I told you before about me  baking cookies for teenage girl school friends.  It turns out they were a little bit disappointed that she didn’t bake them herself.  So, last weekend she got in the kitchen and made these ones:

Van TofuParty-bakery

Lucky she made a double batch so we could have some at home too.

She used the recipe from the golden vanilla cupcakes from Vegan cupcakes take over the world. My only help was translating some of  the ingredients.

Last week I borowed the vegan lunch box from the EVA-library.  It’ such an inspiring cookbook.  Although I don’t think I will ever get up one hour earlier than my usual hour, for baking and cooking.  I really need my time to get awake in the morning.  And half of the time I’m looking ahead of a nine hours working day. Back from work it’s time to cook again. My half hour lunch break is used for grocery shopping.  That means I usually eat my lunch at my desk. Mostly around 10h30 because that’s the time I really, really get hungry.  Instead of getting a snack I eat  sandwiches that I prepared at home.

Mostly I use spreads that I buy in a wholefood shop.  But inspired by the vegan lunch box, I made my own.  This spread takes only 5 minutes to make.

Van TofuParty spreads

Mash some tofu, add veganaise, tiny pieces of roasted red peppers (or a red pepper spread for bruchetta or something like that), some soy-sauce and black pepper.

Van TofuParty dishes

I don’t know how it is in other countries, but I’m having cauliflower all over this time of the year.   I wanted to try something new and found this:

CAULIFLOWER AND POTATO BURGERS

1 cauliflower
-> cut into florets

2 potatoes
-> cubed

=> boil together

=> when ready, mash

1 tbsp soy-sauce
1 tsp pepper
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
1 tbsp soy flour
2 tbsp chickpea flour

=> add all of this to the mashed pototoes and cauliflower
=> let it cool for a while
=> preheat the oven at 175 °C
=> shape your burgers by taking one small handful of your mixture
=> bake in the oven, 20 min.,  turn the burgers halfway the time

PDF of this recipe.

I served them with Bulgur pilaf and a basic brown sauce (from Vegan Planet)

Busy day asks for fast and easy evening meals.  This is one:

Van TofuParty dishes

RICE AND TOFU SUPER FAST WOK

• Boil rice, add frozen peas at the last minutes.
• Chop up 1 onion and some carrots.
• Heat some oil in a wok, add the vegetables.
• Keep stirring, add tofu pieces (I used the ones from alpro but of course you can make your own marinated tofu)
• Add 2 tbsp soy-sauce
  
• Stir in the rice and peas.

Since I’m working as a volunteer in the EVA-library I’m lending every 4 weeks a  new cookbook.  I’m escpecially interested in the older vegan ones.  This way I can figure out if it’s still worth to buy the book.  The problem is that every cookbook I read has at least a few recipes that are worth buying the whole thing.  Yes, I am a cookbook addict. The latest one I took home was

The Angelica home kitchen: recipes and rabble rousings from an organic vegan restaurant.

The book is originial from 2000.  So don’t expect new inspiring food.  But it has some basics that every vegan should know.  Like this one:

Van TofuParty dishes

Braised seitan with onions!

Van TofuParty-bakery

From ‘The vegan scoop’. Especially good when served with  chocolate chip ice-cream.

And a funny news: they discovered a pear tree which is the only one of his kind in the world.  And guess what, it’s standing 100 meters from my door.  In a park, which is at this moment closed for the public.  So, I can’t take a picture of it

I’ve got the idea for this recipe from this blog ‘Natuurlijk veganistisch’.  She has an english blog too, Happy Veganarian, but I couldn’t find the recipe for tofu filet on it.

Van TofuParty sides

1 block tofu
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp passata
1 tsp 5-spices
breadcrumbs
rice flour
nutritional yeast flakes
paprika powder

1. Slice your tofu in 3
2. Mix the soy sauce, passata and spice herbs.
3. Marinate the tofu slices in the mixture.
4. Mix the remaining ingredients
5. Coat the marinated tofu with the crumb-flour mixture.
6. Bake the tofu delicious crispy in a frying pan.

Again you can find a nice lay-outed downloadable pfd file overhere.

Of  course you can play around with this recipe as much as you like.  There are probably 1 000 different combinations of spicing it up.  Let me here about yours!

I had the idea for this recipe from ‘Vegetarisch koken in 30 minuten’.  Normally it was a carpaccio recipe, but I ended up changing it totally:

Van TofuParty sides

1 cup bulgur
2 red beets
2 tbsp nut vinegar
2 tbsp canola oil
2 tbsp soy cream
2 tbsp nutritional yeast flakes
2 tbsp chopped walnuts
vegetable broth

1. Peel the red beets and cut into thin slices.
2. Heat the sliced beets in the microwave for 3 minutes.
3. Let them cool and mix with the vinegar and oil.
4. Meanwhile boil the bulgur in the vegetable broth.
5. Mix the bulgur with the soya cream and nutritional yeast flakes.
6. Serve the bulgur with marinated red beets and chopped walnuts..

You can serve the bulgur in a lettuce leaf and garnish with the marinated red beets
and shopped walnuts.
Or you can mix everything together.

Extra tip: add some fresh shives to the bulgur

You can download the recipe om my new website.

A little word about this website: it’s not a real website yet.  It’s more excercise material.  But it comes in very helpful as a way for offering my recipes for free download.

Around this time of the year in Belgium, you’ll find speculaas all over the shops. For people who don’t know what speculaas is: it’s a kind of cookie which contains spices. You can read more about it here.

For these scones I used the ‘raisin and spices scones‘ recipe from Vegan brunch and substituted all the spices with speculaas spices.

Van TofuParty-bakery

I must confess, I was intrigued by this name when I saw it for the first time in  ‘Vegan with a vengeance’.  I have no idea where the name comes from, but I know this is one great way for serving seitan.  The recipe says you can easy play around with it.  So I did, but of course I forgot to write it down.  I only remember I didn’t have lime juice and swapped it for vinegar and the maple syrup for apple syrup.

Van TofuParty dishes

Anyway I served it with mashed savoy-potatoes.  This gives a nice green colour which is very beautiful with the red and brown of the jerk seitan.