We hadn’t eaten black-eyed peas for a while, so the peas and rice did taste extra delicious. Anni commented how the taste of the black-eyed peas combine the sweetness of chickpeas and the flouryness of regular beans. I think that’s an apt description!

Here’s what I used:

• 2,5 dl dried black-eyed peas
• a piece of kombu
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• about 2 teaspoons of cumin
• about 1,5 teaspoons of coriander
• 2 chipotles in adobo sauce, finely chopped
• 2 dl tomato sauce, passata style
• 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

About two hours before I started to cook, I quick soaked the peas: I rinsed them, put them in a bowl filled with boiling water, and covered the bowl. (Obviously, they could’ve been soaked overnight too, but since I forgot to do it, I had to quick soak them.) Then, two hours later, I began with boiling the black-eyed peas. I threw soaking water away, put the peas in a kettle over low heat, added the kombu and plenty of boiling water.

While the peas were simmering, I prepared the sauce. First, I put a frying pan over medium high heat, added the onion, and fried it until quite brownish. I kept stirring the onion a lot so that it wouldn’t burn. Then I added the garlic, cumin, coriander and the chipotle, and fried them about half a minute, stirring continuously. I poured the tomato sauce in the pan, stirred, lowered the heat, and waited until the black-eyed peas were done. I drained the peas, removed the kombu, and added the peas into the frying pan. I mixed the sauce and the beans, added the salt, and checked the taste.

Now these burgers are not about the patty, since the “patty” is actually just a slice of fried tofu, and I guess that in the US these might most likely be called sandwiches instead of burgers. But the main thing that’s going on here is the beet-sauerkraut relish, with its sweet-tangy taste that goes so very well with the rye bread, and its beety texture that is quite lovely with the fried tofu – especially when everything is drenched in creamy tahini sauce. Simple, quick, and tasty, just the way we prefer our dinners to be right now.

This recipe makes enough for 4 burgers, with some extra beet relish and tahini sauce left over. The relish is mighty tasty as a side dish as well, and we often serve this sauce with cooked grains like quinoa or barley. We also filled our burgers with pea sprouts and sliced yellow bell pepper, and enjoyed them with a side of carrot sticks.

The Tofu:

• 300 grams tofu
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
• canola oil for frying
• black pepper to taste

Heikki first cut the tofu in 4 slices, pressed them for a bit with some cheesecloth, and then fried them in canola oil until slightly brown on both sides. Then he drizzled the liquid smoke and the soy sauce in the pan and turned the slices over a few times to make sure they got an even coating, and crackled plenty of black pepper over the tofu when it was ready.

The Beet Relish:

• 2 large beets, julienned (or even grated)
• 1 and 1/2 dl sauerkraut (about 100 grams)
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 1/2 tablespoon canola oil
• salt and black pepper to taste
• (a sqeeze of lemon juice)

I heated the oil in a frying pan and fried the onion until slightly browned. Then I added the beets and the sauerkraut in the pan, and fried for about 5 minutes, until the beet started to soften. Now I added the salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice, covered the pan, and let it stew until everything else was ready to serve (it took about 10 minutes).

Tahini Sauce:

• 3 tablespoons tahini
• 1 dl nutritional yeast
• 3/4 dl water
• 1-2 garlic cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• juice of 1/2 lemon

Heikki just dumped all the ingredients in our mini food processor and mixed until thoroughly combined and creamy. The thickness of this sauce can be easily adjusted by cutting the amount of water – this makes quite a runny sauce.

To assemble, we buttered out two toasted rye bread slices with a bit of vegan margarine, slathered the bread slices with tahini sauce, then added a pile of the beet relish on the bottom slice. That got drizzled with some more sauce, then covered by a slice of tofu and a bunch of veggies, and another drizzle of the sauce.

This makes enough tofu for 4, so we have plenty of leftovers – they are very munchable and a nice addition to many meals.

The Herbed Tofu (serves 4):

• 500 g tofu
• 2 and 1/2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce
• 1/2 teaspoon each: smoked paprika, thyme, sage, tarragon
• 1 teaspoon brown rice vinegar
• freshly ground black pepper
• 3 cloves garlic, pressed
• 1 tablespoon olive oil

I first pressed the tofu – sliced it, wrapped in cheesecloth, placed a cutting board and a pile of cookbooks over it, and let sit for 15 minutes. Then I cut it into small-ish cubes (about the size of the tip of my thumb), heated the oil in a frying pan on medium high heat, and fried the tofu cubes until slightly browned on most sides. This takes about 10 minutes, and while the tofu was frying, I had plenty of time to mix together the seasonings (tamari through garlic).

