Tag Archives: recipe

Bacon!!! Tofu Bacon, that is…

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , , ,

First and foremost, I sincerely apologize for there not being a picture to accompany this post. Epic fail, considering I made this for the first and second time this evening. Yep, it was that good.

Tofu bacon was seriously an experiment. I had the following items in my fridge that needed to be used: some iceberg lettuce, a small amount of fingerling potatoes, some extra firm tofu soaking in a bowl. Not even planning to use the tofu, I googled “potatoes and iceberg lettuce and recipe”, and was presented with an array of German potato salad recipes. Bacon.

Bacon. There had to be bacon. In my mind, I could already see the bacon coming together because our pantry had the goods to make it happen. Hickory liquid smoke. Maple syrup. I literally talked myself through making this. Bacon.

Bacon needs fat. Butter. Butter burns. Olive oil. 1 tbsp of each into the pan.

Bacon needs yummy meaty flavour. Onion. I diced half of an onion and added it to the pan (med heat) once the butter melted.

I had about half of a pkg of extra firm tofu. I drained it, patted it dry, finely diced it and added it to the pan with the onions right away. My plan was to brown, to caramelize both the onions and the tofu and let them marry in the pan. I’ve been reading about caramelizing onions lately because I have fantasies of making a vegetarian French onion soup. Apparently, the key to cooking down onions well, is to not have them too hot, and to leave them alone for the first 15 minutes. Patience. The onions don’t need you!

Because there was tofu, I stirred for the first time after about 10 minutes. I add 3 dashes of liquid smoke to the pan and a liberal amount of salt and pepper. Bacon is salty. Bacon can be peppered. Do it.

Your kitchen will now be reaking of hickory smoked bacon. Continue to cook down the mixture until the tofu has a dark golden crispy outside. About 15-20 minutes. Just when you think it’s done, drizzle 2 tbsp of maple syrup into the pan and stir frequently for another few minutes. Bacon.

It’s so good. It is so good, that I made more to add to some pasta lunches that I made.

Spaghetti Squash is awesome

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , , , , ,

Spaghetti Squash IS awesome. If you’ve never had it before, it’s a must try. I’m not going to be one of those that say you can fool anyone into believing it’s pasta, because it’s not. It’s a squash. But it’s a squash with a super funky texture that’s easy to make…and quite filling.

So, while it isn’t pasta, I do like to treat it like it is. Olive oil, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese (if you nasty) are really all this needs to be deelish. Do you like something more saucy on your pasta? Do it. Do anything. Tomato sauce is nice. Meat sauce, pesto, cheese sauce…it will all work great because this squash has a mild flavour compared to, say, butternut squash.

Tonight, I had a couple of small eggplants that I had to cook. So, when roasting the squash, I diced up the eggplant, tossed it in some olive oil and balsamic, and roasted them right alongside the squash. I then added the eggplant to a homemade marinara. They both take pretty much the same cook time, so you’re golden.

How to cook spaghetti squash: please note that a recipe telling you to do this in any other way is lying. I’ve seen recipes calling for water baths…FAIL. Higher temps and much longer cooking time will cause this squash to burn or get mushy. The texture is the fun part!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Cut squash in half lengthwise (heavy chopping cleaver = best gift EVER)
Scoop out the seeds n gunk from each half
Rub a bit of olive oil on the flesh. Gently season with salt and pepper, then roast cut side down for 30 minutes.

After those 30 minutes, remove from oven and let it sit for a couple more before you use a fork to remove the flesh from the sides and scoop into a bowl. I’ll hold the half in my oven-mitted hand, then scrape and scoop.

My partner thought the fork created the spaghetti-esque strands…nope, that is the essence of this squash. It’s pretty cool when doing it for the first time.

Once in the bowl, I like to drizzle a bit more olive oil then toss with seasoning.

Then serve, with whatever else you’ve made with it.

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A Warm Hug – Vegan/Vegetarian Asian Corn Soup

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food, Musings and tagged with , , , , , ,

I bought myself a new laptop…2 months ago. Blogging hasn’t been striking a chord with me lately. Interestingly enough, a LOT has been going on in my life since I last wrote. Busy Busy, exciting times. With all of this fun madness, the one thing that inspired me to ‘Add New Post’ is corn soup.

