Currently viewing the tag: "curry"
Paneer is an Indian cheese. Palak Paneer is the spinach and cheese dish I’ve long noticed on Indian menus. I was so excited to see that the amazing blog Olives For Dinner veganized it.
Pressing tofu is step one. I opted for the TofuXpress then a nice press with some paper towels. This is the safest bet in this 3-cat household… the kitchen towel shelf is a cat nap hot spot. Paper towels it is!
“Culturing” coconut milk gives cubed tofu a cheese-like bite. Tofu marinades for a couple of hours.
Fennel seed, garam masala, and curry powder.
Time to make a paste. Onion, ginger and garlic packs the punch.
Big jump here. Everything is simmering together. Looking good!
Delicious Palak Paneer!
Healthy Nibbles, on Flatbush & Prospect Place, is a cute conter sandwich and juice spot that’s kind of awkwardly connected to a frame shop.
I ordered their I Have Peace, or their vegan curry chicken sandwich made of tofu, vegan mayo, raisins & curry with shredded carrots & mixed greens on toasted breaded. It was a tasty sammy and I appreciated its yummy simplicity.
This curried tofu rocked my world and made my fingers yellow.
They also have housemade vegan baked goodies. Since I was with cold, I forgoed the excess sugary treat. Next time.
Also on Flatbush, Vegetarian Palate is one of them fake meat meccas.
Deep-fried wontons with coconut filling.
Tarot steak. All hail the starch!
Brooklyn Crepe & Juice, on 5th avenue in Park Slope, has vegan crepes. And they’re real, real good.
You can create your own from their vegetable spread… and they also have the vegan cheese stuff.
I got this adorable new Bento lunch system that appeals to space efficiency as well as my wish to cut portions. This first week it is filled with a scrumptious Panang curry, seeded sticky rice and dried Mission figs. The curry is everything you want in a curry: lots of heat (garlic, shallots and grated ginger, as well as chili paste), lots of creamy (peanut butter, coconut milk and soft, supple tofu) and some sweet (brown sugar and crimson raisins). Here’s hoping for a quick and tasty week!
With the day off, the list of to-do’s was long and scroll-like, starting with two classes at the gym. I did the pilates stretch and alignment class. Given the early morning hour and Park avenue address, it was me and a studio filled with lively blossomed senior ladies. The instructor played Sinatra and lead us into the Rockette-style formation as we tipped our pilates rings like top hats. It was the best class I’ve ever been to! After, a b-line to Best Buy on 23rd street who had my beloved SLR for the past week for a preventative maintenance tune-up, to Trader Joe’s for lunch fixings for the week and back to Brooklyn, picking up my laundry and finally whipping up breakfast. I made use of the stale ciabatta rolls I picked up over the weekend, dredging them in VwaV‘s Fronch Toast mixture. In the enthusiasm of finally having my camera, as well as daylight in the kitchen, here is the step-by-step.
My kitty Frankenstein relished my daytime presence, reclining in my lap whilst I finally downloaded Easybeats’s Friday On My Mind on my iTunes. This is the half-way point: a breather. There’s much more Monday to do.
Ok, lunch time. Time to help the 2011 January Pantry Turnover. Time to get rid of the bizarre can of vegetarian duck from the Asian grocery store. Packed with a ton of sodium, I went easy on the salt with a heavily spiced curry. Minced ginger, garlic and onion set the stage for teaspoons galore of cumin, cayenne, garam masala and curry powder.
What do you do with a scoop of Millers Bran? You sneak it into chocolate chip cookies, that’s what! I cut the 2 cups of flour like this: 1 cup all-purpose flour, 3/4 whole wheat flour, 1/4 bran; and I cut the sugar like this: 1/2 granulated sugar and 1/2 cup raw cane sugar. Also, before measuring out thick, flowing molasses in your little teaspoon, coat it in canola oil. That’s a tip.
As mentioned previously, this is what’s left of my books, color-coded to the best of my ability. Ain’t it pretty?