When the tofu was nice and golden brown, I poured the seasoning mixture in the pan, and stirred it to coat all the tofu cubes. I kept on stirring until the liquid was absorbed and started to get brown, and removed the pan from heat. I let the tofu come to room temperature before adding it to the salad base.

The Salad Base (serves 2):

• 1 small head of new cabbage, thinly sliced
• 1 red bell pepper, sliced
• a bunch of arugula, chopped
• 6 sundried tomatoes, chopped
• a squeeze of fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1-2 tablespoons gomasio (Japanese sesame salt), or salt to taste
• 1 teaspoon agave syrup
• plenty of black pepper
• fresh basil

I just tossed everything together in a large bowl, added about half of the tofu, and sprinkled with some fresh basil.

We’ve used these bacon bits as a yummy pizza toping and in two kinds of pasta sauce – the other was just a tomato sauce with chick peas, and here’s the carbonara sauce we whipped up the other night.

Here’s what I used:

• 2 dl soy flakes
• 2 and 1/2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon rice vinegar
• 2 teaspoons brown syrup
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons liquid smoke
• canola oil for frying

I first mixed the soy sauce, vinegar, syrup and liquid smoke together. Then I placed the soy flakes and the seasoning in a bowl and stirred until the flakes had absorbed all the liquid.

Now I heated our cast iron skillet with enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan, and then fried the soy bits until nice and brown all over, with a few blackened spots here and there. For crispy results, I’ve used more oil, and for a chewier and less greasy result just a thin layer is enough.

I drained the bacon on kitchen towels and then it was ready to be used – in pasta, on sandwiches, as a pizza topping, or in salads. Yum.

Simple Carbonara:

• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/2 dl soy cream (or other vegan option – rice, almond, oat)
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• plenty of black pepper
• 1 and 1/2 dl soy bacon bits
• chives and nutritional yeast

I heated up the oil and fried the onions until browned. Then I added the garlic, fried a minute more, and added the soy cream and heated it up. Then I removed the pan from heat, and stirred in the salt, plenty of black pepper, and the lemon juice. This makes enough sauce for a dry-ish pasta dish for 2 persons – add more cream if you like it saucier.

When the spaghetti was cooked, I stirred most of the soy bacon bits in the sauce, and then mixed the sauce with the pasta. We sprinkled our portions with nutritional yeast, chives, and more soy bacon bits.

We enjoyed this dish with a side of lightly steamed broccoli and carrots, which were a nice sweet side with the flavorful stew. Before settling with my version I was happy to find Nupur’s lovely and thorough blog post about khichdi, and closely read through quite a few kitchari recipes. Heikki loved this dish and commented that kids would probably enjoy it as well – before he even knew that it’s often the first solid food introduced to children in India!

This is what I used (serves 3-4):

• 2 dl brown basmati rice, soaked for 2 hours (unsoaked cooks longer)
• 1 and 1/2 dl green  mung beans, soaked overnight
• 1 or 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh ginger
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, ground
• 1 teaspoon black mustard seeds
• 2 teaspoons each: ground coriander and cumin
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• pinch of asafoetida
• 6-8 dl water, and maybe more as needed
• sea salt to taste
• 2 tablespoons of vegan margarine
• 1 tablespoon of tamarind paste or lemon juice

I first heated the oil and fried the mustard seeds until they started to pop. Then I added the chopped ginger and fried it for a few seconds, followed with fennel, coriander, cumin and asafoetida, which I fried just until fragrant, being careful not to burn. Now, I added the rice and the beans along with about 6 dl of hot water and the turmeric, brought to boil, then lowered the heat and let the stew simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes. I added a little bit of water as needed, but not too much – I didn’t want this to be a soupy stew.

When the rice was soft, I removed the pot from heat, and added in the margarine, tamarind paste, and salt to taste. I stirred the stew briskly with a ladle for a few minutes to mash some of the beans and make it a bit creamier, and then it was ready to be served.

Breading with soy yoghurt was very easy and quite fool proof, and resulted in a lovely crispy topping with a hint of yoghurty sourness. The baked version was definitely lighter, and baking also resulted in a more developed, round flavor.

