Thai mushroom and tofu stirfry with fresh mint
I bought a large bunch of mint for this lemon mint lentil potato ragout recipe, but didn’t use it all up, and went looking for something to do with all the mint. I found this recipe in Nancie McDermott’s Real Vegetarian Thai cookbook. It looked pretty simple and called for a whole cup of mint leaves, so Derek and I made it for dinner the other night. Read the rest of this entry »
Chinese cabbage with black pepper and garlic
I occasionally buy napa cabbage to make this wonderful vietnamese slaw, but then I never know what to do with the leftovers. I have very few recipes that actually call for napa cabbage. This time I bought the napa to make kim chee, but the end result was the same—leftover napa cabbage languishing in the crisper drawer. I searched in my cookbooks for a new recipe to try and found this one in Real Vegetarian Thai by Nancie McDermott. It’s a really simple recipe. You just saute up the cabbage with a lot of garlic and a bit of a sweet/salty/soy sauce, and add lots of freshly ground pepper. Read the rest of this entry »
Red curry with winter vegetables and cashews
Back in Pittsburgh I used to make this recipe several times each winter. This dish has all four essential Thai tastes: sweet, salty, spicy, and sour. It tastes just like the curry you’d get in a restaurant, except the addition of vegetable broth results in a lighter dish that’s less overwhelmingly rich. The crunchy cashews make a nice textural contrast to the silky broth and creamy-soft vegetables. Based on a recipe from Nancie McDermott’s Real Vegetarian Thai. Read the rest of this entry »
Green curry with zucchini and bamboo shoots
We’ve been eating the green curry I made last weekend all week. First we ate it on roasted veggies, then I improvised a green curry with chard and tofu. It came out okay but not great, so I decided to actually follow a recipe the next time! This recipe for green curry with zucchini and bamboo shoots from Nancie McDermott’s Real Vegetarian Thai. Read the rest of this entry »
Thai curry paste, four ways
I was making roasted veggies for dinner tonight, and Derek asked me to make some Thai curry paste to go along with them. Amazingly, I actually happened to have all the ingredients on hand. I used to make Thai curry paste all the time back in grad school, but I haven’t made it much (if at all) since coming to Germany. But now that it’s snowy and cold in Saarbruecken, the intense heat of a curry paste sounded very appealing.
The recipe I made tonight is a green curry from Nancie McDermott’s Real Vegetarian Thai. It’s one of five different curry recipes in her book. All of them are fiery and very fresh tasting–a great accompaniment to the sweetness in roasted carrots and parsnips. Traditional Thai curry paste includes shrimp paste, but McDermott’s vegetarian version is not missing a thing: it’s fresh, complex, and intensely spicy. Read the rest of this entry »
Sesame noodles (peanut style)
I make Madhur Jaffrey’s sesame noodles all the time. It’s one of Derek’s favorite dishes. Tonight when I asked him what he wanted for dinner he said “chiliquiles!” but all my tortillas were frozen, so he went with his second choice–sesame noodles. I agreed, but didn’t tell him that I wasn’t going to make our standard recipe. I had recently come across a recipe for cold sesame noodles from Nancie McDermott’s Quick and Easy Chinese: 70 Everyday Recipes. I really like McDermott’s Real Vegetarian Thai cookbook, so I decided to give it a try. Read the rest of this entry »
Vegetarian Pad Thai at Home
I love paht thai, but I rarely order it in restaurants anymore because I’m always disappointed by the oily, bland mockery they serve. Restaurant pad thai is invariably insufficiently sour, and often too sweet. Proper pad thai requires a careful balance of sweet, salty, and sour, as well as warm heat and a strong peanut flavor–two other features that are often lacking in restaurant versions of this popular dish. Traditionally, pad thai is made with salty dried shrimp and fermented fish sauce. Nancie McDermott, in her book Real Vegetarian Thai, suggests that vegetarians substitute Asian bean sauce (dao jiow), a pungent condiment made from salted, fermented soybeans. She says that either the “brown bean sauce” or “yellow bean sauce” will work fine. McDermott’s excellent cookbook includes a recipe for vegetarian phat thai that is superb, if decadent. If you’re going to eat pad thai, and don’t have any excellent Thai restaurants around, I strongly suggest making it yourself rather than settling for another mediocre mockery. Here’s Nancie’s recipe, with a few adjustments to reduce the oil content and speed up the process just a little. Read the rest of this entry »
Zucchini and Tofu in Roasted Chili Paste
This is currently my favorite way to eat Thai roasted chili paste. This recipe from Real Vegetarian Thai by Nancie McDermott is simple and satisfying. For more color, use half yellow squash, but add it slightly before the zucchini as it’s slower to cook. Alternatively, throw in a handful of halved cherry tomatoes when you add the tofu.
- 10 – 14 ounces medium-firm tofu, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 2 tsp. – 3 Tbs. vegetable oil
- 1 Tbs. coarsely chopped garlic (4 to 6 cloves)
- 1 large onion (about 10? ounces), cut lengthwise into thick strips
- 3 medium or 2 large zucchini, cut into 1/4 inch rounds (about 1.5 pounds?)
- 3 Tbs. roasted chili paste
- 1/4 cup vegetable stock
- 2 tsp. soy sauce
- 1/2 tsp salt (omit or reduce if your vegetable stock is salted)
- Heat a wok or a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the oil and swirl to coat the pan. Add the garlic and onion and cook until shiny, fragrant, and softened, about 1 minute. Add the zucchini and cook, tossing occasionally, until shiny, tender, and a brilliant green, about 2 minutes.
- Reduce the heat to medium and add the chili paste, vegetable stock, soy sauce, and salt. Toss well. Add the tofu and cook, giving it an occasional gentle toss, until it is heated through and evenly coated with the sauce, about 1 minute. Transfer to a serving dish and serve hot or warm.
Serves 4.
Rating: B+
Derek: A-
Thai Roasted Chili Paste
A few years ago I made the Roasted Chili Paste (Nahm prik pao) from Nancie McDermott’s cookbook Real Vegetarian Thai. We used it in a recipe with butternut squash and spinach, and everyone enjoyed it. For some reason, however, I never made it again, until this summer. I gave my mom my big Kitchenaid spice grinder with the washable bowl, since it won’t work in Germany, but she didn’t know what to do with it, since she already had a normal coffee grinder. I suggested she make Thai roasted chili paste in it, and she wanted me to show her how, so we cracked open her pristine copy of Real Vegetarian Thai, and made half a batch of Roasted Chili Paste. After tasting it and discovering how utterly delicious it is, we felt foolish for only making half a batch! Read the rest of this entry »
The captious vegetarian 