One Pot Spicy Tofu Stew

Healthy, easy and all in one pot

One Pot Spicy Tofu Stew

Hello folks! How was everyone’s weekend? I sure hope you had a good one whatever it is you got up to.

As for me, I had my first encounter with hill sprints. It is part of my training plan for the Berlin Marathon in September this year. Man, was it tough. You essentially have to sprint up a hill 4 times. This is done after you have just completed a 45 minute run. At the end of the first sprint I felt ready to roll down the hill and stay down.

Since I need to incorporate more protein into my diet with all this running, I decided that for Meatless Monday I am going to make a protein packed stew. This recipe was inspired by a Korean dish – soondubu jjigae, that is, soft tofu stew. The traditional stew uses dried anchovies and kelp to make a stock and the stew commonly has meat or seafood in it as well as the addition of fish sauce. Since all of those ingredients are not viable options for a meat free Monday dish, I had to get creative. I was also lazy to wash too many pots so I made this into a one pot stew.

Vegetarian Japanese Egg Tofu for Meatless Monday

Vegetarian Japanese Egg Tofu

Happy Meatless Monday everyone! I hope you are as excited about Meatless Monday as I am.

This Monday, I am going to share a recipe for Japanese Egg Tofu with you. This tofu has egg in it and can be easily bought from most Oriental grocers.  This is what it looks like in its packaging.

Japanese Egg Tofu

As with most tofu or beancurd, it is a very versatile protein in that it goes well with almost anything. For this dish, the tofu is sliced, dusted with corn flour and then fried until it is golden and crispy. You then braise the vegetables in a thick sauce before adding an egg in the sauce to thicken it and to bulk up the dish. I also added a lot of vegetables to bulk it up further. Here, I used mushrooms, sugar snap peas, baby corn and carrots.

Teriyaki Tofu Steaks

Teriyaki Tofu Steaks

Hello and Happy Meatless Monday! How was your weekend? What did you cook and did you try any new recipes? I had a very lovely evening with some of our friends on Saturday night. I also got very excited about Meatless Monday and spent quite a fair bit of time on Pinterest searching for some meatless inspiration.

In the end though, I decided on something basic and staple as I noticed that I needed to use up some Tofu that I had bought. These are firm tofu which is very good for turning into Tofu steaks. I had also bought some Mirin recently so I figured that it would be best to make a Teriyaki Tofu Steaks.

Spicy Tofu with Mushrooms

Spicy Tofu with Mushrooms

Hello! How was your weekend? I mentioned in my post on Friday that I was going biking at Kielder Water and Forest Park over the weekend. That I certainly did. Let me tell you, it was a challenge!

We rented mountain bikes over at this bike rental place called The Bike Place. Be warned, they do have 2 outlets. One in Bellingham and the other at Kielder Castle. You need to go to the outlet in Kielder Castle if you want to bike in and around the trails at Kielder Water and Forest Park. We of course turned up at the one in Bellingham and had to be redirected.

Our route of choice was the Lakeside Way, that is, a 26 mile circular route around Kielder Water. It is very convenient because we picked up our bikes from Kielder Castle and just made a big circular loop back. Did I mention it took us novice bikers 5 hours? All in I must say it was an exhilarating experience and the views are breathtaking. The route was also very well signposted and we didn't have any trouble with navigation. I didn't bring my trusty point and shoot Canon Powershot so I had to rely on my phone. The photos didn't really do the views justice but it will have to do. There are of course many other routes which you can choose according to the level of strenuousness that you want, a good starting point is the Kielder Water and Forest Park website.

Trying hard not to fall

Janus Chairs at Kielder Water

In Kielder Forest Park

View around Kielder Water

Fast forward to Monday and yes, a meatless one at that. We do try to observe Meatless Monday in our household. It doesn't happen all the time, but try we do. After being totally shattered after the bike ride on Saturday, I was indulging in one of my favourite past times of late - pinning on Pinterest! I was searching for tofu recipes and came across quite a few. There is one here, here, another here and lastly, here.