Peanutty Tofu

Meal planning is going pretty well for us still. Though we have a tendency to fall back on regular favourites - dhal, eggplant pasta, burritos - we have tried out new things at least once a week. Because I do lots of prep on Sunday, even trying out new things isn't too time consuming. Here's a new kind of tofu - deliciously peanutty tofu - that we tried the other week. I found the recipe on Pinterest, but we didn't follow it, so I'll post it here the way we made it.

BBQ Satay Tofu

2 Tbsp. soy sauce
2 Tbsp. sesame oil
2 Tbsp. sherry
750 g. tofu, cut into slices

On Sunday (or just a few hours before), mix the soy sauce, sesame oil and sherry, pour over tofu and cover. Let that marinate for a few hours or a few days.

3/4 c. coconut cream
3/4 c. peanut butter
2 garlic cloves
1 1/2 tsp. curry powder
1 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 Tbsp. lime juice
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 1/2 Tbsp. soy sauce

Blend these ingredients together until they are nice and smooth to make a sauce. You can do this on Sunday, too, and leave it in a jar in the fridge until you have tofu for dinner.

When you're ready to cook, put the tofu in a baking tray in a single layer. Pour most of the peanut sauce over the top. We put ours in a cast iron baking tray and cooked it on the BBQ, so added the rest of the can of coconut cream to the pan, too. If you're making it in the oven, see how you go and add extra liquid only if you need to. Alternatively, toss the tofu pieces with 1/3 cup or so of the peanut sauce and cook directly on the grill, serving with more sauce.

The beauty of cooking it in the pan is that the sauce went really thick and caramelised, and then we poured the little bit of leftover sauce over on our plates. It was beautiful!

We served ours with a roasted eggplant & snake bean (both from the garden) couscous salad, and a pesto-stuffed butternut pumpkin.

Lemon and Sage Burgers

These patties are a little bit gourmet, in as much as burgers ever can be classy. They're also quick and easy - we had them on a Friday night for dinner, which is usually our laziest night in the kitchen. A bit of forethought is required, unless you use canned beans. The inclusion of lemon was inspired by a bag of Myer Lemons grown by a friend of mine. We happened to have a roasted eggplant in the fridge waiting to be used -- you see, our eggplants remain in high-intensity fruit-production mode, so sometimes we'll throw a whole one on the barbie to use later in the week -- so we turned it into a really nice condiment that really complemented the flavours of the burger.

Lemon and Sage White Bean Burgers

2 cups of cooked cannellini beans, drained
1/4 c. olive oil
juice from 1 lemon
1 tsp. dried sage
1/2 c. polenta (corn meal)
1/2 to 1 c. gluten flour
salt & pepper

I cooked my beans on the weekend and put them in a container with the olive oil, lemon juice and sage, and left them to 'marinate' in the fridge all week. If you're using tinned beans, or just haven't planned ahead, just mix them all in a bowl. When you're ready to make the patties, mash the beans with the olive oil, lemon juice and sage until most of the beans are broken up. Stir in the polenta, and salt and pepper to taste. Then mix in 1/2 c. of gluten flour. Knead for a few minutes, adding more gluten flour if they feel soft. The dough should be pretty sturdy, because these were nice, firm burgers. Form into patties.

Cook on the BBQ, or in a frying pan, or in the oven. We did ours on the barbie, over very low heat. The delicate flavours in these wouldn't taste very good charred, I think, so cook until just lightly browned.

Eggplant mayonnaise
1 medium eggplant, roasted and then cut into chunks.
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. lemon juice
2 Tbsp. vegan mayo (like Praise 99% fat free, which we used)
salt & pepper

In a blender, food processor or mini chopper, blend up the eggplant chunks with the olive oil and lemon juice until it is pretty smooth. Add vegan mayo and whiz it through to mix. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

We had our burgers on bread rolls with the eggplant mayo, some malabar spinach from the garden, and cucumber.

Pizza. On the BBQ.

Andy and I love pizza. Since I perfected a crust recipe several years ago (below), Andy has requested pizza aroundabout once a week. We have had some really excellent successes in our time - roasted garlic + nutrtitional yeast "cheesy garlic bread", gourmet-style antipasto pizzas, vegan bacon and pineapple pizzas - but we've recently reached new heights in the pizza stakes.

Enter the BBQ.

I had read, several years ago, an article about cooking pizza on the grill like this. The article talked about putting the dough straight on the grill plate, cooking it briefly, then flipping over to top as the other side of the dough cooked. This could work, but we haven't tried it yet, and I don't know how it would go on a Weber (which cooks hotter than most BBQs).

When Andy's parents parked their caravan in our back yard last May, they bought a pizza stone for their Weber, and we tried it out with pre-purchased crusts. They were good, and friends who have pizza stones say they are really excellent. But our trepidation around pizza stones is that they are rather small, and we like our pizzas rather... large. I suppose we could make many smaller pizzas, but they can only cook one at a time, and also what if the dough is floppy?

Our method is much simpler, and probably means that we still have higher heights to reach. But for now, it's blown our minds enough that we're happy here. Our method involves making the pizza on the pan, like we always have, but cooking it on the Weber, raised up on a trivet (because going straight on the grill would be too direct a heat and would burn the base).

