Tofu?! Yes, you can.

Whilst my noodles are soaking in hot water, and the rest of my prep is just waiting for me to heat up the stove and start cooking, I thought I'd update what I'm making today! It's really nice because it involves tofu. Most people I know fall into either of two categories. The first kind of people are not vegetarians themselves, so would never dream of cooking with tofu. But one of these days, they're going to have to cook for a friend or family member who is vegetarian, in which case they're going to serve a delicious 'tofu crumbled through tomato sauce served with spaghetti'. You know, because tofu is just like meat, only squishier. Yuk. The second group are vegetarians, who think tofu might be nice to add to a dish but feel a bit timid when they have to face one of those big blocks of processed white stuff, so rather opt for stuff made from tofu. Like smaller blocks. Today, I am going for a third option: I, a non-vegetarian, will face the processed block, and transform it! Make it delicious! It will be magical.

Ingredients
3 tablespoons of sambal (or, alternatively, of ground up whole medium hot chilis)
Enough oil to cover about a quarter inch of your wok
1 scary-looking block of tofu

Make sure the tofu is at least a little dry. You can do this by folding it into a clean tea towel and putting a brick on top of it (or just squeezing gently yourself), or you can do it with kitchen towels if you prefer. I squeezed the tofu, and I am proud of it.

Slice the tofu into finger-sized pieces, about a quart inch high. Heat up the oil in your wok, add the sambal and stir until you have a chili-flavoured oil with little chili seeds floating in it. Watch out for the hot oil! Now add the first batch of the tofu pieces, just so many as will cover the bottom of your pan with a little room to flip them over later. After about 5 minutes (depending on how hot your oil is!), the bottom of the tofu will be crispy and chilicious, so you can flip the tofu. Wait another 5 minutes or until the rest is crisp and transfer this batch onto a plate lined with kitchen towels. That way, you'll drain the oil. Now do the next batch, until you end up with the tofu in the photo!

Hurray, you've conquered the tofu! Make a stir fry with this, some bok choi, water chestnuts, ginger, coriander, garlic, sesame seeds, soy sauce and noodles - it will be delicious.

A decent curry

I've just come back to the UK after a long holiday. I've also moved into a new studio, with (finally!!) a a proper kitchen that has room for all of my cooking equipment, the different kinds of flour I have, all the herbs and spices, and (most importantly) I can now give my pestle and mortar a prominent in-view spot on the kitchen counter. So what else could I cook, in my very own new kitchen, than a curry? This one's simple, but you make it from scratch so it feels pretty impressive.

My curry when it just started to boil

Ingredients
A 2-inch piece of fresh root ginger
2 cloves of garlic
2 tsp dried cumin
1 tsp dried coriander
1 tsp mustard seeds
2 tsp of tomato puree
A small bunch of fresh coriander
2 tomatoes
200 grams of chickpeas
2 tsp oil (neutral in taste)

Peel and roughly chop the garlic and ginger. Roughly chop the fresh coriander, stalks included. Put the garlic, ginger, fresh coriander, spices, tomato puree and oil in the mortar and crush everything with the pestle until you get a fine paste. The leaves of the coriander will probably just wilt, don't worry if they still show as little green specks in your paste. Heat a frying pan on medium heat, put in the curry paste you've just made, add the chickpeas and about 200 ml of water. Slice the tomatoes into quarters and add this to the curry. Bring to the boil and wait until the water has evaporated and you're left with tender chickpeas. The tomatoes will break down, so you can pick out the skin of the tomato before eating. Serve in a bowl with rice or naan bread, or just eat as-is, enjoying your new kitchen :-)

Breakfast of (Hungover) Champions

After writing the black bean nachos recipe a few months back, I've been coming back to that recipe to make slight changes so that I can eat black beans more often. Today, they made for an excellent spicy breakfast. To keep it simple, I always keep some fried black beans in one-person portions in my freezer. I added some squash leftovers from last night (recipe coming soon!) and sprinkled over some feta cheese - voila, a breakfast of (hungover) champions. (Incidentally, try a web search for breakfast of champions - I find you either see incredibly healthy wholegrains or something extremely fatty. For shame, internet!)

Prep
As with the nachos you need to boil the black beans in water with a few bay leaves, an onion, some garlic and salt; then, you fry the beans in a little olive oil with (fresh) shallots and garlic, and sprinkle over some fresh lime juice. In this case, I would advice you add a (few) chili(s) to the fry-up with the shallots and garlic to make the breakfast nice and spicy. Then, you freeze this in one-person batches.

The squash side I made by peeling a squash, chopping up its flesh in 1 inch cubes, adding 4 tablespoons of tomato puree, and frying this in olive oil. After a few minutes, I added two cups of water and some freshly ground pepper and sea salt. After letting this simmer for at least 45 minutes (or until the squash is soft enough to easily bite through), I added a few sprigs of fresh curly parsley.

Ingredients
1 portion of frozen fried black beans (about half a bowl)
1 portion of leftover squash (about half a bowl)
75 grams of feta cheese
A few sprigs of fresh curly parsley

Defrost the beans in a bowl in your microwave. Push to one side of the bowl, add the squash, and sprinkle over the cheese. Put in a full power microwave for another 2 minutes or until the food is piping hot. Sprinkle over some fresh curly parsley. Enjoy!

