Vegamofo: Fusion food!

Yet another awesome home run for Joni w/ Vegan Fusion Kitchen this might be one of my new favourite books so what better way to christen it then with today's (yesterdays?) Veganmofo fusion challenge.

I made the fantastic sweet chili grilled tofu and bok choy sandwich with has a variety of tasty compotents included marinated sweet chili grilled tofu with it's super simple sweet chili sauce. It's not as thick as the store bought thai sweet chili sauce but the flavours are fantastic and you likely already have everything you need.

This sandwich features the grilled tofu (which I will be eating all week! yum!), with some grilled bok choy and a fantastic siracha mayo recipe (which I kinda cheated on and made with veganases like Joni mentions in the intro).

Since my tofu was frozen, I defrosted and marinated it over night then at lunch I just grilled the whole batch at once.

I had a freezer full of brown bread, but this sandwich really deserves baking sour dough rolls.

Joni provides a kick ass recipe to make this from scratch but since I had a near empty bottle of Veganase I took her lazy suggestion and added siracha chili sauce and sesame oil.

I am also going to prep a bunch of my produce to freeze today and hopefully get the dumpling filling ready for tomorrow's post. I am unsure if a preserving vegetable post is that interesting to folks, so let me know otherwise I might just snap a picture for instagram to keep folks updated on what I am Mofoing!

 I feel so behind with the themes! But I love seeing everyone's posts so keep it up.

<3 p="">

Veganmofo: Lunches!

Lunch is an often neglected when it comes to the food enthusiest. Dinner is the main show, brunch has it's fans, breafkast can be impressive and lunch is mandatory.

Well I figured it might be neat to have some lunch worth braggin about.

Today's Lunch is brought to you by YRR and the ever fantastic lunch buddy leftovers!

A few years ago I began toying with the idea of Cooking my way through a cookbook, the book I choose was Yellow Rose Recipes by the Lovely Joanna Vaught. After all it was a kick ass book, with good old fashion belly pleasers. As always life got in the way, and a year later I'm still working on it.

 So here is YRR's Delightful Cajun tofu in bento format

This one was pretty simple, wild rice in the rice cooker, produce box veggies in the steamer and leftover YRR Cajun Tofu.

For storage sakes and added flavour, I went with BBQ dipping sauce kicked up with Blair's Hot sauce (review to come). Simple and Tasty

Veganmofo: YRR Mission Continues: Cajun Crusted Tofu

 

 One of those cookbooks you keep coming back to paired with one of those recipes you always wanted to make but somehow never got around to it.

Yellow Rose Recipe's Cajun Crusted Tofu has been tempting me since it's testing days.

So when I defrosted some homemade tofu and thought, what am I gonna do 2 lbs of tofu YRR had the answer.

First came the Cajun spice, which let me tell you is worth the cover price alone. These were cripy, chewing bundles of delight.

Diner was pretty simple, wild rice, steam carrots/broccoli, Garlic braised cabbage, YRR Cajun Tofu and some amazing Mustard Chow from the Market.

Braised cabbage!

Crispy tofu slices

Halifax Eats: Heartwood's new Bruch

Ok, so I've blogged about Heartwood a few times. But being the last remaining veggie place in Halifax (there is obviously Formosa's in Dartmouth), it's bound to happen.

Recently they've had a few ascetic make overs but best of all they have started serving Brunch! With an all new brunch menu from 10am-3pm on Saturdays and Sundays [Also they are now open Sundays!].

Over all exciting times.

I went with my Dad who was in town and my little brother Zane.

I did the classic tofu scramble platter: comes with fries and toast. Zane opted for the Wild Card Salad, brunch edition, which turned out to feature a tiny bit of everything they serve, so I was jealous. Dad went with the Kamut/Spelt Waffles topped with berry sauce and fruit salad.

Everything was super tasty and we lucked out with our fresh coffee and fresh mango/orange juice as the special of the day along with Banana Walnut Muffins.

As the platters were huge, I lucked out with leftovers so I have breakfast tomorrow too!

Post-Modern Lasagna

As any good post-modern lasagna this challenges traditional lasagna views and standards, and is a little bit twisted.

