Getting our Cooking Groove Back

Cooking Less Meat Again

After three weeks of travel, and not cooking much, I have been back home for a week. Truthfully, for the last few days on the road, I was eating quite a bit of real junk food, including several McDonald's hamburgers. So it feels good to get back to my ongoing experiments cooking with less meat -- or no meat.

Jamaican Curried Tofu

Tofu is really an unfamiliar food for me, and it's taken quite a few experiments to find ways that we might enjoy it. My approach is to view it as a food in itself, not as an imitation of meat, because it's nothing like meat. This week, I tried a recipe for a Jamaican curry using tofu, and it was not bad at all. I was inspired by a blog called From the Comfort of My Bowl, written by Jhanelle Golding, a native of Jamaica who now lives in the US. I was inspired by a recipe called Vegan Jamaican Curry Tofu (Traditional Recipe!) 

The ingredient prep -- I didn't use the Scotch Bonnet pepper, which would have
been true Jamaican, because it would be too hot for us.

I added a few snow peas to the original recipe.

The final dish: tofu, vegetables, and brown rice. Quite enjoyable!

Mushroom Pancakes, Broccolini, and Gochujang Sauce

What's new here is a box of gochujang paste that I found in the supermarket Asian section. I was inspired by several recipes for a gochujang dipping sauce, as well as for some recipes for Korean pancakes. Since I was using up sourdough discard for the batter, I prepared  my normal savory pancake recipe and added lots of green onion and a few mushroom slices for each pancake. I stir-fried broccolini as the vegetable for dipping -- and we also dipped the pancakes. And I improvised a cucumber salad.

Ingredients for dipping sauce:

2 tablespoons gochujang Korean red chili pepper paste

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

1 tablespoon agave nectar

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds

Vegetables: broccolini, chopped green onions, mushrooms.

Mushroom pancakes, stir-fried broccolini, gochujang sauce, and cucumber salad.

Spaghetti Squash with Lemon-Olive Sauce

I don't remember ever cooking spaghetti squash before. Several food writers mentioned that this vegetable may look like spaghetti, but the texture and the taste are not in fact like pasta. I was warned! So I tried to find a recipe that would highlight the squashiness. My source recipe was from Food and Wine Magazine. Using an immersion blender, I emulsified lemon juice, oil, lemon zest, chopped green olives, and scallions, as the recipe suggested. I added some parsley as well. In addition to the garnishes of toasted almonds and feta cheese, I used some sunflower seeds (for part of the almonds) and additional lemon zest and parsley. We enjoyed the resulting dish.

The sauce, the nuts and seeds, the lemon zest and parsley, and the feta cheese.

Spaghetti squash roasting in the oven. The recipe says to boil the squash.
I think boiling squash halves sounds dangerous -- and not as tasty.

Squash: just out of the oven and spooned out of the skin.

The finished dish with a glass of white wine to share with the bloggers at Elizabeth’s weekly blog get together.

Mother's Day by Len: Tortilla Española

I'm not the only cook in the house! For Mother's Day, Len made me a Spanish potato omelet: Tortilla Española. He found a recipe that used lots of onions and lots of olive oil, so it was really delicious.

He flipped the tortilla and slid it back in the pan,
just as it should be done.

Of course we had some wine with the tortilla.

blog post © 2022 mae sander