Tomato Paste Tablespoons

I found it fairly frustrating when a recipe called for a single tablespoon of tomato paste and I was left with the rest of a can with no other plans to use it.  I saw a suggestion in a magazine to freeze the rest of the can of tomato paste in ice cube trays, but since I didn't have any spare trays, I decided to just plop the rest of the can in tablespoons on parchment paper and put them in the freezer:

After a night freezing up, I was able to wrap them up individually in parchment paper:

Like a little bon-bon:

Then I put them all in a quart-size freezer bag:

So whenever a tablespoon (or more) of tomato paste, I just pull one (or more) of these from the freezer. So far, I pretty much use them straight from the freezer in recipes, like in Red Lentil Soup with Lemon.  But if you need it in soft paste form, let it defrost for about 30 minutes at room temp.

Hope this helps anybody who hates wasting food like me!

Red Lentil Soup with Lemon

I have been forever looking for the recipe of a tasty lentil soup that I had once in an Indian restaurant and never could find the recipe. It was called Mulligatawny soup but every recipe I've found looks nothing close to the one I ate. Then I found this recipe and it's hands-down one of my favorite soups of all time.

The recipe was printed in the New York Times: Red Lentil Soup with Lemon by Melissa Clark. I'm still on the look out for a recipe for the tomato and lentil Mulligatawny soup--if anyone has it, please, please, please share it with me. In the meantime, this red lentil soup keeps me pretty happy in the meantime, especially on chilly days.

Hotteok (Korean Sweet Pancakes)

I was gifted with Marja Vongerichten's cookbook, "The Kimchi Chronicles" and had to make these sweet Korean pancakes--makes the best breakfast on a chilly weekend morning:

This video slideshow does a great job demonstrating the recipe and what everything is supposed to look like at various stages.  It may seem challenging but it came together pretty easily.  Here's my balls of dough waiting to be filled.

I went with the traditional brown sugar and nut mix as well as vegan chocolate chips:

And they cook very easily in the fry pan:

And beautifully.  You don't want to cook too fast on high heat because you want to give the filling time to melt inside:

Love that crispy golden brown color:

That melty chocolate goodness is heavenly!

I recommend making them when you have guests and can eat all of them while they're warm. They're a little less dazzling once they're cold. Looking forward to making these again soon...

Vegan GF version of Sesame Chicken Noodle Soup

During the time when both my husband and daughter came done with the FrankenFlu of 2013 (after I recovered from it), I made them this Sesame Chicken Noodle Soup from this recipe at Epicurious:

They loved it but I also altered it to make a vegan, gluten-free version:

Sesame Tofu Noodle Soup

Toss together:

1 pound tofu, cut into thin strips
3 tablespoons gluten-free tamari
2 tablespoons dry Sherry (I didn't have any--I used rice vinegar)
1 tablespoons dark sesame oil

In a separate bowl, mix together:

3 garlic cloves, minced
3 tablespoons tahini
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh ginger
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon seasoned rice vinegar
1 1/2 teaspoons chili-garlic sauce

Heat 1 tablespoon sesame oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add 4 cups chopped cabbage (ideally Napa cabbage, but I used standard green) and 6 chopped green onions and sauté until cabbage is tender, about 5 minutes. Add 2 quarts vegetable broth and bring to boil. Add tofu mixture and tahini-garlic mixture. Reduce heat to low and simmer until soup is hot, about 5 minutes.  Add 1/4 cup chopped cilantro.

Separately cook about 8 oz of rice noodles according to package directions.  Lay some in a bowl and ladle hot soup on top.  Top with more chopped cilantro if you like.

Brought the tofu soup to a friends house to share--the kids loved it!  Either way, both soups are great comfort food on a chilly day.

Buffalo Tofu

Sometimes I crave the flavor of a certain food, though not necessarily all that goes with it.  Like sometimes when I'm watching football, I really crave the spiciness of Buffalo wings, but not necessarily the wings.  So I made some Buffalo Tofu.  I cut a pound of some pressed firm tofu into sticks and panfried them to give them a little "bite".

Then I heated up half a cup of Frank's Hot Sauce, a tablespoon of margarine, and 1/4 tsp of garlic powder just until it was warm and blended.  Them I tossed the tofu sticks:

Whipped up a simple vegan ranch sauce with 1/4 cup vegan mayo, 1 tsp of dried parsley, 1/4 tsp of garlic powder, 1/4 tsp of onion powder, and about 1 TBSP of rice milk to thin it into a sauce (add more if necessary).

