Friday Quickie - Saucy tofu for lunch

When I'm working from home, I like to make a tasty, but quick lunch and this was one from earlier this week, that I thought I'd share with you, because it was really easy and took about 20 minutes to whip up, start to finish.

To make this, you will need:
Cooking oil of your choice
Tofu
Tenderstem or regular broccoli
Veggie stock
Balsamic vinegar
Light soy sauce
Chinese 5 spice powder (or herbs / spices of your choice)
Maple syrup
Black sesame seeds for garnish (optional)
Rice to serve alongside tofu

I used about 1/3rd of a block (about 130g if you're weighing, I didn't - I just eyeballed it) of cauldron tofu. I cut it into squares and then pressed it for a few minutes, while I rinsed and drained some basmati rice.

I got the rice on to cook and then spray a hot frying pan with a bit of oil. Then I fried the tofu for a good 5 minutes on each side, pressing it down with the spatula regularly to get rid of excess water.

I also chopped a handful of tender stem broccoli / broccolini into bite size chunks and boiled it for 3 or 4 minutes.

To make the sauce I mixed a veggie oxo stock cube with about 1/2 cup of water, 2 tsp balsamic vinegar, 1 tsp maple syrup, 1 tbsp of soy sauce and sprinkling of 5 spice powder (add whatever herbs/spices you like).

I added the broccoli to the tofu pan and poured over the sauce. I let it bubble rapidly until it reduced enough to coat the tofu and broccoli. I din't let it go for too long though as I wanted the dish to have plenty of sauce for the rice to soak up.

A sprinkle of black sesame seeds on top just made this look pretty. Some sriracha would've been great but I didn't think of that til it was too late :)

And that's that!

What's your favourite quick lunch?

Hope you have an awesome weekend.
Sal xXx

Heartburntastic!

Happy humpday people!

So earlier this month I went on a trip to Amsterdam with some friends. Really the main point of the trip was to see Maroon 5, which we did on the last night, but we made it into a weekend.

Unfortunately I don't have much good stuff for you because we mainly ate at classy establishments like this....

My travelling companions weren't really into actual food apparently! haha.  We did get falafels from Maoz one day for lunch but I forgot to take a pic - doh! Also I forgot to take a pic of dinner on the first night, but it was a risotto, nice but fairly unspectacular.

This was breakfast on our second day there. No vegan food at all in the little cafe we found, but we were all a bit hungover so I let them get their full English and I asked for mushrooms on toast, no butter (as I'm a baked bean hater). He looked very confused but in the end I got a mushroom toasty!  Weird, but surprisingly not that bad with some ketchup.  They put the mushrooms in raw so they were partially cooked, which I have to say I kind of liked.

But after a weekend of crappy food I happycow'd somewhere to get a decent breakfast on the last day and this ended up being my favourite thing that I ate during the whole trip. The place was a short walk from our hotel and was called Le Pain Quotidien (it's a chain, but not one I've ever heard of) and they serve local, organic food. It's not a veggie place but all the vegetarian and vegan options are clearly marked on the menu with a little symbol.

The breakfast menu had a few items, but nothing that stood out, so I was glad when they said I could order off both sides of the menu.  I got the black bean hummus tartine, which is basically an open faced sandwich. It had really really good hummus on, plus some harrissa and herby dressing and beans and chickpeas. Plus a lovely crunchy salad. Not the type of thing I'd normally have for breakfast but I just cooked some black beans up so I'm remedying that tomorrow - it was so good!  Plus they had soymilk, yay! So I got a soya latte to go with and I thought their coffee was also really really good.

On our last night, we went to see Maroon 5 at the Ziggodome and they were awesome as always. But the food there sucked! Apparently the omni food was also shite, so not just the lack of veggie options.  There was basically one food place and the veggie options were tortilla chips & salsa and a fruit cup. I had both because it was dinner.  The fruit was pretty good and tortilla chips is tortilla chips but that salsa - DAYUM, it was rank! BLAAARRGH.  Had a really funky taste that stayed with me all through the concert and all the way home. Grim.

