• April 23rd, 2011quarrygirlasian food, recipes

    hey everyone, time for a recipe guest post! this one comes to us from the very talented janice whaley who lives in san jose and has achieved the massive undertaking of recording every single smiths songs using only her voice—no instruments. it’s pretty epic, so check out the smiths project when you have a chance, and pre-order the box set. but FIRST, she’s gonna teach us how to make a vegan bibimbop! here goes…

    The other day I turned to my boyfriend and said, “ohhhh…. remember bibimbop?” I made it occasionally back in our carnivorous days. We used to frequent a place in San Francisco that made an amazing bibimbop and my version was basically an attempt to re-create what we ate at that restaurant. And now that we’re veg, I had to re-created it the dish again. Because life is no fun without bibimbop.

    The fake meat in this dish is a dried soy product similar to TVP called “thit chay” and comes in many shapes and sizes. I go with the one that resembles slices of beef. You can also substitute wheat gluten sausages found in most Asian market in the tofu isle. They are the weird spongy grey-ish brown logs next to the fresh tofu, bamboo, etc (that I avoided for years because, what IS that stuff?!?!?) .

    This recipe looks insane, but it’s really not so bad considering most all of this can be made in advance and then reheated when ready to plate. It’s impressive to look at and even more impressive to eat. Each of the side dishes work together to create an amazing flavor combination that is beyond description.

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  • as the summer rapidly approaches, it’s handy to have an arsenal of cool, refreshing meals that can be whipped up in less than 15 minutes. enter veganomicon and pete’s tofu to go.


    veganomicon’s corn & edamame sesame salad, atop spinach leaves with asian dressing


    pete’s tofu 2 go ready made tofu, with mango wasabi sauce (and we added in some chili garlic sauce as well)

    so simple to make and ready in minutes, this was the perfect meal for a scorching hot evening spent sitting on the couch with a bottle of wine. there was just enough to satisfy without leaving us full, bloated and feeling guilty.

    more pix after the jump…

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  • April 13th, 2008mr meanerasian food, recipes, vegan stuff

    Mr Meaner’s mantra about restaurant food is “If they can make it, so can YOU!”. And the corollary is often “BETTER”. Here’s an example of creating a dish from scratch with nothing but the taste memory of some truly outstanding airport food.

    Golden Curry

    On a recent trip back to LA from wine country, we happened to hang around in SFO for an hour or so while waiting to board. The post-vineyard pangs of hunger began to set in, so I was wandering between Baja Fresh, Subway and a minimalist food court in Terminal 3 when I happened upon “Tomokazu Japanese Food”. An unassuming little place with two very helpful Japanese serving ladies who were only too happy to explain that the only “non meat” thing on the menu was Curry a with a choice of Chicken, Beef or Tofu.

    Moving on from the “non meat” Chicken or Beef curry, I focused on the Tofu option asking if it had anything animal-derived in it (chicken stock, cream, milk powder… The usual questions). One of the servers pulled out a flip book with the ingredients listed, and showed it to me. Indeed, it had nothing remotely animal in it, so I went ahead and ordered the dish.

    Two minutes later I was eating one of the most satisfying tofu/sauce/rice bowls I’d ever come across. It was spicy, yet very flavorful and the bed of rice (which the sauce soaked into) was absolutely divine. After boarding my flight back I spent quite a while thinking about how to emulate the feast.

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