July-September 2025 COTM + COOKING FROM thread -- MEERA SODHA

[MelMM (Mel)]

TOFU FRIED RICE WITH CAVOLO NERO - Dinner, p. 49

Another game of find-the-dish-in-the book. #@!% index! It wasn’t under rice, fried rice, or kale.

Not only are you making this fried rice in a skillet (I’m OK with that, really, I am), but she has you making the rice same day and only cooling it on a baking sheet for about 20 minutes while you do the rest of the prep. I am NOT OK with that. So I did my thing and made rice the day before. In the skillet, before the rice goes in, she has you cook sliced onion for 8 minutes. Then add garlic and cook another 2, the your cavolo nero for another 5 or so, and finally your seasonings (five spice, sesame oil, salt) and crumbled tofu. That gets mixed together and cooked a little more, then the rice goes in. Cook until rice is hot, then serve with sriracha on top.

I probably won’t make this exact version again. I couldn’t help but think if I was using my outdoor wok, this would done in 3 minutes. This skillet business is slow. I’m also not a big fan of five spice in fried rice. But what it did do for me was remind me that it has been far too long since I made fried rice, and I need to get back to doing it more often.

[MelMM (Mel)]

CHILLI PANEER (tofu), KOREAN STYLE - Dinner, p. 115

I used tofu for this instead of paneer. Ms. Sodha has you pan fry the paneer. I gave the tofu a sprinkling of salt and a misting of avocado oil and baked it in the oven. You mix up a sauce of gochujang, rice syrup or honey, soy sauce, sesame oil, and white wine vinegar. Sauté garlic, ginger, and scallions. Add the tofu and sauce, then add greens (I used bok choy) and cook until the greens are done and everything is glazed in sauce.

I went a little heavy on the gochujang and didn’t need to, as this was quite hot. It was good though, one of the better dishes from the book so far.

[MelMM (Mel)]

THAI YELLOW CURRY WITH GREEN BEANS AND POTATOES - Dinner, p. 182

You make a curry paste of shallot, garlic, lemongrass, ginger, chiles, lime leaves, turmeric, cumin, coriander, and salt. She has you do this in a blender, adding coconut milk to make it loose enough to blend. I made it in my Sumeet, skipping the coconut milk. I actually didn’t use coconut milk at all in this recipe (heresy!), but rather a homemade cashew milk.

You are supposed to boil the potatoes before making the curry. I microwaved them until mostly cooked. Then you fry the curry paste, add coconut milk (cashew for me) and water (did not need this) and the green beans, and simmer until the beans are done.

This was fine, but so far down on the list of curries I’ve made that it isn’t realistically going to be a repeat. It was just kinda boring. And also a bit unsatisfying - I wish there had been more vegetables and maybe some tofu or something. Just beans and potatoes? Meh.

[MelMM (Mel)]

TAMARIND TOFU WITH NOODLES, HERBS AND PICKLES - Dinner, p. 200

Tofu packaging seems to be different in the UK, as this book is always calling for 280g packs of tofu, while our standard is around 400g. A partially used block of tofu is not really something I want to deal with, so I’ve been using a whole block. This recipe calls for 2 packs of tofu, but I definitely didn’t want to go up to 800 grams, so I once again used a single block, this time giving less tofu than called for, rather than more.

You pan fry the tofu, then it gets coated with a glaze of tamarind paste, agave or rice syrup, and salt. This gets set aside. A dressing is made of vegan fish sauce, agave or rice syrup, chiles, lime juice, and salt. You cook some bean threads and drain them, then assemble the dish. The salad ingredients are julienned zucchini, bean sprouts (I skipped these), iceberg lettuce (I used a green leaf lettuce), pickled sushi ginger, fresh mint and basil, peanuts, and fried onions. I skipped the onions as well, as all the store-bought ones have gluten, and I couldn’t be bothered to make my own. I went heavy on the peanuts.

I would opt for a more hands-off method of baking the tofu, but other than that, I would make this dish again. The picture in the book shows it plated on a large platter, with the ingredients spread out and everything visible. I plated in bowls, which meant the tofu covered up all the herbs and such, but they were down there.

