T. garlic oil
• 1 T. soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp brown sugar
• about 1/2 tsp sri racha sauce

Vegetables etc.

• 1/2 sweet potato
• 1 summer squash
• 5 mushrooms
• 1 baby bok choy
• 3/4 c. brown rice
• 2 c. water
• a few cloves of garlic
  

Red Sauce

• 3 T. dark soy sauce
• 1 T. kecap manis (sweet Indonesian soy sauce)
• 1/4 c. water
• 1/2 cube bouillon
• 1 T. vermouth
• 1/2 tsp. sri racha sauce

Methodology

1. Cut up tofu and put in marinade. Cut veggies into similar sized pieces.

2. Start the rice. You can dribble in a little of the tofu marinade for flavour if you want. Heat a wok over high heat with a small amount of oil in it and drop the tofu in. Leave it to brown on one side, then flip and brown the other. You can put some of the marinade on here, too, and let it reduce, or just throw the rest away. When the tofu is done, remove it to a plate.

3. Put a bit more oil in the wok and turn the heat down slightly. Add the garlic, then the mushrooms. When they start to brown, add the bok choi, the sweet potato, and the squash. Stir fry it for a few minutes, then add about 1 c. water and cover; the water will boil, cooking the potatoes. This is especially useful if your pan is small.

4. When the sweet potatoes (the veg needing the longest time) are almost done and the water has boiled off, add the tofu and the sauce. Stir everything together and cook a while longer to let the sauce reduce some. Serve over rice.

Notes

*Good and healthy, but nothing spectacular. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but while I wasn't displeased there also was nothing to make me sit up and take notice. Chinese dishes tend to use only one or two vegetables, which is frustrating for a vegetarian but tends to bring out more of the "essence" of those vegetables, as opposed to "a bunch of vegetables in a bowl".

*3.5/7. Middle of the road.

Pictures forthcoming.