Veggie-ful lunch~

I haven't had much time not chance to cook a lot these days... What with exams, and stress, I was lucky to have a cousin over to help cook for me while my parents are gone on vacation.

My cousin left last night, though, so I had to feed myself. I remembered there were a few endives in the fridge, so I originally planned to make a salad. Somehow, I felt it was too boring, so I thought I'd make something a little different.

Chicon bites! (chicon is the term used in Belgium for endives)

Basically, I took the endive leaves and cut them in half to make curved boat-like recipients, in which I spooned a bit of filling. The whole plate was made with just 1 endive, 1 tomato, a few pieces of tofu skin log (it's kind of like an alternative to meat... it has a slightly sweet and savory flavor).

I ate a late breakfast with another cousin, and she had leftover salad dressing. So I mixed that with the diced ingredients, chopped some Vietnamese perilla, and filled my endive leaves. I also made a few cuts in the heart of the endive and poured some dressing inside.

The dressing is made of grainy mustard, salt, sugar, pepper, olive oil, and some balsamic vinegar. I topped the whole thing with some more perilla.

I accompanied it all with a small amount of carrot matchsticks and a yogurt dip in which I mixed a bit of oregano, a hint of paprika, and a speck of cinnamon.

Onigiri!

Once again home alone, with some leftover salty, poached tofu in the fridge and leftover rice in the rice cooker, I thought "hey, I can try making onigiri!" (onigiri are rice balls, sometimes with filling, usually wrapped in nori seaweed)

Some of them contain chopped poached tofu and chopped boiled carrots, others have a chopped tofu and mayo mix. I had some leftover chopped carrots, so I added them as a side.

I mixed in some salt, sugar, and rice vinegar into the rice to make sushi rice, just for fun and additional flavor. I even tried making faces with the nori seaweed, but they're kind of failed... =D

Spinach Tortilla rolls

August 1, 2013

I was home alone, and needed to make dinner. But I was too lazy to do anything too intricate, and there was also a lack of ingredients in the fridge. I settled for what I could find.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• tortillas
• frozen spinach
• cream cheese
• tofu
• salt and pepper to season
• plain yogurt

  Procedure

1. Thaw the spinach in a pot, then boil out most of the excess moisture.
2. Put oil in a pan and lightly fry the crumbled tofu (I like calling it "scrambling the tofu" because it's almost like making some scrambled eggs). Season with salt and pepper.
3. Warm up tortillas according to package instructions.
4. Add cream cheese to the spinach, then spread on the tortilla, leaving space at the edges.
5. Sprinkle on the scrambled tofu.
6. Fold the side edges of the tortilla, then roll it. Stick a toothpick at the 1/3 and 2/3 points of the roll to hold it closed.
   Optional: put a thin strip of normal cheese between the flap and the body of the roll so that when it melts, it acts like glue.
7. Bake the whole thing at 180°C for about 5 mins.
8. Enjoy dipped in some plain yogurt for added creaminess, and that hint of tart freshness.

Curry

July 7, 2013

Just some more homemade curry. Pretty much the same overall process as this one, except that I didn't have mushrooms and cashews, so I settled for some frozen green peas.

Sandwich

June 12, 2013

Just a sandwich I made for lunch one day. The particularity is that I tried marinating some tofu slices in a ginger-soy sauce-sugar marinade before baking them.

Some of the leftover pieces were left in the still-warm oven, and surprisingly turned into something similar in texture to commercial fake meat.

I tried reproducing the effect, but it didn't work out... Will have to figure out how exactly it all happened, then I'll post it here ^^

Birthday Cupcakes and Truffles

June 9, 2013

June 8th was the birthday of someone who is very important to me. I wanted to give her something special, but had no chance to make anything intricate. So I settled for cupcakes. The recipe for the cake is this basic vegan cake recipe (it's almost my go-to recipe for cakes nowadays), except without the matcha. I made some large cupcakes as well as some mini ones.

The frosting is the same as well, except that I tried to give it a slight strawberry flavor by mixing in some strawberry jam. The difference in moisture content (as well as a lack of time resulting in insufficient cooling of the mixture) led to it having a weird, almost unmixed aspect >.<

Some of the mini cupcakes fell apart when I tried to take them out of the silicone mold, so I thought I would try to make some impromptu cake truffles that I've read about on so many blogs. I put the broken cupcakes in a blender to turn it into cake crumbs, and mixed in leftover frosting to make it stick together. I formed little balls, stuck toothpicks in them, then dipped them in melted chocolate.

I had a few issues with the cake balls not staying on the toothpick while dipping in the chocolate. After looking it up, it would seem that it's best to refrigerate the uncoated truffles before dipping them. It will be worth trying another time (with maybe less sugar in the cake/frosting mix).

