tofu green bean szechuan stir fry

Bonjour les amis! We've really been enjoying our bountiful veggie baskets from Lufa Farms, one of the world's only commercial rooftop farms. They amplify the bounty with fresh and local produce from local farms as well. The baskets have provided a variety of veggies and as a result I have been inventing new recipes and pimping old ones (tomatillos in my bean chili--booyeah!) Moreover, I collect my box at the local Green Peace office, and the people there are so friendly! I often end up chatting with other neighbourhood folk collecting their veggies. It's nice to feel part of a community of good eaters.

Here's a yummy stirfry that I think really captures some nice Chinese flavours like sesame oil, spicy szechuan pepper, and the delicious salty kick of soya. It helped me use up the tomatoes, onions, soya beans and green beans that were in my basket.

The flavour culprits that comprise most Chinese cookery: sweet, sour, salty, and umami.

Mix 2 teaspoons of sweetener (agave, honey, sugar, etc), 1 teaspoon rice vinegar, 2 tablespoons of soy sauce, and 1 teaspoon of toasted sesame oil together, then taste. Does it taste like the makings of delicious stirfry? If so, you're good to go! If not, keep tweaking it, you'll get there. 

Once your taste buds are happy, mix 1 tablespoon of cornstarch in about a 1/4 cup of water.Mix those two together, then incorporate into the stirfry sauce, like so.

Now to get your spicy szechuan salt ready. If you don't have szechuan peppers, just add regular pepper or chili flakes, whatever you fancy to get your hot on.

It was my first time cooking with szechuan peppers, which actually aren't from the pepper family at all. They're some sort of flower pod. Neat! I toasted them over a medium hot flame and waited for them to change colour, stirring often.

I decided to turn my pepper into a pepper salt by crushing about 3 teaspoons of peppers and added that to 3 tablespoons fine sea salt. Now it's stirfry time!

The regulars in my wok: garlic and ginger, about 2 tablespoons each.

A pound of tofu, chopped up and sprinkled with salt and pepper.

A sliced onion and some chopped tomatoes will add some body to the stirfry (and use up some excess from the veggie basket!)

I shelled about a cup of fresh, organic soya beans and trimmed three big handfuls of green beans while watching bad internet TV (What Not to Wear--looking hot is all about showing your waist shape, apparently) while imagining that I was a farm girl in some parched and dusty town in the deep south, fixin' my vegetables on the front porch while mama was out back poundin' the grits.

Now for the actual stir fry process: are you hungry yet? First, fry the tofu in a bit of oil over medium high heat to cook t the cubes to a golden brown crisp.

I then added the soya beans and the green beans to the wok, giving a good stir occasionally. These greens were deceptively dense, took about 10 minutes to soften.

Next, the tomatoes, garlic, ginger, and onion went in. I wanted these flavours to stand out, so I added them last and cooked for about 5 minutes.

Remember the sauce you made earlier? Add that in now and give it a good stir. Sprinkle about a teaspoon of the szechuan salt mix and let that cornstarch in the sauce do its thing. Get everything nice and coated now!

You can eat this on rice or noodles, but I just had it on its own with some sesame seeds as a garnish. Oh, I probably added tons of sriracha as well.  The peppers made the stir fry taste quite zingy, without the burn of regular chili peppers, for example. I enjoyed the electric feeling on the tongue created by the szechuan peppers.

Cleanse Smart

I've undertaken one of the nicest things you can do for your three cubic feet of blood and bone and meat. If you think about it, that's what we are, and why shouldn't we give our insides a good scrubbing? I am presently doing a cleanse from Renew Life and I feel amazing. What has happened to me so far:

-more energy, thus more yoga and running
-no dips in energy throughout the day, nice and steady!
-cleanse clarity: clear thoughts, less mental rambling
-my pores look smaller
-skinnier!
-lots of poop
-more motivated and concentrated
-awesome mood all the time
-no food cravings
-feel energized from eating, no more afternoon fatigue

What's more, here's what you can EAT when on a cleanse. I pretty much cut out all dairy, wheat and sugar. Everything is yummeriffic nonetheless.

Typical cleanse dinner: roasted veg mixed with red rice, some brussel sprouts (I LOVE BRUSSEL SPROUTS) and half a plate of salad. Awww yeah.