[rosyred]

I remember her always gorgeous always inspiring posts on Chowhound----soup to nuts.

[rosyred]

You’ve put in a lot of effort! Even the one you weren’t crazy about (Thai Yellow Curry with Green Beans and Potatoes) looks great to me.

[MelMM (Mel)]

SESAME NOODLES WITH SPICY FRIED SOYA MINCE - Dinner, p 230

This recipe calls for ramen noodles, which I can’t eat, and I didn’t have any GF ramen on hand, so I used rice noodles. Which would be fine, except the particular rice noodles I had were really not very good. But that is a side issue and not the recipe’s fault at all. The sauce for this contains a partial vegetable stock cube (I used Better Than Bouillon, which is a paste), tahini, chile crisp, soy sauce, rice vinegar, Chinkiang vinegar, and Sichuan peppercorns. It just gets whisked together with some hot water, then later is heated to a brief boil. There is also chile crisp in the soy mince. I didn’t have enough on hand for the total amount, so I fudged by adding bits of various chile oils that I had around. The mince here is “dried soya mince,” a.k.a. TVP. I was kind of surprised to see TVP in a book by a non-vegan author. Heck, in this day of Beyond and Impossible, you don’t see it that much in vegan books either. Which is a shame, because it’s a really flexible ingredient. She has you sauté garlic and ginger, then add the TVP (still dry), and then cook until it is toasted. You then add water, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, Chinkiang vinegar, and chile crisp, and cook until the mince has absorbed all the liquid, or it has evaporated, and the mixture has dried out.

She has you cook the ramen noodles, remove them with tongs, and then cook baby spinach in the same water. I just added my greens (I used bok choy) to the boiling noodles for the last minute or two of cooking, then drained the whole thing. This means for plating my greens were mixed in with the noodles and not off to the side like in the photo in the book. Most of the greens in my version were hidden under sauce. The mince is supposed to be a topping, but I went heavy on it.

The mince was a flavorful, and fairly sweet. I would make it again or use the same method with different seasonings. If you have ever wondered how to cook with TVP, this recipe would be a good starting point. Overall, the dish was good, and I will probably repeat at some point. Maybe pretty soon, since greens are about to start ramping up in the CSA box.

[MelMM (Mel)]

CARROT FALAFEL WITH PICKLED ONIONS - Dinner, p. 181

Saved the best for last.

Here’s what happens with carrots around here. They go on the grocery list because they are in a lot of things, and chances are something I have planned requires carrots. My intent is to check the fridge before I go, because we usually have carrots on hand, but I can’t be sure, because Mr. MM will snack on them and sometimes finish them off. So I put 'em on the list, and then check the fridge and remove them from the list if we have some. That’s the idea. In actuality, I forget to check the fridge, so I get to the store and they are still on the list. I buy them “just in case”. This is what happened a few days before I made this dish, and when I got home, I saw that we already had carrots. In fact, we had more than one bag. So I rummaged through the produce drawers and found we had FIVE bags of carrots, some opened, some not. Does this happen to other people or just me? Thus began a hunt for ways to use them up and get down to a reasonable quantity.

This is just a pretty standard falafel recipe, but with carrots added. They don’t have to be grated (yay!), they just go in the food processor with the soaked chickpeas and other ingredients. These falafel are baked. In the past I would ignore this and fry them, but this time I decided to go with it and see how they came out. The one place I ditched the instructions was where you are told to drizzle the falafel with oil before baking. Seriously, you are not going to get anything close to an even coating that way. This is where a sprayer earns its keep. I sprayed the falafel with a fine, and reasonably even mist of avocado oil, then baked them.

These are supposed to be served in a pita with cucumbers and very simple pickled onions (recipe included), topped with hummus or a vegan garlic mayo and sriracha. I made a tahini sauce instead of using a mayo, but I did use the sriracha, and I served them broken in half in a GF wrap, with escarole and radishes. These are solid falafel. Well seasoned. The carrots just kind of blend in. I would consider this a way to use up a couple carrots, rather than a dish featuring carrots.And I’m fine with that.