OK home and a couple of recent pics off my camera.  This first one was a recipe from Anjum Anand's book, Anjum's Indian Vegetarian Feast. I've mentioned before that Anjum is the shizzle! So yeah, I got the book for Christmas and as I'm a massive lover of Indian food, I couldn't wait to try something out.  So I made the Creamy Pistachio Curry, as we had all the ingredients, with just a couple of subs - I used sweet potato instead of butternut squash, which the recipe says is ok to do and I left out the cloves as we only had ground ones and also my mum's not a fan.  It was really good, but I would've liked it a bit spicier. In this recipe you put the chillis in whole and then discard them, I'd probably just chop one up and put that in next time.  It is mean to be mild though and I loved the addition of chopped and blended pistachios. 

If you're wondering whether this book is worth buying as a vegan, I'd say YES most definitely. There's loads of recipes in and nowadays it's so easy to replace yoghurt and cream, which are the main non-vegan offenders.  There's a few things with egg and I'm sure some of them could be veganised.

This was a meal last week when I didn't have much time and it was basically leftover sauce from the roasty soba bowl that I LOVE from Isa Does It mixed into soba noodles and some veg.  Then I just drained a tin of Granose mock duck and baked it at 200C for about 15 mins, then tossed it hoisin sauce to serve on top. Really good and easy.

And did I mention that I love that sauce from the soba bowl? Yeah I know I know, I'm addicted. It's a problem. But my new favourite thing is roasted veg with awesome sauce on, which is basically that sauce but with a shittonne of Franks hot sauce and nooch mixed in.  I had this for dinner the last 2 nights because it was SO good.  I also put some Taifun basil tofu in with the veg when I roasted them for a bit of protein.

That last pic is from my new camera phone - the others all from my old one!  I think it's WAYYY better - whaddya you guys say? 

OK I should probably go do something productive now, so have a good rest of the week everyone. 

And I promise that favourites post is coming, but it's gonna be a 'current favourites' rather than 2013 favourites, because it's now almost February. MADNESS!

Laterz

xXx

Vegan MoFo Day 2: Pogo & Bubbles!

Hey folks. So it's MoFo Day 2 and I was hoping to have some pics for you of awesome vegan foodz from the O2, as I went to see Nickelback there last night (shut it H8rs - they're awesome!!). Unfortunately we chose badly and ended up eating some rather crappy chinese food that I'd rather not remember.  So I dug into my camera and found some pics of a recent trip to london with my vegan ladybros.

 

Starting off with lunch at Pogo Vegan Cafe in Hackney.  I remember last time I went there it being an awful long trek in the rain after an awfully long bus ride to get there! But my friend Kip has skillz and it was much quicker this time.  We all had the punk burger meal, which is their house tofu burger with facon and cheezly.  The carrot salad I wasn't struck on, the other one had avocado in so that made me happy. Oh and wedges!

 

Inside shot - that is one fat wodge of cheezly right?  Yep.  It was superrad.

We decided after lunch to go to Soho and made a stop at Bubbleology so Kip could get bubble tea. As I've always been curious, I decided to get one too.  They don't advertise it but apparently the whole menu is vegan!  I picked coconut flavour and I LOVED it.  In fact I loved it so much I have bought some tapioca pearls in the hope that I can make some cack-handed effort to recreate it!  Watch this space....

We also went to Ms Cupcake in Brixton and I got a cherry coke flavoured cupcake which I shared with my friend the next day.  It was pretty, unfortunately it wasn't that great - a bit dry and just not really my cup of tea.  But I have never before had a bad item from Ms C so I'm willing to bet this was a one-off. I knew I should have gone for that blueberry one! ;0)

Have a great day all.

See yas
xXx

Happy New Year!

Did everyone have a good Christmas?? 

I know I know, I'm over a week late, but here is the pictures of my christmas food and a few things since then.

I make a yule log every year and here was this years (VCTOTW basic chocolate recipe and store bought frosting - I was lazy!!) It fell apart a bit when I rolled it, so I just covered it with a tonne more icing.

Christmas day - first drinky!

