plum tomato tofu

Following on from my plum sauce success, I've been trying it out in dishes. We only had a little bit of tofu left, which I chopped up (rather inelegantly) and marinated, then broiled with some veggies & tomatoes. It was so good! Kind of like a scrambled tofu, without the scramble.

Plum Tomato Tofu
250g tofu
1 tbspn plum sauce
1 tbspn soy sauce
1/2 tbspn tahini
1 tbspn olive oil
2 - 4 spring onions, sliced
1 carrot, sliced
1/2 zucchini, sliced (or, whatever veggies you like)
1 large / 2 medium tomatoes, chopped

First, chop up the tofu and marinate in the plum sauce, soy sauce & tahini for at least 10 mins.
Grill it on a flat frypan (reserving the marinade) with the olive oil until the tofu develops a nice golden colour.
Add in the spring onions, carrot & zucchini & fry until the vegies are just starting to cook.
Add the chopped tomatoes & leftover marinade, turn down the heat and let the dish cook for about 10 mins.

The tomatoes should break down and start to disappear, and the tofu should develop a crunchy crust (I thought it ended up tasting slightly bacon-y, in a good way).

I served mine with rice & dumplings (momos).

stephanie alexander's plum sauce

Hooray! We have a winner! Since we moved into our current house with a large plum tree in the backyard, I've been searching for the perfect plum sauce recipe. I'm not a huge eater of sweet things, so I don't really do jam. I think this Stephanie Alexander recipe is the best plum sauce I have tried!

I used 1 less cup of vinegar and 1/2 less cup of sugar than the recipe stated - I have no idea what variety of plums we have, but they are a lot more watery & less fleshy than a blood plum. I also didn't actually chop up the plums at all, I just chucked them in whole and cooked for a bit longer. I am a lazy preserve maker.

Anyway, if you have a plum tree, make this sauce! Mmm.

Oh, I also found the recipe made around 1 litre, not 2.

Super Easy Pizza

I always think of homemade pizza dough as being rather labourious, so I was happy to see some on Where's the Beef that promised to be dead easy. Hooray! Chris & I gave it a go, and it really is!

You can see the recipe here, we followed it exactly, but let the dough rest for about 30 mins, allowing it time to double in size and get all nice & puffy. The dough on the left had been sitting for about 10 mins, and looked almost exactly as it did when we made it - giving it that extra 20 mins was a good idea.

Our toppings were nice & simple, and made use of the incredibly large bunch of silverbeet we'd received in our vegie box.

Tomato Pizza:
Tomato
Garlic
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
Basil

Sprinkle the tomatoes & garlic with a pinch of salt & let sit for 10 mins (to release excess tomato juices & get rid of garlicky garlickness).
Pour off the excess liquid.
Mix in olive oil & basil - voila!

Silverbeet Pizza:
Silverbeet
Onion
Olive oil
Lemon juice
Oregano
Artichoke hearts
Pine nuts

Blanch some silverbeet in boiling water then cold water.
Squeeze out the extra juices.
Slice the silverbeet finely, then add some lemon juice, oregano & olive oil.
Put it on the pizza, and top with the artichokes & nuts.

Yum!
Add

cherry chocolate sundae

This isn't quite a true sundae, as it's not frozen. Chris gave me this lovely cookbook for Christmas - to encourage me to make raw things that aren't salad?


It's a great cookbook, I did a bit of research on Amazon, and this book (Raw Food for 1 or 2 people) is recommended by lots of people because it uses kitchen utensils most people have, rather than the dehydrator so many raw cookbooks use. I do find the cover design rather offensively bad, but don't let that put you off.

I've been intrigued by raw desserts for a little while now, and wanted to try the cashew vanilla cream.

Cherry Chocolate Sundae

One layer of halved & pitted cherries.
One layer of raw cashew cream.
One layer of chocolate sauce.

Raw Cashew Cream
I altered the recipe as I went, but basically you:
Soak 1 cup of raw cashews for an hour or so.
Then, blend them in a food processor with some agave syrup & vanilla extract.
Add additional water slowly as you go, and keep on tasting! Just keep blending until you get to a delicious, creamy consistency.

Chocolate sauce
Heat 1/4 cup soy milk in a double boiler, whisking in 1/2 tsp cornflour.
When the cornflour is in, add about 25grams of dark chocolate, and stir until melted.
Let it cool! That's it.

Sorry about the super 80s photo styling, by the way...

vegan tzatziki

Tzatziki is something I miss a lot, I do eat yoghurt sometimes but only when very necessary (like after burning my mouth on hot chillies). This is my new substitute!

This version is based on the recipe from Veganomicon, which seemed good, but contained some random stuff that I pooh-poohed. This is my version, it is delicious!

Tzatziki
1/2 cup raw cashews
1 medium lebanese cucumber
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 clove garlic
1 tbspn extra virgin olive oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon
2 sprigs mint

Soak the cashews in boiling water (enough to cover) for about 30 mins. Drain.
Grate the cucumber (peel if you like).
Put the cashews, 2/3 of the cucumber, the salt, garlic, olive oil, lemon juice into a food processor.
Squeeze the liquid out of the other 1/3 of the cucumber. Place the squeezed cucumber aside, pour the squeezed liquid into the food processor.
Blend! It takes a little while, but you should end up with a smooth-ish paste. You may need to add more water, I ended up adding about 1 tbspn extra water.
Mix in the reserved cucumber & shredded mint.
You can drizzle over a little extra olive oil.

I served mine with some toasted pita bread - I rubbed olive oil & ras el hanout into one side, then baked until crispy.