Vegan chorizo and potato tacos

SO GOOD!

With homemade vegan chorizo, and perfect fried potatoes (parcooked with vinegar) -- all from Serious Eats.

Cauliflower inarizushi

Dinner: 'inarizushi' filled with cauliflower rice, plus dolmades, over salad greens.

The cauliflower rice was half a cauliflower, pulsed in the food processor, plus one carrot, likewise, plus sesame seeds, salt and liquid from the can of inari wrappers. The dolmades were from a can, and were a sort of jokey last minute addition to fill out this meal.

I read that there are various options with inarizushi: you can use plain rice, sushi rice or sweet rice (okay, cauliflower) like I did here. I think I might prefer sushi seasoning over the sweet version.

Also, it should be noted that Inari herself, as the goddess of rice, would be very unhappy with these cauliflower imposters. I'm not sure how foxes would feel about them.

Catchup

Good things I ate (or drank) in the second half of 2014:

From Vedge, Broccoli Rabe Philly Style (seriously bitter homegrown broccoli rabe [which I cut with gai lan to tone it down a bit], roasted red capsicum, porcini mayo)

 Pizza and roasted cauliflower at Pizza Domenica in New Orleans:

 Birthday/journal acceptance cake (Chocolate/root beer):

Asparagus pizza:

Enchiladas Especiales Tacuba style (wish I'd had poblanos; made do with green chillies and used rehydrated yuba sticks as chicken, and cashew cheese)

Pasta with a pureed caramelized onion / nutritional yeast sauce and cubed smoked tofu:

Pumpkin and pecan pie(s):

Home brewed saison:

Pok Pok

This was a great dinner courtesy of Pok Pok. Maybe I should say 'inspired by', because I did a lot of veganizing and lazifying to the very precise recipes.

It's a cucumber salad in the style of papaya salad, with coconut rice and grilled eggplant salad. We also had (not pictured) some flavored tofu with this -- I was inspired by the recipe for Khao Man Som Tam (papaya salad with coconut rice and sweet pork). The combination of the cucumber salad, rice and sweet tofu was superb -- I kept making myself perfect little bites with a bit of each on my fork. The coconut rice in particular was the best version I have ever made: the secret is coconut cream instead of milk, and a bit of sugar. (Who'd have thought adding extra fat and sugar would make something taste better?)

For veganizing, I replaced fish sauce and dried shrimp with a healthy dose of toasted and ground tua nao. I didn't have a mortar and pestle for the cucumber salad, so I just bashed everything a bit in a bowl.

Every Grain of Rice

I love this cookbook by Fuschia Dunlop. Previously I have found Chinese cooking to be a bit intimidating, but these recipes are really simple and come together very quickly. The book also includes an excellent glossary of ingredients, with pictures, to make shopping for some of the more obscure ingredients much easier.

We've had some excellent dinners from this book. The standout recipe so far is a very simple one: you cook greens (e.g. gai lan or choy sum) briefly in salted water with a little oil, so that they are still somewhat crisp. You drain and shake them dry, then put them in your serving bowl. You top them with finely chopped ginger and spring onions. Then you heat up a few tablespoons of oil until they are really hot, and pour the oil over the veggies. Then you add a mixture of half soy sauce and half hot water. Done!

Here you see: (clockwise from top left) Chinese chive (chickpea) omelet; spicy firm tofu with garlic stems; spinach with chilli and fermented tofu; smacked cucumber in garlicky sauce. The second picture shows vegetarian 'gong pao chicken' (though I used tofu rather than mushrooms); the simple greens recipe mentioned above; green beans with black bean and chilli; vegetarian clay bowl 'chicken'. The last picture is ma po dou fu (vegetarian version), but with the tofu crumbled rather than cubed.

As you can see, we had a few fancy meals with lots of dishes, because I really wanted to try everything. But the great thing about these recipes is that you can actually make an interesting and satisfying meal quickly and easily. I threw the ma po dou fu recipe together one night when we were starving. It took less than 10 minutes. It was superb.

The only bad thing I can say about this cookbook is that it has the worst index I have ever seen. Like, I think you would actually have to go out of your way to make an index this bad.

Garden salads

I'm not really sure why I planted 12 lettuce plants. We've gone from eating salad maybe once a week, to having shopping bags full of lettuce in the fridge and resorting to lettuce soup to get rid of the stuff.