Following the greens/grain/protein train, here we have a tabouleh salad with tomato, some barley with a swirl of sriracha and a tofu burger. Did you know you can stick a tofu burger in the toaster? So quick and easy.

A delicious spicy vegan chilli with pinto and kidney beans. Made it epic with some fresh avocado and nutritional yeast sprikled on top.

Brunch for winners: omelette with leeks and peppers. Didn't even miss the toast!

Green goddess stirfry with peanut sauce. Snow peas, broccoli, cabbage and leeks turn into a feast of healthy goodness. Gonna blog this dish, it's definitely a keeper.

I'll continue to document my eating on the cleanse as I get cleaner and cleaner. I like thinking about food to begin with, and the cleanse is just another awesome challenge to encourage me to keep thinking up creative and healthy dishes!

no-knead bread

After seeing this attempted by a friend on facebook and looking at the beautiful result, I thought I'd give this a try. I was in the middle of writing papers, which is what my life is all about at the moment, I needed a bit of procrastination in carbohydrate form. The dough took less than 3 minutes to prepare. All you need is time for it to rise and for the yeast to do its thing, and a 2 hour window of opportunity to let it proof and bake. This bread is so easy and the results taste like you spent hours slaving away. This one's a keeper, and I plan on making more of this in the near future.

You'll need:

3 cups of flour (i used 2 c. organic all purpose wheat, and 1 c. organic spelt)
1 1/2 cups of warm water (you'll need 1/4 c more if you use spelt or other alternative grain flour)
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 teaspoon instant yeast


Combine the ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon. The dough should look "shaggy" and "piecey".

Here's what my dough looked like after mixing. Now all you need to do is cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit for 12-18 hours.


My specimen after a nice long sleep. Way to go yeast, you did your thing!

The next step: you might need to wet your hands to turn over the dough a couple of times to form a nice smooth ball. Nestle it into a tallish bowl for it to rise for another 2 hours. 30 minutes before you want to bake it, heat the oven to 450 degrees and pop in a heat resistant pot with a lid, such as a cast iron casserole. When the oven and pan are nice and hot, place your dough into the pan and give it a few shakes to distribute the dough nicely. Cover the pan with your lid. This creates steam while the bread bakes and results in a wonderfully crispy crunchy crust.

After 30 minutes of baking, remove the lid and bake for another 15 to 20 minutes. You can tell your bread is ready when it sounds hollow when you tap it.

Straight out of the oven. Note the parchment paper at the bottom of the pan to prevent sticking.

I love baking. I am always amazed by how beautiful it can be. Is this the end of store-bought bread for me?


The spelt flour added a sweet nutiness to the bread. All that resting for 12-18 hours imparts a complex flavor to the bread with a dense and chewy crumb and a crusty outer shell. Amazing.
I scarfed down two slices with butter while it was still hot. The next day it got slathered with cream cheese, smoked salmon and capers.

courgette cauliflower leek potato soup

Hello comrades. Long time no see me eat. I made a soup a while back with great results, easy peasy, have a look!

The zukes were dying, time for soup! Chop that shizz up. Cauliflower, zuke, leek, garlic, onion and the humble potato coalescing for your pleasure.


In case you were wondering, this is about 2 glugs of olive oil. Glug = about a tablespoon.

Your hero hard at work. Blog time.

Veggies get softened in the olive oil until they are steamy and fragrant. Then I threw in half a can of coconut milk and about 4 mugs of veggie broth. Cook for 20 minutes or so. Next step (not pictured) involves ladling the soup into the blender and pureeing.

You will also make this face if you try my soup recipe. I guaran-frikkin-tee.

Random breakfast shot! Ask me about those potatoes. They practically reveal the secrets of the universe they're so good.

vegan shepherd's pie

I've decided to make a vegan diet my priority for 2011. I figure it'll force me to be more creative in the kitchen, and creativity is always a good thing. Here's hoping that creativity will spill over into other areas of my life.

I wanted the "meat" part of the dish to taste as meaty as possible so I used tourtiere, or meat pie spices in the lentils such as cloves, garlic, cinnamon, and pepper. Overall, I was pretty impressed.