Corn Soup. I was sitting in the passenger seat of our little white snowflake driving the Coquihalla and I wanted corn soup. I wanted to feel the thick warmth, sweetness and crunchiness of corn soup.

Do I have a recipe? Of course not. I looked up a recipe once, likely at age 18, when I lived in my first basement apartment and bought 1 Chinese Cookery recipe book with magazine sized photos of chow fun, chow mein and young chow fried rice gracing its pages.

1 large can of creamed corn
some frozen corn
3-4 cups of broth
sliced shitaake mushrooms
corn starch slurry with soya sauce and cooking wine
white pepper, salt, sesame oil
chopped green onion
swirl one beaten egg at the end (optional, but of course, this won’t be vegan anymore)

The recipe I was looking at was likely crab and chicken…or something fancy/incredible asian funky. But, besides that, it looked possible for my teenage brain to recreate and turned out oh so yummy. Ridiculously memorable. And now, I regurgitate this recipe at random, and evolve it to my current level of culinary matureness/mood/contents of my cupboard.

When I made corn soup last night, I added some minced garlic and ginger and diced celery and carrot into the base. I tossed in some chopped green beans, and chilli flakes/coriander/cinnamon/rice wine vinegar. I made broth out of dried porcini mushrooms (by the way, I’m never buying veggie broth again. EVER. and I’m always getting dried porcini mushrooms from the Farmer’s Market, not Whole Foods where they’re 6-8X more expensive) ps – I just wondered if creamed corn is vegan.

When I made corn soup last night, I made it for my future husband. I gave him one of my fond memories in a pot. He loved it. He liked the mushrooms. He picked all of the shiitake bits out of the pot when we’d eaten our fill. He enjoyed the crunch of the green beans and loudly slurped the soupy sweet corn goodness.

#beam

I Pity The Fool…that doesn’t love avocado (recipe included)

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food, Musings and tagged with , , , , ,

I truly believe that avocado is the most perfect…uhmmm…fruit? Well, I’m going to call it a fruit for the purpose of this blog entry.

It’s Friday night, and I had a big bowl of mushy kidney beans that I’d cooked up on a whim, needing to be turned into a meal. We decided, while lounging at the beach, that we’d do bean and rice burritos tonight- and that I’d head home to start cooking, and he’d run to Safeway to grab wraps, tomatoes, and whatever else I figured we’d need (an onion)

While in the kitchen making guacamole and salsa, I was thrust into a childhood memory wave of happiness. I have made salsa and guacamole SO many times since I was quite young and the thought of it reminds me of summer and fresh foods and so much fun!

Making salsa with my Mom was a mini-event, because, while we were only 2, we always would make a huge vat of salsa that would easily feed 20! Hahaha…why? Because we always shared, salsa goes good in pretty much anything AND, because salsa is always better on Day 2, Day 3!

Guacamole, on the other hand, curse of the sensi green fruit- is not a sustainable treat. I’m not fond of the brown skin that covers the top if left overnight. Others don’t care and just stir it up again, but…meh.

Anyways, being thrust into a wave of happiness over food inspired me to take some quick photos while prepping. I’m pleased to share my simple quick guacamole recipe. This will serve 2-3 people as it only uses 1 avocado.

1 ripe avocado! Please please don’t use it of it isn’t ripe!!!! Any good Asian corner produce shop will have ripe avocados hiding behind the register. They don’t want them squeezed!!

Score then scoop the avocado into the small serving bowl.

Juice half of a lime
1/2 tsp ground coriander
Dash of salt and pepper
1 tbsp chopped cilantro
2 cloves of minced garlic
1 tbsp finely chopped onion

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Mush it all together with a fork in the bowl. Presto! Serve immediately!20120629-212946.jpg

Mama’s salsa recipe is too much for our small home. I make a quick salsa that I think is moreso known as pico di gallo. It’s made pretty much the same as guacamole but with tomatoes instead of avocado!

I used 2 tomatoes in this one to ensure we’d have some leftover for breakfast tomorrow.

Happy Canada Day!!!!

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Vancouver Farmer’s Market Chopped Basket Ingredient: Sea Asparagus

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , , , , , ,

It’s an unwritten rule in my home that when we have hollendaise and alcohol for brunch, we should plan to have something a tad lighter for dinner. Well yesterday I went on a shopping bonanza at The Farmer’s Market. Such a spree, in fact, that I visited two markets: my neighbourhood West End Market and the always stellar Trout Lake. Here are some goodies I bought:

Sea Asparagus

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And garlic scapes!

