Griddled tofu and Samphire stir fry

Quick Lunch for 2

 

The ingredients

Ingredients:

·         200g pressed tofu

·         ½ yellow, red, & green sweet peppers

·         1 small onion

·         half a red  scotch bonnet (chilli)

·         2 garlic cloves

·         4 sundried tomatoes slices in oil

·         Salt & black pepper

·         90g samphire

·         100g aubergine

·         4 tablespoons of oil from the sundried tomato jar

·         1 Maggi cube crushed

The marinade

Prep:

The marinade for the tofu: 3 tablespoons of flavoured oil, 1 tablespoon water, pressed garlic, very finely cut sundried tomatoes (slightly mashed), very finely cut scotch bonnet. Mix well, add the crushed stock cube, salt & black pepper. Set aside.

Cut the tofu in 2 to reduce the thickness, then cut again from corner to corner. You should obtain 8 pieces. Dip the pieces in the marinade and set aside for about 10 minutes.

Cut the aubergine in the same size (1cm thick) as the tofu, quarter the half peppers and onion, lie them on a plate and throw on it the rest of marinade. Leave to the side.

Now remove the samphire from the package and rinse.

Method:

You will need a griddle pan and a frying pan.

Heat the griddle pan and line up the slices of tofu and aubergine on it. Fry each side until brown and cooked through for 1 minute and half. The aubergine might need 30s more on each side than the tofu.

All lined up in the griddle pan

In a very hot frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the flavoured oil. Throw in the multi-coloured peppers, and onions with salt and pepper. Stir fry for 3 minutes. By this time the contents of the pan should be slightly soft and brown, but crunchy. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Now add the samphire and continuously stir from side to side and top to bottom to bring the heat to the surface.

The samphire softens very quickly. So, 1 minute or one minute and half should suffice while the peppers and onions should remain crunchy.

the rest in the frying pan



 Plate up and serve as suggested.

This is a very light lunch with a little kick to it. With the peppers still crunchy, their sweetness still comes through. Nothing else is needed but, if you must, potato wedges will do.

Bon appetit!

 

Tuck in! Griddled tofu and Samphire stir fry

 

Old carrots second life. Sauce, dip, spread.



Sauce, Dips, Spread in ramekins

This is something I often do when I have not had the time to use the vegetables purchased in my monthly shopping.

Can you tell I have raided the fridge?

Using vegetables this way is great because it give them almost a second life and the bins are starved!

 

Ingredients:
·         500g carrots
·         100 onion
·         10g spring onion
·         1 pepper (optional)
·         6 spoons vegetable oil
·         1 fresh tomato
·         Salt & Herbes de Provences

Method:

Just peel rinse and chop everything. Place the onion, pepper, carrots, spring onion and tomato in a blender with just about 10 ml of water. Blend until very fine. But not liquid. Like on the photo.

In a sauce pan, heat about 6 tablespoons of oil, carefully empty the content of the blender in the pan, add salt and Herbes de Provences. Stir and cover the pan so the ingredients would cook though for 5-7 minutes. That is the first stage.

blended ingredients

At this stage, this carrots mix can be used as a spread for sandwiches as they need a bit of moisture. This spread will keep for 3 days.

The mix can also be used as a dip on a platter. If this is the way it is intended to be used, add Alpro single cream, leave to cook for another 2-3 minutes. Leave to cool before serving. Mine here is served with homemade crisps (recipe of crisps in the next post).

The one with the cream

If it is going to be used for pan fired red meats or warm dishes, instead of using cream, use mustard oil or any other spiced oil then spread on the meat either before serving or before frying.

If using it as a sauce, first fry some chopped onions before adding the content of the blender. Leave to simmer and dry completely before adding 100 ml of vegan stock and cook down to the constitution wanted. Here the carrot are used on a salad served with a warm steak Hache (mince beef steak).

 



The one with mustard oil



The spread

End of January sandwich all leftovers #skint

Skint? make your own (burnt) crisps

 

Used in a main meal - see last week's post

Voila!  Now go create and send me pics of what your have done with your old carrots!

 

Here is the collection: Carrots dip, spread, sauce…

Tip: if your carrots are shrivelled up and wrinkled, soak into fresh water to rehydrate. After an hour, the will look plumb and revived!

C Ya next time!

Encased Stuffed aubergine

All Stuffed

Serves 4

 

Ingredients:

• 
  1 medium aubergine (about 300g)
• 25g potatoes flakes or 1 tablespoon plain flour
• 40g minced dry soya
• 50g fresh parsley
• 1 small red onion
• 50g roast or sundried tomatoes from the jar or fresh tomatoes
• 1 ready rolled puff pastry
• 20g raw sunflower seeds
• 1 table spoon paprika
• Salt & white pepper
• 20ml room temperature water.
• 1 Lemon
• Olive oil

Preheat the oven at 180C

Prep:

Cut the aubergine in half, remove some of the flesh leaving about 1cm of flesh all around the skin. To prevent the inside of the aubergine darkening, rub a bit of lemon juice in it and set it aside.

Cut in small pieces the flesh of the aubergine and place in a bowl.

Chop the parsley, onion and seeds. Keep them in separate bowls. Grate the lemon and set aside.

Rehydrate the soya mince by pouring on it 200ml of salted boiling water. Leave it aside for 10 minutes then, sieve & squeeze out the salted water. Set aside.

Method:

In a bowl, mix the cut aubergine flesh, potatoes flakes, half of the parsley, sunflower seeds, paprika, sundried tomatoes, salt and white pepper, lemon zest, mix well.

If you have chosen to use fresh tomatoes, the juice from the later will help to bind the stuffing. But since we are using roast tomatoes, it is the reason water is need to combine. The stuffing should be able to hold together.

Now that the mix is ready, stuff both halves of the aubergine and

stick them together then, drizzle about a table spoon of olive oil on the stuffed aubergine, then wrap in the pastry.

Place the aubergine on a buttered baking tray, score and pierce the sides of the pastry to allow stream to get out while it is cooking. Place in the oven at 180C for 1 hour.

Once the aubergine is ready, leave to rest for 10 minutes, then serve,

In the meantime stir fry the mince to accompany the dish:

Heat 2 table spoons of olive oil, add the onion and stir for 1 minute on high heat. We are not looking for the onion to brown here we need its flavour and the crunch.

After 1 minutes, add the mince soya and continually stir until the remaining water from the rehydration has evaporated. This should take 3-5 minutes.  Leave the mince to crisp a little bit add pepper and adjust the seasoning. Stir again and then add the other half of parsley. Stir for 2 minutes. That is ready. The mince should

take in all 10 minutes to get ready and can be done while the aubergine is resting.

Though the aubergine may still be moist, I recommend to serve this dish with some kind of sauce or dip. Mine here is served with a carrot sauce.

I will be posting the recipe of the carrot sauce here soon.

Thank you for reading and don’t forget to tell me what you think!

 

Et voila!

Bon Appétit!

Nash