My Christmas dinner. I took the pic before I slathered it with gravy.  This was a Redwoods celebration roast (fake turkey and pigs in blankets).  It was pretty gross and I wouldn't buy it again.  To be honest though, I'd have been happy with just the veg, sage & onion paxo stuffing and gravy, which is what I will probably have next year, if I'm too lazy to make something seitan based.  My Mum makes the best roast potatoes ever. Ever.

Christmas cake!  I never write down the recipe or follow one for that matter, I just wing it and if I'm lucky it turns out good.  This year was a good-un.  The decorations on top were not vegan (egg-white), so I picked them off my bit.  I just decorated it with a layer of marzipan then a layer of ready-made fondant icing, as cake decorating is not really my best talent, as you can see!

Dinner on boxing day was a puff pastry concoction I made.  It was mushrooms and onions sauteed and then I made a white sauce and added some cooked potatoes to it, then just wrapped it in puff pastry and baked.  It was pretty good for something I didn't put much thought into.

The next day I fancied soup, so I used some of the leftover veggies from boxing day...

I added the veg to veggie stock, a bit of tomato puree, some sauteed onion and garlic, lentils, a chopped up Wheaty Hemp Spacebar and some smoked paprika.  It was yummy and kept me in lunches up until I went back to work.

OK jumping forward a bit, this was dinner for my 3 besties, who came over on Saturday night.  I made the coconut lemon bundt cake from Veganomicon.  I ordered a bundt tin from amazon, but it didn't arrive in time, so I made it in a regular tin and it burnt a wee bit. Sadface!  However, it was still really really good!  I can't wait to try it again in the right tin, if the sucka ever arrives.  I used lite coconut milk in this.

It was a Veganomicon kinda night, because I decided I do not cook from that book enough, and it's awesome.  So I made the saffron garlic rice (although I only used 2 cloves of garlic, as my friends are not as into it as me).

And the Chickpeas Romesco.  I LOVED this.  I think the only change I would make next time is to maybe use ground almonds, as my food processor didn't get them as fine as I think they need to be.  Aside from that it was delicious. 

The side dishes were just some blanched green beans that I then sauteed with shallots and some baked tofu.  I made the marinade up as I went along, so I can't remember exactly what was in it, but from memory I think I added some wine, sherry vinegar, agave, paprika and vegan worcester sauce.  I burnt it a bit (theme of the night??) but it was still not bad and all got eaten!

And this was yesterday's lunch.  A quesadilla I made with cheezly white cheddar and jarred salsa.  Easy and quick (and yummy!).  My dad said I shouldn't post it as it was burnt (recurring theme...) but I think it was just well done! :-)

Hope you all had a fab break and if like me you celebrated an anniversary of being vegan on 1st January - Happy Veganniversary!! Mine was 4 years! :0)

Laterz
xXx

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday. Today is Friday, Friday!!

It's fri-ee-day fri-ee-day - that damn Rebecca Black and her stupid catchy annoying song!!  Dang.  Ah well, it is Friday - HURRAH.  So here's some stuff I've eaten this week.

As I said I was gonna in my last post, I made the lentil burgers from Hot Damn & Hell Yeah.  I really love these burgers!  I change them up a bit by adding a few extra spices in but the basic recipe is still the same.  I had it on toasted ciabatta (I had no rolls) with some steamed sugar snaps and broccoli and some sweetcorn and kidney beans straight outta the tin with a bit of vinegar and tabasco on - yum.

Later on in the week I wanted something fast, so I chopped up a couple of pieces of leftover AFR chilli / lime tofu from my last post and cooked it with a chopped tomato, some sweetcorn, kidney beans (what was left in the cans after the meal above), some cooked brown rice (out of a packet - tskk naughty Sal!) and some soy sauce and tabasco.  Then I shoved it on top of a tortilla with some lettuce on and a dollop of Tesco's soya yoghurt, which may I just say - kick's Alpro plain yoghurt's dirty sugary ass!!  It made way more than you see below, after I took the pick I just piled it all on the plate! hehe.

Then as it's Friday and I don't feel the need to be so strict with my diet on a Friday I made some muffins.  They are chocolate chunk, coconut and cherry and they rock.  Recipe is below the pic.

