Wednesday, April 23, 2008

2 Dinners!!!!

Saturday we spent in Chestnut Hill walking around in the nice weather. Followed by lunch and a hike in Fairmount park. Most of our time in Chestnut Hill was spent at Kitchen Kapers and Penzeys spice shop. Great store where they put their spices in jars and you can smell each of them. I always like to try something new and purchased an Indian Balti spice. For dinner I attempted my first try at Indian cooking. Lots of veggies, tofu and spice sauce over Basmati Rice. Although not authentic the spice was perfect.






'A' was over for dinner on tuesday for our weekly dinner and taste tester. Boy is she brave but she gets a nice dinner out of it and a chance to spend some time with ME. I was craving some BBQ so i cooked up some Veganomicon's Backyard BBQ sauce with some changes.

BBQ sauce
1 onion chopped fine
4 cloves of garlic minced
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp red pepper flakes
28 oz can of crushed tomotoes
1/3 cup molasses
1/3 cup vinegar
2 tbsp brown rice syrup or maple
1 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 tsp liquid smoke
2 tsp Vegan Worcheshire


Brown the onions in a suace pan. Add garlic and saute another minute. Add all other ingredients except for the mustard and liquid smoke. Cook up to an hour to let thicken. Add mustard and liquid smoke to taste and cook 5 more minutes.

I made BBQ tofu and eggplant, polenta fries, with roasted eggplant, mushrooms, onions and chickpeas.











Ihave been wanting to make the polenta fries which turned out quite simple and quite delishous.




Make firm polenta with 1 cup polenta (corn grits) to 2 cups water in a saucepan. Cook until no longer hard and just tender. Scoop polenta into a oiled dish or baking sheet and Refridgerate 30 minutes until well firm. Take out of fridge and cut into slices. Place onto oiled baking sheet add salt and pepper and bake 20-30 min until crispy and brown. Should look like this

1 comment:

patd said...

Looks yummy. I'd love to try the recipes and I already know the BBQ sauce is great!