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we also got great tomatoes, strawberries, collard greens, mushrooms, arugula, cheese curds, snap peas, kale. I think that’s it! Haha

I like to cook my purchases while they are still fresh, so buying a lot of veggies on a Saturday encourages at home meals for most of the weekend and into the beginning of the work week! Good stuff!

As with all new ingredients, I googled recipe ideas for sea asparagus and found a common thread: fish. Makes sense. Sea asparagus is quite salty and has this deep essence of the ocean and shorelines it is harvested from. Our friend made hers with salmon and I bet hers tasted better than ours. But I did learn from her to soak them in water for about an hour before cooking, as the sea salty sensation intensifies through cooking.

I’ve made garlic scapes before. Garlic scape pesto! But I decided to grill them along with the eggplant and tomato I was going to grill up.

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Indoor grills ROCK! I quickly marinaded the eggplant with a splash of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and oregano before putting it onto the grill on high heat so I could get the yummy char marks. Eggplant will dry out- especially if you make thick slices like I did (3/4 inch) – so splash water onto it throughout the cooking process. In total it should take about 15 minutes on the grill (375 degrees)

To prepare the sea asparagus, I ended up going with a similar cooking method that I’ve used for kale. Sauté half of a large onion over medium heat with about a tbsp of butter for a few minutes, then add the asparagus and squeeze a whole lemon over it. The asparagus only takes a few minutes to cook. This needs to retain its bite!! At the end, I had the idea of adding dill, but my spice rack was stuck behind my hot grill…rats. Next time!

I also quickly grilled a couple of cherry tomatoes and the garlic scapes. Darn google, you aren’t always right. The scapes were a fail. I should have probably sautéed them with the asparagus. Oh well. I’m making pesto next time!

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Dinner was yummy!!!

Blog Challenge Day 18 – Bullet My Day

Posted by Freedom Fro in 30 Day Blog Challenge, Fun with Food and tagged with , , , , ,

Sorry for derping my post for yesterday. I was in no condition to post anything; and anything I did post should have just been ‘derped’. I bulleted as I went about my day, by using the notepad of my iphone. As you can see, I didn’t do much today. HAHAHA We all need a lazy day sometimes, right?

  • Wake up on my BFF’s couch
  • Loo
  • Take 2 naproxins cuz my head is POUNDING!
  • drink a large glass of water
  • Snuggles with Bailey cat
  • Lay back down
  • Sit back up
  • Thought: Hungryyyyyy
  • Large drink of water
  • Lay back down
  • Sit back up
  • Thought: Hungryyyyyy
  • Brush teeth
  • Clothes on
  • Fluff fro
  • Pack
  • Text BFF that I am hungry and am going home!
  • Pet Bailey
  • Pet Neko
  • Lock the door behind me
  • Walk up Commercial Drive
  • Buy and eat croissant
  • Skytrain waiting is longer than usual. Blame budget cuts or my impatience
  • Get home. Yay.
  • Wash face
  • 2 Naproxin
  • Nap for an hour. Like one of those magical naps that makes all  of your pain go away.
  • Wake up
  • Text BFF for a bit
  • Dress
  • Sautéed mushrooms, black beans, avocado tomato hash with focaccia for lunch
  • brew sangria
  • Shower
  • Swimmy suit
  • Beach!!!!
  • Post pic on Facebook
  • Lay
  • Laze
  • Lazy
  • Mmmmm…chips
  • More laying, lazing, and lazying
  • Get up. Walk to the ocean’s edge
  • Toes in…COLD
  • ankles in
  • Knees in…STOP
  • Ponder
  • Ponder
  • Ponder
  • Thighs in
  • Hips in…waist in! Past the point of no return. More than half of me is IN!!
  • Inch inch…boobie splash.
  • 1…2…3…aaaaaand DUNK!
  • Ok, Im done.
  • Post pic on Facebook.

 post first ocean dip of 2012

  • Lay, laze, lazy
  • Rotate
  • Splay lay yay!
  • Safeway – where I wander the aisles and pick up some veggies and hot dogs
  • Get home
  • Shower – because I smell like the ocean
  • Make this incredible pasta salad for dinner

Pasta Salad

In this salad:

raw chopped broccoli – one big nub (what are they called, a hunk? a chunk?)
1 carrot, diced
1 stalk celery, diced
4-6 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
(optional) approx a finger sized piece of cheddar, diced
cooked pasta
1 tbsp olive oil, red wine vinegar, mayo – paprika, oregano, salt, pepper
3 slices of sun dried tomatoes – reconstituted then chopped finely
1 tbsp pine nuts

Day 4 Blog Challenge: What’s For Breakfast?