Cherry, Coconut & Chocolate Chunk Muffins
Dry Ingredients:
- 1.5 cups plain flour
- 1 cup oats
- 1/2 cup dessicated coconut
- 1/2 cup dried sour cherries
- 1/2 cup vegan chocolate chunks or chips
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 cup granulated sugar

Wet Ingredients:
- 1 cup Kara coconut milk (or you can use lite coconut milk or other non-dairy milk of your choice)
- 1/4 cup rapeseed (canola) oil
- 1 tsp light vinegar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract

Method:
Preheat oven to 180C/350F.

Mix together dry ingredients, breaking up any cherries that have stuck together.  Whisk together wet ingredients and then pour into dry.  Mix well and then divide between muffin tins.

Bake for 25-30 mins, until a skewer comes out clean.

I got 10 out of this, but my muffin cases were quite big, you might be able to eek out 12!

Have a fab weekend everyone.

Laterz
xXx

It's been a long time... we should'nt a left you....

...without a dope beat to step to....*

Well helloooo there!  I decided to wait til MoFo was over before posting these pics.  And also, today is World Vegan Day - Happy WVD to all the vegans out there!! :-)

I'm starting off with the food from Saturday night.  My awesome friend Jojo had a party and made a crap tonne of ace food.  When looking for inspiration, I of course headed straight to the queen of Halloweegan's blog - Wing it Vegan and found these awesome peppers.  As you can see, my carving skills are not as great as River's! ....

This one ended up with a snaggle toof!!  hehe

I also made cornbread, as my other friend Kip made chili, which I forgot to take a pic of! DOH.

Onto the stuff Jojo made (head over to Jojo's blog for more info and also for pictures of the gingerbread house shw made that was pretty awesome!). She made sugar cookies: 

Cupcakes:

Jelly - with eyeballs in! oooooh scary.

Mummy dogs - sausages wrapped in pastry = genius!

oh and me, dressed as a zombie, shovelling a cake into ma gob!

The next morning, we got up and went to Iydea Cafe.  We all had the same thing, the vegan breakfast bap and a side of hash browns.  The baps was like a lentil burger with tomatoes and avocado on top, it was pretty rad.  And the hash browns were perfectly greasy but not too greasy!

On to yesterday. I finally dug some cookbooks out of storage and headed straight for this recipe from Appetite for Reduction: Arabian Lentil & Rice Soup.  It's AWESOME. I've made it before, but last time I didn't have a lemon, so left that out.  I'm really glad I had it this time though, it really makes a difference.

And a couple more recipes from AFR, the soft broccoli polenta and chilli lime rubbed tofu.  I wasn't crazy about the tofu, but that was more a texture thing that the flavour, I like the flavour, I should have pressed the tofu though.  The polenta was good, but once I added nooch it was amazing. I wish I'd made a more exciting veggie to go with this though, those were just plain, steamed green beans and they were underwhelming!

Tonight I think I'm gonna dig out Hot Damn & Hell Yeah and make my favourite lentil burgers.  What are you guys making for World Vegan Day??

Laterz
xXx

*post title is from this song that I will now be singing all day!

Vegan MoFo: The last one of MoFo!

I hadn't planned on blogging today but then I realised it was the last day of MoFo and thought I gotta!

Yesterday's dinner - I got my hands on some Taifun tofu (10 million times better than the skanky new cauldron crap) and decided to make a scramble. I haven't had tofu scramble in AGES and this one was pretty amazing. It had mushrooms, tomatoes, pak choi, sweetcorn and fresh basil in, along with cumin, paprika, coriander and turmeric for the spices and nooch of course. I had it with some roasty potatoes that I added some thyme to before I roasted them.


Today's dinner and I used more of the tofu in my thai green curry. I used shop bought paste, light coconut milk, veggie stock, sugar snaps, potatoes and baby corns. I added some frozen peas right at the end and served it over basmati rice.


I also made some quick spelt/cornbread muffins. I know they're really meant to go with chilli but I love them with curry too.

I've found myself a bit uninspired this MoFo, as you could probably tell by my posts, but it has been good to have a kick up the bum to post a bit more. So I'll try and go back to once a week and not slip back to once a month. But hey, I'm not promising anything!