The Marinade:

• 1 dl red wine
• 1/2 dl soy sauce
• 5 cloves garlic, pressed
• 2 teaspoons agave syrup
• 1 teaspoon pink peppercorns, ground
• 1 teaspoon green peppercorns, ground
• 1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns, ground

I first pressed my 500 gram block of tofu for one hour – sliced it 1 cm thick, wrapped in cheesecloth, arranged as a uniformly thick layer, and placed a cutting board and a pile of plates on top. Then I just mixed all the marinade ingredients and placed in an airtight container along with the tofu. I flipped the tofu slices and shook the container every once in a while to ensure even absorption of the marinade.

As we found out, the marinating time can be anything between 2 hours and two days.

The Breading for Fried Tofu:

• 1 dl dry bread crumbs
• salt and black pepper to taste
• 3/4 dl plain soy yoghurt
• a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar

I mixed the bread crumbs and the salt and pepper on one plate and the soy yoghurt and the salt and sugar on another. Then I patted the marinated tofu slices dry with some kitchen towels and dipped them first in the yoghurt dish, then rolled them carefully in the bread crumbs.

Then Heikki shallow fried the tofu slices in canola oil until nicely browned on both sides.

We enjoyed our breaded tofu with lemon wedges and a side of stir-fried morning glory – so good!

I adapted the recipe from Mathilde’s recipe that I found on the French Vegetarian Association’s website. I added some cognac and muscovado sugar, and served the soup with toasted baguette slices with some melty vegan cheese on top. It gets dark after about four in the afternoon in Helsinki, so the picture is taken of my lunch bowl the next day!

Here’s what we put in our soup (serves 4-6):

• 1 kg onions
• 3 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons whole wheat flour
• 2 tablespoons cognac
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• black pepper and salt to taste
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 teaspoon muscovado sugar
• 1 and 1/2 liters water

We sliced the onions pretty thickly (about 1/2 – 3/4 cm thick), chopped the garlic, and then fried them on medium heat in the olive oil in our largest cooking pot until golden and soft. The frying took about 20 minutes or so. Then we added the flour, stirred to mix evenly, added the cognac, and stirred again to remove all the bits stuck to the bottom of the pot. Then we added the rest of the ingredients, and cooked the soup for about 45 minutes.

The Garlic bread (serves 2-3):

• half a multigrain baguette, sliced
• 3-4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 50 g vegan melty cheese (we had Cheezly Edam)
• freshly ground black pepper

I preheated the oven to 200 degrees Celsius while the soup was boiling, and started making the breads when it had simmered for half an hour. I placed the bread slices on a baking wheet, combined the garlic with the olive oil, and spooned it over the bread slices. Then I let the oil seep in for a minute or two.

Now, I turned the slices over, grated the Cheezly over the slices, and ground some pepper over them. Then I baked the bread on the uppermost rack of our oven for about 6 minutes, until it was brown and crispy underneath and the Cheezly had melted.

Soup ingredients:

• olive oil for frying
• 2 onions, chopped
• 6 cloves of garlic, crushed
• half of a medium rutabaga (about 275 g), diced
• 1 carrot, diced
• 1 teaspoon hot chili powder
• 4 teaspoons of ras-el-hanout
  
• 4 dl (about 275 g) dried split fava beans (you can use whole beans, but they take longer to cook)
• enough water to amply cover the vegetables and beans (about 1 – 1 1/2 liters)
• 3 teaspoons vegetable stock powder
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• juice of 1 mandarin
• salt to taste

Harissa yogurt ingredients:

• 1 teaspoon harissa
• 1 1/2 dl soy yogurt
• pinch of salt
• pinch of pepper

About 4 hours before starting to cook the soup I speed soaked the fava beans. Speed soaking means I simply rinsed the beans in cold water, put them in a bowl, poured boiling water on them, and covered the bowl. Of course one could soak the beans properly too, overnight in cold water.

After the beans were soaked, we started by chopping the onions and crushing the garlic. While I diced the rutabaga and the carrot, Anni put some olive oil in a pot over medium-high heat, and fried the onion and the garlic until the onion was translucent. We then added the chopped rutabaga and carrot, and fried them for a minute or two more.

Now we added the chili powder and the ras el hanout, stirred the mix for a while, and then added the beans, water, stock powder, sugar, and vinegar. We covered the pot, and simmered until the beans were soft. This took about one hour.

