Curried Tofu

The curried tofu is from Vcon, and I think I essentially followed the recipe. It's really good. Nicely spicy. It's served with sauteed kale, rice, and spicy yoghurt sauce. The sauce started out as the one from Vcon, but being me, I completely ignored the recipe and threw whatever I felt like in it. Good stuff.

Check out my Le Creuset ramekin. I own Le Creuset cookware. Aren't I fancy? Okay, so it's two ramekins, and that's probably all I'll be able to afford for some time, but still, it's nice to say it. I own Le Creuset cookware.

I'm a Tweaker...

But not like on Dog! I don't do no ice, brah!

Ahem, yes. What I mean by this is that there is not a recipe on earth that I don't feel the need to change. I don't care if you had forty five million testers working 25 hours a day trying your recipes, I will change it. Sorry bout that. Yeah, so remember how I wasn't too sure about the white bean aioli thing from Vcon? Well, not one to waste food (or eat something I don't really like), i went back and played with it. Now what did I go and do but change a perfectly classy food into something completely tacky. Ha. Anyhoo, you know those gross sandwich filler things that come in various shades of cream, and a whole manner of horrible flavours? Well I turned it into that. Okay, so this one tastes good and I suppose is slightly classier than those shop bought ones, but still...

Anyhoo, here it is on some pumpkin seed and oat rye bread things:
Oh yeah, almost forgot to say what I actually did to it. I amped up the garlic a bit, added some fresh basil, onion, and various other herbs (yeah, like I pay attention). Anyhoo, yum.

Battered Seitan with Roast Potato Salad

This meal was so very nearly doomed. I had intended to beer batter the seitan, and bought a pack of beer specially for it. Alas I couldn't find the bottle opener and I was getting hungry, so I just winged the batter. Maybe the art of batter making is pre-programmed into all Scottish people, or maybe I truly am just a genius, but this was the best battered anything I have ever tasted. Look how golden it is! It was also incredibly light and fluffy, and strangely not greasy, and hasn't left me feeling ill. Yay! It's served with the roasted potato salad from The Everyday Vegan, and the white bean and garlic aioli thing from Veganomicon. The potato salad was lovely, but the aioli could do with some more garlic. Usually I double the garlic in most recipes, but this one warned me it was really garlicky so I didn't. Oh well! I'll know for next time.

Aerogrow Update and Adventures in Seitan Making

First up, here's the Aerogrow update for week 4:
Everything's spreading out and starting to encroach on each others growing space. It's kinda cute. It's like watching a little artificial community interact.

Anyhoo. This week I made the soy and seitan cutlets from Bryannas Vegan feast Newsletter (which I thoroughly reccommend). The recipe makes loads, so I've mainly been eating those for the past few days. The first night we just had them floured and fried, with potatoes, asparagus, broccoli, and gravy. Delicious.The next night we had them cut up into strips and marinated in a lemony, soy, mustardy, agavey, (you know, all the stand by marinade stuff) sauce and served over stir fried vegetables.
Given the fact that I'm Scottish, you may expect to see some battered seitan in the coming days. Oh my.

Various Stuff from the Land of Lelly

Yeah, so, I totally took the picture for my Aerogrow update, but got distracted by the overwhelming urge to sleep for a week (I had my last exam on Wednesday) so I didn't get around to posting it. So here it is:
So everything's growing great. The dill doesn't seen to be happy with it's allotted space and is trying to invade all the other herbs spaces. Big bully!

This is a pot pie I made the other day when I new I was going to be busy for a few days. I think this was the last slice:
It had potatoes, carrots, brussel sprouts, spinach, cheezly, in a nutritional yeasty type sauce thing. Damn tasty.

This year I told everyone in my family not to buy me presents for Christmas, because well, I hate Christmas. Blah blah blah commercial crap. Anyhoo, Nobody was happy with this, so I thought we'd reached a compromise in that I would make presents, and they could donate money to a charity or buy a very small present if they really felt they needed to. Alas, I just came back from Glasgow with bags of presents. Seriously people, next year, no presents! Anyhoo, here's one of the presents I (mostly) made:
It's a hamper (duh). In the jars are sundried tomato pesto, onion marmalade, and chocolate-cinnamon-almond biscotti. There's also a bottle of chilli infused oil, and the cracker looking things are chocolate chip cookies. There's also some herbal tea and hot chocolate. Oh, and don't you just love the bag the bottle's in? I made that too. It can be reused to transport all your holiday plonk to parties. I reinforced the stitching on the handles to make sure there were no plonk breakage incidents. All in all, I think I did rather well.