Tomorrow starts Christmas month! WOoT!

Laterz
xXx

A whole heap of crap and I hate you blogger

So I just typed this muthafucka and then blogger deleted the whole. damn. thing! GARRR! So forgive me if it's less than informative! hahahaa.

Ooh I been busy lately from work to hen nights to planning a holiday to starting another blog!! More on that later though.

Onto the food. I got hold of some taifun tofu (which in my opinion kicks Cauldron's cack excuse for a new recipe's arse!!) and I sliced it up and brushed with a glaze of mustard, miso, rice syrup and a bit of olive oil. Then I sprinkled it with sesame seeds and baked it, brushing it again with loads more glaze half way through so it was good and sticky. It was delicious with steamed veg and herbed butter, well vitalite anyway.


Leftovers the next day - with some tabouleh.

Microwave cupcakes! I quartered the basic chocolate recipe in vegan cupcakes take over the world and split it between 4 silicone baking cases and nuked them for 1 min and 40 seconds in total. The glaze was a mix of heated cherry jam that I seived and then mixed with icing sugar.

This week's dinner with the girlies. I made us a sweet potato and butternut squash curry (which was awesome).....

With some raita (strained alpro yoghurt, lemon juice, cucumber and fresh mint) with a wee drizzle of olive oil on top.....

some mushroom rice (I made it foofy and fancy by dying a little bit yellow, a little bit red and mixing it in to look like takeaway rice)....

And homemade naan breads. As usual I was winging it, one day I'll remember to write down when I make up a recipe.

Dessert was ice cream - the easiest ice cream EVER. The flesh of a large mango, blended with 1 carton (250ml) of alpro fresh single soya cream and a tablespoon of rice syrup then put in the ice cream maker. Delish and easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Onto seitan. I finally got around to makng the red seitan from Viva Vegan and yes, it is as awesome as everyone says it is. It makes 4 logs and you get 2 servings from each log. So I froze 2 and here are a couple of the meals I made with the other 2:

I brushed it with barbecue sauce and baked it for 15 mins. Served it with a baked potato topped with coleslaw.

This was my favourite thing I did with it. I veganised Nigella's Moroccan Lamb & Cacik. Basically I took one log of seitan, just opened up the foil and poked holes in it then poured over and rubbed in a mixture of: 1.5tsp of ras-el hanou spice mixture, juice of 1/2 a lemon, 1 tbsp olive oil, 1 grated clove of garlic and a pinch of salt. Then I sealed the foil back up and baked it at 180C for 10 mins, then opened the foil and let it carry on cooking for another 10 minutes. I served it with bulgar wheat just cooked in veg stock and cacik (which is exactly the same as my raita above, but with a clove of garlic also grated in).

This is what the seitan looked like after baking, isn't it pretty with the rose petals from the ras-el hanout?

Here, I pressed the seitan into some ground peppercorns and dry fried it. Steamed veggies, mashed potatoes and stuffing with a tonne of gravy completed this awesome sunday roast!

I made spelt bread. It was awesome but I've not got the recipe exactly how I want it yet, will report back with the recipe when I've got it right.

I also made some cornbread for a chilli the other week. But I love it most with jam! YUM. This recipe is from La Dolce Vegan. It always works perfectly for me every time, great recipe.

Remember that hen night I mentioned, here's a jug of pimms royale: pimms, prosecco, lemonade and a crap tonne of fruit. YUM!!!!

And some of my contributions to the food: cupcakes, rock road cookies and peanut butter cups.

Close up of the cupcakes - it was a 90s weekend and we were doing a ravers theme - hence my aceeeeeed cupcakes!

I also mentioned another blog! Totally separate from this one, I'm still keeping this one!! My new one is my beauty blog - mainly about make up but really is my showcase for make up work which I'll be adding to the more weddings / occasion make up that I do. Head on over and have a look if you're curious: http://sjbeauty.wordpress.com/. Blogger deleting my posts is just one of many reasons I decided to put the new one on wordpress!

I'm off to Dallas on holiday in a few days and I can't WAIT. So this'll be the last post before then, see you next time with pics of Dallas foodz!

Laterz
xXx