A perfect lunch!
I had Portobello mushrooms to make steak, fresh arugula, homemade vegan gorgonzola, and homemade crusty bread.
You can also see some tomato slices on the bread as well.
They were served with balsamic reduction glaze.
Super yum!
A perfect lunch!
I had Portobello mushrooms to make steak, fresh arugula, homemade vegan gorgonzola, and homemade crusty bread.
You can also see some tomato slices on the bread as well.
They were served with balsamic reduction glaze.
Super yum!
Plant-based comfort food at its best!
I often use firm tofu and crumble it to make “sausage” with it.
Extra Firm Tofu sold at Trader Joe’s is extremely firm and provides a great texture.
I would particularly recommend this to first-time tofu eaters, as the texture is similar to that of chicken.
The cream sauce was accented with fresh thyme and sage.
Love the combination of these herbs.
They never fail to help create tasty sauce.
I like any kinds of pasta, but if I have a choice, I almost always choose long pasta.
On the other hand, my husband prefers short past.
So I usually cook both, which is really not a big deal, because I cook them in the same pot together.
We’ve become quite skilled at picking up our own pasta.
The pasta was served with this simple salad and sauteed zucchini (no photo).
Have a great week everyone!
Okonomi-Yaki is a popular savory pancake in Japan.
The most used ingredient is cabbage.
Other than that you can basically add anything, but the popular ones are pork and squid.
This time king mushroom (cooked with garlic), purple cabbage, and chive went into my Okonomi-Yaki batter.
You mix them well.
Typically you can start cooking it into pancakes at this point.
But you know me, I like to give a little twist.
Since I was making this for breakfast (Okonomi-Yaki is usually NOT a breakfast food, but it doesn’t mean you can’t eat it in the morning!), I thought “why not adding some hashbrown potatoes?”
Since I live in the Midwest, Idaho potatoes seem like a great candidate for a partner of my Okonomi-Yaki.
I cooked the potatoes until browned and crispy.
Doesn’t it look yummy?
The idea is that you don’t add the potatoes to the batter, but you place the potatoes at the bottom, and pour the batter over the potatoes.
So you cannot really see the potatoes well in the picture, but they are there, at the bottom.
The pancakes were served with two types of Japanese Sauce (one is Japanese style worcestershire sauce and the other is a little sweeter and thicker sauce specifically made for Okonomi-Yaki), homemade vegan mayo, dried seaweed called Ao-nori, and chopped fresh chive.
This was so tasty!
I love king mushrooms in my Okonomi-Yaki.
My husband says it tastes like octopus.
I do agree.
It has the seafood-like texture and taste.
Here is a close-up picture.
You can see the potatoes.
When I think of it, I do make “east meet west” kind of dishes often.
It’s usually not so much of an effort or a project, but many dishes naturally turn out to be that way (lol).
I’d like to think this is a good reflection of our happy East-meet-Midwest marriage!
Doesn’t my King (mushroom) Roll look good?
I really love everything about king mushrooms.
Its firm texture is so unique and substantial that it can easily take the leading role.
I’ve never tried king mushrooms with mayo together, but it was so good.
Homemade vegan mayo is really a game changer.
First I cut the mushrooms into bite size pieces and sauteed them with a lot of garlic.
Then they were dressed with a mixture of vegan mayo, lemon juice, hot sauce, salt, and pepper.
But before I go on, I should talk about my beautiful buns.
I bought these hot dog pans many years ago.
Actually I quickly regretted because I’m not a big fan of hot dogs, and I didn’t think I would ever make buns for hot dogs.
I’m so glad I kept them.
So excited that I got to use these pans for the first time.
The buns turned out great!
Homemade buns are really the best.
They were light, soft, slightly chewy, slightly sweet, and super tasty.
I think a big part of my not liking hot dogs (even when I was eating meat) was that I didn’t like how those store-bought buns tasted.
The King (mushroom) salad was generously placed on the lightly toasted bun.
Yum!
I grew up eating ramen a lot.
It’s so popular in Japan, and when I found out that a lot of Japanese people post ONLY ramen pictures on their Instagram page, I was not surprised.
Some of them go out to eat ramen every day, and they don’t run out of new ramen shops to try!
Anyway, I’ve become a little more serious about ramen myself recently.
When I found this dried ramen noodles at Amazon which had great reviews, I had to order a package.
I also got myself a new bowl.
I always wanted to have a traditional ramen bowl.
I typically like a lot of toppings on most dishes, but when it comes to ramen, I’m probably a bit more traditional and stick with a few.
The most popular ramen topping is probably “Char Siu” or barbecued pork slices.
Instead of pork, I prepared yummy portabella mushroom slices.
The mushrooms were so delicious; a bit sweet and a bit spicy from these Japanese “shichimi” spices.
The noodles were cooked perfectly.
Ramen looked so good in my new bowl!
Made me feel like I was back in Japan.
