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:

Pasta with Spinach, Sauce and Sausage

This was an impromptu dish for dinner. I had some Gimme Lean hanging around, so I took about half the tube and seasoned it with red pepper flakes, oregano, and fennel seeds. I shredded some onion and garlic into a pan, sauteed, and added the sausage. Then cooked it until browned up to my liking.

The sauce was another experiment from a few days ago. We have no red sauce in the house, but TONS of tomato paste. So, I figured I would try to make sauce from that. I started by shredding half an onion with a grater, and roughly chopped 4-5 small cloves of garlic. I sauteed these in a pan with some olive oil. Added some oregano and salt. I used 2-3 cups of "not chik'n" broth for more depth and 2 cans of tomato paste (the small 6 oz ones). I just kept simmering and stirring and adding water as needed to smooth everything out. It turned out great! I've been rather impressed with myself for that sauce.

For this specific dish, I made elbow macaroni and spooned over some fresh spinach. I poured the sauce over the noodles and put the sausage bits on top. A super-yummy dinner!

Night Grillin'

Ah, night grilling! We decided it was time to grill, but got distracted and before we knew it, darkness had taken over. But that did not deter plans for eating grilled food!!!

I sliced a bunch of zucchini, thanks to a giant zucchini gifted to me by a co-worker. I used my mandoline to slice both crinkle-cut style and regular slices. I marinated in olive oil and my fave, Montreal Steak Seasoning:



Next, I used the mandoline again for thick-cut potatoes and onions to put into a foil packet along with olive oil, salt and whole peeled garlic cloves. Here's a picture of the packet:




Everything on the grill:



Just the 'burgs (we used Boca Big Burgers):


My bun awaiting the 'burg (yes, that is a zucchini slice under the onion):

Chik'n Strips with Edamame Vegetable Blend and Quinoa

A simple meal, with Morningstar Chik'n Strips, a steamer bag of frozen veggies (Mukimame Vegetable Blend from Target) and quinoa.

Peanut Curry Sauce from Ruam Mit Thai

Not the best picture, from inside a box of takeout, but this is one of the BEST dishes around. Pha Ram Long Song from Ruam Mit Thai in Saint Paul. DROOL: Red curry, coconut milk, crushed peanits, served over steamed spinach and (the way we order) with fried tofu. Can also be done with mock duck, but they fry the tofu to order, so it's always delicious. Plus, they separate everything out for takeout so nothing gets soggy. yum yum yum yum

Accidentally Vegan: Keebler Jumbo Fudge Sticks

I found these in my day to day perusing of junk food as being accidentally vegan. These are the peanut butter flavor, as opposed to the original vanilla flavor. I much prefer the PB flavor. To be clear, the mini fudge sticks are not vegan, but the jumbo ones are. Weird, I know.

Not healthy in the least, but a nice sugar bomb.

Smoky Beans with Quinoa and Corn

A spin on one of my favorites, Smoky Beans and Rice, this time with quinoa and kidney beans rather than black beans and rice. Any bean will do, as would any grain. I added corn to this one for something extra.

I made a TON of quinoa and have been using it for everything: beans and quinoa, broccoli and quinoa, quinoa as hot cereal in the morning with soymilk and dried or fresh fruit.

I sauteed onion and garlic first and in another pan heated veggie broth. Then I added two cans of kidney beans, drained and rinsed, to the onions and garlic. I added in frozen corn and just when it was getting un-frozen, I added a ton of quinoa to the ratio I preferred, and mixed everything. A few drops of liquid smoke, another big stir, and then added some veggie broth and allowed it to simmer until the broth was absorbed by the beans and quinoa. The liquid will absorb more after cooking, so keep that in mind.

New Blog Design

Whoa, changes!! I have been playing around with layouts and designs, and like this new book-background one so far. It brightened up the blog a lot and I'll stick with it until I find an awesome coconut image to use as a background.

Hopefully I'll be back to posting more regularly because there are a lot of things I want to make and also a lot of restaurants I want to try out in the coming months.

Quinoa, Broccoli, Potato and Tofu with Curry Sauce

This was dinner for today.

I boiled some russet potatoes that I cut up into smaller pieces to cook faster, and while those cooked I made some quinoa and marinated tofu that I cut into cubes. I marinated in a sauce I made: soy sauce, dijon mustard, hoisin sauce, pickle juice, hot sauce. I then sauteed onions and garlic until soft, then set aside and started to pan-fry the tofu cubes.

At this point I started steaming the broccoli.

The quinoa was about done, as were the potatoes. I put potatoes aside, and then boiled water to dissolve a bouillon cube and curry paste in for the "sauce".

After the tofu was done to my liking, I set it aside, rinsed the pan out and then started to reheat the onions and garlic. Once it was getting hot, I added the potatoes, quinoa and broccoli, then stirred everything together. I added the curry sauce and heated until some of the liquid absorbed into the potatoes and quinoa.

I served in bowls with the tofu on top, a few shakes of sesame seeds to finish it off.

Indulgent Dessert: So Delicious Coconut Ice Cream Bowl with Toppings

This is a bowl of 2 flavors of So Delicious Coconut Milk Ice Cream, my hands-down favorite vegan ice cream. The flavors of "ice cream" are: Cookie Dough and Mocha Almond Fudge.

