We bought extra when we bought vegan ribs from The Herbivorous Butcher for our Valentine’s dinner.
Today we realized that the expiration date was coming soon, and we decided to cook them for lunch.
A homemade English muffin, homemade vegan cheddar cheese, vegan ribs, more cheese, and coleslaw.
Super tasty!
Chinese food is very popular in Japan, and I felt I had a good grasp of their cuisine.
So when I came to the U.S. and found a lot of dishes on many Chinese restaurant’s menus that were not familiar to me, I was shocked.
Kung Pao Chicken was one of them.
I never had the dish in Japan, but it quickly became one of my favorites.
I’m always looking for a fun product to try.
I found this vegan soy meat at the Asian grocery store, and I thought this would be a good “meat” to be used for Kung Pao as “chicken.”
The instructions on the package tell you to soak them in water for 30 minutes to make them soft, but they were far from “soft” after being soaked for more than 45 minutes.
Eventually, I cooked them in boiling water for 5 minutes or so.
Next time I will definitely boil them to avoid wasting time.
The “meat” browned well, and the texture was pretty good.
I think coating with strong sauce is the key when it comes to soy meat, and this dish worked well.
I made sourdough bread again last weekend.
This was for Mr. K.
Our neighbor friend, Mr. K, gives us a loaf of homemade bread periodically.
He is so generous with his bread, and I wanted to give something back to say “Thank you”.
I hope he liked it.
This is what I wanted to make with my first homemade Chinese noodles (previous post).
It’s called “Ankake Yakisoba” in Japanese, but basically it’s “crispy fried noodles with vegetables and thick sauce”.
This was my first time making this dish with homemade noodles, and I absolutely loved it!
Homemade noodles really make a huge difference.
There are two important things about this dish, and one is that you want to make sure that your noodles are fried super crispy so that you can really enjoy the great combination of the crispy noodles and thick sauce, which is the second important thing (the sauce has to have the right thickness, not too thin, but not too thick either!).
YUM!!
I make other types of noodles, like pasta and Udon, and I thought it was time to try Chinese noodles that can be used to make ramen or fried noodles.
I think my general noodle-making skills are getting better, and Chinese noodle making was not too different from other types of noodle making.
The only thing that was tricky was that you have to cut it into thinner strands.
I did my best, but they could be even thinner.
They cooked beautifully!
This is what I had in mind…
… when I made the orange-cocoa bagels (previous post).
I already had homemade vegan cream cheese and orange confits prepared for this.
Spread a generous amount of cream cheese and sprinkle some cocoa powder.
Next.
Pile up the beautiful orange confits.
Pretty, isn’t it?
Scrumptious!!
One of the fun things about bagel-making is to think about what flavor(s) to add.
About a week ago for the Valentine’s Day weekend I made a orange-chocolate cake, and since I really liked the combo I decided to use it again.
I could have just mix them together, but I thought it would be interesting to have two separate colors.
Loved how they looked and tasted both!
Ramen for lunch!
To tell the truth, I couldn’t decide if I wanted Ramen or Mapo Tofu-Wood Ear.
What do you do when that happens?
Well, you have both!
This was SO GOOD!!
I found beautiful wood ear mushrooms at the local Asian grocery store today, and it was perfect for this.
After some extended winter time off, I went back to work this week.
During my time off I ate fried noodles for lunch almost every day.
Before we started the plant-based diet, I never really paid much attention to oyster sauce.
I liked it, but I always felt that had a strange name because for some reason I didn’t think there was actually any oyster in it!
So when I realized that oyster sauce was off our list, I was bummed because I liked the rich flavor.
Then I found how to make oyster sauce vegan in “The Homemade Vegan Pantry” book, and I had to try it.
The sauce turned out fantastic!
It’s thick, rich, and flavorful, and even has some “ocean” flavor.
These canned vegetables make any dish instantly “Asian”!
Turmeric is one of my favorite spices, and I use it a lot.
It always gives bread a beautiful bright yellow color, and today I decided to take advantage of it for Shokupan.
Turmeric did it again!
It’s not only pretty but also very soft!
