Soy Curls with rice and broccoli

Back by popular request (well, one person requested that I start posting again)!


Sorry for the crappy cell phone photo! Sometimes the delicious food does not want to wait for the good camera to get out for the party.

Have you heard of soy curls? They are the new faux meat of choice here in Portland and I have really enjoyed trying all the different takes on them around town. I first tried them in a Buffalo "Chicken" sub at the Sweet Hereafter (all vegan bar) and fell in love. My next taste test was at the Double Dragon with the Orange Sesame Soy Curl sandwich. In a Mexican iteration, Los Gorditos allows you to add soy curls to practically any menu item so I had them in Gordito form, which was delicious. The latest soy curl consumption came from Canteen (another all vegan place) in the Southern bowl (see below).


The Southern Bowl and Apple Ginger Greens smoothie from the Canteen.

My husband was walking by the vegan grocery store after work a few weeks ago and picked up a package of soy curls for us. We just finished cooking through the 1lb bag (which lasted about five meals for the two of us) and I am eager to go pick up another package (or twelve). The texture is what I find so amazing about them. They are very substantial and don't break down like tofu can do. They also really do take up whatever flavour you put on them (like tofu is SUPPOSED to do) and don't require several long steps to get a good texture consistency (pressing, then marinating, then cooking it just right), just some rehydration, some sort of sauce, and go. They are wonderful!

Other things we tried with our package of soy curls:
- rehydrating and sautéing them with veggie broth, white wine, and butter, served with rice and vegeteables
- rehydrating with veggie broth, then sautéing with cumin and chili powder for use in fajitas

Ideas that look tasty from other food blogs:
Mongolian Soy Curls
BBQ Soy Curls
Sesame Soy Curls
Thai Soy Curl Pizza
Smokey Soy Curl Chili
And for more ideas, Pinterest seems to have a lot of recipes for these amazing bits of awesome.

Ingredients
warm veggie broth
1/4-1/3 cup of soy curls (for 1 VERY large serving or two normal size servings)
sweet chili sauce

fresh ginger, minced
fresh garlic, minced
broccoli, chopped

rice
water

Method
Start cooking rice in whatever method you choose (I can't live without my rice cooker).

While the rice is cooking, put the soy curls in the veggie broth and allow to rehydrate and marinate.

In a skillet over medium heat, add some olive oil and sauté the garlic and ginger for a few minutes until fragrant. Add the broccoli and some of the veggie broth (about 1/4 cup) from the soy curls. Stir, then cover and steam for about 5 minutes until the broccoli is to the desired doneness. I like it more on the crunchy side than soft. Taste for salt and pepper needs. Remove broccoli from pan.

In the same skillet used for the broccoli (no need to wash it!), add the soy curls with about 1/4 cup of the veggie broth and several glugs of the sweet chili sauce. Sauté over medium high heat until the broth has evaporated and the chili sauce is coated around the soy curls.

Serve soy curls with the rice and broccoli.

Notes
Seriously, get your hands on soy curls. This was a winning dish and I can't wait to get another package for more experimentation!

Orange Tofu with rice and broccoli

We bought a tofu press this week. This one to be exact. It is essentially two plastic cutting boards with screws on two sides to compress the tofu. It is amazing. I looked at the reviews for both this one and the Tofu Xpress and decided to go with the simpler gadget. It took about 20 minutes to press the block of tofu down to dense deliciousness. For the first go with the press, I decided to use the resulting tofu in an orange sauce over rice with broccoli. I used a combination of three recipes for the orange sauce (Food52, Vegetarian Ventures, and the PPK).

Ingredients
1 16 oz package extra firm tofu, drained and pressed
olive oil

zest from 1 orange
juice from two oranges
2 - 4 T rice wine vinegar (I think the higher amount balances out the sweet and salty well)
1 T maple syrup
1 - 2 T soy sauce
2 inch chopped fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic
Sriracha (or a fresh chili, or red chili flakes)
1 T cornstarch

rice
water

1 head broccoli
olive oil
salt
pepper

green onions, chopped

Method
Press tofu using whatever device you fancy until it is firm, dense, and dry. It took about 20 minutes with our new gadget.

Cook rice in whatever way you fancy. We have a cheapo rice cooker and I'm not sure how I cooked rice without it.

Preheat oven or toaster oven to 400F. Chop broccoli into pieces and coat with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Put on a small pan in a single layer and place in the oven. Cook for about 15 minutes until the florets are a bit burnt and the stalk is tender.

While the tofu is pressing, rice is steaming, and broccoli is roasting, whisk together all the ingredients for the sauce in a medium bowl. Taste and adjust sauce, although not too much, the character changes a bit when it is heated. Make sure there are no clumps from the cornstarch.

