Dinner Plate #2
Avoiding the grocery store does have a way of sparking my creativity, and though this was a bit odd, it was a great meal! I have here buttery mashed carrots with leeks (recipe from Eat Simple Food, using vegan butter), baked pesto tofu bites (recipe from This Wife Cooks), and broccoli lemon pasta (recipe from Connoisseurus Veg).
I had the end of a package of leeks, and I always have carrots, so making the carrots was only natural. I don't know if I've ever mashed carrots in this way before, and I think next time I'd go with an immersion blender to avoid having it be quite so chunky, but this was nonetheless pretty great. I wouldn't expect anything else anyway, really--carrots are probably my favorite vegetable, and leeks get nowhere near enough love. I did salt and pepper the leeks while they cooked and salt the cooking water for the carrots rather than reserving seasoning until the end, which is common cooking sense because it lets the flavors infuse better (and you end up using less salt overall that way).
The tofu was made from a partial block I had open in the fridge (leftover from my rice paper dumplings). I baked it in the toaster oven, given how hot it has been, which was the perfect size to accommodate the amount of tofu I had. I doubled the garlic powder and salt here, because it seemed like not enough to reach all my tofu cubes as it was. I had vegan pesto on hand to toss it in, and it all worked out great.
Finally, the pasta. I had a little bit of bow tie pasta and a little bit of penne, but not enough of either for a whole recipe, even cut in half per my usual habits. So for this, I used both, and used up two partially open boxes of pasta--totally running myself out of pasta, which is a bit of a shock to my system after the food shortages of 2020 and 2021. But I do have noodles and whatnot on hand and I will buy more pasta on my next grocery run, so I feel all right about it. This whole exercise may really be helping me get used to using things up, which is one of my goals.
If you're going to use multiple pasta types at once, just make sure you account for different cooking times. I put the bow ties in about a minute or so before the penne, because it takes longer to cook.
Anyway, though I am more of a saucy pasta person in most cases, this was really, really good. It was very simple, but also had a lot of flavor. All in all, a win!
I would not have thought to add pesto to tofu, but OF COURSE that is brilliant! The mashed carrots do look more "rustic" than smooth, but probably some people prefer them that way (with a bit more texture); I don't think I have strong opinions either way on that one, although I do on some other "fully pureed vs. not" things (I'm a "strongly prefer porridges with texture with an exception for savory congee which is allowed to be whatever" person), but basically the right way is however you like them (... or, I guess, with some things, whatever way is Good Enough for that day and involves an acceptable level of effort for that day, if the "perfect" texture requires more work than the level of preference is worth to you)(I am still mildly curious about what really *happens* when you rub cooked spinach through an ultra-fine-mesh sieve for half an hour with a wooden spoon as directed by some old very-fancy spinach recipes that end up straining out some of the fibrous bits and leaving the rest as an extremely smooth puree, but even if the result was impressively good, I would probably not do that very often for a side dish when there are so many other fantastic veggie dishes in the world that do *not* involve that much sieve effort. Unless it turned out to be really enjoyable to do and I had the time and energy, I guess, but that triad is difficult to imagine from here!).
ReplyDeleteI think I did that once a very long time ago; it was not worth it!
DeleteThat is really good to know!!!
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