Pasta and rice casserole with cheesy tempeh topping

What an odd dish, I can hear you saying! 😀 Well, it´s one of those wild ideas coming from my very own head and I admit it´s not a meal you would read about anywhere in any cookbook…But it turned out rather well, so I am publishing it here for your kind consideration 😀

I cooked separately about two servings of buckwheat pasta (made by a fabulous Czech buckwheat company) and about two servings of long grain brown rice. After cooling down I mixed them together in a large bowl and added some vegetables – raw chopped celery stalk and leek and raw grated carrot and celery root. I seasoned the funny mixture with some shoyu sauce, smoked paprika powder and dried oregano. I poured it into a casserole dish and topped with a topping which I made by combining grated tempeh (you could use fried tempeh or smoked tempeh, any tempeh that is already flavoured and not plain) with corn starch mixed in some cold water and some nutritional yeast powder (adds extra “cheesiness”). I popped the dish into the oven and baked until crusty and browned.

Pasta salad with vegetables and tempeh

This meal brought me back to my childhood when I used to love pasta salad with rich creamy mayonnaise. It´s really quick to put together when you use some convenient ingredients such as tofu mayo and already fried and seasoned packaged tempeh. But you can definitely make your own tofu mayo (there are plenty of recipes on the webs) or season and fry plain tempeh according to your wishes.

I cooked some corn pasta al dente. On a pan I sauteed onion on olive oil for a couple of minutes. Then I chopped up leek, celery (stalk plus leaves) and tempeh and I grated carrot and celery root on the coarse side of the grate. Afterwards I added all these veggies to the onions, sauteeing until soft and shiny. You can season them with fresh cracked black pepper. Mix the veggies and the pasta and add as much tofu mayonnaise as you like, mix well, voila!

Quick vegetable sautee for pasta

Usually when I think of pasta, I think of a rich creamy sauce – yes, the memory of all those thick tomato sauces… well, this time I decided to use some (dried) tomatoes, but instead of a sauce I created some sort of veggie sautee to serve on top of my glutenfree corn pasta 🙂

First sautee sliced onion with a pinch of salt on some olive oil until translucent. Then add a few finely chopped dried tomatoes (allowed to soak for at least half an hour, better more), green beans chopped into bite-sized pieces, thinly sliced leek and thin quarter-moons of zucchini. Add a sprinkle of salt (beware – some dried tomatoes can be very salty) and stir until vegetables become bright. Add dried herbs (I used oregano, basil and garlic powder) and water, cover with a lid and let steam for five to ten minutes until veggies are tender. If you cook the veggies longer, the tomatoes will become more soft which might be nicer, so decide for yourself… I might even try first blending the tomatoes with some water before using them. At the end stir in some fresh minced parsley. Easy peasy!

Pumpkinseed pesto: great both on fish and pasta

The recipe for this pesto comes from my favourite cookbook by Susan Marque, focused on clearing candida from the body.

The good thing about pesto is that you can make it in just a few minutes – if you have a blender. And since I am a lucky owner….

I just blended 1 cup of pumpkin seeds (first dry roasted on a pan until they pop), blended them on pulse mode with about 1/4 cup olive oil, a big clove of garlic, 1 tsp ume vinegar, 2 tsp shiro (white) miso and a cup (or more) of fresh basil leaves, adding water as needed.  The blender requires quite some water to function…If you like smoother pesto (like the one I made), you can also blend on higher speed towards the end of blending.

just blended pesto

I used the pesto in two meals – over corn pasta with blanched carrot, green beans and broccoli (no picture, sorry!) and as a topping of baked fish which I baked in a heat-resistant glass baking pan covered with tin foil, for about half an hour. The fish was served with a rice/sweet rice mixture and a layered stew: onion rings on the bottom, then curly cabbage, white cabbage, dill and lettuce, flavoured with ume plum vinegar and cooked for some 20 minutes on a low flame under a lid, with just about 2 cm of water in the pot.

pesto covered baked fish

Pasta with homemade almond-basil pesto

There´s nothing like a good bowl of pasta with a delicious pesto sauce…it´s not a very typical macro dish, but it´s something I appreciate immensely. This pesto is dairy-free and uses almonds instead of the more usual pine nuts or cashews. Almonds are the most alkalizing of nuts, so why not 🙂

I made corn pasta (my favourite glutenfree type of pasta) with some blanched carrots and green beans and a sprinkling of organic corn kernels from a jar.

For the sauce you will need 1 or 2 cloves of garlic (I used 2 for my candida clearing plan :-D), a generous bunch of fresh basil leaves, 1/2 tsp sea salt, 2 tbsp of oil (I used the incredibly fragrant cold-pressed pumpkinseed oil purchased in Slovenia), a dash of black pepper, 1 tbsp lemon juice and 1/4 cup of almonds which I soaked overnight and peeled their skins off the next day. Soaking almonds makes them more digestible and removes the enzyme inhibitors found in all nuts, seeds, grains and legumes.

First place the nuts with oil, salt, pepper, lemon juice and garlic into your blender on “pulse” setting and shortly process into a chunky mixture (depending on your preference, of course). When that is done, add basil and pulse again for a more chunky pesto or blend on higher speed for a smooth cream. Serve on top of pasta with veggies.

 

Simple smoky udon noodles from the oven

Pasta ovendishes were always a favourite of mine before becoming macro…now I hardly have them because…well, because I don´t eat any more cream and cheese, quite essential ingredients for creamy pasta dishes! 😀 But there is a way…yup, tofu to the call…

First cook your noodles (any kind will do, I made udon, which are thick flat wheat noodles). Mix them with sauteed veggies of choice (I used onion, carrot, broccoli, parsley root and leek), sauteed on water with a teaspoon of tamari. For the sauce just blend a cube of smoked tofu with enough water and lemon juice to taste – smoked tofu has a distinct flavour of its own so I didn´t want to overpower it. It will come out a bit chunky, but it´s ok 😀 Mix through the noodles with veggies and bake in the oven on 200°C for 30 – 45 minutes until the top gets a nice crust. Serve with fresh salad – I had lettuce, rucola and red radishes with some salt and lemon juice. Good for balancing the baked yang food!