When tofu is done pressing, cut into slices. Heat some olive oil in a cast iron pan over medium heat and add slices. Cook on each side until crispy, about 10 minutes all together.

Once the tofu goes into the pan, add the sauce to a large high sided skillet. Heat the sauce over medium heat until it starts to bubble and thicken and turn off the heat. Stir every so often to keep the sauce from becoming too stiff. Add the broccoli and tofu to the sauce when they are done and stir to coat. Serve over rice with fresh green onions.


Notes
We both loved the texture of the tofu after pressing it and the sauce was delicious. The tofu was chewy and not mushy at all. I am a tofu press convert. I cut the tofu into cubes and because I didn't marinate the tofu before cooking, the tofu was a bit bland in the middle. I suggest cutting thin slabs for this dish or marinating in the sauce before cooking. I am eating the leftovers for lunch tomorrow and perhaps the sauce will soak in by then.

Vegetable Bowl

As the day was winding down at work today, I was trying to decide what to make for dinner. We had several vegetables near the end of their lives and I knew that we had a lot of lentils and rice in the pantry. Thus the vegetable bowl with lentils and rice was born!

Serves: 2 (with about 1 cup leftover lentils, and 1 cup leftover vegetables)

Ingredients
Lentils
1/3 - 1/2 cup brown lentils
1+ cups water
cumin
chipotle powder
turmeric
smoked paprika
salt
pepper

Rice
1 "cup" rice
1.5 "cup" water
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds

Vegetables
1/2 medium butternut squash
3 stalks broccoli
1/2 onion
4 stalks rainbow chard
olive oil
salt
pepper
basil
rosemary


Method
Lentils
Measure and rinse lentils. Place in a small saucepan and add water and spices. Cover and bring to a boil. Turn to a medium simmer and stir every so often to prevent sticking. Cook until the lentils are tender, about 30 minutes.

Rice
Using the "cup" measuring device from your rice cooker, measure and rinse rice. Put rice in rice cooker with the water and cumin seeds. My very simple cooker has one setting, but if you have a fancy pants cooker, you might want to set it specifically to the type of rice you are using. Cook until rice is done.

Vegetables
Preheat oven to 400F.

Peel and cut butternut squash into 2 cm pieces. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Cut broccoli into 4 cm long pieces, place on prepared baking sheet. Chop the onion into large pieces and place on baking sheet. Any other "roastable" vegetable can be used here - carrots, beets, potatoes, etc. Drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, basil, rosemary, and anything else you think would be tasty. Stir vegetables to coat.

Place in oven, and bake for about 25 minutes or until tender, flipping vegetables over halfway through. You can also bake the remainder of the butternut squash at this time, but if you leave it in large pieces, it will have to bake for longer.

While the vegetables are in the oven, chop chard into 2 cm pieces. Sauté in a cast iron pan with olive oil, salt, and pepper, until wilted.

Grab a bowl, put in a scoop of rice, a ladle full of lentils, half the roasted vegetables, and half the chard. Repeat with second bowl.


Notes
This was delicious. I was reminded that we need to do vegetable medley dinners more often. We get a lot of produce with our food box delivery and I hate seeing portions of it go to waste each week. My husband was a big fan of this meal.

Other ideas for combinations:
Quinoa, beets, sweet potato, spinach
Quinoa, kale, carrots, potatoes
Rice, kidney beans, onion, carrots, jalapeno, cilantro, avocado
Rice, white beans, cabbage, onion, thyme
Millet, chickpeas, carrots, chard, onion (inspired by Vegan Richa)
.
.
.
The possibilities are endless!

Rice Noodles with Peanut Sauce

Today, I was working from home because we needed to take our kitty to the vet. Nothing major, but she is 20 years old and needs a check up every so often.

I'm almost convinced that this cat is going to live forever.


Taken with my Rolleiflex camera. I just needed to adjust the focus a biiiiit more.

Anyway, so both my husband and I were at home today, he is trying to get over sickness and I was trying to work in a quiet environment. I looked at the clock and realised that we hadn't had lunch yet and it was almost time to go to the vet. I looked through our fridge and decided on rice noodles with peanut sauce. I have been craving Thai food lately and none of the "Thai" restaurants around here are cutting it. While this isn't even remotely authentic, it fulfilled a bit of my noodle craving.

Ingredients
rice noodles
vegetables (I used onion, garlic, carrot, broccoli)

peanut butter
sriracha sauce
hoisin/oyster/black bean/other dark sauce to give a little umami taste
hot water, to blend

Method
Boil enough water to cover the rice noodles. When the water is boiling, add the noodles and cover for 5 - 8 minutes until almost done.