Trashy Food

Today it was cold outside, and I felt no real need to put non pyjama clothes on and go to the shops. Therefore, I had to make do with whatever I had in the fridge and cupboards. What I had and felt like using was leftover tortillas from the enchiladas, spinach, an onion, potatoes, and all the usual cupboard staples. What I made was trashy food, but tasty none the less.
I took some tortillas and folded them into cones and held them together with tin foil and baked them for a bit until they got crispy. I then made a refried bean mixture with kidney beans, onions, all the usual spices, and added some spinach at the end, and filled the cone thingies and rebaked them for a bit. Served with potato wedges and garlic and herb mayo. I make the worlds best potato wedges. Fact. No, seriously.

Aerogrow - Week 2

Reporting in for the end of week two. Good growth on everything. The parsley is coming out to play and I'll probably take it's lid off in the morning (you're supposed to do it when the light's off to reduce stress). I had begun to lose hope for the coriander at the back there, but I just had a peek and it is starting to sprout! Yay! The lights started to blink today to add nutrients and water, so I did. It's all highly exciting stuff.

Procrastination Food

I have exams soon. Like, really soon. Some may say that this would be one of those times when eating frozen/ready made foods would be acceptable/advisable, or generally making simple foods. Not I. Maybe it's a good thing, but I just have a thing about taking at least an hour a day to cook/bake. I can't help it. It does help me relax though, so I suppose I can justify it that way.

Anyhoo, enchiladas.

Made with red kidney beans, onions, spinach, cumin, coriander, paprika, lime juice, etc. Served with home made tofu sour cream. These were delicious, and fairly quick (well, for me).

Now onto the really good stuff, Smlove.
From Veganomicon and sooooooooo good. The only thing I'd change is making more of the peanut butter caramel, and baking the pie for slightly less time, coz mine got a little hard on top, but it was still great.

Now here's a money shot of a slice:
Show me a person who doesn't want that piece of pie, and I will show you a liar my friend.

Food of the Spicy Variety

Gary's in Glasgow and usually when that happens I end up not wanting to cook proper meals just for myself, but today I felt in dire need of decent food. Gary also doesn't like spicy food, so I took this opportunity to cook myself some spicy food.
I made this kidney bean curry with seasoned rice to satisfy my craving. I also made some spiced flatbread thingies. There was no recipe for anything, I just used stuff i had lying around. Brilliant.

Aerogrow - Week 1

The Aerogrow was all set up a week ago so I thought I'd post the progress. I may do this every Wednesday, or I may get bored. I make no promises. Anyhoo, the italian and purple basils, dill and chives are sprouting up nicely. The chives appeared in like an hour and seem to be growing bigger by the second. Not that I sit and watch it or anything, not at all... The mint has sprouted too but not enough to remove the lid thingy yet. The coriander and parsley aren't due to sprout until the 8-15 day mark, so it could be tomorrow, it could be next week. I know I'm on the edge of my seat!

Tofu and Cookies

Vegan staples right there (not really, obviously).

I made the Tangerine Baked Tofu from the Veganomicon for dinner tonight I pretty much followed the recipe except I used whisky instead of rum (coz I'm Scottish, duh), and I fried them with some cooking spray after the baking because they were all floppy.
I'd been hearing a lot about these potato squasher things in Dreena's new book. I don't have the book, but I, like most people was annoyed not to have thought of it first. I also thought 'how hard can it be to squash a potato without a recipe?', so here's my interpretation of the recipe. I parboiled the potatoes and then roasted them until they were nearly done. I took them out, squashed them a bit and brushed them with a spicy oil mixture (oil, cumin, paprika, cayenne, etc) and put them back in the oven. I think they turned out rather well.
The stuff on top of the tofu is a carribean chutney I picked up in the shop ages ago and had been waiting for something to use it on.

Oh, I promise to stop eating meals that consist of tofu and potatoes. Even I'm getting bored of it.