Hits the spicy spot!

Good old Oatmeal

We've been having a few chilly mornings, and I've just been craving hot food for breakfast, like coffee cake. Unfortunately, I don't always have the time or caloric allowance to eat coffee cake as much as I like so I kind of rediscovered oatmeal again. Here's my current mix:

It's regular oatmeal drizzled with honey, sprinkled with cinnamon, slivered almonds, chopped walnuts and a healthy splash of soy creamer.

I'm kind of in that stage where I'll eat this for days straight and already looking forward to eating tomorrow morning. Any other hot breakfast suggestions?

I love this No Knead bread

Now that summer has been slowly receding, I've been back into making bread.  Unfortunately, I think I neglected my sourdough starter and it's not quite the same, even though I've been baking it in my dutch oven--which makes the most beautiful crust.  But I still haven't been getting the chewy holey-ness inside.  I would probably fault my crappy kneading skills, though a friend's mom said I need to get a standing mixer with a kneading paddle.

So then I thought about the original No Knead bread recipe that Linda originally posted about and thought I'd give it a try since kneading dough is not my friend and it was only reaching 80 today--brrrr!  Get the oven on!

The ingredients are pretty simple:

Dissolve 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast in 1 1/2 cups of warm water.  Stir in 3 cups of all purpose flour and 1 1/2 tsp salt until blended.  It'll be sticky and pretty slack.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest at least 8 hours (up to 18 hours) at room temperature.  The recipe says room temperature is about 70 degrees but my a/c thermostat is set at 78 but it seems it was all right.  The dough is ready when the surface is dotted with bubbles:

Then you flour the work surface and scrape the dough on it.  Sprinkle the dough lightly with flour and fold it over on itself a couple of times:

Cover with plastic wrap and let it rest for 15 minutes.  Using enough flour to keep dough from sticking to your hands and work surface, form into a ball.  Then generously coat a dish towel with flour and put the dough ball, seam side down on it.  I didn't have a clean dish towel, so I used parchment paper:

Then dust with more flour and cover with another clean dish towel.  Let rise for 1-2 hours until doubles in size and dough doesn't spring back when you poke it.  I couldn't help but notice that it doubled out but not up.  I wonder if using a dish towel would have been more grippy, allowing less slide of dough out.

Put dutch oven in the oven and preheat to 475 degrees about 20 minutes.  Flip dough into the hot dutch oven, ostensibly seam side up, though mine didn't have much of a seam.  Is it because I didn't use a dish towel?  I'll have to test that out.

Bake 30 minutes with lid on, the 15 minutes more with the lid off.  There's that golden brown crust:

And more so, that chewy, holey inside:

The girl and I ate half the loaf in one sitting. She loved it. I would have loved it more if it was more taller and loafy instead of such a wide, flatter boule. Hope using the dish towel works during the second rise helps. Also, I'm wondering if I could add sourdough starter to this somehow? Anybody know breadmaking science a lot more than me and have advice?

Anyhoo, I highly recommend this bread--if you've got a Dutch Oven, it won't disappoint. It's cheap and easy (NO KNEADING!) and the result is virtually artisan bread!

UPDATE: Yes, using a dish towel (instead of parchment paper) made a huge difference:

It definitely rose more "up" than out.

There's the big beautiful boule I wanted!

Gorgeous.  Sigh.

Here's a little side by side comparison:

Definitely a favorite.

Sauces for Salad rolls

After making salad rolls for my mom, I got pretty addicted to them myself. It's a delicious way to get salad, avocado, and tofu together in one bite:

Especially when I can mix up some quick sauces for dipping!  Here are three I'm currently rotating.  I came up with a quick peanut hoison sauce:

Mix together:
- 1 tbsp of Peanut Butter
- 1 tsp of vinegar (I used rice vinegar)
- 1/4 tsp of soy sauce or tamari or aminos
- 2 tsp of hoison sauce
- 1/4 tsp of garlic chili sauce (or 1/4 tsp of hot sauce and dash of garlic powder)

These are definitely not etched-in-stone quantities, play around to your liking, but you'll want a creamy sauce with good "cling".

