Moving to Mondays

A bit of a stressful evening, because the delivery didn't come until 4:30. We started the shift with beets, squash, tofu, and some kidney beans that I'd soaked. We didn't even have onions! In a bit of a panic, I had Megan W. start prepping all the beets that we could fit in the oven, and Ida started some butternut squash for soup. Then the food arrived, and we made everything I had originally planned, minus dessert, plus beets and squash. And were fifteen minutes late. Not my best meal, but we're just getting settled in...

Green Salad

with pears, nappa cabbage, and a choice of yesterday's dressing or the tofu marinade

Spring Roll Salad

Rice noodles, shiitakes baked in tamari and olive oil, mint, cilantro, with nappa cabbage, bean sprouts, and scallions to the side. (Note: putting rice noodles in boiling water bag by bag works, but is not the best method for cooking them, because it takes a lot of time and there's a very high risk of gumminess. I think that just soaking them for a lot longer in hot tap water works. Also, it might be possible to do the herbs in a food processor, if we were willing to do some kind of simple dressing, which might be good for the noodles anyway, although Ida's carefully minced herbs were pretty awesome.)

Peanut Sauce

Caramelized onions, two parts coconut milk, one part peanut butter, vegan sugar, tamari, lime juice. I thought it was possibly the best peanut sauce I've ever made, although I didn't get any compliments on it, which is unusual for peanut sauce.

Tamarind Sauce

Tamarind, lime, sugar, garlic, tamari. Should have had hot pepper, but I couldn't find any in the walk in.

Naked Beets

Baked in water for twoish hours, then peeled and chopped. Yay beets!

SatayRendang Lamb

Lamb Stew meat with a satay spice rub (garlic ginger sugar coriander cumin) cooked rendang-style (sear and simmer in water). The searing was a little dicey, because the sugar in the spice rub wanted to burn, but it all worked out fine. I trimmed the meat a little, but not too carefully.

Tofu

with Soy, Lemon, Garlic, and Ginger. Three quarters of a box because is what fit in the container that I had set aside for marinating. We could have eaten a whole box. Baked as hot as the oven would go until it looked nice, then kept in the oven at a low temperature until serving time. I think that Tim has a new tofu supplier; the tofu was less grainy and almost fluffy, while still firm enough not to fall apart when I was rough with it. I love Sac Tofu, but this did seem to be of a higher quality.

Brown Rice

Steamed Bok Choy

quartered, and steamed in a colander over the thin pot of water, along with the tougher parts of the Nappa we used for the salad.

Honolulu Beans

From Moosewood Restaurant cooks for a crowd. Kidney beans with hoisin and pineapple and onions and tomato. I would make them again iff I were making this or a similar meal. They were not the best beans that I have ever had, but they were solid B beans that fit in really well with the rest of the menu.

Butternut Squash and Coconut Puree with Ginger

This was one dish too many, and I thought that it was a bit heavy, but everyone loved it. Baked squash, sauteed onions, veggie broth, coconut milk, ground ginger. Credit to Megan W for insisting on processing the hot squashes; I wanted to give up and just serve them as squash. Without this dish, we probably would have been on time, but the reception that it got indicates that it was worth the delay. I don't know if it was worth all that her hands went through, but I'm glad she did it.