I made some cookies earlier today, so here are said cookies:
They're the Chewy Chocolate-Raspberry Cookies from Veganomicon. Isa totally lies when she says that they don't spread out. They totally do, and as a consequence I got a few oddly shaped ones from where they attacked each other/the side of the pan. Oh well, they were tasty so who cares.

I also made some ice cream sandwich cookie thingies (it's an American thing, we don't do this here), with these and some raspberry ice cream.
Like I said, I've never made ice cream cookie sandwich thingies so they're a bit messy, but again very tasty, so who cares.

All of todays pictures were taken in front of my Aerogrow. It has a lovely level of UV light that's so much like natural light it takes a good picture. Yet another reason why I love my Aerogrow.

Balsamic Tofu with Hasselback Potatoes and Sweet Onion Sauce

Yum. The tofu was marinated in a balsamic (and stuff) mixture for the best part of a day and then baked and fried. Has anyone else heard of Hasselback potatoes? I've made them before, but I went to google them to check I was spelling it right and there were no results! Weird! Anyhoo, you take potatoes and cut them in half lengthwise, par boil them, and then make a few scores into them. You then roast them and when they're very nearly done you take them out and put some breadcrumbs, and parmezano on them and roast them until crispy. The sweet onion sauce started out being the one from Veganomicon, but I got bored of that one and went my own way. It's just how I roll.

The Aerogrow Is Here!

Isn't she purdy? It came ridiculously quick, and I literally just set it up 5 minutes ago. I set it up myself which just shows how foolproof it is. I should apparently have my basil sprouting in 3 days, and everything else not long after. I've got purple basil, italian basil, coriander, chives, dill, mint, and parsley. How very exciting! Once the herbs are done (they'll apparently grow for 4-6 months) I think I'll be getting the salsa pack which has tomatoes and peppers. That is, unless they bring out something more exciting before then!

I will of course be providing periodical updates on the progress of my herbs, because well, I'm sad like that.

And now I give to you... A token Tofu Tikka Masala.

Leek and Bean Cassoulet

From the Veganomicon. To be honest, I found this a little bit bland. Once I'd tasted a few bites I found myself reaching for the salt, and then the red pepper flakes, etc. I would definitely add more garlic next time (even though this time I already doubled the garlic), and I would also add some herbs to the dumplings.

Nonetheless, it was filling, fairly healthy, and it looked pretty. Here it is served up.

In other news, I recently ordered one of these for my incredibly poorly lit flat. I'm very excited about growing my own fresh herbs, and then tomatoes... Mmmm... I am not your average 22 year old.


Oh, and in case anyone cares, the answer to the question in my previous post was "Two plain bridies, and an onion one as well". I did love herbstsonne's answer of "There were plenty of bridies and singing a song togethaaaaa.". Brilliant! It really should mean that...

Cullen Skink Tofu Bridies

What's Cullen Skink? What's a bridie? What's tofu?! Two of these three questions shall be answered. One shall not.

Cullen Skink is a traditional Scottish soup. It usually contains smoked haddock and cream and all sorts of nastiness. I veganised it using smoked tofu and soy milk etc.

A bridie is a type of pie. It's similar to a cornish pastie but has a shorter crust.

Hence, a Cullen Skink Bridie is a bridie filled with Cullen Skink! Huzzah! You come to Lelly's website and you learn something. I'm just good like that.

I liked these, the filling was smoky and creamy like it should be. I meant to get a picture of the bridie cut open so you could see the filling, but clearly I forgot. I think I need to work on this recipe a little, yes, indeed, it needs a little bit if tweaking. Gary also liked it. I made four of these and I had the one in the picture. Gary came home from work and ate three before he'd even said hello to me. Not surprising really.

Oh, if anyone can tell me the meaning of "Twa plenn bridies an ingan ane an aa" without looking at the wikipedia page, you will earn the title of 'person who Lelly thinks is cool'. It's an honour, believe me.

Nominominominomicon Stuff

Yup, I got my Veganomicon last week and I have mainly been cooking from that. It's kinda weird having a Cookbook that's bigger than my Ecotoxicology textbook but there you go.