I really liked these noodles as they are so authentic.
They have the right chewiness, flavors, and look.
The soup turned out to be super tasty too.
Tonkotsu ramen is known for its rich flavored soup.
“Tonkotsu” ramen became quite popular in the U.S., but I’m not sure if people really know what that means.
Tonkotsu literally means “pig/pork bones”, and you make your soup from them.
(My vegan version contains no pork or any type of meat, but it does have a similar rich flavors that are very satisfying.)
“Tonkatsu” is another popular Japanese dish in the U.S., and I sometimes hear people say “Tonkatsu” ramen, but that’s incorrect, unless the ramen is served with “tonkatsu” as a topping.
Tonkatsu is “pig/pork cutlet”.
Just a little not-so-necessary piece of information (lol).
But if you say “Tonkotsu ramen” correctly, you will certainly look like someone who knows your ramen (lol).
The soup was delicious as it was, but a little splash of this Yuzu hot sauce I found at Trader Joe’s brightened up the flavors.
I always wanted to take a picture like this.
If you eat good ramen, I think it’s obligatory.
And this is an acceptable way in Japan to finish your soup.
I do not recommend doing this in the western countries though.
Tonkotsu-Style ramen soup: onion and garlic sauteed in canola oil, water, kiridashi-kombu, tahini, soy milk, mirin, sugar, soy sauce, salt, pepper
Quesadilla!
I call it the Mexican king of snack.
This quesadilla was ready for a little Friday happy hour because luckily I happened to have this “mozarrella” I had made the day before.
The cheese melted perfectly!
A beer please.
I mean, a Corona, please.
This is my take on the traditional Chinese pork noodle dish called Zha Jiang Mian.
My “meat” sauce is made of Shiitake mushroom as a main ingredient.
I used dried mushrooms, because they provide intense flavors.
This is how the Shiitake looked like when reconstituted and sliced (later it was chopped into small pieces).
This was so so good!
This is one of the dishes that I thought I would never get to enjoy when I switched to the 100% plant based diet.
But I when I made it and had the first bite, it was a “Zha Zha Zhu” moment for me all over again (lol).
This is definitely not the type of noodle you typically use to make Zha Jiang Mian, but lasagna pasta strips have been my recent favorite, and this was a good choice for this dish as well.
It’s such a beautiful dish.
Julienned cucumber is the typical garnish for Zha Jiang Mian, and it’s a well-thought one.
Not only does it give the fresh green color, but also its crunchy texture perfectly accompanies this dish.
Galette is one of my favorite things to make.
I think I like the “free-style” type of crust.
I got these beautiful morel mushrooms the other day.
Interestingly, there is this pizzeria in our neighborhood which sells pints of morels this time every year.
And I never miss the opportunity.
I was already loving this even before putting it in the oven.
The galette turned out great!
We devoured it.
My husband liked it so much that he has been asking me to make this again already.
Blue cheese burger has always been one of my husband’s favorite burgers.
Remember?
I just made plant-based blue cheese using the recipe from this book.
Well, there was a reason my husband asked me to make the blue cheese first.
Since I couldn’t decide if I wanted to use tofu or portabella mushrooms for the “burger”, I decided to go with both.
Can you tell how beautifully the blue cheese melted?
Onion slices were placed first, and then teriyaki-balsamic glaze was generously drizzled over everything.
I mean, really, how awesome does this look?!
These burgers were prepared for the Memorial Day Weekend, and it was a perfect main dish.
Happy Thursday everyone.
One of my Instagram friends (she may not think I’m her “friend” but I feel we’re!) had a picture of her cauliflower scampi, and I thought it was a brilliant idea.
And lucky me, I happened to have a head of cauliflower already in my fridge.
She kindly told me how she made hers, but you know me, I have a tendency to digress from any recipes.
So I decided to boil (and then sautee) my cauliflower instead of roasting it.
I also decided to add king mushroom.
The king mushroom has become one of my favorite foods, particularly since I started the plant-based diet.
Its texture and the flavor are so unique, different from anything else, and gives an interesting twist to any dish.
The texture reminds me of that of scallops, particularly used in this dish.
Isn’t it gorgeous?
My King Cali Scampi was served over freshly cooked linguine.
Is it just me that believe that scampi should be served over linguine but not other type of pasta?
I don’t even know where I got the idea.
Freshly squeezed lemon juice and chopped parsley are a must.
I remember one of the celebrity chefs (and I like her and a big fan) always says Italian parsley is more flavorful than curly parsley, and I would quietly disagree (well I don’t really talk to TV (lol)) every time she said that.
I feel that way probably because I grew up with the curly one, and I have a weird pride in using it.
I also like how they look especially when they are chopped.
(This is a completely different subject, but my mom used to deep-fry curly parsley and it was crunchy, flavorful, and delicious! You could really taste the condensed intense parsley flavor. I should make it sometime, maybe next time when I’m in a mood for deep-frying.)