Quick spinach, cream and lemon spaghetti

There's nothing better than my new pestle and mortar. With it, I made the following quick recipe. It takes about 10 minutes to prepare. If you don't have a pestle and mortar, you can use fine sea salt and freshly ground peppercorns. Make sure the peel of the lemon is grated very finely. Press the garlic. Mix these. It is not half as satisfying as mashing stuff with a big blunt instrument, though.

Ingredients (for 2)

1 clove of garlic, peeled
1 tsp of whole peppercorns
1/2 tsp of coarse sea salt
Grated peel of half a lemon
100 grams of creme fraiche
3 handfuls of well-washed baby spinach
125 grams of spaghetti

Cook the spaghetti until al dente. Make sure to keep a cup of the cooking liquid (easiest by just submerging a cup in the pan while you're cooking the pasta - make sure it's nice and starchy before you do this). Mash the garlic, peppercorns, sea salt and lemon peel into a fine paste using the pestle and mortar. Mix with the creme fraiche. Drain the spaghetti, then add the paste and creme fraiche and the preserved cooking liquid to the pan. Mix until covered. Add the spinach and stir until wilted. Serve quickly.

Squash & Black Bean Tortillas

Squash is a tricky ingredient. It needs to be peeled, diced and the seeds need to be taken out. Somehow, though, I find the entire exercise quite satisfying (and not as disturbing as, say, chopping up an entire chicken). It feels as if I've made an effort. It's not really that much work - five minutes tops, if you have a sharp knife. And once you have some tasty bite-sized dice of squash, you can make some lovely things. This is a filling for tortillas.

Ingredients (serves 3-4)
2 shallots, finely sliced
1 butternut squash (approx. 1 kg), diced into bite-sized chunks
250 grams leftover boiled black beans

olive oil
2 tbsp tomato purée
3 dried bay leaves
3 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp dried chili flakes
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
sea salt
freshly ground pepper

150 grams feta cheese
plain flour tortillas

Fry the shallots with the bay leaves in plenty of olive oil until softened. Add the squash and tomato puree and stir until everything is covered in the puree. Add the beans, cumin, chili, vinegar, salt and pepper and 400 ml of water (two glasses). Stir and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium. Let the mixture boil for about 30 minutes or until the squash has softened. Serve in heated tortillas sprinkled with feta cheese.

The Accidental Vegetarian - Black Beans Nachos

Black beans! Such amazing things. I put 250 grams of stone-hard tiny black beans in water to soak overnight and the water turned a deep purple, the beans swelled up to twice their normal size and when I boiled them for about an hour they turned into deep purple soft little creamy bites. Yes, it takes some time to get them where you want them - but then they're very, very tasty indeed.

Top left: dried beans; top right: swollen beans;
bottom left: boiled beans; bottom right: black bean nachos.

Ingredients - for two

Boiled black beans

175 grams of dried black beans

3 dried bayleaves

1 onion, peeled and quartered

3 cloves of garlic, squashed but still in their little jackets

2 tsp salt

Fried black beans

The cooked beans (see below)

2 shallots, finely sliced

1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

olive oil

half a lime

Salsa

2 tomatoes, finely chopped

1 green chili, finely sliced

olive oil

half a lime

Extras

1 avocado, skin and pit removed, halved and sliced finely

100 grams of feta cheese

2/3 bag of tortilla chips

Cooking the beans (start the evening before)

Put the beans in plenty of cold water to soak overnight (I used half a litre). They will swell up. The next day, drain the beans and put in a pot with a litre of fresh cold water, the bayleaves, onion and garlic. Don't put in the salt yet (this will apparently keep the beans from going soft). Now bring the water to the boil and leave it boiling for 20 minutes. Then turn the heat down to low, add the salt and let the beans bubble away for another half an hour. Drain, then take out the bayleaves, onion and garlic.

Frying the beans

Heat up some olive oil in a frying pan. Fry the shallots and garlic until soft, then add the beans. Stir for a few minutes, then turn down the heat. Add the juice of half a lime. 

Serving

While the beans are frying, divide the tortilla chips over two plates, evenly covering the surface. Top with crumbled feta cheese. Put each plate in the microwave for 25 seconds at full power. Mix the tomatoes, chili and lime. Top the plates with the chips with the beans, avocado and tomato mixture. Serve and enjoy!

Pre-weekly Links & Recipe Tips

I order my groceries online, which makes it very easy to complement dishes and remember every ingredient. It takes me an hour, mostly spent looking into cookbooks and websites for crazy new ideas. So, as if I'm an organised person, I can tell you that next week, I'll eat:

Indian & Vegan
Chickpea, Potato & Spinach Jalfrezi with Chapattis & Poppodums

Mexican
Black Bean Tostadas with Avocado (from Thomasina Miers's Mexican Food Made Simple)
Corn Tacos with Squash, Chorizo & Pickled Pink Onions (same book)

Quick Vegetarian Pastas
Fresh Tagliatelle with Chestnut Mushrooms & Stilton (my own recipe - coming up soon!)
Fresh Tagliatelle Alla Putanesca (from Valentina Harris' Perfect Pasta)


Easy Oven Weekend Food
Baked Cod with Lemon Potatoes & Greens
Pork Belly Roast with Baby Potatoes (my own recipe - coming up soon!)

Already looking forward to it!