I cracked a sugar cone over the ice cream, and then some chopped cashews. Finally, I covered the whole mess in Hershey's Hard Shell Chocolate Topping. This stuff turns into a hard chocolate shell in a few seconds once it makes contact with cold items, like ice cream.

Needless to say, this was delicious and indulgent and awesome.

4th of July 2011

Not a food photo, though I did make some grilled food for 4th of July. I also played a lot of chess outside with Mr. Coconut.

I grilled up marinated tofu inside a foil packet, we also grilled veggie dogs and potato/onion/garlic foil packets.

I failed to photograph any of this, but at least there is a photo of one of the chess games.

Boca Burger with Peas, Corn and Mashed Potatoes

Nothing spectacular, other than the Burger Shark in the potatoes. Just a pan-fried Big Boca Burger (slightly larger than the regular-sized patties) with mashed potatoes and peas and corn. Some Earth Balance for butter, salt and pepper.

Bowtie Pasta with Green Pepper Strips

I was out of red sauce, but also had a lot of pasta and a lot of green peppers to use up. What to do?

This was the result. The peppers were a nice change from my usual broccoli or spinach. I just cut up 3 green bell peppers into strips and sauteed with onions and garlic. I like my cooked peppers to still have some snap in them, but you could cook until your desired texture. I might try to do more of a julienne cut next time, but this worked for a simple quick dinner.

Curry with Tofu, Broccoli, Cauliflower and Red Potatoes

This may not look that impressive or pretty, but it was DELICIOUS.

Just as the title says, this is tofu, broccoli, cauliflower, and red potatoes with coconut milk curry sauce poured over it. I served it over brown rice.

The method

I pan fried some cubed up tofu, using garlic, onions, and soy sauce. While doing this, I already started steaming cut up red potatoes and allowed them to start cooking. Before they were done, I added a bunch of frozen broccoli and cauliflower to steam them as well. I made the sauce with one can of coconut milk and some red curry paste. Yum yum yum!

The potatoes added a great texture and rounded out the dish with a "full" mouthfeel.

Here's another photo to see the whole bowl:

Open-Face Sandwich: Cashew Cheese, Tomatoes, and Basil

I've been experimenting with nut cheese lately. I wasn't able to get raw cashews, which I know may affect the taste and texture. I've been experimenting with roasted unsalted cashews, soaked and blended. The first time around, I added sundried tomatoes, salt, lemon juice, water and garlic. My errors? Too much garlic, a little too much salt, kind of bleh. This time? 1 clove of garlic, a touch of sea salt, a little water, some nutritional yeast, and a touch of liquid smoke. Not bad. I am not in love with the texture - it's like hummus but weird, but not bad. Hard to explain.

Mr. Coconut has not tasted any of it yet, it's far too much into it's infancy to be worth giving to others yet. I like it, it's not bad. But I've had amazing raw nut cheese before, and this is not it yet.

With all that negativity, I liked this sandwich. It was delicious. I also tried the "cheese" with some pasta. Again, I need to get the texture to a better consistency. Maybe in the Magic Bullet as opposed to my tiny food processor would get it there.

Sweet Potato Oatmeal Casserole: From "Oh She Glows"

This is a sweet potato oatmeal casserole from the vegan blog, "Oh She Glows". The recipe can be found HERE.

Basically, it's oatmeal with a cooked sweet potato and banana mashed in, then covered with a crunchy pecan topping and baked.

The only changes I made were: I used 1 cup coconut milk beverage from So Delicious and 1 cup soymilk. I didn't have chia seeds, so I used a little more oats.

Delicious breakfast for several days! I really like the blog "Oh She Glows" and found it in a round about way. Hopefully I will do more recipes from there in the future.

Pesto Chicken Sandwich: Leftovers Day 3

What else can be done with leftover ingredients from Stuffed Manicotti?

Sandwiches! The sandwich above consists of 1 Morningstar Chik'n Griller, a schmear of pesto tofu ricotta, and some tomato bruschetta mix. The bread is Arnold's brand. I've been a fan of their sandwich thins, and now they have flat/skinny hot dog "buns" called fill 'ems. They aren't on their website yet, but Wegman's has it up on their site, here.

Stuffed Shells

The best part about making Stuffed Manicotti is that we usually make a lot of it, so we have lots of leftovers. We had some jumbo pasta shells, so for the past couple days we have been making dishes of 2-3 shells filled with tofu pesto ricotta and covered with sauce.

Stuffed Manicotti Dinner

Mr. Coconut and I cooked a tasty Italian-style dinner for Mr. Coconut's Grandparents. We decided to make one of our favorite meals, Stuffed Manicotti, which I've blogged about before.

I made some focaccia-style bread and some bruschetta mix to go with it. We made some sauce from a combination of some canned whole peeled tomatoes, onion, garlic, olive oil, oregano, tomato paste, and basil. The star of the show, though, is the pesto tofu ricotta. A blend of basil, garlic, olive oil and walnuts for pesto; mixed with extra firm tofu. We stuffed that into cooked manicotti and then spooned sauce over the top and baked it to heat through everything.

We served the meal with a salad of greens, onions, snap peas, and pepitas (pumpkin seeds toasted and salted).

A Close-up of the meal: