Low Fat Vegan Cooking

Thai Jasmine Brown Rice with Thai Vegetables and Thai Tofu Triangles

Thai Vegetables with Thai Jasmine Brown Rice and Thai Tofu Triangles

About four years ago, i was visiting my daughter and we made Thai food. It was the first time i had paid attention to the flavors and combinations that make up Thai food. It took us about four hours to make the dinner. I copied the recipe and went home and made it again and again, simplifying and eventually taking out all the added fat. I don’t know how much i originally liked the dish and how much i just liked remembering cooking it with her. But i love this dish now, and had it to start the New Year.

There are some ingredients that Thai food commonly has that may be hard to find. At the bottom of the recipe are some substitutions – the meal will by no means taste the same, but it will be tasty. You may also be able to find canned lemongrass, galangal, and kaffir leaves. They are a rather pale substitute, but are better than nothing.

If you can find fresh lemongrass, you need to mince it or you will have a rather chewy mouthful, which you will find at some Thai restaurants. I peel the outer tough layer off the lemongrass, and mince it, and then put it in my coffee/spice grinder. Our produce market always carries lemongrass. I usually make a lot at once and freeze some.

The kaffir leaves can be frozen too. Cut out the middle stem, and then cut it into tiny squares with a pair of kitchen scissors. I find these sometimes at health food stores. Sometimes all i can find is lime leaves, which are not perfect, but very good.

I make the Thai Vegetables a lot with plain brown rice for everyday meals. I use different vegetables sometimes, but usually four different ones with one in the broccoli/cauliflower family. For special occasions i make this version with the tofu and special rice. I use this dish for company too – it’s not an obvious vegan meal.

Thai Tofu Triangles

Makes 4 servings
Preparation about 20 minutes

14 – 16 oz. firm or extra firm tofu
½ c. cilantro, chopped

Marinade:
3 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 inch piece ginger
1 lemongrass stalk
2 inches galangal
¼ c. apple juice
2 T. pure maple syrup
2 T. low sodium tamari
2 T. fresh lime juice
1 T. Thai red curry paste or 4 small Thai chilies

Drain tofu and press with a heavy object at least 30 minutes. I wrap the tofu in a clean towel and press it with my stack of heavy iron skillets.

Make the marinade. Grate ginger, press garlic, and mince lemongrass. This works great in a coffee or spice grinder. Mix well with apple juice, maple syrup, tamari, lime juice, and Thai paste or chopped chilies. Pour mixture into a 9 x 13 baking pan.

Here’s how I make the tofu, but you can just dice it up to save time. Place tofu cake on its side and cut into 3 thin slabs. Cut slabs in half diagonally to make two triangles. Cut each triangle diagonally again, making two more triangles from each piece. Place tofu triangles on the marinade, wait a minute, and flip over. Marinade at least 15 minutes per side.

Pour off half the marinade. Bake the tofu in the rest of the marinade in a 350 degree oven about 45 minutes, until the marinade is mostly absorbed and the tofu is light brown.

Serve garnished by cilantro and basil chiffonade (see instructions in Thai Vegetable recipe).

Adapted from The Voluptuous Vegan, a cookbook of absolutely wonderful but mostly very complicated and time consuming recipes.

Thai Jasmine Brown Rice

If you can find jasmine brown rice, it is very nice in this dish.

2 c. jasmine or other brown rice
4 c. water
1 inch ginger, grated
1 T. lemongrass, grated, minced, or processed in a coffee or spice grinder
1 ½ t. minced kaffir lime leaves

Bring water to boil in a large pan. Add the rice and seasonings and cook about 30 minutes until the water is absorbed and rice is tender.