Posted by Freedom Fro in 30 Day Blog Challenge, Fun with Food and tagged with , , , ,

While I didn’t plan this out, I’m glad that this topic landed on a Saturday. Weekends are when we take time to make a yummy fancier breakfast (or brunch, depending on how our morning goes), while weekday breakfasts (for me, at least) tend to consist of fruit, carrot sticks grabbed from the fridge in a hurry, a JJ Bean Muffin, coffee and/or tea. It’s hard for me to adapt a normal breakfast food routine, because I go through phases of the things I like to eat. Cereals, granolas, or oatmeals sometimes make the list — but then I get sick of them. Toast with peanut butter and banana is a great treat sometimes, but it takes some planning on my part. Anyways…about today – what’s for breakfast?

This isn’t a typical Saturday, because I’m on my own this morning…and am eating breakfast much earlier than usual. We also had breakfast for dinner last night. I was a little inebriated and made us spinach florentine bennys (minus the english muffin) with a side of smiley fries. Dinner was so great, I have to admit, that I pretty much made myself the same thing for breakfast. The only thing is, I think what I made this morning tasted better. HA!

One thing that I’ve always wanted to learn was how to poach an egg. Poached eggs are so yummy and fresh tasting, that I think I officially prefer them over fried eggs now. There are three keys to properly poaching an egg:

1. Vinegar. I poach my eggs in a small pot with about 2 inches of water in it. Without measuring, I splash some white vinegar into the water before heating. The difference between using vinegar and not is HUGE. Use vinegar!

2. Water Temp. Water should be hot and with small bubbles in it – but not boiling. Even a small boil is too aggressive on the egg. Every stove is different — on mine I put the heat to 6 (just over medium) and wait until it’s at that small bubble stage before putting in my first egg.

3. Do not plop! Crack your egg into a bowl and slide the egg into the hot water. I find that putting the lip of the bowl into the water and literally letting it slide in is the best way to prevent losing egg white through the cooking process.

Today, for the first time, I timed how long I poached my egg. Funny — because watching the timer made me poach it longer than I usually do. 5 minutes gives you a solid medium poach! (I like mine a bit softer than that, so I’ll make note to see how it is at 3 or 4 minutes)

To accompany my poached egg, I made some smiley fries. Smiley fries were my inebriated grocery store purchase last night. A cute tasty treat, but not something I’d buy on the regular.

I also made a small hash that turned out super good. 1 chopped Italian vegan sausage, half of a small onion diced, half of a yellow pepper diced, a handful of spinach – and about 2 tbsp of leftover (store bought) alfredo sauce.

Breakfast was a treat. Sorry that my love missed out!

Breakfast Smiles

 

Roasted Vegetable Coconut Mango Curry – recipe by Mouthwatering Vegan

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , , , , , ,

I made this!!!

Part of improving your ability to combine spices and flavours involves venturing out and trying others tried, tested and true recipes. This roasted vegetable fruit coconut curry turned out juicy, spicy, sweet and ridiculously flavourful.

I have made my fair share of curries, but this is the first time I’ve cooked the vegetables and sauce separate and blended the sauce. The result was veggies that had a good bite to them, and a creamy bold sauce.

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This was the sauce as it was simmering. By this point my apartment was inundated with the smell of lovely Indian spices. I didn’t have curry powder (surprisingly) or cardamom (I’m certain that I tossed some old cardamom pods a couple weeks ago…oh well) so I substituted garam masala…mine had cardamom as the first ingredient listed, and a bit of cayenne powder to get the heat.
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See? Really Good! Check out Mouthwatering Vegan. There are some really tasty looking recipes. Oh, I should mention, this makes a LOT. Because we made rice too, we could have fed a family of 6. More for lunches next week ;-)

Recipe: Baked Grapefruit

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food, Musings and tagged with , , ,

This may seem like too simple of a recipe to do a blog post for, but, until yesterday morning, I had never tried a baked grapefruit.

