Red Curry Carrot Soup, Fried Rice

Fantastic dinner featuring a carrot soup recipe from 101 cookbooks.

• carrot soup (recipe from 101 cookbooks) 
• fried rice with black vinegar and green peas
• slow-baked chili tofu (something like this)
• cucumber-cashew salad (recipe adapted from the asian vegan kitchen)

Simple Carrot Soup with Red Curry Paste
(from 101 cookbooks)

Ingredients
2 tablespoons extra-virgin coconut oil
1 onion, chopped
scant 1 tablespoon red curry paste, or to taste
2 pounds carrots, peeled and chopped - 1/2-inch chunks
1 14-ounce can full-fat coconut milk
1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt, or to taste
1 1/2 cups / 360 ml of water, or to cover
1 lemon or lime

Instructions
In a large soup pan over medium-high heat add the oil and onion. Stir until the onions are well-coated, and allow to saute until translucent, a few minutes. Stir in the curry paste, and then the carrots. Allow to cook another minute or two, and then add the coconut milk, salt, and water, adding more water to cover if needed. Allow to simmer until the carrots are tender, 10 - 15 minutes, and then puree using a blender or hand blender until the soup is completely silky smooth. This next part is important (with any soup) - make any needed adjustments. Add more water if the consistency needs to be thinned out a bit. After that taste for salt, adding more if needed. And add lemon or lime juice at the end. Serves 4.

***

Cucumber-Cashew Salad, Slow-Baked Chili Tofu, Fried Rice

Kind of Macro

sweet potato hash browns
steamed broccoli
miso-tahini sauce
baked tofu (something like this)

This is how we breakfast / picnic

Sometimes the best food needs no recipes.

Coffee, sprouted rye bread from Trader Joe's and intense rye bread with coriander seed from Mediterranean Best Foods, homemade roasted red pepper hummus, earth balance, tomato, red onion, avocado, lemon, and almond-stuffed Meski olives from Trader Joe's

 Garlicky succotash with edamame instead of lima beans, sloppy joes made with cauliflower-walnut slop, quick-pickled shallots

Cornmeal-battered and fried pickle spears with caper-dill mayo, watermelon, salad, sloppy joe round 2

Soondubu Jjigae (sort of)

This soup had marvelous sour, spicy, and umami flavors.

Soft Tofu Stew (Soondubu Jjigae)
(adapted from gumshoe gastronomy)

Ingredients
For the stock:
1 sheet of dried kelp
3 dried shitake mushrooms
½ onion, quartered
6 cups water
*
For the sauce:
2 tsp sesame oil
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp minced ginger
1 TB chili-garlic paste
2 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp honey or agave
1 Tbsp liquid from kimchi jar
*
For the stew:
1 Tbsp olive oil
6 shitake mushrooms, sliced
1/4 c asian-style pickles (I used these) or kimchi, chopped
3 c shredded cabbage
1/3 lb soft or silken tofu
Salt, to taste

Instructions
1. Combine all stock ingredients in a large pot and bring to a boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Mix together all sauce ingredients and set aside.
2. Heat the oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and sauté for a few minutes until the mushrooms release their liquid. Stir in the sauce and sauté for a few seconds until bubbling. Stir in the broth and bring to a boil. Add the remaining veggies and cook until cabbage wilts.
3. Drop the tofu into the stew in one block. Gently break up the tofu as you stir it into the sauce (don’t crumble it in because the stew should be chunky and the tofu is very delicate). Continue to boil until the veggies are soft.
4. Taste for salt. Serve with white or brown rice and garnishes.

Chili Roasted Eggplant

I made this for my mom when I was visiting last month--it's really simple (and customizable), but feels strangely fancy.

The basics: you need something salty and something oily for sure, plus ideally something sour, something spicy, and (for maximum broil action) something sweet.

Oily: canola (plus optional: a little bit of sesame oil)
Salty: tamari (or: miso paste, rich veg stock, etc)
Sour: rice vinegar (and/or: lime juice, other vinegars)
Spicy: sriracha or chili-garlic sauce (etc)
Sweet: pinch of sugar or agave
Also: garlic powder (and/or: minced garlic, minced ginger, onion powder, sesame seeds... wasabi?)

As in a vinaigrette, oil should be the largest portion, balanced out (to taste) by salty and sour. And everything else to taste. This is how I think about recipes these days, which may be one of the many reasons this blog has been languishing. I've been cooking really intuitively--and not precisely. I mean, this recipe depends on how big your eggplant is!

But here's the general game plan: preheat oven to 375. Slice your eggplant into thin (1/4-in) slices. Mix together your sauce. Get a baking sheet and a piece of parchment paper. Brush both sides of the eggplant with your sauce and then spread them out on the parchment paper. Bake for about 20 min, then check them. At some point you'll want to re-brush the eggplant and flip them over. But basically you are just watching to make sure the slices are still wet with sauce, and then you are watching to see when they are brown and melty (i.e., no longer raw looking).

Garnish with great things like cilantro, sesame seeds, and scallions. Goes great on/with: sandwiches, noodles, tapas, rice...

Frittata Waffle

Following on the heels of the chocolate beer waffle and the hash brown waffle (kartwoffel), here's a frittata waffle--tofu and chickpea flour base, turmeric, garlic, kalamata olives...

Harissa Split Pea Soup

Just a variation on the marvelous harissa split pea soup. No mushrooms here, so a simpler base flavor, dressed up with olive oil, smoked paprika, and steamed kale.