Sunday Dinner: Pineapple Five-Spice Bun with Orange-Sherry Glazed Tofu

For this week's version of Sunday Dinner I had to veer away from the typical Sunday dinner type fare. There's only so much "American" type vegetarian food one can make, you know? Especially when it's not quite grilling season yet and I can't pretend to make burgers by grilling mushrooms.

Can you guess by the name that this was another recipe from that same book? This is actually one of the simpler recipes - I think it only took me about an hour and a half to make and I didn't really need to do any advanced preparation. I wasn't very happy with it when I first put it all together. I'm not sure why. I think I was annoyed by the tofu sticking to the pan, or maybe that I had more tofu than I had pan space. Either way, I wasn't thrilled. But now thinking back on it, the meal was actually pretty good. I love the combination of basil, mint, and cilantro. The tofu that did manage to come out of the pan had a nice texture and flavor. The only thing that actually went wrong was the rice noodles probably needed another 30 second of cooking. I found a few clumps of hard noodles still stuck together. Oops!

The best part about it though is that I have leftover pineapple, plus a can of coconut milk from making coconut rice earlier this week - perfect for making coconut sticky rice with grilled pineapple! And so that's it for today - I'm off to finish dessert and curl up on the couch with a warm bowl of rice.

-C

Thai Adventures

One of my favorite restaurants from back home is Araya's Vegetarian - a Thai restaurant that I have been going to since I was in high school. It's all vegan and all delicious - especially their lunch buffet! For years I went weekly to catch up with a friend and stuff as much food as possible into our bellies (I really miss those days when my metabolism was my friend!).

I bought a vegetarian Thai cookbook when Jonathan and I were in Phuket last October, but I've found the recipes to be a little too vague and perhaps advanced for me - perhaps I need to just give it a better try, but I think the translation to English didn't work out that well for them.

If it wasn't lunch buffet time at Araya's my favorite dish was the Orange Tofu. I was exploring different food blogs this weekend and came across a recipe for Orange Pan Glazed Tempeh (ok I know this is the same website that the Ravioli Salad came from, but at least it's not my usual!). It reminded me so much of that dish at Araya's that I had to give it a try. The verdict? The sauce had the perfect flavor, but I didn't think there was enough leftover once it had reduced to a glaze - it left the rice a bit dry. I also think I should have marinated the tofu and then dried it out so the flavor was throughout - I always struggle with that with tofu, lots of flavor on the outside and none inside.

Thinking of this Orange Tofu (I used tofu instead of tempeh - forgot to mention that, but it was probably clear from the picture) made me think of the dessert that Araya's always had as part of the buffet - Black Sticky Rice with Coconut Milk! I had never tried making it before, but figured it couldn't be that tough - luckily I was right! Here it is - simply Forbidden rice (black sticky rice) cooked with coconut milk, palm sugar, and a little cinnamon topped with a little of the remaining coconut milk!

Up next: the most Oregonian thing I have done since living in Oregon!

-C