Tag Archives: Thai

Vegan MoFo Day 6: Post #6 Thai Peanut Massaman Curry with Coconut Rice

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Original Recipes, Restaurants, Vegan MoFo 2015, Veganized Recipes and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today’s theme for Vegan MoFo is to recreate a restaurant meal.

There is a Thai restaurant in my town called Tong-D that is really vegan friendly. However, at one point I was assuming my favorite dish I used to get, Peanut Massaman Curry with tofu was fully vegan based on the description on the menu. Well, one day my mom went a step further than I did, and tried to confirm that it was vegan with the waiter. They wouldn’t say what is in it that does not make it vegan, but I knew from that point on it wasn’t. So, I’ve eaten there other times and ordered different stuff, but I’ve missed this particular dish.

A few months ago I went to Market Basket and found a package of Massaman Curry paste that’s both vegan and gluten free. The implications for this ingredient was obvious. I was going to recreate this dish. And since I could, instead of tofu, I decided to use Beyond Meat Chicken Free Strips.

Additionally, the restaurant in particular has the most amazing coconut rice they serve as a side. It’s the ultimate comfort food for me. I have been wanting to recreate it for so long, but all of the recipes I’ve tried online do not come out as good. So, I decided to try and experiment with how I think it should be done to re-create the taste, and it actually came out pretty much exactly spot-on.

Peanut Massaman Curry

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Ingredients:

  • 1 cup coconut milk
  • 1 package Kanokwan Massaman Curry Paste
  • 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
  • 1 9 oz package Beyond Meat Chicken Free Strips
  • 1 onion, sliced into strips
  • about 2 cups chopped red potatoes
  • 1/3 cup peanuts, plus more for topping

Directions:

  1. Steam potatoes in a covered microwave proof bowl or casserole dish with a small amount of water (you don’t want to cover the potatoes with the water). Microwave for about 5 minutes or until a fork can easily be inserted into a piece. You don’t want it anywhere near the softness you’d need for mashed potatoes
  2. Pour the coconut milk into a heavy bottomed saucepan and put the curry paste into it. Stir on the stove on medium heat constantly until the paste melts and oil appears on the top.
  3. Mix in the peanut butter until it melts.
  4. Add the chicken free strips and cover, stirring occasionally until they defrost.
  5. Add the onions and microwaved potatoes.
  6. Turn to low heat and stir every so often until the onions are soft.
  7. Fold in the peanuts.
  8. Serve with coconut rice (recipe below) and top with peanuts.

Thai Coconut Rice

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Ingredients:

  • 1 cup jasmine rice
  • 1 1/2 cups coconut milk
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 2 tablespoons sugar

Directions:

  1. Mix the sugar into the coconut milk and water.
  2. Place the rice and coconut milk, sugar, and water mixture into a saucepan or rice cooker bowl.
  3. You basically cook this as you would normal rice (if you don’t know how to cook rice on the stove, I highly suggest you invest in a rice cooker. They are usually $20 or less and make perfectly cooked rice every time. They also make cooking a heck of a lot easier because you can focus on other things–like making curry– while your rice is cooking.) You may need to stir it a bit more at the end before letting it sit for a bit. It turns out my rice cooker was broken when I went to use it, and so I had steamed the mixture for a bit before I had to transfer it to a pan to cook on the stove. It still came out awesome.

Enjoy! The first full week of MoFo is done, and was pretty successful! Yay!

Mango Cashew Thai Yellow Curry

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Curry, Dinners, Gluten Free, Mangos, Rice dishes, Thai, Tofu, Vegetables and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Tonight I made this really good dinner for my brother and I! He said it tasted like it was from a restaurant. It was surprisingly easy though. I had bought this curry paste, pictured below, at Market Basket:

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Which eventually became this:

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Note: the curry paste is not mild in spiciness. 

Ingredients:

  • 1 can organic full fat coconut milk
  • 1 package Kanokwan yellow curry paste
  • 1 lb extra firm tofu, cubed
  • 1 cup vegetable broth
  • 14 oz chopped stir fry veggies of choice
  • 1 champagne mango, cut into chunks
  • 1/2 cup raw cashews
  • Cooked rice, for serving

Directions:

  1. Mix together the full can of coconut milk and curry paste. Heat on medium low heat and stir until oily on top.
  2. Add in cubed tofu. Stir and allow to cook for a few minutes.
  3. Pour in vegetable broth and stir. Increase heat to medium, and add veggies, mango, and cashews.
  4. Heat until veggies are cooked.
  5. Serve over rice.
  6. Deliciously simple!