Peanut Hoison sauce: Sweet and spicy

For times I prefer a non-creamy sauce, especially when I use a lot of avocado, I make a quick chili vinaigrette:

Mix together:
- 1 tbsp vinegar (I used rice vinegar)
- 1 tbsp water
- 1 tsp chili garlic sauce (or hot sauce and garlic powder combo)
- 1/2 tsp sugar (you can use equivalent of sugar substitute)
- splash of soy sauce or tamari or aminos
- generous squirt of fresh lime or lemon

Again, I suggest adjusting the amounts per personal taste. This vinaigrette doesn't have as much cling, but it still packs a punch:

Chili Vinaigrette: Bright and Spicy

And my new favorite, Lemon Tahini sauce:

Mix together:
- 1 tbsp tahini
- 1/2 tbsp of vinegar (I used rice vinegar)
- 1/2 tbsp of fresh lemon juice
- 1/4 tsp soy sauce or tamari or aminos
- generous dashes of garlic powder
- dash of hot sauce

Again, adjust quantities per personal taste--most of the time I'm just throwing stuff together and hope I get a tasty clingy sauce:

Lemon Tahini: Bright and Tart

Anybody got any other sauce suggestions?

Salad Rolls for Mom

Making something new or vaguely exciting for my mom is tough, due to her low-sodium, low-carb, low-sugar, and low-fat dietary requirements.  It kind of leaves vegetables, which ironically, for as much as she made me eat vegetables when I was a kid, she has shown much less verve when I cook them for her.  So I decided to try making a variation on Vietnamese summer rolls (which normally feature noodles, shrimp, and pork) with the focus on salad and she dug it.  Interested?

I used baby spinach and arugula, tofu, and avocado as the filling with rice vinegar and garlic powder as seasoning.

The other key ingredients are these rice paper wrappers:

They are a great lower carb alternative (about 7 carbs per paper, depending on brand) to tortillas and are great with cold items like salad.  When you take one out, it's so thin and seemingly fragile:

I've read various recipes with different recommendation on soaking these rice paper circles--some advise soaking the rice paper for 30 seconds until pliable, some say let them lie between wet paper towels, but I learned from eating dinner with my Vietnamese friend and her family that you only have to submerge it once (make sure the whole thing gets wet) and put it on your plate.  As you load the fillings (granted this took longer when you're passing fillings around with a family then a chef would have mise en place) the water soaks in and when you're ready to wrap it up, it's pliable. 

So here at my mom's I just dipped it in a clean fry pan filled with tap water and put it on my plate--yes, it's initially still stiff:

Then I laid down the filling--some baby spinach leaves and arugula, some slices of avocado and tofu, and topped with splashes of rice vinegar and sprinkles of garlic powder (alternatively, I guess one could toss the greens with a dressing and seasoning beforehand):

Then you roll it like a little burrito, first bring the top up:

Fold the sides in:

Then finish rolling it up:

Ta-da! Vegetables that my mom likes to eat. The nice bonus is that my mom hadn't been enjoying salads because of her poor eyesight--now she doesn't need to see the salad--it's all in her hand. Next time I'll try adding cilantro or mint for her as well. Ideally these should be eaten shortly after they're made--which isn't hard, they're pretty darn tasty!

For those on less restrictive diets, I'm sure some leftover marinated cooked steak or chicken could replace the tofu and it would be dynamite. Just don't tell my sodium-restricted mom!

Chamomile Iced Tea aka Sweet Honey Iced Tea

Anybody else trying to lighten up on soda and caffeine? I scanned the cupboards and came across a fairly full box of chamomile tea from my detox at the beginning of the year. It's an herbal tea with a really mild pleasant flavor so I decided to try making iced tea from it.

I followed the conventional iced tea wisdom of brewing a strong batch, so I steeped 8 bags with a quart of hot water:

Then I sweetened with some honey for flavor:

And some agave nectar for sweetness:

Then I let it cool in the fridge for a couple of hours and then poured over ice:

It's a really pleasant cool drink--very inoffensive but won't necessarily knock your socks off. Because of the mild flavor of the chamomile tea, the sweet honey is the dominant flavor. So I gave it the alternate name of Sweet Honey Tea. Or maybe next time I should steep some extra bags of chamomile tea. With plenty of hot summer left here in South Carolina, I'm sure I'll be doing some more experimenting...

Rice Krispies Treats

While visiting California, I was fortunate to meet with two friends for lunch who both were celebrating a birthday. For one, I made a clutch. For another, I wanted to also give something homemade and went with good ol' Rice Krispies treats that I wrapped individually in waxed paper:

Two stacks of Rice Krispies treats all prettified in baker's twine that Linda had:

Holy cow, has anyone had Rice Krispies treats in a while? I hadn't eaten one in a long time, and yeesh, it was sooo good straight out of the pot! Kind of want to make a batch when I get home...