Mango Fried Rice & Coconut Curry

I haven't been blogging much but I'm continuing to cook from Isa Does It pretty much every night and so far there have been zero duds. It's super fun!

Here is a thing I made a couple weeks ago - mango fried rice. She says to put toasted cashews in it but I didn't feel like dealing with that, so I put some tofu in for  protein instead.

I also made this freaking amazing coconut chickpea curry with kale.

I always think I will be bored with curry but I'm usually not, and this one was especially good with the full-fat coconut milk base.

Warm Cabbage Salad with Yuca and Tofu Chicharones

We had a really good experience last week trying a new recipe from Viva Vegan, and as a result I tried to pick a few more from that book for this week's meals.  This one is a salad I've paged past a hundred times, which necessitates a trip to the Mexican grocery for frozen yuca (as the fresh stuff is a huge pain to deal with). However, the Mexican grocery is extremely convenient and there is no reason not to go there. We stopped by this morning and, for our reward, saw a car there in the parking lot with a homemade wooden spoiler, painted the same color as the car but all splintery and peeling. It was pretty awesome.

So anyway!  Here is this salad. The dressing was awesome, a mostly lime juice and olive oil with a touch of paprika.

After dinner Ben said, "Molly, that was SO GOOD."  YES.  It was. That Terry Hope Romero knows her food.

Spicy Drunken Thai Noodles

I made these delicious noodles last night from a recipe in Vegan Eats World.  Harris Teeter doesn't have the sort of noodles (wide flat somethings) she tells you to use so I bought some other random Asiany ones and they were fine.

This recipe called for three of the Thai soy sauces I went to the Asian market for a couple months ago - it's fun to have all that stuff on hand so I can make a wide variety of noodle dishes for quick weeknight dinners.

Kung Pao Tofu

Last night I made the Kung Pao Tofu recipe in Bean by Bean and it was wonderful.  The tofu first has to be briefly marinated in mirin, garlic, and cornstarch, then baked at high temperature, which makes it crispy and chewy even before it goes into the stirfry.

Next time maybe I will not chicken out and will add as much spice as I'm supposed to.

Peanut Noodles

Noodles + peanut sauce are one of the best things in the world!  I've been making the same recipe for years but saw this one on Veggie Belly the other day so I decided to mix it up.  The best thing about this type of recipe is that I almost always have all the sauce ingredients on hand, and then can add whatever protein and vegetables I have lying around.

I added some tofu (fried first in my nonstick electric skillet), broccoli, and green onions.  It was great - the sauce was thicker and smoother than my usual recipe so I think this is going to be my go-to in the future.

Asian Groceries

I went to Grand Asia Market last weekend in search of wonton wrappers, which for some reason Harris Teeter seems to have quit carrying.  I found them!  And naturally they were practically free.

While I was there, I picked up a full range of sauces that Terry Hope Romero uses in her new cookbook Vegan Eats World.  She has a lot of awesome-looking noodle recipes I've been wanting to try, but you need Thai Thin Soy Sauce or whatever.  I was kind of surprised I was able to find all this stuff!  And again, it was way, way cheap.  I love the ethnic grocery store.

I also picked up various weird tofus.  The tofu section in this place is incredible!

I already used this stuff in a rice dish - it was not spicy at all, but was flavored nicely and really dense and chewy.

Yet to be used:

This one says "halogen taste-flavor dried TOFU" in case you can't read it.  How could I not buy that?

Lemon-Mustard Tofu & Waffles (not together)

I made this tofu from Vegan Eats World the other day and it was basically the best tofu ever in history.  It is smothered in a lemon-mustard sauce and covered in thinly sliced onion and then baked for a long time.  So, so good.  I also had collards boiling away the entire time, which I then sauteed with some garlic and stuff so they were so soft and velvety.  I never thought in my entire life that I would be excited to eat boiled collards, but there you go.  I made some spicy Ethiopian millet to round it out.

This weekend we made pumpkin waffles in the brand-new fancy waffle maker my mom got me for my birthday!  Our old waffle maker was an extremely old hand-me-down from Ben's parents, and the last few batches of waffles we tried all stuck horribly.  I thought maybe the problem was due to eggless vegan recipes, but no!  Because these pumpkin waffles are vegan and they worked perfectly.

OK so everybody hang onto your hats, because this week is Taco Time in the McClure household.  We are having a new and exciting type of taco every single night!!  Stay tuned!

