Roasted Pepper & Tofu Soup

I am now treating my recipes like laundry or dishes - if you don't wash them periodically, they accumulate and you don't know where to start, the difference being, often I tend to create dishes and then have to rely on my pictures to remember the things that went into it.  But I have another adaptation of a recipe for you from the Vegetarian Times.

This is one heck of a soup and if you happen to like tofu, this one's a winner for you - Again this one;s a simple and quick recipe with not too many ingredients.

Ingredients

• 2 Roasted Red Peppers (pickled or roasted fresh for the occasion)
• 2 red peppers cut fine, thin and long
• 3-4 cloves garlic
• 1 16oz pack extra firm tofu cubed 
• 1 carton about 4 cups of veggie broth
• 2 cups of water
• 1 cup of fresh baby spinach chopped
• 2 Red chilies (first tempered in 1 tsp of olive/sesame oil)
• 1 tsp of sriracha sauce
• 1 tbs of tamarind paste (I only recommend Lakshmi brand for those living in the US)
• 1 tsp sugar

Method

1.  Finely grind the roasted peppers, garlic and tempered chilies into a smooth sauce
2. In a pot, add the sauce, the 2 cups of water and the vegetable broth and let it come to a boil on medium heat
3. Add the tamarind, sriracha  and sugar to this and stir in well
4. In a flat sauce pan add about 1 tsp of oil and sauté the cut peppers and tofu just for a couple of minutes.
5. Add the spinach
6. Add to the boiling soup and the soup to a simmer for about 5 minutes or until the spinach looks green and cooked

Enjoy Hot
Makes about 8 servings

Macaroni with Spinach sauce

Today I made a resolve to get back to blogging, if only for the sake of writing, an exercise like all others, that needs to be kept up, if I don't want to stagnate…which is pretty much what I've been doing in this department. And that calls for time-managements and less over-committing of my time to other far less useless pursuits - by this i mean my recent addiction to angry birds friends - an online game that is exciting because you are playing against somebody, but also stressful because each time your high score is beaten, you want to up it and in this way end up spending good time that is better spent writing about how I waste it :)

Oh well, like a writer's block, I have suffered from a blogger block - We grew so many veggies in our garden this past summer and I have cooked like the dickens but somehow have not felt enthused to sit and blog them or crop my pictures. Did I mention to you among other things, I have also started working at the market, selling crepes, aka masala dosas. This has been a awesome outlet for me and I get to do this with my older kiddos, an icing on the cake!

And I have been traveling to exotic Espana :) The most wonderful experience with the dance and the spanish Guitar that I have fallen in love with verily-  AND...folks of all the countries I have visited in Europe and elsewhere, including the US where I live, I have never seen cleaner public restroom anywhere but Spain. Impeccable until you read the Madrid airport of course  - Even the Spanish cannot keep up with the world's dump in their busiest airport!  I am not about to make this a travelogue but I would like to share some pictures with you all, assuming of course, that I still have an audience out there who is interested in reading what I have to write. Oh God, please be there :)

In any case, we returned home only to fall right back into parental duties of driving, cooking, baking for school events, cooking cleaning etc… not my idea of fun - the US way of life - sigh - especially because I know better lives can be gotten (in some ways) back in my home country. But that's a topic for an entirely separate lament.  What I meant to say is I've literally had no time to recover from jet lag, what with the whole house sniffling -cos t'is the season for the sniffles, being fall and all.

Another hurried dinner day before I have to run my girls to their music dance and whatever else class. Thinking on my feet and thinking simple is becoming second nature to me, in so far as daily dinners are concerned. This is not to say they are not made with love or with an element of the exotic. Like on election day when i said - ok it's going to be macaroni and…. went racing down to the basement where our old fridge houses additional supplies of milk veggies and miscellaneous. Saw a box of fresh spinach and quickly, easy as abc it struck me to me a sort of spinach pesto to go with the mundane macaroni.

So I got the garlic, the spinach, a red chili or two, and a fistful of pine nuts. But to make it more wholesome, I added a can of campbell's mushroom soup and a 1/2 cup of milk - brought it all to boil and then ground them into a fine sauce. I then threw the macaroni into it and added some grated parmesan to the plate as I served it out. A simple healthy and delicious meal. The kids enjoyed it and I had it all made in less than 20 minutes. Now this is what I call a win-win situation :)

I am going to try this out with other veggies and will keep you posted as I make them

Will be back with a a spanish recipe and some pictures soon.

Simple Spinach Dip

 For the Avant Garde Cookies this time, my hush-hush ingredient was spinach given to me by my partner Jayanthy. I had some fresh baby spinach handy which i used to put this dip together...

Ingredients

• 2cups of baby spinach leaves
• 2 red chilies
• 1.5 cups of thick yogurt (greek would work)
• 1tbsp of spices 
• 1tsp olive oil

Method

1. Sautee the spinach with 1 tsp of olive oil and the chilies. 
2. Add salt. cook and remove from heat
3. If the yogurt has some whey, use this to grind the spinach not too smooth
4. Add the yogurt to the blended spinach
5. Top this with 1 tbsp of spices of your choice - Tzatsiki, or your home blend of thyme, garlic, parsely, oregano etc
6. Whip it in until blended well
7. Refrigerate until ready to use.

We enjoyed ours with steamed sweet potatoes!

Goes to Avant Garde Cookies -Check out the other AGC thoughout this week 

Anusha, Jayanthi, Kavitha, Radhika, Veena, Priya S, Roshni