Tomorrow is the Summer Solstice and Father’s Day! I wish it wasn’t supposed to rain…:(

Foodie (Photo) Friday #5: Eating out, Pumpkin/Chocolate muffins, Tofu Satay

Posted by Banana Curl Vegan Girl in Bake and Destroy/Natalie Slater, Baked Goods, Breakfast, Foodie Friday, Pumpkin Obsession, Recipe Reviews, Restaurants, The 30 Minute Vegan Cookbook and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hello hello! It’s foodie (photo) Friday! Annnd… I did not make much food this week because I ended up going out to eat quite a bit.  I’ll talk about my dining experiences first before going on to the food pictures and recipe reviews:

I went to a burrito place that had seitan as a filling option (which I was very excited about) in Amherst, Massachusetts,  an Asian restaurant in Providence, RI  (the menu had mostly Thai and Chinese dishes but also some Cambodian I believe) where I got orange crispy tofu, garlic eggplant, and sticky white rice, and then tonight to The Grange in Providence where I got a pretzel bun po’ boy with fried oyster mushrooms, vegan remoulade, pickles, lettuce, and cole slaw.

It’s a big toss up between whether I liked The Grange or the Asian food better. I want to say I liked the Grange more. I was so excited when I was eating that sandwich. The flavors in it are amazing. And all the textures together worked really well. A mix of 3 crunchy elements (the pickles, lettuce, and mushrooms) and two soft/creamy (the bread and the remoulade). I was worried that the restaurant might not live up to the hype I’ve heard about it, but I was impressed by the food at least. The only complaint I may have but am undecided about is that I found the atmosphere kind of weird, it was noisy and too dark (I don’t really like dark restaurants, but maybe that is because my vision is not great in the dark? I honestly do not know!

The Asian restaurant (called Gourmet House) had a lot of options for tofu which is always a sign of a good Asian restaurant for me. Almost all the dishes you could choose tofu or tofu and vegetables with. The orange tofu was so good. I was not expecting it to come the way it was though. This tofu was more like what I remember the sauces being when I was an omnivore and had ordered lemon chicken. It was a thick, citrus-y orange flavored sauce, with no hint of soy sauce or anything that I was expecting. I liked it so much I may have gone a bit overboard by eating the whole plate of it. Oops. And the eggplant and rice were also very yummy. I liked the stickiness of the rice, I don’t think I’ve actually ever had sticky rice before. It’s kind of sweet. The eggplant was savory but also had a sweet flavor to it at the time. The eggplant itself melted in my mouth.

Sorry I didn’t take any pictures of my food at the restaurants, I was embarrassed to do so, heh.

Anyways, on to what I made from some tasty recipes this week.

The first:

venus chocolate pumpkin muffinsVenus Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins from Bake and Destroy by Natalie Slater. These are half and half pumpkin/chocolate muffins with a streusal topping. They’re difficult to make half and half so they look good, but they do taste pretty good. Next time I might omit the walnuts in the pumpkin, because I’d like a stronger pumpkin flavor. I think the walnuts might overpower it.

photo (51)

Also I had a hard time with my oven getting them cooked well enough. Even with the max time listed with the recipe they were still totally liquid in the middle when I put a toothpick in the center, I think I cooked them for 5-10 minutes more. I honestly cannot remember, sometimes my oven is a bit weird lately.

Overall, these tasted pretty good and the recipe was pretty straight forward and easy despite having to make 3 separate parts so I give it a 4 good banana, one bad banana. It lost one good banana because it just didn’t have that “wow” factor when I tasted it. But they’re good otherwise.

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Second, was Tofu Satay from The 30 Minute Vegan cookbook.

tofu satay

I made it into a bowl with some quinoa and added extra peanut satay sauce on top. The satay sauce was perfect, it tasted exactly like the kind of peanut satay sauce I like, that I remember getting from the Thai restaurants I have been to. Sometimes people and companies make a type of peanut satay that doesn’t taste this good, maybe without coconut milk and less of a peanut buttery taste, but this was amazing. The tofu came out pretty good, but I wish I had baked it longer until it got a little more crispy, except I was hungry and impatient so oh well. The addition of raw scallions and red pepper made it a complete and tasty meal all together with the quinoa. So yay! I think this probably deserves a 5 good banana rating!

5bananas

That’s all, folks! I have some couple neat ideas for a few different kinds of posts this week, hopefully I’ll get some time to post them, but I do have some exams coming up as well, so I don’t know! But I hope so!

Until next time!

In deliciousness,

Laura