The first thing I cooked was the spaghetti and beanballs.
It was really quick and easy to make and the recipe yielded 40 gagillion beanballs (which was fine by us, we had the beanball sub for dinner the next night). It tasted quite healthy, but really, really filling too.

The next thing I tried to make seemed doomed to failure. Quite simply, the vegan gods did not want me to make this dish, but I perservered.
I was trying to make the Pasta with Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe. First of all, my trusty health store was mysteriously out of tempeh, and the shops were out of broccoli rabe. I ended up making Pasta with Spicy Tofu and Plain-Old-Boring-Regular-Broccoli. Because of subbing the Tofu, I had to adjust the method a little bit. I baked the tofu in the marinade for about 20 minutes before frying it. It didn't really matter anyway, because this turned out delicious. The tofu was strangely melt in your mouth, and the flavours worked perfectly. It really reminded us of a similar dish we got at a vegetarian restaurant in Prague (Clear Head).

Yesterday morning I was awake at the crack of dawn (not unusual) and bored so I decided to cook me and Gary a big American style Brunch.
I made scrambled tofu, toast, sliced tomatoes, and the Diner Style Home Fries from the nominominomicon. I thought us Scottish folk had mastered the art of the fried potato for breakfast (tattie scones), but these were also pretty damn good. I'd definitely make them again. Even Gary hoovered his up and he's a crazy non-potato lover. Also, because I'm actually the nicest person in the world, I made Gary some garlic mushrooms for his brunch, even though I have the mushroom fear.

Stuffed Tofu... Again.

Yep, third appearance now, but this time with recipe and tutorial, yay!


Stuff you'll need for the filling:

• 4 tbsp margarine
• 1 tbsp dijon mustard
• 4/5 cloves garlic (I like my food really garlicky, reduce this amount if you don't share my passion)
• 1 tsp oregano
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast
• Handful basil leaves, chopped.
  

Stuff you'll need for the coating:

• 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup nutritional yeast
• 2 tbsp dijon mustard

And obviously you'll need a block of tofu! You'll want a really firm tofu, with no cracks or holes in it. This is the kind I use:

What you do:

1. First make the filling by mixing together all the filling ingredients in a bowl. Simple as. This is what mine usually looks like:
2. Now drain your tofu and pat it dry. Cut block of tofu in half like this:
3. Now, using your sharpest knife score a rectangle into one of the sides. Keep scoring deeper and deeper. Go quite far into the tofu, but not too far, as you don't want the tofu to split open.
4. Scoop out the insides of the tofu. Set aside some of the scoopy out bits.
5. Put filling in tofu. Don't overfill it, you don't want the filling to explode the tofu.
6. I sometimes put a little basil leaf on top of the filling, it probably doesn't do anything, but I'm strange like that. Put some of the scooped out tofu in the end.

7. Brush some of the remaining filling onto the outside of the tofu and cover in foil. Leave to marinate, anything over an hour is great, but it tastes fine with no marinating too.

8. Now it's time to bake. I've baked it standing up, and on it's side. It's okay on it's side as long as it's tightly wrapped in foil. This time I baked it standing up. I leave the top of the tin foil open, and wrap and excess round the back of the pan to keep it upright. This probably isn't making any sense, so here's a picture:
9. Bake at around 200 degrees for 20-30 minutes. Keep an eye on it to make sure it hasn't fallen over.

10. Take tofu out and leave it to rest until it's cooled down a bit. Why? Well the easiest way to do the next bit is with your hands, and right now, that filling is like molten lava. I did it with tongs tonight, but I wouldn't really recommend it.

11. Right, now put the remaining mustard on a plate, and mix the flour and nutritional yeast together (on a separate plate if you like, I just use a big plate)

12. Turn on your frying pan and put some oil in it. You want to let it get really hot before you put anything in it.

13. Dip tofu in mustard, and then dredge in flour mixture.

14. Fry for a few minutes on each side. Should be nicely browned.

Eat!
Got any leftover filling? Cook your vegetables in it!

Seems like a lot of instructions, but most of it involves waiting for things to happen so it's not too bad.

Some Stuff What I Eated Recently

Yeah, that was me trying to do lolcatz speak. I fail at life sometimes.

