Greek-ish Filled Pasta

And finally, we’re back!  After a week or so of searching and overlooking, I managed to find the rogue camera cable and upload a whole backlog of food photos.  So, now there’s catch-up blogging to do.  I can sense your excitement.

After Josh and I returned from our travels (which, toward the end, got very icy and treacherous), we weren’t in much of a mood to do anything more involved than watching TV and boiling water for a few days–and thus, this simple pasta was born.  The pasta itself is store-bought, with a cheese and vegetable filling.  Bored of the usual marinara, I decided to liven it up with a quick lemon-garlic cream sauce.  I sauteed garlic in some butter, then added a little flour to make a light roux.  After that browned just a bit, I slowly added some milk, salt and pepper, thyme and lemon juice.   To finish the sauce, I tossed in some halved grape tomatoes and roughly chopped kalamata olives–and then tossed the whole thing gently with the cooked pasta.

If I were going to make it more authentically Greek, I’d probably skip the roux and milk, and just make a light sauce of olive oil, garlic, lemon and thyme–but there was something pretty satisfying about the texture of this one.  Plus, brightness of the lemon juice has a way of making the cream sauce taste a bit lighter than it actually is, which is a nice (or not-so-nice, depending on your point of view!) trick.  Either way, it was a tasty combination, and–more importantly at the time–simple.

Tofu Tacos

I’ve mentioned before how much I love Mexican food.  I should add, with this post, that this love encompasses all foods even vaguely Mexican, including Tex-Mex, Fresh-Mex, and tofu-centric Mexican spin-offs.  This recipe is an adaptation of the Moosewood Restaurant’s tofu burritos, and it’s currently my favorite thing to make and eat (though I should note that such favorites are subject to my frequently unpredictable whims).  In fact, this is one of those cases in which I think my adaptation makes the recipe even better…which is difficult to accomplish, given my predilection for anything with even the slightest hint of cumin.

I started out by cubing a block of tofu, patting the cubes dry, and then browning them in a few tablespoons of canola oil and a good amount of Spanish-style grill seasoning.  If you’ve ever tried to brown tofu, you know that this process takes a bit of time (because of the significant moisture content), and this may be why the Moosewood recipe doesn’t call for it.  I, however, think that this process improves the taste of tofu by a factor of about eleventy-billion (who doesn’t like fried stuff, right?), so I never skip it.  In other applications, I’ve been known to bake the tofu instead of frying it, but the splurge here is worth it.  And when it comes down to brass tacks, you’re already eating tofu.  So get over yourself.

*Ahem*

Anyway, while the tofu was browning, I sauteed chopped red bell pepper, onion, garlic and jalapeno in a separate skillet.  When these started to get a bit of color, I added paprika, cumin, coriander, and oregano and let it all hang out for a bit.  I then added the browned (crunchy, delicious) tofu, chopped tomatoes, some soy sauce (look, I said it wasn’t exactly traditional), corn and chopped black olives.  When everything had a chance to combine and warm through, we were ready to eat.

I stuffed the tasty mixture into wheat tortillas–it makes up for the frying–and topped the whole thing with sliced avocado and my very own cilantro.  We had rice on the side, but I have to tell you that it wasn’t much to write home about.  I’m still looking for a good Mexican rice recipe that doesn’t involve chicken stock–let me know if you have one.  Rice aside, though, the tacos were amazing, and I can’t wait for lunch today: leftovers.