Cooking (and Baking) Blitz!

Wheee! I've just finally finished dinner after close to three hours of nonstop cooking and baking. I made several things, ones that will last a couple of days at that, but it's still more exhausting than it seems like it should be. I'm also cooking for two now, at least partially. My boyfriend and I are still on winter break but we're both working odd schedules. This means that even though we're pretty much the only people in the dorm right now, we're probably not going to be able to eat together most of the time. On the other hand, it does mean that I can pack lunches.

I think packing lunches might have been my favorite part of high school....

Anyway! Let me show you some things I've made, started with tonight's (very colorful!) dinner:

Pretty, huh? :)

That lovely orange soup is a redux of the orange-red pepper bisque I posted pictures of a few days ago. I used one huge carrot and one whole red pepper, a clove of garlic and a piece of ginger the same size, plus salt and paprika in this batch. I also made the veggie puree separately from the bechamel and mixed the two together at the end. It goes down a lot smoother this time, but I still think the recipe needs some tweaking.

And what is this delightful dish? Steamed Chinese broccoli and garlic-ginger marinated tofu, dry-fried and arranged atop a bed of pasta. As you can see, there's a little "broth"-- it's just a bit of pasta water and some soy. Let me tell you how good this is: it's so good.

I pressed most of the excess moisture out of the tofu then rubbed on the same proportions of garlic and ginger as the soup, plus a bit of salt and peanut oil and let them sit for probably about an hour and a half or so while I went about cooking other things. I prepared the Chinese broccoli by separating some the "branches" so that each piece consisted of a single stalk and leaf. The fatter stalks were split down the middle but left connected.they were put into a frying pan full of about 3/4" water so that the stalks would simmer and the leaves steam.

At this point, I started the water for the pasta and soon had that cooking too. 

Bringing it together was no problem. As soon as the water had evaporated completely from the broccoli I pushed them into a stack on the side of the pan and added the tofu to the other side until they had browned. Then I gave the whole thing a toss until tofu and broccoli were shuffled together-- the broccoli had stuck to the pan and browned a little too, but to be honest I kind of like a little bit of "burn" on leafy things otherwise cooked soft in a pan like that. (Chinese broccoli is like spinach in texture in the leaves, and like asparagus in texture in the stalk.) Switching gears, I plated the pasta and a little of its water, drizzling soy on top. All that was left to arrange the broccoli and tofu on top. Simple simple, and even better cool!

Mmmmm.... that's a little teacup with cranberry-pomegranate juice. Look at all the colors in this meal! I figure that means it must be good for me, right? And I upkept one of my New Year's Resolutions too, as this meal is completely vegetarian.

Speaking of vegetarian... I feel like I should entitle this "half-assed hippie". These are some slices of Pink Lady apple that I dried myself in the oven for making (dun dun dun) my own granola. I'll have some pictures of that once I've actually eaten it with something, but let me just tell you that the reason why you're not supposed to use instant oats, other than them being less healthy than rolled, is that they get sort of mushy (cooking "instantly" as promised) when you add the butter and honey. At that point it's a battle to crisp them up while keeping them from burning in the oven... oy. I don't know if this batch was any good, but the dried apple experiment was a success anyway. And pretty, too!

Last but not least....

I got my first stains on my home made apron. Look like chocolate.... :)