Here's what I used:

-3 handfuls of brown lentils
-1 handful TVP (textured vegetable protein)
-a cube of miso stock
-a squirt of tomato paste
-a squirt of Bragg amino liquid or soy sauce
-bay leaves

To make the lentils, simply throw them in a pot with the stock cube and bay leaves. Cover with a good 2 inches of water and boil away, making sure that they don't dry out. Once they are tender, add the TVP and tomato paste and mix well. Set aside.

Now you want to add veg and bulk to the lentils. I used celery, carrot, garlic, onion, peas and corn, but use whatever you have on hand and chop everything to a similar small size so that everything cooks evenly. I sauteed these ingredients until just tender in some coconut oil, and seasoned with herbes de provence and tourtiere spices.

Cut nice and uniformly.
If you ask me for cooking advice, more often than not, I will tell you to start by frying an onion. I then added the carrot and celery, then combined the veg with the lentil mix.

Meanwhile, you want to get your tater tots going for the top of the pie. I jazzed things up with a sweet potato. Tastes awesome and looks great instead of the plain anemic looking white potato.

These were ready to sprout, thus ready to be cooked.

Boil them suckers up real good. I threw in a few cloves of garlic into the water to add a nice garlicky touch. Once the potatoes are tender, rinse and mash. Don't forget the holy trinity of unsweetened soy milk, coconut oil, and salt.

Layer the bottom half of your casserole dish with the lentils, then spread the potatoes on top. I suppose you could add some parmesan cheese or spices before cooking, but I kept it simple.
Throw that into the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Done!
Mmm extreme closeup.

Tastes great with a wee side of ketchup.

So does anybody read this blog thingy? Do you have ideas you would like me to try in my kitchen? Need advice on a specific recipe or vegetable? Let me know.

Happy eating!

chili's dead easy

I'm still thinking about food! Don't worry, I haven't starved, it's just that life got in the way there for a bit but 2011 has arrived with my new resolve to continue documenting my food adventures.

Here is an extremely quick, healthy, inexpensive chili that can be made and frozen in batches. In fact, I made this chili a few weeks ago and have been enjoying round two from the freezer today.

The ingredients in question: basically whatever veggies you have on hand will work well. I like to make sure I have corn and peppers in the chili, something about those veggies really scream chili to me. Also key are two onions, not one but two. Trust. Get yourself some chili powder and some cumin powder and you're sure to have a chili-rific time.

Oh look! Opened cans.

Rinse those canned beans well. Otherwise...well, you know the rhyme. Beans beans the musical fruit!

Choppity chop.

Please note that frozen blob is veggie ground beef. No need to add it in unless you've got some already. Mine was languishing in the freezer so in it went.

Unfortunately I probably got distracted at this point in the cooking process to accurately document it, but chili is basically soup. Soften your onions in a good glug of olive oil, then add in the veg and beans, cook until almost tender. Add the canned tomatoes and super secret ingredient: a bottle of beer! Throw in some spoonfuls of chili powder but make sure you know how spicy your chili powder is. Taste it first to check. You'll need a good teaspoon of cumin powder as well. Keep tasting and season with salt.

Always happy days in the kitchen!

And in homage to 2010, here are my top ten food memories of the past year.

10. Making my own quiche.
9. Baking a kick ass b-day cheesecake in a round casserole dish with epic chocolate graham crust. Thanks for your advice, Yoshi!!
8. Nervously preparing mango salad to impress.
7. Discovering, to the detriment of my waistline and vegetarianism, BBQ pork buns.
6. Popcorn with nutritional yeast and cayenne.
5. Summer rolls in the sweltering heat with peanut sauce. Made them like 3 days in a row.
4. Smoothies! Hello blender, you are wonderful.
3. Oysters and mussels as a snack just because. Even purchased an oyster knife.
2. Restaurant Mahli for some serious Indian with LJ.
1. Cuisine Dependance b-day meal: sea bass with chorizo risotto and some sort of amazing truffle mousse sauce, followed by an orange sponge cake with orange syrup and chocolate ganache. Minervois to drink. Bliss!

Happy New Year food lovers! Hope this year is even tastier than the last. Life certainly is sweet.