New Apartment, New Favorites!

Sorry to be SO BEHIND! Seeing the baked tofu post has inspired me, though--not only to bake tofu of my own, but to put up a few recipes I've come to love. My new apartment has a tiny (but truly lovable) kitchen, so these are all things that take relatively few dishes and not too much space, but are delicious when they're done. (Photos to follow soon, now that I have a new camera.)

--Mollie Katzen's Farfalle with Arugula Gremolata, Gorgonzola, and Walnuts (posted here: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=531928): I upped the amount of the gremolata but kept everything else just as it was, and was awarded with a delicious, filling, and unusual pasta dish.
--Roasted butternut squash and shallots. Cut into small pieces, toss with a splash of olive oil and some salt and pepper, and roast at 450 degrees. Time depends a lot on size--I overroasted mine a bit, and found that made them even creamier and better.
--Lentil Stew with Spinach & Potatoes (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Lentil-Stew-with-Spinach-and-Potatoes-349). Simple, quick, and yummy. I top each bowl with an extra splash of lemon juice and some fresh pepper.
--Cranberry Walnut Pumpkin Bread (http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cranberry-Walnut-Pumpkin-Bread-108606). I subbed apple sauce for most of the butter, since there's a lot in there, but man, this bread tastes good. After the first loaf, my roommate made it clear that the rest of the canned pumpkin should be made into another loaf, ASAP.

That's all for now! Looking forward to making some tofu & dal--

Easy Baked Tofu

These two sauces make great baked tofu!
I already posted here about using jarred Indian sauces for making a quick tofu dinner. But a couple nights ago I found that by diluting the jarred sauce with a little water (if necessary), it made a great sauce for coating tofu before baking. I cut two 1-pound blocks of extra firm tofu crosswise into 12 slabs each and dipped the slices from one pound into the diluted Indian sauce and used the LaChoy Garlic Ginger sauce (undiluted) for the other. I fit all the slices onto one baking sheet and baked them at 400 for 20 minutes, turned the pieces over, and popped them back in the oven for another 10 minutes. Delicious!!! I think I liked the leftovers even more -- they make great sandwiches and are delicious eaten just as is. So easy, so good. And I love getting 2 full pounds of tofu on one baking sheet. You could also cut thicker slabs or cubes, or triangles, or any shape you want.

Garlic Ginger Tofu (left) and Madras Curry Tofu (right)

I can get 2 pounds of tofu from each bottle of the LaChoy sauce and probably about 4 pounds (more?) from each bottle of the Pataki sauce -- and both sauces keep a long time in the fridge. Now I'm on the lookout for other prepared sauces for quick meals. Let me know if you've tried any that you like!

Berkeley Bowl, fresh turmeric and a great soup

I was just visiting J in Berkeley and because she knows what I like, she took me to the newly opened Berkeley Bowl. Wow! Everything you could imagine in a grocery store, and more. At first I was dazzled by the intensity of the colors.

I wanted to bring home some of everything, but that was a little impractical with my carry-on luggage. So I settled for 2 colors of quinoa that I hadn't seen before, and some fresh turmeric.

I got yellow, of course (what's the point of white?). I've always thought of turmeric as a powder, but never considered where it came from. Turns out it's related to ginger. And fresh turmeric is an adventure in tasting that you will never get from the powder! (Think of the difference between fresh and dried basil.)
Turmeric appears as a stubby little thing that looks like ginger. Peel it and an Illini orange flesh appears. It's a really intense color, so beautiful! I shredded it in the finest grater I have and was relieved to find that, unlike ginger, it is not at all stringy. When I took a taste, it gave a tingly kick, kind of like ginger, but milder, more citrusy and only a hint of what dried turmeric tastes like. So delicious! Of course, I hadn't thought to read about it before I used it, I just relied on the old rule of thumb to gauge my measurements -- about 3x as much fresh as dried. It was subtle in the soup, but definitely present. Next time I'll use more ... if I can find fresh turmeric in town!
Here's the recipe for the soup. I have always called it Ethiopian Soup because I made it in imitation of J and V's favorite dish at the Blue Nile restaurant in Ann Arbor. It's a comfort soup with a pleasant surprise from the fresh turmeric.

Ethiopian Soup

1 Tbs vegetable oil
2 medium onions, chopped
2 medium carrots, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
8 cups water
1-1/2 cups yellow split peas (not green split peas -- they taste very different!)
2 medium potatoes, in 1/2” cubes
2 tsp vegetable broth powder (or vegetable bouillon cubes)
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp salt (to taste)
1 tsp dried turmeric or 1+ Tbsp fresh turmeric, finely grated

1. In a large soup pot, heat oil over medium high heat. Add onions and carrots and saute, stirring frequently, until they begin to turn brown. Add the garlic and heat for a minute longer.
2. Add the water, yellow split peas, and potatoes. Bring to a low boil and skim off the foam that rises. Add the remaining ingredients.
3. Reduce heat to medium, cover (with just a little bit uncovered) and simmer, stirring every now and then, for about 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Soup is ready when peas are getting mushy and broth thickens. (You will need to add water to reheat the leftovers.)

And if you'd like to read more about fresh turmeric, I found this article in the New York Times. Note the date -- it was published the day after 9/11.

Finally updating!

