Thursday, August 24, 2006

Catching up on a month of cookalongs!

So I had a nice internet hiatus as I moved across the U.S. from NYC to Portland, Oregon, and that hiatus also included a cooking hiatus, but now I'm all caught up and ready to show you my versions of the last four cookalongs!

I actually made the Colorful Tofu Salad with Basil and Cashews before I left New York (I think I made it the day or the day after it was posted!), but then I got too busy to post it. It was a month ago, but I still remember how delicious it was!

a picture of the dressing

and the finished salad!

I made the coleslaw dish most recently since I'm not really a coleslaw person and I wanted to give the idea some time to percolate as I considered what my take on it would be. So I tinked with it to make it more "me" (added tempeh and celery to give it more of a tempeh/mock chicken salad feel, added wildwood garlic aioli (so good!) and a little bit of seasoned rice vinegar and olive oil as the dressing), and I was very pleased.

And in a million years I wouldn't think of adding uncooked ramen noodles to a salad but it was simply fantastic!

ramen noodles, chopped carrot, grater, and cabbage

steaming tempeh

roasted sesame seeds

mixed salad!

I made the next two dishes last week. I've actually never made quesadillas before (and I don't remember ordering them either), so this was new. So exciting that vegan cheese has finally come along enough to make something with "queso" accessible to us!

before cooking shot (I used canned pinto beans, and I cooked the pepper and mushroom as long as it took me to prepare the bean puree and grate the cheese cause we were hungry!)

out of the oven on my cookie sheet! I didn't have a large working oven in my old place so a simple thing like this gave me a lot of joy!

my plate, with a big dollop of tofutti sour supreme

And lastly, pakoras! I'm completely in love with Indian food so I was so excited to try my hand at pakoras! And I think Kitee's recipes are the best so I had full confidence. I ended up frying them in a whole bottle of peanut oil, and while when I filled it up I saw that they actually hadn't absorbed too much peanut oil at all (I got most of the bottle back), it still felt wasteful. Anywho..

mixing up the batter (i tasted it too, but i knew what to expect so not so bad)

pakoras, airing out on the paper towel

with toor dal/frozen spinach and spices (I forgot to put the chopped spinach in the pakoras so they made it into the dal!)

Thanks for reading (if you made it this far!) The farmer's market is tomorrow and I'm so excited to stock up on peaches!

Michelle

3 Comments:

At August 25, 2006 6:03 PM, Blogger mishka said...

yay! I've been waiting for your post a-plenty!

Everything looks good - which was your favourite? Super shiny cookie sheets, too! Mine are all icked up by cooked on grease.

The pakoras - I just baked them like you would a drop biscuit... lots of oil on parchment, drops of batter, drizzle oil on top, bake, eat!

 
At August 26, 2006 5:48 AM, Blogger Unknown said...

I agree, yay! It's great to see you posting and cooking again, glad you're settling in!

 
At August 27, 2006 11:33 AM, Blogger Michelle said...

hmmm, for sheer taste and "wow, i can't believe i made that!": definitely the pakoras. though the two salads made me feel really healthy and i crave that every now and again, too.

and funny about the cookie sheet cause i had a totally scuffed and permanently greasy and multicolored cookie sheet that i finally discarded in order to buy a new one. then when i went to use my oven (this was the old place), it didn't work! so this was completly unused for over a year!

and thanks anna -- i didn't know you were reading this! i've got to do a proper post one of these days...being so behind is kina overwhelming!

 

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