Dish #23 – Grilled Tofu

My Mom gave us a George Foreman Grill for Christmas last year. We haven’t used it much since then, but I broke it out to grill some tofu the other night with excellent results. Now I feel stupid that I’ve gone so long letting this little treasure sit above my kitchen cabinets.

I used one package of tofu to make two different dishes, since I like to cook in bulk so we have leftovers.  For our main meal, I made the curried couscous dish we are both so fond of and paired it with Tofu Tikka Masala.  I used the simple grilling directions from Shift Vegan, but marinated the tofu in Maya Kaimal Tikka Masala sauce for 30 minutes before grilling.  I had to add a bit of sauce after grilling to keep it wet and flavorful, but the results were really excellent.

Since I had the grill out, I decided to grill the rest of the tofu package to use for salads or sandwiches later.  This time I simply marinated in olive oil and seasoning that you use to marinate chicken before grilling.  Voila!  Yummy yummy and keeps well in the fridge.

Thank you for the grill, Mommy… and Happy Mother’s Day!

Eat Cheat: Vegetable Dumplings

It’s been a while, but I’m back now with some more obvious advice for those who avoid the kitchen as much as I do.  I recently picked up a bag of frozen vegetable dumplings from a market on our street.  (You can choose chicken or pork if you’re not vegetarian.)  They’re simply delicious – low in calories (steam, don’t fry them), but a filling snack or rice replacement to accompany a stir-fry if you’re trying to keep the carbs down. They’re done in only 10 minutes.  Save those left-over soy sauce packets whenever you order Chinese food, and you’re set.

*Photo courtesty of That’s vegan?!

Eat Cheat: Maya Kaimal Indian Simmer Sauces

The success of your no-muss-no-fuss meals depends very much on what you keep in the house.  Fortunately, I live right above a robust market, so I can generally grab most things, but even so, it is MUCH easier to motivate yourself to cook when you already have the ingredients and can just get down to business without a store run.

We all have ingredients that we keep on hand almost all the time.  They vary from household to household.  In my apartment, we almost always have bread, whole wheat pasta, brown basmati rice, bags of frozen vegetables and a package of tofu.  We also have cabinet drawers full of Indian spices.

The other night I was downstairs in my local market checking out what I could buy that would make a quick and easy meal.  I figured I should buy a few different things that I could whip up in a jiffy so that I wouldn’t have the laziness excuse not to do it.  I spied a jar of Maya Kaimal Coconut Curry sauce and decided to give it a try.

I put some rice in the rice cooker, dumped some frozen vegetables and cubes of tofu into the curry sauce and simmered it for about 10 minutes.  Dinner was done.  That was it.

It was very tasty. I personally have never had a coconut curry that was Indian (only Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian, Sri Lankan) and didn’t really know it existed.  The curry reminded me of some Thai dishes I’ve had.  It was so easy and yummy, and you can feed 4 people from a single jar.  There are also directions on the jar for making the curry with meat, for the non-veg among us.

I got myself the Tikka Masala one too, but haven’t tried it yet.  To be clear, this may or may not be satisfying for an actual Desi person who knows their way around a kitchen or has been fed by someone who does.  I haven’t tested it on the husband yet.  But let’s be honest – Desi’s aren’t reading my blog anyway, unless it’s to chuckle at how cute I am at botching their cuisine.  So for the rest of us – enjoy!

Addendum: Tried the Tikka Masala but not really a fan.  Too tomato-intense and rich for me.  But you might like it, you never know.

Introducing the Eat Cheat Series

Maybe you’re ambitious (like me) – you buy cookbooks, you take cooking lessons, you start your own blog and overlook your failures just so you can keep trying new things.

On the other hand, maybe you’re lazy (like me) – you pick up takeout, you order in, you make your spouse do the cooking because you’re tired from your workday/the kitchen is daunting/you can’t boil water/insert-excuse-here.

Yes friends, I do vacillate between both worlds (though I spend a hell of a lot more time in the lazy one) so I understand that some nights, you just don’t want to cook.

But your New Year’s resolution is to eat out less to save money, or to cook at home so you know what exactly you’re eating and you know that it’s nutritious.  And it’s only January 20th!  What a bummer for you, then.

But wait!

I like a good cheat.  I like a good quick fix.  How about recipes that can just be thrown together so that you did, in fact, cook but that it didn’t take you four hours?

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Last January, my resolution was to learn how to cook Indian food.  I think I fulfilled that to the best of my ability. I generally know my way around some main dishes, provided the recipe is still open in my email somewhere.

This January, I have a new resolution – to cook.

It’s easy to have a cooking blog when you post once a month!  🙂  It’s easy to buy a bunch of groceries because you’re going to “eat in” for the week and then watch them go bad in your refrigerator.

This year, I’m going to actually cook at home.  I’m not coming up with numbers (x meals a week, x times a day) but my goal is to increase my in-house or home-cooked consumption considerably.  For all of those reasons you’re thinking.  And probably a few more.

But I am still lazy.  That hasn’t changed just because it’s January.  So I introduce to you: The Eat Cheat Series

I was a kid who never cheated on a test, but I have cheated on plenty of diets, so I know a thing or two.  These blog posts are going to feature fast, easy recipes that anyone can do, sans training, time and willpower.

I will still do regular, effort-full recipes too.  But probably more of these – I mean, let’s be realistic.

Hoping you follow along and enjoy it.