The result is a crispy crunchy base with a still-fluffy crust ring around the edge of the pizza. The whole thing gets a slightly smoky, BBQ flavour. And it only takes 8-10 minutes per pizza, on low heat.

BBQ sauce, fresh pineapple, and vegan bacon bits, with a few mushrooms.

I suppose the most revolutionary aspect of this pizza-making method is that it lets us have pizza in the summer without heating up the house. On a really hot, North Queensland day, you can imagine how important this is. It even encourages us to eat outside, something we normally only do when we have people over.

Pesto, Mushroom and Tomato pizza

Pizza Dough
1 cup of water (usually, + 1 or 2 Tbsp., but play it by feel)
2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 Tbsp. sugar
3 c. flour
3 Tbsp. gluten flour
2 and 1/2 tsp. yeast

We make this in the bread maker, just whacking everything in and letting it go, adding a splish splash of water when it looks dry. If you don't have a bread maker, do this in the normal way of making bread. Mix up the water, salt, olive oil, sugar and yeast. Mix the flour and gluten flour together and then mix the dry into the wet with a wooden spoon. When it gets too stiff, mix with your hands, and knead the dough for 10 minutes until it becomes stretchy and smooth. As you knead, add more flour if it is too wet; if it's too dry I like to get my hands wet and knead in more water that way. When it looks like nice dough, put it in an oiled bowl, cover, and let it rise for 60-90 minutes.

At the end of the dough cycle or when the dough has risen in the bowl, punch it down, drop it on the bench, and knead by hand for a minute. Divide it in half (or more, if you want smaller pizzas), form into smooth balls (tuck the rough bits in at the bottom until it's pretty smooth), and let rest on the bench, covered with a tea towel, until you're ready to roll out the pizzas (up to 2 hours, but we usually go 30-60 minutes).

Meal Planning: Week 2

Look at me: back at work for less than a month and I've already fallen off the regular-blogging wagon. Obviously I'm no good at multi-tasking, so you can see why I need at least a semi-structured meal plan!

Our second week of meal-planning began with the best of intentions. We would go to the market, get whatever produce looked good and was cheap, and then plan a week's worth of meals. But on Sunday morning we woke to find Tika in a bit of discomfort and sporting a huge belly. The night before, I left the dog food bag open, and she helped herself. So we skipped the market, instead staying home to keep an eye on her (also, it was hot).

So I thought about what we had on hand, and started flicking through some cookbooks, but I only got through two before I had so many ideas. Week 2's meal plan became our Week of Urban Vegan. Her cookbooks tend to be my faves anyways, so I wasn't surprised to find a big list of possibilities. Here is the plan that I wrote, based on some input (and some resistance) from Andy:

• Esther's Baked Falafel (Celebrate Vegan p.107), or Chickpea Chilli Burgers (Urban Vegan, p.48) - early in the week, so Andy could have leftovers on his lunch-time sandwiches
• Black Bean and Bulgur Tacos (UV, p.83) - on Tuesday or Wednesday, so the lettuce was still fresh.
• Pumpkin risotto with sage and sundried tomatoes (UV, p.152)
• Spicy Seitan 'Wings' (Celebrate, p.165)
• Spaghetti alle Melanzane (UV, p.91)
• Pumpkin-Daal Soup (UV, p.54)

There were others I could have chosen, but there are only so many days in a week! At this point, Andy got a little nervous that my meal-planning would become inflexible, so we agreed that this was just a guide - a list of recipes that we could use if we didn't know what to make, but if we felt inspired to do something else that was cool too.

Here is how it turned out.

On Sunday, while soaking beans for the week, I decided to turn some overripe bananas into muffins. I used the recipe for Blueberry-Banana Bread (UV, p.24) as a guide, but changed it up heaps, so I will post the new recipe another time. These were high in protein, and super yummy, the perfect morning tea snack for a week without fruit (on account of not going to the markets).

Sunday night's dinner was a mash-up of the two chickpea patty recipes. I couldn't decide, and then I did, but then I changed my mind. So the flavouring is falafel, but I added oats as per the burger recipe to bulk the patties up. They were a little dry, so not very well suited to BBQing, but they were delicious with BBQ potatoes, beetroot and corn.

Monday night we had eggplant pasta, basically following the recipe for "alle Melanzane" but adding a jar of pesto (because our freezer is so full of it!), and using penne pasta.

Up until now, our meals for Week 2 looked strikingly similar to Week 1, with a few minor variations. Andy would have preferred to keep this up, but Tuesday is where I took a more serious detour. Instead of our normal tomatoey Mexican meals, I made Dynise's Black Bean and Bulgur filling, with the addition of some corn, which we ate burrito-style. I thought they were delicious, and a great change. Andy likes what he likes, and thought these were just okay.

On Wednesday, we got a break from the sticky, hot weather - instead, it was 25 degrees and we got 200mm of rain. I felt like something warm and snuggly, so flicked through the two cookbooks and decided to make an afternoon snack of Milk Pudding (Halvaye Shir), a Persian sweet (Celebrate, p.10). Except I didn't follow the recipe well - I used different spices, vanilla instead of rosewater, and walnuts instead of pistachios. It was very yummy, anyways.