As I anxiously await the arrival of my Veganomicon, I thought I'd make something from Vegan with a Vengeance that I'd never tried before. So, I give to you, Tempeh and White Bean Sausage Patties. I had four of these babies in some lovely organic pitta bread. Then I went to bed and when I woke the rest of the patties had miraculously disappeared! Funny how that happens sometimes.

Sometimes Gary cooks. When this happens it's always chilli. Sometimes I complain that I get bored of chilli. Sometimes Gary listens and makes things other than chilli. This was one of those times. He took some gorgeous ciabattas and scooped out the insides and stuffed them with roasted vegetables, cheezly, and probably all sorts of other lovely stuff. As I didn't make it, I'm not sure. He also roasted some tomatoes, and toasted the scooped out bread and served it with some garlic olive oil. It was all highly delicious.


I made this soup today and it was the best tomato soup I've ever eaten (even if I do say so myself). It's lovely and rich, and chunky, and flavourful. It also has some cannelini beans in it for some protein (coz you know, none of us are getting enough). It's served with some toasted organic bread I got at the health store, which is spread with lovely garlic and herb butter.

So, I Perfected That Stuffed Tofu Recipe...

... but I'm being a total tease and not posting the recipe yet. Why? Well because I have a tendency to not measure anything when I'm cooking, but I promise I'll measure stuff next time I cook it. In the meantime, here's a picture of it, in all its oozy glory.
Gary says it's the best thing I've ever cooked and offered me 50 quid if I would surrender my portion right then and there. I politely declined.

So, on Sunday we had a small vegan brunch at our flat. It was fun. So, I give to you... brunch food!
Balsamic Bruschetta
Tomato Tarts
Aubergine Pomodoro

Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff.

Indeed.

I started back uni which kind of explains my absence. I have been cooking and taking pictures, just not posting, whoops!

Anyhoo, we had a potluck a few weekends back, so I thought I'd post some of the stuff from there.
Chocolate Chip Cookies from VwaV. Always a hit.
Raspberry Blackout Cake also from VwaV. First time I've made it, and I only had one tiny slice, but it was good.
These were brought by our friend. She hand made the tortillas without a tortilla press! They were delicious. Inside them was a mexican beany mixture. Fantastic.
I'm not entirely sure what to call this. The inside of the tofu was hollowed out and stuffed with various things (I would say what, but I'm still working on the recipe), and then sealed over with some of the scooped out tofu. It was then marinated and baked wrapped in foil. I then dipped it in the remainder of the marinade and dredged it in a flour and nutritional yeast misture and fried it. It was really really good, but the recipe needs a little bit of work.
That's an action shot of the stuffing.

Ciabatta Pizza - Now With Go Faster Stripes.

I spent most of yesterday clearing junk out of our bedroom coz we're moving a few things around, so when it came to dinner time, I wasn't in the mood for anything complicated. Ciabatta pizzas to the rescue!
On the pizzas are stripes of basil tofu ricotta and pesto (from a jar). Hit the spot, it did.

The Chinese Supermarket is Fun!

I love the chinese supermarket, I really do. We went there yesterday and looked at all the cool vegan junk food (it's there! you just have to look). We ended up with a ridiculous amount of junk and not enough vegetables.
Amongst our haul is yam cookies, black rice mochi, weird looking vegetable and fruit muffins, veggie ham, and weirdly enough, a bottle of Irn Bru (not pictured). Indeed.

With all the wonderful stuff we got, I made the Hongshao Doufu (I think that's how it's spelled) from Please Don't Feed The Bears. It was delicious. Gary took some leftovers to work today and I have just been informed that it was much tastier the day after, but it was plenty tasty just cooked too!


In an unrelated note, I sometimes like to make things. When I make things I sometimes like to show them off. So that's what I'm going to do.

Behold! The amazing D10 earrings and necklace!
I love these so much! They're so simple but they look quite impressive when I wear them. They're basically three D10's (ten sided dice) wrapped in wire. Brilliant. Love em.

I made this bracelet two days ago and went out to the pub wearing it, where it was officially named "The Bracelet What Would Make Mozza My Friend". Apparently it's hard to become his friend, and I decided this bracelet would impress him enough to form a life long friendship.
In case you can't tell, that's the vegan society logo. This bracelet probably breaks all kind of copyright laws, but I'm not selling it or anything! *looks scared* You have to catch me first!