Grapefruit is one of those fruits that I consider to be temperamental. When it’s good, it’s amazing, sweet, and juicy. When it’s bad, it’s inedible. I decided to check out recipes for baked grapefruit and was taken aback by how many methods there are to make something so simple. This is what we tried, because of what was handy, but we’ll mix it up next time. Oh yes…there will certainly be a next time!

Recipe:
1 grapefruit (we used a ruby red)
Dash of ground cinnamon
Drizzle of maple syrup

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Slice the grapefruit in half and use the knife to loosen the fruit from the peel. Cut around it and through the segments so it will be easy to enjoy when it’s hot.

Place each half of the grapefruit in a ramekin and put a dash of cinnamon and a drizzle of maple syrup.

Bake for 15 minutes

The ramekins will be smoking hot, so let them sit for a few minutes before serving. If you’re serving to an accident prone loved one, dont serve in the ramekin at all. Hahaa. My grapefruit was juicy, so the ramekin did catch a bit of yummy ooze.

We enjoyed our grapefruit with a poached egg on a piece of toast (Cape seed bread from Cobbs). It got me thinking about breakfast and eating out and portion sizes. Canada isn’t as bad as the States, but we too can be guilty of using portion size as measure of goodness at a restaurant. My city has a growing Brunch culture and there are many delicious restaurants to choose from. But how often do you cook 3 eggs for breakfast + 2 toast +, +, +? It’s so not necessary. I hope that we move towards being a culture that enjoys good food…I mean GREAT FOOD… reasonably.

Enjoy your day!

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I have a thing for grocery stores

Posted by Freedom Fro in Fun with Food and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

I have many fond memories of trips to the grocery store as a child. Particularly, when we lived in Strathcona; a girl, a woman, and a granny cart would walk to Sunrise Market to get the best deals on fresh produce, chicken, tofu, noodles and rice. I grew up being accustomed to shopping for a good deal and enjoying food shopping as an experience because there is so much variety, depending on where you go.

I really like where I live in Vancouver now, because there are 6 large grocery stores along with numerous small specialty markets within walking distance of my home. Often while walking home from work, I’ll stop into a grocery store and peruse the aisles for idea and bargains. Today, I wandered into H-Mart, which is a large Korean grocery store.

Brown Enoki Mushrooms

Not too long after entering the store, my eyes were drawn to a gorgeous display of brown enoki mushrooms, from a farm in Richmond. I have cooked with white enoki mushrooms many times before, and they have a nice crunchy texture that works in stirfrys or in soups quite well. The flavour is quite mild, so I wondered if this slightly heartier looking enoki would be more intense.

Because I had never cooked with these mushrooms before, I decided to keep it simple and make a stir fry to serve on rice. I grabbed some of my ‘ol faithful’ ingredients for a stirfry: extra firm tofu, shiitake mushrooms, celery, ginger, garlic, carrots, green beans…and then, I saw some great looking swiss chard for sale. *yoink*

As someone who has made a lot of stirfrys, I have to admit that I have messed up my fair share. Over-cooked zucchini? Too much soya sauce?

This is how I learned to do a good tofu stirfry, that has texture and freshness and defined flavours. I’ll demonstrate with the veggies I used tonight.

extra firm tofu – sliced or cubed
1 tbsp minced ginger
2 cloves of minced garlic
1.5 tbsp of cooking oil

brown the tofu, ginger and garlic over medium heat, then set aside.

turn heat to medium high. In the pan you had cooked the tofu, add another tsp of cooking oil and saute the veggies in order that they take to cook:

-sliced shiitake mushrooms
-chop the brown enoki mushroom about 3/4 inch from the roots. They will look like little florets of mushrooms broken up in your dish.
add 2 tbsp of mirin or cooking wine to the mushrooms so they’ll have some moisture to absorb, stir fry for 3 mins
-sliced carrots, celery, chard stems; stir fry for 2 mins
-green beans, chard leaves
-add 1 tbsp of Braggs, 1 tbsp Water, 1 tbsp of mushroom stir fry sauce (it’s a vegan version of oyster sauce)
-add the tofu-ginger-garlic mixture back to the stirfry

After a couple more minutes, it’s all done! Serve over rice or noodles!

The brown enoki, for me was still more about the texture than the flavour. I will never complain about great texture, it’s fun! I’d definitely use them again.