Atomic Tofu Pecan Loaf

I started making vegan dinners over two years ago and pretty often I still choose a recipe specifically because it sounds kind of hilarious.  I have no idea why this tofu pecan loaf (from Vegan Slow Cooker) is called atomic.  It seems like that should mean spicy, but it's not spicy at all!  It's another vegetarian meat-style loaf, this time made primarily from a picture of TVP, tofu, pecans, and oat bran.  I make another one from Vegan Diner sometimes but it's more complicated - this took no time to put together and cooked all day in the crockpot.  Look how realistic it is!

I've always topped meat loaf with ketchup, but this one is a half & half mixture of ketchup and A-1 steak sauce, which I totally recommend.  It adds some zest!  Maybe that's the atomic part.

Tofu & Spinach Curry

Oh look, it's another crock pot Indian curry!  This is called "Butter Chick'n" in The Vegan Slow Cooker but I am not calling it that because 1. no butter and 2. no chicken.  Or chick'n.  It just has tofu.

So, that said, it does have Earth Balance and soy milk stirred in at the end to give it some creaminess and we both agreed it's the best crock pot curry yet (and I think it's the fourth one I've made from the book).  I did add spinach so I wouldn't have to cook a green vegetable on the side, and I kind of can't imagine it without - I think it would be kind of wimpy with just the tofu and tomatoes.  But maybe most people make more than one dish for most meals instead of eating a big bowl full of one thing like we normally do.

Cast-Iron Stirfry with Avocado, Basil, and Peanuts

I thought this recipe from the PPK website sounded interesting because it added avocado, basil, and chopped peanuts to what otherwise was a pretty standard tofu and vegetable stirfry.  I didn't do all the separate cooking steps she did - I just fried the tofu first and then threw everything else in there at once and it turned out fine.

The addition of the avocado in particular made this incredible - way better than I expected (and I can especially verify its spectacularness because we ate stirfry leftovers the next day without the avocado & basil and it was kind of blah).  Super excited about using this idea in future stirfries.

Pad Thai Salad with Red Thai Tofu

This salad is soooo gooood.  Lettuce, carrots, bean sprouts, peanuts (or in this case cashews, because I used up all the peanuts in the dressing) and I added some sliced red bell pepper.  The dressing is slightly spicy peanut-lime.  The tofu is coated in a mixture of Thai red chili paste, agave, and soy sauce. Perfection.  All recipes from Appetite for Reduction.

Caramelized Onion Quiche

I've been wanting to try a vegan quiche for quite a while, and finally got around to it today. I made this recipe from Vegan Brunch because it called for three pounds of onions, caramelized, and if there is one thing I love it's a whole bunch of caramelized onions. The rest of the filling is tofu and cashews, mainly, blended until smooth.

It was delicious. One of the other reasons I wanted to make a quiche is that Ben is always going on about how much he hates real (egg-based) quiche, but I was pretty sure he would like this. It really tasted more like a ricotta pie than anything else. I'm going to be trying other quiche recipes in the future for sure.

Lasagna Rolls

Back in the pre-vegan days I used to make lasagna rolls pretty often, with a black bean & feta filling. I hadn't made them since giving up the feta, but I had a half box of lasagna noodles taking up valuable cabinet space so I threw these together tonight. The filling is Veganomicon cashew ricotta, with some spinach mixed in to green it up. I had the tomato sauce in the freezer, so I just thawed it out in the microwave and poured it on top. Then I baked them in the oven for thirty minutes.

Ben said, "This goo [that would be the cashew ricotta] is so delicious! I can't believe it's not dairy." BAM.

P.S. Check out these turtles I saw on my lunchtime walk yesterday.

Bobotie!

Oh, look, I cooked! Last week was lazy. Crock pot chili, sandwiches, leftovers, etc. Today, though, I got back on the horse and made two new things from World Vegan Feast, Bobotie (African Vegan Meatloaf) and African Yellow Rice.

The "meat"loaf was mostly tofu, which was frozen overnight, then thawed and crumbled. The texture when I was crumbling it was WEIRD. It did not feel like food. It was cottony or something. Anyway, I crumbled it up anyway and mixed it with the other things (bread crumbs, almonds, raisins, etc.) and put it in the baking dish. After baking for a half hour, you add a custard on the top made from almond milk and cornstarch. Look how it made a little pattern after baking!

She suggested pairing it with this baked brown rice, seasoned with cinnamon and sugar and turmeric, mixed with raisins and onion and garlic. It was GOOD.

We had a simple green salad with lemon juice and olive oil on the side.

This dinner was great! World Vegan Feast is proving to be pretty awesome.

Sweet & Sour Stir-fry with Smoked Tofu

This looks like your average stir-fry but it is awesome for two reasons:

1. I made the smoked tofu myself.

2. The stir-fry is not actually stir-fried, but was instead cooked in the crockpot, which means I didn't have to do any work (besides chopping).