For the end result, I packed a couple of large cupcakes with a few of the mini ones, and a bunch of truffles, into an aluminum pan (kind of like those that pre-cooked lasagna comes in at the store, because that's all I had), decorated it all, and gave it as a present, with a card.

Home-popped popcorn

May 30, 2013

Simply some corn kernels tossed in olive oil and some salt, then microwaved. I'm not skilled/patient enough yet to pop my corn in a pot...

Homemade Chunky Roots Curry

May 28, 2013
I tried making some curry...

Apparently, it was good enough that my cousin (who did some taste-testing before I served) said she could have a reaction (refer to Yakitate! Japan manga about that).

Served with some baguette and a cucumber salad.

In addition to the ingredients listed below, I have also tried using some of the "helper ingredients" found on the following image from Addicted to Curry (manga). Some may deem it unwise to follow a fictional manga for cooking, but I wanted to try. Some of the additions turned out very helpful.

Unfortunately, I didn't write down the recipe, so the following will be an approximation.

Ingredients:
- carrots
- potatoes
- mushrooms
- tomatoes
- cashews
- tofu
- curry powder
- ginger
- mushroom seasoning

Procedure:
1. Cut the carrots and potatoes in even chunks. Boil water and cook the carrots.
2. Once cooked, remove the carrot from the water, and use the same water to cook the potatoes.
3. Reserve some cooking liquid, and add some mushroom seasoning.
4. In a bigger saucepan, heat a little bit of neutral oil, and add in minced ginger and a bit of curry powder. Add in cut mushrooms.
5. Sauté mushrooms until cooked, then add in the carrots and potatoes, reserving 2 or 3 chunks of potatoes aside.
6. Add in the liquid from step 3. Crush the reserved chunks of potatoes and add in (this will thicken the curry without adding more starch).
7. Add more curry powder and seasoning as seems fit, then throw in diced tofu, diced tomatoes and halved cashews.
8. Let simmer on medium-low heat, then serve.

For the cucumber salad:
1. Slice cucumbers fairly thinly.
2. Make a dressing out of lemon juice, salt, pepper, and a hint of sugar.
3. Mix

The cucumber salad will help to cut the fire of the curry.

Crumble du Chat Qui Tousse

May 22, 2013
I have no idea why this crumble is named after a coughing cat. Trust me, I tried looking it up, but nothing came up...

Sorry for the low quality picture, it's due to the fact that it 

was evening, and the whole thing was still steaming...

Recipe from Marmiton.org, halved.

Ingredients:
- 3 apples
- 75 g brown sugar
- 75 g flour
- 50 g butter (take out half an hour ahead of time)
- ground cinnamon
- vanilla sugar
- the juice of half a lemon

Procedure:
1. Preheat oven 210°C
2. Core, peel and roughly dice apples. Spread in an oven dish and pour lemon juice, cinnamon, and vanilla on top.
3. In a bowl, mix flour and brown sugar. Add in small cubes of butter, and mix by hand until obtaining a sandy dough.
4. Spread this dough on top of the apples.
5. Bake for 30 mins.

This is what happens when you watch too much Top Chef...

May 21, 2013
Around this time, I was still watching a lot of Top Chef (we recorded it since I was never able to watch it when it was airing).

So my mom made a self-service type dinner, and this is what I did with my food.

It's pretty ridiculous, but I was being very silly at the time.

Egg-free chocolate cake

It's been a while since I last posted on this blog, but it was due to a huge lack of time. While I still occasionally baked and cooked, I hadn't gotten the chance to upload the pictures and recipes.

Instead of doing a huge post on everything, I'll go by item/dish/recipe. So there will be a lot of posts coming up today.

May 15, 2013

So one day, my aunt came over and brought a tablet of 70% dark chocolate for baking. I hadn't had many chances or motivations to bake chocolate cakes in the past (except for a failed fondant), but I thought I would give it another try, seeing how my aunt bought the chocolate just for that.

The cake has a weird-ish appearance due to the fact that I flipped it on a plate before flipping it again onto the serving plate. So it has the indented shape of the bottom of a plate.

I can't seem to recall where I got the recipe, but anyways, it was a recipe in French.

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RECIPE

  Ingredients

• 250 g chocolate
• 150 g butter
• 150 g flour
• 100 g sugar
• 150 mL (3/4 cup) milk

  Procedure

1. Preheat oven 200°C.
2. Melt the chocolate and butter together in the microwave.
3. In a mixing bowl, mix flour, sugar, and milk.
4. Add the melted chocolate and butter.
5. Pour into a prepared tin.
6. Bake for 25 min.
7. Turn off the oven and leave the cake inside for 5 more minutes.
8. Remove, let cool, and sift powdered chocolate over the top.