We have had some nice salads though. The first is lettuce, rocket (leaves and flowers), baby broad (fava) beans, golden beetroot, and mulberries. The second is lettuce, rocket, roasted golden beetroot, and homemade tofu misozuke. I really love that almost all of these ingredients came from the garden.

Vegan poached egg

I used this recipe, and even though it kind of seemed like a silly thing to make, it ended up being tasty and fun to eat.

I added a little black salt to both the white and yolk mixtures. I also added a few drops of soy sauce and Maggi sauce for a little extra umami in the yolk. I was really pleasantly surprised by the airiness of the white.

Fig and leek pizza

We had pizza topped with slices of fresh fig, sauteed leek, and walnuts on top of a blue cheese-inspired cashew sauce. This was good. I also made another one with slices of preserved lemon, which made lemon-fiend R very happy.

The sauce was about 1/4 cup raw cashews, blended with water to a creamy consistency, plus nutritional yeast, lemon juice, salt, and two cubes of stinky tofu. It had a nice funk/pungency to taste, but in the context of the pizza it didn't stand out too much, just complemented the rest of the flavours.

Tofu

I know this looks like any other chunk of fried tofu.

But I made it myself, from dried soy beans!

It was nice. I think I could taste the love. (I used the recipe in Kansha, which I borrowed from the library, and which I will certainly borrow again.)

Smoking

I got a stovetop smoker for my birthday. Since then we've been eating lots of smoked things. Probably my favourite things so far have been smoked tofu and tempeh. Here's the smoker packed full of veggie protein (marinated pressed tofu, tempeh, and two homemade seitan sausages).

For the tofu, I press it overnight and then marinate it for a day in soy sauce with a bit of maple syrup and sesame oil. Once it has been smoked for 30 minutes, it's ready to be sliced thinly for sandwiches. The tempeh just goes in plain -- once smoked, it's ready to be cooked however you like. I like to slice it thinly and pan fry, adding flavourings (soy sauce plus whatever other things) at the end for a glaze.

Other things I've smoked so far: cherry tomatoes (10 minutes), garlic, potatoes (45 minutes from raw to cooked -- too long; better to parcook them before smoking), young coconut, coconut flakes (20 minutes), lemon. The young coconut was a bit odd -- I ended up pureeing it and making a smoky ice cream which was pretty good. The coconut flakes were great as a bacon-y element in a salad. The smoked lemon I didn't know quite what to do with, so it is sitting in the freezer waiting for inspiration to strike.

Mapo doufu

I hate it when Chinese restaurant menus have a tiny vegetarian section, with say, fried rice as the most exciting option, and then they have a whole tofu section which is decidedly nonvegetarian. The Szechuan dish mapo doufu is one of those that I've always wanted to try, and this week I made a version with crumbled tempeh in place of the meat. It was great.

I used this recipe, following the suggestion of one of the commenters to reduce the oil by omitting the chili oil, and infusing the 1/4 cup of oil with both chili and szechuan pepper. (I think that worked okay, but next time I might use the chili oil. I didn't find my chili infusion hot enough.) I also added a bit more water because the tempeh seemed to soak up a lot of liquid.

Pomegranate tofu, lemony zucchini

A nice summery dinner courtesy of the Moosewood Cooking for Health cookbook: pomegranate glazed tofu, and sauteed grated zucchini with lemon and fried breadcrumbs. I liked the tofu technique: brown the tofu, then add the 'marinade' to the pan and simmer until it turns into a glaze.

(Alongside, we had some kind of blah couscous of my own invention. Luckily the tofu and zucchini made up for it.)

Rosemary and basil

So here we are in the middle of winter in Perth, and I find myself obsessed with basil and rosemary. Luckily winter in Perth is sort of a joke, compared to Massachusetts (a typical winter day time temperature here is 18C or 64F) so I actually still have basil growing in the garden.

And as for rosemary, many of our neighbours have rosemary hedges in their front yards. I don't feel bad about grabbing a few sprigs here and there while walking the dog.

So this is how we ended up eating some pretty summery looking meals this week. Here you see beans with pesto and cherry tomatoes, green beans and mushrooms, and baked polenta 'fries'. (The polenta was pretty great -- I made it quite cheesy-tasting with miso and nutritional yeast.)

And here is baked eggplant with a quick tomato sauce and pesto, stir fried cabbage with lemon and pepper, a quick focaccia topped with rosemary, and rosemary-roasted tofu cubes (from Vegan Soul Kitchen). The tofu was great -- the baking technique is really cool. The tofu cubes puff up and get crisp on the outside.