I've been on the library request list for The Vegan Slow Cooker for ages and it finally came in last week. It looked awesome enough that I ordered it from Amazon on Friday. I don't think I've used my crockpot once since we quit meat two and a half years ago, and I really missed being able to come home from work and have dinner waiting for me all ready to go.

There are a lot of basics in the book, in addition to what look to be really good recipes. For example, apparently you can do baked potatoes in the crock pot by poking holes in them and tossing them in there on low for 8 hours. WHAT?? Acquiring that knowledge alone was worth getting the book.

The smoked tofu was also done in the crockpot - I smoked it all day yesterday by putting a mixture of tea leaves, brown sugar, and rice in the bottom and setting the tofu in a steamer basket. The flavor wasn't all that strong, but the texture was amazing - nice and chewy the way the pre-baked Trader Joe's stuff is. She has some other flavoring ideas for smoked tofu so I'm excited to try more of them.

So for this dinner, I just threw that tofu in there with some carrots & onions, and added pineapple, red pepper, and broccoli about 45 minutes before dinner time. The sauce is pineapple juice, ginger, and soy sauce. I only use reduced sodium soy sauce so I did need to add some salt at the end (and some pepper, too). I almost always find that I need extra seasoning for crock pot recipes - it will be interesting to see if that continues with other recipes in the book. Anyway, I'm all excited now for future crock pot adventures, especially now that summer is coming and I won't want to use the oven.

Tofu Salad Sandwiches

Tofu salad sandwiches were one of my last frontiers of vegan cooking. They just sound gross, like some kind of crappy egg salad imitation, and I have a weird mental block about tofu on sandwiches, period. But I made this anyway, to avoid having to go to the store for other lunch ingredients, and also because I have been hearing rave reviews of the recipe (from The Best Veggie Burgers in the World).

It was soooo gooood and I have some left over for lunch tomorrow and I am very excited about it. We put some arugula on the sandwich, too, to make it extra vegan.

I told Ben to "take some artistic photos of that sandwich" while I was dishing up the (not pictured) pasta side dish and I think he did a good job!

The tofu in this recipe is sauteed with onion and garlic, then mixed with various spices, nutritional yeast, Vegenaise, and mustard. I don't know what about the whole thing makes it so delicious but the flavors are just perfect. This is going to be a summer staple at my house.

Italian Tofu, Israeli Couscous, and Roasted Vegetables

I made a dinner! I baked some tofu forever in an italian marinade and meanwhile roasted some eggplant, zucchini, yellow squash, red pepper, and garlic. The couscous is a Veganomicon recipe (Israeli Couscous with Apricots and Pistachios) I hadn't tried before and it really tied the meal together.

Everything seemed vaguely Mediterranean and it all went together very nicely.

Hoisin Tofu & Baby Bok Choy

This took ten minutes but it wasn't very good. I mean, it wasn't bad, but just okay. I guess it was good for ten minutes of effort.

I sprinkled the tofu with salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and fried it in my electric skillet while steaming the baby bok choy for a few minutes. Then I dumped some jarred hoisin sauce in the skillet with some water to thin it out, added the bok choy and tossed everything around, and served it over microwaved brown rice.

Everytime I try to use jarred sauces I'm disappointed. It really is worth the extra work to make my own.

Tahini Dill Sauce and Cheesecake

So after we ate that pizza the other night, we decided to have more pizza the next day also. And then we both started to feel pretty gross and fat. So for our next dinner I went super simple and light, with some steamed kale, baked tofu, and Veganomicon's Tahini Dill Sauce.

That tahini dill sauce is SO GOOD. So for today's lunch I went to the store and got more kale and did some smoky tempeh to serve it with.

I also made a cheesecake. This recipe is from Vegan Planet, a Robin Robertson book I got from the library to try out - I've been feeling like I'm about ready for a new cookbook. It's supposed to be key lime, but somehow I forgot to get limes so I used lemons instead. I also made a blueberry-ginger sauce for topping.

It is delicious. The best vegan cheesecake so far. However, none of them have been quite dense enough. This one has a 1:3 ratio of silken tofu to vegan cream cheese and I'm thinking of starting to experiment and use more cream cheese than tofu. Experimenting seems scary, though! We'll see.

Quinoa Puttanesca and Italian Tofu

This quinoa recipe is from Appetite for Reduction and is basically just quinoa in a spicy tomato sauce. There are supposed to be olives in there but obviously I left those little nasties out. I marinated the tofu (Veganomicon recipe) overnight and it was delicious.

I thought this dinner would be kind of boring but it very much exceeded my expectations. The quinoa was really interesting and held up well for leftovers the next day, too.