Thai Vegetables

Makes 4 servings
Preparation about 90 minutes
Freezes well
Can be made ahead

Seasonings:
8 tiny Thai chilies or milder chilies
3” piece fresh ginger and/or galangal
2 stalks lemongrass
3 cloves garlic
6 kaffir lime leaves
2 T. low sodium tamari

Vegetables:
1 medium eggplant or 12 small Thai eggplants
1 small head cauliflower
4 medium carrots
1 large red pepper
2 medium zucchinis
4 scallions

Last minute additions:
¼ c. basil
¼ c. cilantro
1 T. coconut extract
¼ c. chopped peanuts (optional)

If you have a spice grinder, chop the chilies. Peel and chop the ginger. Peel off the tough outer leaves of the lemongrass. Chop off the greenish white part of the bulb and chop. Peel and chop the garlic. Process these four seasonings in the coffee grinder.

If you do not have a coffee grinder, mince or grate the seasonings as best you can. A garlic press and plane grater really helps. You want to end up with something of a paste that will incorporate into the dish.

Set aside the seasonings.

Depending on how much time you have and how special the meal is, you can make the vegetables fancy or plain. All you need is to make them into bite sized pieces, but here are some suggestions:

Peel the eggplant if you want. The skin looks very nice in the dish, but I don’t like to chew it. If you have a big eggplant, cut into eighths, and then slice each eighth into small rounded rectangles. If you have long skinny ones, slice into rounds. Small Thai eggplants are little balls that can be halved.

You may want to leave the cauliflower florets a little larger than bite size, as they look so nice whole. If you are thrifty, you can chop the stems into little pieces. They taste fine but are usually discarded (my puppy eats them with relish, so i don’t put them in).

The first time we made this, we chopped the carrots into matchsticks, which is time consuming but looks very nice, and gives a small carrot taste in more of your bites.

Same with the zucchini – we originally made matchsticks, but i have convinced myself that zucchini coins look nice too.

You might want to slice the red pepper into rings. Alternately, you could cut the pepper into fourths and then make thin slices down each quarter. This goes well with the matchsticks if you’re doing that.

Depending on how much you like scallions, you could cut them into 1 inch long pieces. I don’t like much of an onion taste in each bite, so i slice them into thin rounds across the length of each scallion.

While you are slicing, roll up washed basil leaves into a small cigar. Hold onto that with one hand and slice the roll into thin strips. This is called chiffonade.

Finally, you can hold onto washed stems of cilantro and chop away, or to make a prettier leaf, which after all will not be cooked so it will show up fairly clearly, you can take each stem and pull off each leaf separately. This is the one thing i do every time to make the dish look nice. But, to each his/her own.

While you are merrily slicing up your vegetables, start cooking them in the order listed, starting with the eggplant and ending with the scallions, which you just basically warm. Put ½ c. water in a large pan, and have a little more at your side in case you need it. Put the seasoning paste in the water and stir it well. Put in one vegetable at a time, cook it maybe three minutes, and then add the next. If you move rapidly enough, you can get each vegetable cut while the previous one is cooking. I am not that fast, so i slice up about half the vegetables before i turn on the pan.

When the last vegetable is in the pot and all are tender but not overcooked, turn off the heat and stir in the coconut extract, basil and cilantro.

Garnish with chopped peanuts, if desired.

Substitutions: for the Thai chilies – any other fresh chili, or Thai Kitchen red curry paste.
For the galangal – fresh ginger. Or dried ground ginger, but then you’re really messing with the taste.
For the lime leaves – you can use the zest from 1 medium lime, and the juice (be sure to zest the lime before you squeeze it).
For the lemongrass – juice from ½ medium lemon – not the same, but it’s good in a different way.
I don’t recommend using dried basil for the fresh basil – it reminds us too much of Italian food and that is not a reminder you want with Thai food, or at least i don’t want it.

Adapted from The Voluptuous Vegan.

Nutritional information – not guaranteed to be accurate:
Per serving – 131 calories/7 g protein (21.4%)/.8 g fat (5.8%)

The original recipe suggested a salad of mint, orange, and red onion with rice vinegar and tamari and a little sugar. I have only made this once, but it was good with the rest of the meal.