Anni then proceeded to purée the soup using our immersion blender until it was smooth, and adjusted the taste by adding the olive oil, the mandarin juice, and a pinch of salt.

We garnished our soup bowls with some harissa yogurt – the yogurt was simply made by combining and mixing all the ingredients in a small bowl.

This isn’t the most visually pleasing dish even with the decorative sprig of rosemary, but the taste will more than compensate for the plain looks. Heikki took his half to work on the next day, and says it was very good re-heated as well. Cooking this took me about 25 minutes from start to finish, including the cooking time for lentils.

The Ingredients (serves 2):

• 5 dl whole wheat fusilli
• 300 g eggplant (1 medium)
• 1 and 1/2 dl green lentils (plus 1 bay leaf for cooking)
• 4 garlic cloves
• 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 dl fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons capers
• salt and pepper to taste
• nutritional yeast for sprinkling (optional)

The first thing I did was to rinse the lentils. Then I placed them in a small sauce pan with plenty of cooking water and a bay leaf, and let them simmer until soft but still firm.

Now, I cut the eggplant in small cubes, and heated a non-stick frying pan with about half a tablespoon of the olive oil. Eggplant will absorb any amount of olive oil, so there’s no point adding too much. Then I started frying the eggplant, on medium-high heat, stirring every now and then to ensure even browning.

I chopped the rosemary, squeezed the lemon juice, and grated the garlic, and mixed all these together. Then I cooked a large pot of water for the pasta, and added it in the pot when the lentils had cooked for about 10 minutes so that they’d be ready at about the same time.

When the lentils were done (which only took 15 minutes to my surprise), I rinsed them, removed the bay leaf, and added them to the frying pan with about two thirds of the lemon-garlic-rosemary mix. I added some salt at this point as well, and continued frying for about 3 minutes, stirring all the time. Finally, I added the capers, and removed the pan from heat.

When the pasta was cooked, I drained it, and combined it in the cooking pot with the rest of the lemon, garlic, and rosemary, and half a tablespoon of olive oil. After I plated the dish I sprinkled it with some nutritional yeast, and ground a healthy amount of black pepper over my portion.

Most tandoori sauces seem to have red food coloring, and that’s not something I wanted to include in this recipe. I added a chopped beet to get a little bit of that red tandoori color, but my endeavor wasn’t a complete success: the result was unevenly colored, partly bright fuchsia, partly yellowish. Now that I think of it, I could have added the beets in when I was pre-cooking the rice, and the color would’ve most likely come out prettier! Another option would’ve been to add some beet juice in the sauce, so that the tofu would’ve had a pink color as well.

This recipe makes a lot of food, enough for about 4 hungry or 6 not quite as hungry eaters. I like to make a larger batch of food once I heat up the oven, so there’s leftovers for the days to come.

The Tandoori Sauce (adapted from this recipe):

• 5 garlic cloves
• 5 cm peeled ginger
• 3 shallots (or 1 regular onion)
• 1 small red chili with seeds
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons canola oil
• 2 tablespoons muscovado sugar
• 1 and 1/2 dl plain soy yogurt
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 1 and 1/2 teaspoons paprika powder
• 1 teaspoon each: ground cumin and turmeric
• 1/2 teaspoon each: cinnamon and freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon each: freshly grated nutmeg, ground cardamom, and ground clove

Also Used:

• 500 g firm tofu, pressed and cubed
• 2 potatoes, scrubbed and cubed
• 1 beet, peeled and finely cubed
• 4 dl brown basmati rice
• 1 bay leaf
• water to cook rice in
• 4 dl vegetable stock

Three and a half hours before we planned to have dinner we started the preparations. I blended all the tandoori sauce ingredients with our immersion blender until smooth. Heikki pressed and cubed the tofu, and I mixed it with the sauce and put it in the fridge to marinate for two hours (overnight would be even better). I rinsed the rice at this point and let it soak in fresh water for two hours as well.

An hour and a half before dinner time I set the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Then I rinsed the rice, cooked it in ample water with the bay leaf for about 20 minutes, and drained it.  While the rice was cooking, I cubed the potatoes and the beet. When everything was prepped, I just mixed it all together in a large baking dish – tofu with the tandoori sauce, pre-cooked rice, potatoes, beets, and the veggie stock. Now, I covered the dish with a lid, and baked it for one hour.