What you will need:
2 1/2 cups WW spiral (or bow tie) pasta
1 firm block of tofu (frozen then defrosted)
1/2 cups plain or unsweetened soymilk
1 T lemon juice
1 T dried basil
2 t oregano
1 t sea salt
1/2 white onion chopped
5 garlic cloves chopped
3 cups chopped spinach
1 green onion stalk
3 medium sized green garlic shoots
1 jar or recipe for you favorite tomato sauce
salt and pepper to taste

To begin: Preheat oven to 355
Boil your noodles in salted water until almost done or al dente.While the noodle cook, blend your remaining ingredients (except your tomato sauce and greens!) until nearly smooth (if you like a chunkier texture, I won't tell). Dice your greens up and put them aside. Take a small amount of Olive oil to grease your baking dish (The deeper the better!). Once the dish is greased, add in your tofu mixture form the blender and add your chopped greens, stir until combined. Once your noodles are done, drain and rinse in cold running water, shake dry and add to baking dish. Toss to combine/coat with tofu mixture, then poor jar of tomato sauce over top. Shake a few times so the sauce drips on down and add your salt and pepper to the top.

Now pop that sucker in for the next 35 minutes or until nice and bubbly. Let sit for a few minutes before serving, optional nooch or vegan cheese for the top and you are set babies!

Let's get Fancy now

Here is a cheap and easy way to impress your dates, friends and family and to make your everyday vegan food look uber fancy. We've all seen the fancy restaurant portions of little food artistically mounted onto a plate for the "ouuus" and "ahhhs" only to leave you still fucking hungry! So my solution, stack your own food.
Stacking food, especially into little towers of alternating flavours looks impressive and isn't very hard. Best of all, you get enough to eat and hey, this might even get you laid. Now, normally I don't give two rats asses about presentation, I want tasty food and I wanted it now damn it. But if you have people to impress or want to try something new here are a few easy tips.
1)Use edibles to create beds, baskets, mounds or cups to present your food on. Because no one wants to pick out paper or plastic from their food when they sit down to eat. Dress up plain plates with drizzles of sauce, a bed of lettuce or get really fancy and cut carrots and other vegetables into cute little shapes to arrange.

2)For some reason humans are fascinated and excited about food in shapes. Molds are an easy way to do this, now this doesn't mean you should go out and buy all kinds of fancy equipment but the next time you make say a grain/noodle/mashed potatoes try experimenting with what you have available. Spray some oil into a mug, tupper ware contain, old EB container etc and try different shapes it may take some practice but once you master it you can create layers by alternating sauce, vegetables (squash etc works nicely). Rissorto work really well for this.

3) finally the easiest of all is food towers. Which is basically stacking your food on the plate, alternating sauces/toppings with your main dish. This works in a variety of ways, you could do tofu rounds, eggplant rounds, polenta rounds and basically make all your food round or you could use different shapes and for an alternating pattern. Sometimes I find using a variety of shapes gives a dish more appeal for example my breakfast:


Tofu triangles stacked onto a bed of sauteed mushrooms with onion and then repeated until finished surrounded by rounded potatoes. This is a very simple dish, but it gets fancier just because of the way it is plated.

Cooking for the family, backlogged

i am currently recovering from surgery so most of my food looks pretty gastly. But this may give me the chance I needed to get back to posting the older stuff.


This meal actually had my mother eating tofu, which was interesting. I loved it and I think zane did too. Isa's Baked tofu from theppk.com very few modifications, pressed tofu for a few hours and as usually it was frozen first.


Wild mushroom couscous that was sitting in the pantry, along with the some toasted almonds and broccoli in lemon juice with brags. And candied Carrots from Kittee's site.




I also made some brownies, Isa's recipe again although I accidentally used regular tofu instead of silken, so they were a little dense but still good I found. Live and learn.

Lolo's Testing

OMG, OMG, OMG.
Lolo you are amazing!!
Sweat and Sour tofu is so good.
Crispy, tasty and my god, awesome.
So good my mother (pickier than a 4 year old) ate tofu and lots of it!




Go out and buy her cook book the moment it comes out.

Y-U-M

**Sorry all my photos are blurry and the rest was eaten too fast for seconds.