What's Cooking This Week?

From Left to Right.

I am trying to cut down on the oil so instead of frying, I did steam the eggplant for this Italian freestyle Caprese Salad. Steaming veggies really makes them super tasty!! This salad has it all, great colors, great taste, and great textures!

Delicious Tofu Mushroom Sandwich!

Pan fried slices of champignons, slices of herbed soft tofu, sharp tasting daikon sprouts, thin tomato slices and a good old fashioned squirt of Dijon mustard makes this a great and tasty sandwich.

A while ago I did buy a vegan cooking book that was totally devoted to the fine art of making vegan cheeses.

It looked totally awesome but unfortunately too many recipes do use ingredients that are not available here Thailand, such as non dairy yoghurt, xanthan gum, and nutritional yeast flakes.

But I wouldn’t be “me” if that would be a problem!! Instead of making these elaborate refined vegan cheeses, I put the vegan cheese book away and figured how to make a few basic recipes.

What's cooking 2

Yesterday I blogged about my disappointing experience with a MEATLES recipe. Well, the next day after this Broccoli Pesto failure, I had a much better cooking day with a Thai curry dish.

Curry paste is usually made with shrimp paste but last week I saw curry paste without shrimp paste in the “Macro” shop. And it was pretty exciting to see not one, two, or three, but a whopping six different flavors of curry paste, which I did buy all and will try out the coming months.

Since these curry pastes are NOT vegan “Jay” curry pastes, they DO contain garlic, which is a basic and authentic ingredient of a Thai curry paste. (“Jay” is the Thai Chinese style of veg Buddhist cooking ; besides no animal ingredients also various plants like garlic are not used.)

I like garlic, so it is great to see a vegan curry paste with it!

Okay, i will blog more about vegan curries later, keep in touch. :-)

What's cooking?

This week I tried the Rice Noodles With Broccoli Pesto on page 302 from Martha’s “MEATLESS cooking book.

I was excited to make a Broccoli Pesto, it sounded so creative! But I was less excited when I tasted it. First of all, pesto’s are just great, from a classic Basil Pesto that I use for a spaghetti or a pizza, to a variation with roasted smoky bell peppers that I yet have, and will, try.

Roasted and smoky bell peppers have great and deep and full flavors. Many times I have added them to a chickpea hummus for a really deliciosa Smoky Bell Pepper Hummus. So I am pretty sure they also will add in the same way to a pesto.

But broccoli…?