After making it to my dinner destination the night before, the day following my birthday was a bit more open. I wanted to wander a bit, remove myself from the track of routine set destination. But I knew I had to get good coffee and a baked good before exposing myself to the pace and rhythm of the Catskills. I started the day at Alternative Baker in Rosendale, a quaint little town 20 minutes or so from my motel in New Paltz. They had several vegan muffin options available but I opted for the strawberry-lemon. Looking out the lace curtains to the waking town before me, Rosendale seemed an idyllic small town. With its independent movie house, its tiny little recording studios, The New York Times on the bakery table and a lack of Paladino for Governor signage, I understood the allure of upstate New York. I was content as the resident pooch sniffing my boots under the table… and the muffin was moist and delicately delicious.
But I had to make the most of the morning if I wanted to make in back to the city in time to share dinner and drinks with my people. I needed to see fall’s foliage. It was one of the main reasons I opted to day trip north. And the region’s deciduous trees were wearing their finest peak colors and would soon be losing leaves. It is the deciduous trees of the temperate forest that trumps all other climate zones. Having an autumn birthday, I have always associated the colorful fall–trick or treat weather–with excitement. Below are some of my best shots, delivering us from Rosendale to New Paltz and into Woodstock for lunch.
Ah, lunch at Garden Cafe in Woodstock. This is one of my absolute favorite restaurants. Everything is always spot on: flavorful, fresh, thoughtful. Even a simple tofu sandwich is transformed into magic with a delicious curry base, sliced mango, caramelized onion and red pepper pressed into a scrumptious panino with amazing texture and taste. Even the side of greens is absolutely delish!
Time to head home!
Tomorrow is the first day of school. So tonight I had lots of anxious energy to burn. I had to get in the kitchen and bask in a fragrant medley of like 40% of my spice rack… freshly-ground coriander, a heavy twist of the garlic mill, best buddies in dying my utensils yellow: turmeric and cumin, ground ginger, allspice, ground mustard, paprika, cayenne pepper and your standards: salt and pepper. Ok- more like, I’d been jonesing for a tofu curry for weeks and I had no curry powder nor curry paste.
I’ve made plenty of curries before but this one was probably the best. I grated a bunch of fresh ginger root, used a cup of vanilla soy yogurt along with 3/4 cup of coconut milk for super-duper creaminess and didn’t include too many watery vegetables. I served myself a small helping of bright white sticky rice and the fabulous creamy curry and packed the rest away for the Rosh Hashanah break.
That helped a bit.
Unwound helps too.
At Olive street, Sundays are for podcast catch-ups, cooking and lesson planning. They’re for doing the dishes, budgeting and watching the Netflix, a Buster Keaton double feature, that has been staring at you all week long from the desk. They are an attempt at making the next 5 days as easy as possible. That means it is pantry cooking time once again! This week’s lunch: pumpkin-coconut red lentil curry and cous cous.
Finally using the remainder of my Halloween pumpkin, pictured here, I whipped up an army’s worth of this curry recipe, my very first stab at the Vegan Table cookbook.
I also attempted another loaf of bread. This time, it was a wheat bran bread with molasses. Unfortunately it was a bit of a fail, never fully incorporating to a glutinous dough, never rising and baking into a big brick I may use as a paper weight.
On a blustery December morning, the first of its kind, 3 intrepid souls wandered into the depths of Brooklyn by hoof for Part 2 of a thorough borough scour of veggie delights. Congregating at the gorgeous Brooklyn museum of Art, we headed down Washington avenue to Natural Blend, a Ital hotspot renowed for its cheap veggie patties. The selection and friendly service was a perfect start: hot entrees, vegan ice cream, fresh juice and vegan baked goods… all at rockbottom prices.
Needing some hearty grub to absorb some of the rampant caffeine flowing through my jittery digits, I opted for their curry “chicken” and steamed vegetables on a plentiful bed of quinoa. The curry was particularly delicious, far better than other Jamaican curries I’ve tried. Tall Guy opted for the sweet citrus ribs and two spelt dumplings, a kind of fried dough perfect for sopping up the flavorful sauce (not pictured) while CandyPenny tried one of their famous veggie patties.
There were so many baked goods to try! So we ordered a variety: sweet coconut bread, pumpkin bread, carrot cake bread, a massive chocolate chip cookie and a slice of sweet potato pudding cake. The stand-outs were the sweet breads, moist and spiced. The coconut bread was a tropical delight infused with candied cherries and the delicate pumpkin bread super-moist with pumpkin and topped with pumpkin seeds. Mmmm.