Then for dinner, we went off-plan in favour of something hearty and warm - Mesir Wat with Chappatis.

Thursday was still a little on the cool side, so rather than BBQ-ising Dynise's seitan wing recipe, we followed the original recipe and baked them in the oven. I think of them as nuggets, more so than wings, but whatever you call them they are fantastic (with oven-baked potatoes).

On Friday, we fell into old habits (not necessarily bad habits...) and threw some gnocchi and jarred tomato sauce together and called it dinner. It did the job, got us through the week, and made a dent in the big pile of gnocchi taking up space in our freezer. So Week 2 was a little similar to Week 1, a little creative, and still flexible. A success, even if not a resounding one!

Meal Planning: Week 1

Despite saying in my page on spending less money that meal planning isn't really for us, I made it a resolution to be a bit more organised about dinner. But I didn't want to adopt the kind of meal plan that requires choosing recipes, buying specific ingredients, and following a plan very strictly. We need flexibility, and also Andy gets a little grouchy about buying things full price when there are on-special alternatives, so specific ingredients are rarely purchased in our place.

Our first week of meal planning didn't come about as much through planning as through indecision. Scene: Sunday morning, after breakfast, on the couch. Me: Do you want to go to the market? Andy: We probably don't need to. Me: But the only veggies we have are corn and lettuce... Andy: Well, let's have... dhal, nacho salad, burgers, gnocchi with pesto, and pumpkin risotto. Me: Wait, let me write this down.

So we had a vague plan. Then I realised I wanted fruit so we went to the market anyways, and came home with some more things: potatoes, carrots, sweet potatoes and beetroots (plus bananas, a bucket of mangoes and three pineapples). Add to that our eggplant bushes heavily laden with quickly-growing fruits. So I amended our meal plan.

Monday and Tuesday I was home still, not yet finished with my holidays. So I did a lot of prep stuff for the coming week - cooking beans, making chappati breads, and roasting eggplant. And then we enacted our meal plan: no set schedule, just a pretty good idea of what we could make given the ingredients on hand, and no real thinking required (for those nights after work where thinking is very undesirable). Here's how it shaped up.

Monday: Nacho salad. Chips and lettuce on the bottom, a mix of kidney beans, sweet potato, tomato, corn and rice in the middle, and a fresh mango-pineapple-cucumber salsa on top.

Tuesday: red lentil dhal with wholemeal chappatis. I didn't snap a photo of this, because it was just dhal.

Wednesday: kidney bean burgers, with grilled pineapple (under the patty), potatoes, and corn on the cob.

Thursday: gnocchi with eggplant balls and a pesto-y, tomato-y sauce.

Friday: Andy went off script, and crafted a semi-delicious curry of eggplant, tofu and jackfruit.

Since this seemed to work reasonably well for us last week, I tried again on Sunday, this time going a little more adventurous and looking for recipes that we could use. I'll give week 2 a post of its own when we've finished it, but so far meal planning seems to be going well. As long as it doesn't require buying special things, and we have the flexibility to cook what we feel like on a given night, it seems to work for us.I guess I should update the part about not meal planning soon...

Spring Things

The start of spring, in Australia, is the 1st of September, and it has definitely warmed up here in Townsville. We still have the blankets on the bed, but when I walk the dog very early in the morning the sun is up, and I don't need a jumper anymore. The warm weather has meant a few different things.

Cucumbers.

Bucket loads of cherry tomatoes. We didn't plant the cherry tomatoes in our garden - they just came up, all over. We get big bowls full a few times each week.

Last week Andy gave Tika some cherry tomatoes to see if she would like them. She did, and he thought that was awesome. The next morning I saw Tika eating them straight off the bush. Upon realising that he has competition for his tomatoes, Andy doesn't think it's so awesome anymore.

Cherry tomatoes in fresh salsa - with cucumber, capsicum, chilli and coriander.

Fresh salsa on Nachos, with refried black beans and guac.

Cherry tomatoes in Brooklyn Pad Thai.

We got a BBQ, which is fantastic not just because BBQed food is yummy, but because BBQ dinner is quick and easy and doesn't make a big mess.

Stuffed capsicums, cooked on the Weber, with some baby zucchinis.

BBQ potatoes, garden radishes, garden zucchinis, felafel balls, and corn on the cob.

Side salad with tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, nasturtiums and rocket, all from the garden.

Chickpea patties. Check those char marks.

I grew soy beans over the winter, knowing full well they are a cool climate crop and they might not do much. But I knew they would fix nitrogen in the soil even if they didn't produce beans, so they were worthwhile.

And they did produce a tiny crop.

I got more shells than beans.

Edamame salad with cucumber, wasabi, soy and pickled ginger.

We also got solar panels. On a good day we get 24kilowatts per day, and if it's a bit cloudy more like 20, which is 2-3x what we use each day, so we're pretty smug about things.

 Also, our patio is getting lovelier and lovelier, with the BBQ and the fairy lights, and a quickly growing passionfruit for shade.