In a wok or frying pan, saute onion and garlic with olive oil until softened. Add carrots and broccoli (and whatever other vegetables you want, unless it is a green - spinach, kale, etc - add that at the very end) and any water to make it not stick to the bottom and to steam the vegetables a bit.

While the vegetables are cooking, make the peanut sauce. I used about 1/4 cup of chunky peanut butter with a few squirts of sriracha and a few drops of oyster sauce, and added enough hot water to make a thin, whiskable sauce.

When the noodles are almost done, add to the pan with the vegetables. Add the peanut sauce and stir until everything is coated. Cook everything together until the noodles and vegetables are the desired tenderness. Add water to prevent too much sticking.


Notes
Both of us thought this was good. I didn't think it was "good" food, but it was exactly what I wanted, so it was great and quick.

What I ate Wednesday

I thought I would document what I ate today, for funsies.

Breakfast, part 1: Strawberry, banana, raspberry, almond smoothie

After drinking my smoothie, right as I was getting up to school, I could feel my blood sugar drop and I needed something a bit more substantial to eat.

Breakfast, part 2: Everything bagel with hummus and sriracha

Lunch, after eating some dill pickle chips and pumpkin ice cream (not shown)

Carrot sticks, cashews, almonds, hazelnuts, banana chips, pear, chocolate, mini bell peppers stuffed with cashew cheese

Dinner: Rice noodles, broccoli, tofu, peanut sauce

Notes
This is a typical day of food I eat. I also had some Teeccino Chai herbal coffee today and of course a lot of water.

Dinner Club: Beet Burgers, Curry Fries, Blueberry Cobbler

Tonight we had another dinner club with our friend Trevor. He has mentioned several times that he really enjoys beets, but doesn't eat them enough. When I saw the recipe for beet burgers from the PPK website, I knew I had to make them for him.



The recipe for the beet burgers is from the PPK website. The only deviation I added was about 1 tablespoon of cumin powder. I decided to do the suggested pairing with the baked curry fries, although my curry powder was very sweet and I almost thought I had used cinnamon rather than curry powder on the fries. These were very good, the technique of boiling the potatoes first before baking is involved, but it resulted in a good texture for the fries. I put too many fries on my baking sheet so they did not crisp up enough.

For the cobbler, I looked at the recipe from Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker for blueberry cobbler and adapted the following to use up our 1.5 pints of fresh blueberries from our food delivery.

Blueberry Cobbler for the Slow Cooker
Ingredients
1.5 pints fresh blueberries
1/4 cup or less sugar
1 T cornstarch

1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup or less sugar
1/4 cup oil or softened butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method
In a 3.5 qt slow cooker (you can also use the same amount in a 1.5 qt slow cooker), add the blueberries, sugar, and cornstarch. Mix to coat. In a bowl mix the oats, sugar, oil, and cinnamon. Spread over the top of the blueberries. Cook on high for about 1.5 hours or until the top is crispy. Serve with Coconut Bliss Ice Cream.




Notes
Everyone agreed, this was one of the best things we have eaten in a while. My husband and Trevor both eat meat and they were very pleased with the tastiness of the patty. I had my husband eat some of the patty dough before he cooked it up and he said that not only does it look like meat, it tasted a bit like ground beef as well. So very tasty. The cobbler was good as well, but the real star was the beet burger.

Tofu, broccoli, mushroom stir fry

For my birthday last year, my sister bought me a cast iron wok. We have recently started using it more and I absolutely love it. It is big, heavy, and amazing. The temperature gradient created from where it sits on the stove top to sides is gradual, so you can cook items of differing densities in the separate parts of the wok.





Ingredients
Tofu - we have started getting tofu from our local health food store. They sell it out of a plastic food bucket and it is the best tofu I have ever had. You don't really need to spice it up because it tastes really good on its own.
broccoli
mushrooms
minced garlic
minced ginger - I feel a little sleazy using this out of jar instead of fresh, but it is really easy
soy sauce
rice vinegar
red pepper flakes
splash or two of water
sesame seeds for garnish

rice


Method
Heat a wok or other skillet over medium heat, add a tablespoon of sunflower or peanut oil and allow to heat through. Add garlic, stir for about 30 seconds. Add cubed tofu, stir and allow to brown for a few minutes. Add broccoli, soy sauce, vinegar, and red pepper flakes. In order to cook the broccoli to the right consistency, I added a bit of water and covered the mixture with a lid, allow to cook for a few minutes until mostly done. Add mushrooms and ginger. Cook until everything is the desired tenderness. I like to put the broccoli on the bottom of the wok to cook in the juices, and the tofu up the sides. Serve with rice and sprinkle with sesame seeds.


Notes
This was tasty. I really, really like the tofu a lot. I don't think I have ever proclaimed love for tofu before, but this stuff is amazing. I don't even press it, the consistency is already firm enough.