Recipe: Sweet and Sour Tofu

I was finally able to find reasonably priced firm tofu in the store so I’ve been trying out more tofu recipes lately and this is the winner by a large mile. It’s super easy to make, you can customize the sauce in a lot of ways, and it comes together with only one bowl and one pan. You can use fresh vegetables if you prefer but I love recipes where you don’t have to chop anything because some days you just don’t have the energy. I don’t love tofu but in this recipe it’s pretty tasty and it’s a nice change of pace every now and then.

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Recipe: Salmon in Tomato Coconut Cream Sauce

This is a really delicious and pretty simple dinner. It’s creamy and savory and it comes together in about 20 minutes (basically while your side dish cooks) making it good for week nights or last minute dinner rush since I almost always have the ingredients on hand. It also is one of those dishes that seems fancy but actually it’s not too pricey assuming you live in a place where you can get a decent price on salmon.

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Recipe: Chicken Tinga

This is a fairly simple recipe which is basically just spicy chicken in a tomato and onion and chili sauce and there isn’t anything wrong with that. This can be made in a slow cooker really easily also and gets most of its spices and flavors from the can of chilies in adobo. This is great on rice or in a burrito and can be topped with fresh vegetable or served with a salad to round out the meal.

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Recipe: Shepherd’s Pie

If you time this right by putting your potatoes up to boil right away you can have this in the oven in 30 minutes or less and on a table in under an hour making it a pretty good weekend meal. There isn’t anything particularly difficult about this and it makes an extremely rustic food that is homey and comforting and can be tweaked to your tastes. You can use almost any vegetables on the inside (or go for just onions and meat if that’s your jam) but whatever you use make sure it is very finely diced which you can accomplish by grating them on the fine side of a box grater or pulsing the vegetables in a blender for a few seconds, you want everything but the peas to basically melt away while cooking down to give you a very uniform texture.

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Recipe: Spicy Tomato Dal

This is one of those absolutely great recipes for when you have a bit of time but no time energy. You probably have everything you need on hand to make a tasty, healthy, filling, cheap, vegan, and exceptionally low effort food. The only thing you have to do is chop an onion and then sometimes check on the pot and stir it a little. This can be eaten on its own or with naan or pretty much any other bread product or even over rice. You can add in whatever you like to finish the dish: cream, nuts, cilantro, even fried onions. Also I like my dal thick but feel free to make it any consistency you like.

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Recipe: Vegetable Green Curry

This is probably one of the more interesting recipes I’ve made in a while because it’s not only 100% vegan but it also uses coconut milk as the fat that you cook off the vegetables in. I supposed you can just use coconut oil if you want to make it even faster but since I already use green curry paste (because I don’t really have access to any of the fresh ingredients) this recipe is already pretty easy.

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Recipe: Fish Ball Paella

I wouldn’t say any of the food I make is authentic in any sense but I kind of feel like I’m sometimes stretching the idea of what some foods are. Either way this is undoubtedly a paella even if I made a small adjustment of not using fresh cod pieces but instead I was gifted minced fish and rolled those into balls. It’s practically the same to switch out the minced fish for fish pieces at the end and I’m sure both are great so feel free to play around with whatever you have on hand.

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Recipe: Squash-Carrot Soup

Technically you don’t have to roasted the squash before you make this soup but the flavor is much richer if you do and it’s easier to cut squash up if you roast it first. You can absolutely used pre-cut squash and roast that also. This soup is a real warm winter treat and can be topped off with crushed nuts, breadcrumbs, or grated cheese. Paired with a nice roll or a salad it can easily be a full meal.

Squash-Carrot Soup

Recipe: Romesco Chicken

I know it’s been a while but 2020 is certainly been a ride so I’ll try to keep thinking moving along quickly either way (for the -10 people who will ever see this anyway). I don’t usually post what I consider to be no-brainer recipes but this is such a simple “recipe” that it starts to fall into the lifehack category. Basically you cook chicken breast in the oven and you make a sauce using 2 ingredients one of which is a jar of roasted peppers. Don’t throw out of the jar though! Use it to store your leftover sauce for even easier dinners for the next 2-3 weeks. I served this with some rice cooked with spinach and spices as a full meal.

Romesco Chicken