Birthday Explosion, Part 1 of 2: Evergreen Restaurant

[A stack of fried tofu appetizer from Evergreen Chinese Restaurant.]

It was my birthday at the end of August, and I celebrated with food. This is the first of two parts of my birthday food adventure. For my birthday dinner, I decided upon Evergreen Chinese Restaurant, one of the best Chinese restaurants in Minneapolis -- particularly for vegans.

It has an extensive list of what can and cannot be made vegan, including what may have whey or casein, those tricky dairy ingredients that seem to slip into everything. Almost everything on their huge menu can be made vegan, and they have tons of meat or vegetarian dishes so everyone can be satisfied.

The food is awesome because of the sheer amount of flavor injected into every bite. Take, for example, the Three Cup Tofu:



I get this dish almost every time I go to Evergreen. I don't know how they get that much flavor into the tofu, but there it is: garlic, green onions, other mystery ingredients and sauce that equal pure bliss.

In addition to the fried tofu at the top of this post, we got the fried spring roll appetizer:



And for a second entree, we ordered the Pepper Fired Mock Pork:



We also tried the seaweed knot appetizer, but did not get a picture of those.

All in all a delicious time!

Coconut-Squash Curry Sauce - Two Ways

I have been cooking lots of new foods as well as trying new eateries lately, but I have not had proper posts about it. As the photos have been piling up, I have been putting off blogging more because I can't think of a time I will have to sit down and post all of them. Then an idea came to me: just do one or two posts a day for a while. Constant content for the blog, small amount of time to put it together.

Perfect.

So, enough jibba-jabba, let's talk about food!



This is AMAZING. In the words of Mr. Coconut, "the best thing I've eaten in 6 months." I was gifted a butternut squash from a co-worker's garden, and was pondering what to do. Butternut Squash soup? Just steamed? Roasted? So many possibilities...I saw I had a can of coconut milk and just started to experiment.

I began by peeling and cubing the squash, throwing it into a pot with a little water and steamed it. This was a medium-large squash, so there was a lot there, several cups of cubes. Then I added the coconut milk and some red curry paste. Stir stir stir. Mash mash mash. Whipped out the emulsion blender and pureed until smooth. It was really thick and soup-like. I added salt to taste, and then decided to add canned pineapple with the juice (not syrup).

While all of that was going on, I was boiling rice noodles and steaming frozen broccoli. Then, I decided to make semolina pasta as well because it seemed to be a great sauce for pasta. It was!!!

So, this sauce is really versatile. With the pasta, it was reminiscent of butternut squash ravioli. With the rice noodles, we added soy sauce and sesame seeds for more of an Asian flair. Either way, awesome. I will be honing this sauce more in the future. I would add onions, garlic, broth, and maybe more coconut milk.

Here's another photo: