47 posts tagged “vegetarian”

Well, nothing to say here — just the plain glory of aloo gobi.

This dish normally makes use of bonito flakes to create the broth, but I had none. So I made one from discarded shrimp shells instead (I never throw that stuff away anymore; they go straight in the freezer). Also, I marinated the tofu in soy sauce and toasted sesame seed oil and sautéed them before adding them to the soup, along with noodles, scallions and cilantro.

Apart from making the broth (which was time-consuming, but very simple), this was very simple and easy. Mind you, if I'd try to serve this to Gun (from Tampopo), I'd probably get my arse kicked. So there's an awful lot of room for improvement. But it really is kind of satisfying to eat this with chopsticks, while slurping the soup from the bowl.

Tofu is starting to grow on me. I've never actively disliked it, but it has neither taste nor texture — there's nothing to like or dislike, really. But you can marinate it and add whatever flavor you want to it, and you can sautée it to create a somewhat crispy crust. It's easy to work with. And I realize that there are countless others, much more exciting things that can be done to it.

Had a bit of a mishap with the noodles, mind you. My grip on the lid slipped as I poured the water out, and the noodles followed the water down the sink. Talk about a sinking feeling, seeing them things skidaddling down the drain like that — voilà; dinner's served: Schezuan tofu, but yeah, I decided against the noodles at the last minute. It didn't really create a balanced meal, you see... Not with the tofu. No need for noodles with this meal. Nope. D'oh.

The charred edges look a lot worse than they actually were. Simple, tasty stuff. Puff pastry, tomato paste, onion and garlic. Bake. Done. Nothing very special, but very easy and damn tasty.

Vegetable curry with a sauce from onions, homegrown tomatoes, some leftover, homemade Thai style curry paste, adjusted with some homemade, leftover Indian style curry spice — and whatever veggies we had laying around. This, I figured, would be just an easy, lazy Sunday meal. I figured wrong...

First off, with all these tomatoes going ripe right now, I'm always trying to find a use for 'em. And in one of the few cooking shows I bother watching anymore (Molto Mario) I saw him peel and de-seed tomatoes for a sauce — this would work great for a curry. First off, I used so many tomatoes that they cooled the water down too much, so they didn't get blanched properly. This made peeling them a nightmare. Secondly, it's a de-seeding tomatoes is a horrible mess.

Then there was an awful lot of peeling and chopping, of course. Onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, tomatoes. Took far more time than I expected. And finally of course, there was the prolonged simmering required for this type of a stew. So Sunday dinner was served way late. I really hate screwing up the timing like that.

Still, it was very tasty when it was finally done. And it's also nice to see that it is easy to create curry pastes and dry spice mixes that are far better than anything you can buy in a store. And it's even nice when you can bring them out and use them like this — without using commercial stuff, and be all Semi-Homemade etc.

Whoa, some of these suckers really are striped. It's a wonder, how these things can be done. Makes me wonder what carrots would look like today, sans William — the loyalists marchers in Belfast would have to call themselves the White Men or something...

The tomato season is coming to an end. I wonder what it'll be like, using supermarket tomatoes again. Hopefully, not too bad.

While I'm in no danger of running out of ideas about what to do with them, my enthusiasm for tomatoes has dwindled a bit lately. In the beginning, I couldn't make a simple sandwich without piling on slices of beautiful, sweet, fantastic tomatoes. Now, not so much. I guess I'll have to start looking into how best to preserve these suckers.

This was a very nice soup — well, except for the color. And the taste...

It dawned on me: who the hell makes tomato soup from scratch anymore? I mean, I've never ever tasted, or seen anything except Campbell's. Seriously, I have no idea what a proper, home-made tomato soup is supposed to taste, or look like. When I thaw out the stuff I froze, I hope I'll remember to add some food coloring to it. You eat with your eyes, as they say...

(Oh yeah, that's basil, the green stuff in the soup.)

Chicken marinated in tandoori style spices (mixed some commercial stuff I still have, along with my own curry powder) and grilled them on the Weber, over indirect heat. This was done after I made naan, over a tile, over extremely hot coals.

Aloo mutter isn't as well known as aloo gobi, but this version, I like even better. For this one though, I added carrots also. Worked out quite well, in spite of me being a bit nervous about what the sweetness of the carrots might do to the flavor balance of it all.

And the naan... I'm not sure if my naan is all that authentic anymore, because it's been ages since I've been to a restaurant, and I keep using techniques that I'm learning from The Breadmaker's Apprentice — my reasoning is that some of that fancy-pants French methods for breadmaking can't harm it. I use some of that stuff when making pizza, as well as hamburger buns.

But I'm seriously thinking about doing a really bare-bones, no yeast, just chemical leavener style naan one of these days, thought.

Pasta sauces belong in a sort of a culinary "family" that I think logically, should include other very slowly simmered things like chilies and certain curries. I worship Indian food, and have had a fantastic time exploring it. But I've had a really hard time with chilies. Pasta sauces, well, I've never even bothered trying that. But well, first time for everything.

As embarrassing as it is to admit, what set me off on this trail was an irrational desire to roast bell peppers on the stove. When you have an electric stove top, it's kinda frustrating to see cooks on TV roast bell peppers over their fancy-pants gas cookers. Well, I've got one of them now. And it finally occurred to me that well, lets have a go at that.

I mean, just roasting bell peppers. I had no idea what to do after that point. So I did a few searches and found a few things. Roasted bell peppers, basil, garlic, loads of onions (used my mandolin for that — which I normally avoid in lieu of practicing my knife skills), and who the hell knows what else. It ended up being too sweet, though. I used some apple cider and brown sugar, in addition to a whole roasted garlic clove — and some basil and parm on top, of course. But overall, I'm pleased as punch.

This is a dish I've made before, but this time around, I decided to add some cabbage that we had left over. It was a good idea — one that I'll definitely try again — but in this case, I cooked the cabbage a little too much, and the potatoes a little too little.