Natural Blend had some great looking bread baked into the shape of a large alligator, which apparently is a hit at holiday dinner parties.
Much to our disappointment, our next stop, Scoops, was closed when we arrived. I have had this place on radar for quite some time and will have to return soon, if only to take another picture of their awesome store sign. Scoops is another Ital/Caribbean spot with hot veg food, natural products and vegan ice cream. 
Being just a short walk away, we strayed from Caribbean cuisine to check out Zen Vegetarian House‘s strict veg menu. Think of a Chinese take-out place… the wonton soup, the General Tso’s chicken… the random inclusion of Western French fries and drumsticks. Now picture everything being strictly vegetarian and you realize how overwhelming selecting a dish would be! Add lengthy section of fresh squeezed juices, soy ice cream desserts, $6.00 lunch specials and hearty “tuna”, “beef”, “chicken” and “turkey” sandwich and you scratched the surface of their menu.
We opted for the scallion pancakes, vegetable roast duck, made of pressed layers of tofu, and the banana chicken rolls for experimentation. Hot & sour and wonton soups were also a must, as were a couple of juice concoctions. Though it’s a bit hard to justify all this disposable plastic stuff, the food satisfied that greasy urge for salty yumminess.
This is the pressed bean curd sheets, a.k.a. the vegetable roast duck. It certainly needed a dip of something, but not the Heinz ketchup and soy sauce it was served with.
The scallion pancake not so much pancake-y as it was a kind of fried thin bread. The banana chicken rolls came out later and we had forgotten what the heck they were. Feeling already stuffed, I could barely look at them, unfortunately. But they were deep fried banana and faux chicken encased in some kind of skin. Tall Guy took them home and properly buried them in his belly, no doubt.
The wonton soup was fantastic! I should have ordered the quart size. The broth was tasty and the wontons filled with a salty pink soy protein that brought me back to my omnivore days / working the counter at a Chinese take-out place, my first job. I would walk the length of Flatbush avenue again for a bite of these wontons. Well done!
The borough scour is not even close to its end. Though our next excursion will be uptown to Harlem, to sample some more Caribbean veg flavor. Till next time…
Cooking a four-course Thai meal with ingredients picked from the local market and from the grounds of an organic farm, I brought my appetite and anticipation from the night before. The full day class, offered by the Chiang Mai Thai Farm Cooking School, gave me yet another escape from the familiar streets of Chiang Mai. After just barely making this morning’s count, bringing both of the daily classes offered to full capacity. I was off to the farm with 3 Alaskans, 2 Australians, 2 Germans, 3 Israelis, a Brit and French woman.
But first, the local market to learn a bit about Thai cooking’s food staples: rice and coconut milk. Being granted 20 minutes of free time to wander the busy market’s aisles, I had to hunt down some kow dom mat, a quick handheld breakfast wrapped in a banana leaf to tie me over til feeding time. My love for these 4″ wonders is now bordering on obsession. Mission accomplished. The rest of my 20 minutes was spent leering at the whole decapitated pig’s that was for sale. Also worth a mention, my Food Fight tote bag got some more attention from dislocated Americans. It caught the eye of two zany gentlemen from Portland also signed up for the cooking course. This bag is a reliable source of social outreach!
At the farm, we met our ingredients. Bitter eggplant, sweet eggplant, lemongrass, galangal (Siamese ginger), Thai ginseng, Thai parsley, sweet and holy basils, chilis, tamarind… the grounds have everything! Our instructor let use all our senses: we smelt, felt and tastlt (new word) everything under the shade of our wicker hats of enormous diameter. After, at my indiviual cooking station, I made all of the dishes below from scratch! Not only did I build my kitchen confidence by following the instructions with ease but my food turned out scrumptious. Thai cooking party at Olive when I return!
Kaeng Phed with Tofu (Red curry)
Tom Phak Ruam (Thai vegetables soup)
Phad Kaprao with Tofu (Fried tofu with basil)
Poh Piah (Spring rolls)
Kao Nio Ma Muang (Mango with sticky rice)
Vegan Reporting By Location
