Super Natural Cooking’s: Big Curry Noodle Bowl

Big Curry Noodle Bowl from Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking

Vegan with a Vengeance’s: Green Goddess Garlic Pizza

Green Goddess Garlic Pizza from “Vegan with a Vengeance”

Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World‘s Banana Split Cupcakes

This is pretty much the best cupcake ever to make for someone’s birthday. I mean, look at it:

Banana Split Cupcake from “Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World”

So, yesterday was my friend Lucy’s birthday. Happy Birthday, Lucy!  These cupcakes are kind of the best thing ever: banana cupcake, with cherry fruit preserves and chocolate bits swirled into the top, then topped with vegan vanilla buttercream, walnuts, sprinkles, chocolate ganache and a cherry on top. Definitely time consuming, but not particularly difficult.

The Candle Cafe’s Seitan Skewers & Vegan Soul Kitchen’s Citrus Collards

Yesterday was my Sarah’s birthday. She chose the menu, so what we got was a couple of tried and true recipes from the bookshelf: The Candle Cafe Cookbook’s Seitan Skewers with Chimichurri Citrus-Herb Sauce made with homemade seitan from Veganomicon’s simple seitan recipe (which is, as the title suggests, totally simple to make and quite excellent), and a side of Vegan Soul Kitchen’s Citrus Collards with Raisins Redux.

The Candle Cafe's Seitan with Chimichurri Sauce, VSK's Citrus Collards, and Rosemary Roasted Potatoes.

The Seitan is really excellent, we make ours not with skewers and a grill but as succulent chunks of seitan cooked in a dry cast iron skillet. It gets nice and crispy and perfect. And, if you like seitan, the citrus marinade and sauce are simply to delicious and easy to make not to try this recipe.

101Cookbooks’s Lemon Cucumber Tofu Salad

When I want to make something simple with ingredients that I have on-hand, I turn to Heidi Swanson’s 101Cookbooks. Last night’s meal did not disappoint. I had avocado and tofu on hand and wasn’t entirely sure what to make of it, but a quick look through 101Cookbooks Avocado recipes and I found Lemon Cucumber Tofu Salad. It was pretty simple, healthful but delicious, just lemony enough and went well over the bulgur wheat we recently bought. Of course, how can you ever go wrong with something involving avocado, right?

The original recipe involves “lemon cucumber“, which I’d never heard of and wasn’t going to go out of my way to find, so I subbed with regular cucumber and it was great. I’m not a huuge dill fan, so I used some dried rosemary as my herb of choice. And, next time I’m roasting the tofu a-la Vegan Soul Kitchen, it’s so much easier than making a mess of crusty tofu bits in my skillet and would totally taste just as delicious.

Two other modifications: 1. Definitely UP the salt content on the tofu if you’re using plain-old tofu. Two pinches was not enough. 2. Use as much avocado as you like. It’s good for you!

Recipe :: Lemon Cucumber Tofu Salad
serves: 2 as a meal, 3-4 as a side

Ingredients::

• 2 lemon cucumbers, quartered then sliced into 1/4 inch thick slices
• 1 handful of fresh dill (about 2/3 cup loosely packed)
• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
• 2 big pinches of salt
• 8 ounces extra firm tofu
• 1/4 cup pine nuts
• 1/2 of a large, ripe avocado

Directions:

Toss the cucumbers, (dill), olive oil, lemon juice and salt together in a medium bowl. Let sit for at least 20 minutes tossing gently once or twice along the way.

In the meantime, cook the tofu. Cook the tofu and a pinch of salt in well-seasoned skillet over medium-high heat for a few minutes, until the pieces are browned on one side. Toss gently once or twice, then continue cooking for another minute or so, until the tofu is firm, golden, and bouncy. Set aside.

Just before serving cut the avocado into cubes. Then, spoon the cucumbers out of the lemon-olive oil mixture into a large salad bowl. Add half of the remaining dressing, the tofu, and half of the pine nuts. Gently toss. Taste. Add more dressing or salt if you like. Sprinkle the avocado across the top of the salad and gently toss once or twice to distribute it throughout the salad. Serve topped with the remaining pine nuts.

Not another vegetarian foodie…

Maybe that’s what you’re thinking. Maybe not. You’re here, aren’t you? You probably know what you’ve gotten yourself into, then.  So, welcome to the Vegetarian Bookshelf. Here’s the quick intro (though I tend to have a hard time sticking to “quick”): I love to cook. I’ve been a vegetarian with vegan tendencies for the past nine years or so, and my girlfriend, Sarah, and I have managed to accumulate quite a long list of vegan and vegetarian cookbooks.

So, why start yet another vegetarian food blog? Well, I realized that every time I go to try a new recipe, I almost always make a pit-stop on Google to check out  the vegetarians before me who have tried it. And, sometimes, you want to make a particular something but you can’t seem to find the cookbook, so you search the Google for some food blog somewhere who has posted the recipe. Well, I’m here to finally make my contribution to those Google searches.