After months and months of negligence I am finally updating the blog! I've been living on my own now and there are a few things I've really liked making:

• Quinoa and almond muffins from Veganomicon - These were great when I brought them to a potluck. I made a batch of them early on in the school year and have kept them in the freezer to stick in my lunch whenever it doesn't have quite enough food. I've started getting requests to bring them places!
• Mung bean daal using a recipe from one of Madhur Jaffrey's books - It is ridiculously easy, requires no chopping, and is completely delicious. I've used it as a spread on tortillas.
• Red lentil and quinoa cutlets - These I made on my birthday and loved, loved, loved them. They take a while because you have to boil the lentils and quinoa, wait for it to cool, and then bake, but they were so worth it. I will be making a double or triple recipe next time and freezing them so I can eat them forever. I'm also planning on making these for Thanksgiving this year, with some of my mom's gravy!

And, the biggest discovery:

Last night I decided to make some bourekas, since I'd gone to a potluck a couple weeks ago where someone brought the most delicious homemade bourekas. I was looking for a mushroom recipe, and I came across this recipe. I didn't think much of it, until I sent my sister the link so she could re-create their awesomeness and took a good look at the URL. I know the person who wrote the recipe! I was so excited about it that it inspired me to update. I have been checking out the rest of the recipes here and am hoping to use some for some more Jewish recipes sometime.

All for now! I'll hopefully have more updates soon.

101 Salads

The Minimalist column in the New York Times this week features 101 Simple Salads for the Season. V pasted them into a Word document and deleted the very few that had meat -- I'm sure she'll email it to you if you ask her. We've tried a few and so far, DELICIOUS! All are easy and fresh, and most are a tad unusual. Definitely worth a look.

Major kitchen upgrade & some Indian food

I can't seem to manage to take photos of any food (I guess we just eat it too fast)...  So instead, I will show you my very exciting new kitchen.  But I think to fully appreciate it, you have to know what my old kitchen looked like.   So here goes...

Old kitchen:

As you can see, the only counter space is on the little island there that we bought.  We had 3 burners on the stove (who has only 3 burners?).  The oven wasn't big enough to fit a large cookie sheet.  The refrigerator is 3/4 size.  And the sink is kind of small too.  But it worked.  And I did a lot of cooking anyway.

But now, I have this lovely kitchen. With a DISHWASHER, and a relative abundance of counter space, and a large sink, and an oven that could probably fit 4 big cookie sheets.  Plus many new gadgets, pots, knife block:

And so, what have I been up to in this new kitchen?  

Well last night I adapted a Manjula's Kitchen recipe to make my own low-fat vegan zucchini koftas.  (Her recipe is deep-fried and cooked with cabbage rather than zucchini.)  They were delicious.  I highly recommend them.

Here's how it works:

Koftas

2 cups shredded zucchini

1 cup besan (chickpea/gram) flour

1 tbsp ww flour

2 tsp chopped cilantro

1 tsp shredded ginger

1 green chili pepper

1/2 tsp cumin seed

1 tsp salt

TO fry:

canola oil

1/2 tsp mustard seed

1 tbsp sesame seed

Set up your steaming basket, bring water to a boil.  THEN, mix kofta ingredients together to form a soft dough, and drop the dough into the steamer by the tablespoon-full.  (If you let the batter sit too long, the dough gets soggy and you will need to add more besan flour.)  Cover the pot and steam on medium-low heat for 15-20 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the dumpling comes clean.

Then remove dumplings from pot.  Heat canola oil for frying in a skillet.  Once hot, add the mustard and sesame seeds and stir fry for 30 seconds or so.  Add the kofta to the skillet.  Fry for a few minutes until golden.

Gravy

3 medium tomatoes or 1 can 15 oz of tomatoes

1 tbsp or so of ginger (or 1/2 inch minced)

1 chili pepper

canola oil for frying

pinch asfetida (hing)

1 tsp cumin seed

1 tbsp besan/gram/chickpea flour

1 tbsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp turmeric

1/2 tsp paprika

2 tbsp (soy) yogurt

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups water

1 tsp sugar (if using unsweetened yogurt--soy yogurt is usually a bit sweet, so I omitted this)

2 tbsp cilantro chopped

NOTE: if you don't have asfetida, you could try to substitute 1-2 cloves of garlic and 1/2 an onion or so, panfried before adding the tomato mixture.  You may want to also slightly reduce the coriander in this case. 

In a blender, puree the tomato, ginger, and chili.  Heat oil and pan fry the asfetida, cumin, and besan for a minute or two, until fragrant and golden.  Add tomato mixture, coriander, turmeric, paprika, and cook until mixture reduces by half.  Add yogurt.  Cook another 2 minutes.  Add 1 1/2 cups of water, and salt.  Bring to a boil, reduce heat to medium/low, and cook for several minutes until thick and reduced.  Add sugar to taste.

Add kofta dumplings to the gravy and let simmer for 5 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Add cilantro.  Serve with yogurt and rice or chapati.  (We made chapati.)

And for dessert?  This low-fat chocolate beet cake, because we got beets in our farm share and neither Josh nor I are crazy for them.  This wasn't the best cake ever, but it hit the spot.  Next time I would either add more sugar or mix in some chocolate chips.  

Cauliflower hummus

Yum! This was really good -- lighter tasting than regular hummus, but flavorful and satisfying. The recipe is on page 68 of Veganomicon. I'll definitely make this again.

I made a few changes to the recipe. First, I roasted the cauliflower and used half as much cauliflower as called for (that's all I had); it fit perfectly on the little pan that goes in the toaster oven. I bet this would be good with the full amount of cauliflower, but it might take more seasoning than the recipe calls for (I didn't adjust that down at all).
The other change I made was to substitute cilantro for the parsley. I've made hummus with parsley before and it's delicious, but I didn't have any and I love cilantro. So there you go -- it was really good in this dish!
Here it is with all the fixings. We dipped the veggies in it, too.

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