curry + mushrooms: two weeks of lunch

Didn’t have a chance to post about my food last week, I was super busy!! But I made a bomb lunch last week and also this week so here it all is in one post. Let’s get into it!!

First week was curried vegetables and tofu, and the second week (this week’s) is rice, mushrooms, and kale topped with pomegranate and roasted pumpkin seeds.

Curried Vegetables

1/2 onion, chopped
1-inch piece of ginger, minced
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 head of green cabbage, finely shredded
1 sweet potato, cubed
3 stalks celery (use the greens too!), chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp coriander
salt and pepper
splash of broth or water
can of chickpeas, drained

Sauté the onions and ginger in a little oil until onions are translucent and ginger is fragrant. Add the cabbage, sweet potato, celery, carrot, and any other vegetables you like. Let cook for around 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the spices and cook until fragrant, then add the broth/water and chickpeas and cook on low heat until the vegetables are soft and the consistency is stew-y and thick.

There she is!!

Fried Tofu

1 block tofu
1/4 cup cornstarch
salt, other spices you like

Drain the tofu. Wrap loosely in a clean kitchen towel and press with a heavy pan to drain moisture. Let the pan sit on top of it for a while to really get all the water out. Water is the bane of crispy tofu’s existence. Get it out of there.

Meanwhile, put the cornstarch and the spices (I just used garlic salt this time but usually I’m more exciting) in a quart-sized ziplock bag. Unwrap the tofu and cut into even cubes. Add to the ziplock bag, seal it, and then shake it until everything is coated. It will have a weird texture but just go with it.

Heat a little oil in a pan over medium heat. In batches, fry the tofu until crispy on all sides. Make sure they don’t touch, so don’t overcrowd the pan. The trick to frying tofu is letting it cook on one side until it doesn’t stick to the pan anymore. It will stick once you put it in, and you might be tempted to try to nudge it to unstick so it flips, but have patience. It will unstick and flip easily once it’s ready.

I usually make tofu with this method but I use normal wheat flour instead of cornstarch. I wanted to try this out and honestly I liked the texture, it was just a little trickier to cook.

Here she is:

It was super good and filled me up the whole week!! It would also be good with rice but I’ve been eating so much rice lately I didn’t feel like I needed it.

NEXT UP here’s my first week of November lunch!!! Start it off with a BANG this is an easy one but a tasty one!! only if you like mushrooms I guess sorry Austin 😦

Mushrooms

1 pound mushrooms
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
1 tsp dried thyme

Apparently, according to Rachel Ray, you aren’t supposed to wash mushrooms, just wipe them off with a damp paper towel. It’s because they apparently get kinda slimy? But here’s the thing: I’m cooking them right away, so I don’t really care? But just know that this isn’t the right way to do it.

Wash the mushrooms and slice them into thin slices, trimming the bottom of the stalks before you do. It takes a pretty long time but it’s kinda meditative and a nice time to listen to music and reflect on life. Or just buy them precut if you want to save time. Put them in a large pan with the olive oil, salt, pepper, and thyme. Stir it all around and then let it cook down over medium heat until all the liquid is released and the volume of the mushrooms has decreased drastically.

For me, the liquid would not cook off and it was a lot, so I just drained it off and put the mushrooms in a bowl and threw out the liquid (though it could be saved for stuff like soup!!). Maybe you will have a different experience because this has never happened to me before.

They looked so good and tasted really really good. I love mushrooms ughhhh.

Next thing was the kale, and to be completely honest I’m #lazy and I’ve posted this recipe before so I’m not going to here, but it’s in my post about the butternut squash.

The last thing was the roasted pumpkin seeds, which I made a few weeks ago when my boyfriend (hi Austin) and I made jack-o-lanterns and roasted the pumpkin seeds. Approximate recipe:

Clean off the pumpkin seeds in a bowl of cold water and then pat them dry. mix with some olive oil and spices and then roast in the oven for about 20 minutes on 400ºF, or until crispy.

I don’t have any pictures of the roasted pumpkin seeds but I do have this adorable picture of Austin carving the pumpkin: