Plus this stir fried veggie loaded noodles is quick and easy to make, packed with tons of veggies and proteins and belly warming.

Skip straight to the recipe

You can easily use other proteins and veggies based on what you have in your fridge. Here are some substitutes to try:

• Tofu, paneer, tempeh or 2 scrambled eggs in lieu of the seitan
• Peanuts for the cashews
• Zucchini, squash, red or green bellpeppers, snow peas, red onions, asparagus and mushrooms. The possibilities are for real endless here.

For the noodles, I used whole wheat linguine but you can also opt for more authentic Chinese noodles, Hakka noodles or soba noodles.

Serve hot and be sure to scrape up the crispy bits from the bottom of the pan.

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Adapted moderately from The Kitchn’s Easiest Chicken Chow Mein.

Peas – my family can’t seem to get enough of them. Here’s yet another rendition of Mattar Paneer, this time with chewy triangles of pan fried tofu. For other variations, try Matar Mushroom (Peas and Shitake Mushrooms) and Matar Paneer with Grilled Paneer (Peas and Grilled Paneer, a Farmer’s Cheese).

To get chewy triangles of tofu like these, take a block of store bought tofu and gently press the water out between two paper towels. Placing the long side of the block closest to you, make four equally spaced out vertical cuts with a sharp knife through the block. Cut each of the four pieces in half lengthwise. Then cut each half diagonally so you have a total of twelve triangles. Cut each triangle in half (so they are half as thick). Pan fry in canola oil flipping so each side becomes golden.

Holy hot avocados. Until this summer, I hated avocados (and guacamole). After a taste of my friend Christina‘s guac (just to be polite) this summer, I’ve converted.  Especially when they are hot. I toss cubed handfuls into eggs with cheddar cheese (green eggs no ham) and into stir fries. The few friends I’ve shared this discovery with have all had the same response: “What happens to the avocado? Does it melt?” Nope. It gets nice and soft and even richer in taste. And it imparts that richness to the rest of the dish. So yes, holy hot avocados.

After a relaxing child-free, spa-filled weekend at the Lodge at Woodloch with Christina [A lovely surprise present for each of us from our husbands], I came home armed with recipe ideas and creative juices flowing. We watched a cooking demo using fresh ingredients with natural medicinal properties like shitake mushrooms, asparagus, watercress and leeks. Nathanial Whitmore, a herbalist from Hawley, Pennsylvania, was on hand to explain to explain fascinating details like how shitake mushrooms have natural immune boosting properties.

The best take away from the entire weekend was this easy recipe for a soba noodle stir-fry sauce. And a discovery that Hoisin sauce is not non-vegetarian after all (read the label though just to be sure). It’s a perfect blend of salty and sweet and pairs really well with nutty sesame oil. This has become my go-to weeknight meal – especialy since all of the sauce ingredients are always stocked in my fridge.

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We almost always eat dinner together. Rajat and I have done that since we first got married. Even if one of us is working late, we wait for the other. Eating together as a family became even more of a priority after Surya started eating real food. It gives us a chance to sit down with her. To tune everything else out. To turn everything else off (literally). We ask her how her day was and what did she did – even if she doesn’t always answer on point.

Life and work get in the way and sometimes, we just need a dinner without food flying and reminders to use your fork – so we don’t always eat with Surya but we try to do it at least a few times a week.

The biggest challenge to sitting down to dinner of course is no surprise. It’s the dinner part! The food itself. Unless it’s “one of those weeks”, we don’t order in dinner except for a Wednesday night hump-day treat. This is in large part because our Brooklyn neighborhood – Dumbo – has few restaurants which deliver. Narrow that to those which deliver with vegetarian options, and we are left with two choices.

I tried persuading Seamless Web to expand it’s reach, but that failed and so we eat home cooked meals. Not so bad a result – most days. Some days, it’s a real challenge fueled by:

A – Whether there are leftovers in the fridge

B – Whether there are groceries in the fridge

C – How far in advance of dinner each of us gets home

I just found two new things that I suspect will make weeknight meals easier. The first is Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything Vegetarian iPhone app. I love Bittman, but I was a little skeptical about this book because he’s not vegetarian. I am automatically suspicious of omnivores who claim to know how to cook everything vegetarian. I’m also suspicious of anyone who claims to do everything. I haven’t used a lot of his recipes, but I really like how the app is organized with basic techniques for ingredients that you can use to build recipe ideas and variations for recipes. It also works underground which means I can read it on my subway ride to/from work for ideas. This means that as soon as I get home, I have a game plan for dinner.

The second is Baked Tofu (which I looked up on Bittman’s app on my way home from work Friday evening). Baked tofu is versatile – you can use it in curry, stir fry, pasta, salad or sandwich. The downside is that it takes about an hour to bake. But once you put it in the oven, you don’t have to babysit it. And since I knew that baked tofu was my plan, I put it in the oven as soon as I got home. Even better – I baked two cubes and refrigerated one to use in a few days.

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Back in the day before tofu was really mainstream and vegetarianism the new “in” thing, I was suffering away in Irmo, South Carolina deprived of all of the wonders of soy and wheat gluten.  Even worse, I was oblivious of my deprivation.  Then my brother moved to Washington, D.C. and Vegetable Garden on Rockland Pike came into my life.  Raj would get an order of Kung Pao Tofu to go and carry it on the flight all the way home to South Carolina.  Spicy kung pao sauce with the mildest of sweetness.  Deep fried tofu. And crunchy asparagus and peanuts.

It wasn’t the first time and wouldn’t be the last time that my family would go to great lengths to bring good food to one another.  Rajat used to bring vegetarian sushi back to Boston from business trips to New York.  My brother and I occasionally mail my sister some life changing ingredient that she can’t possibly find in Wyoming, Delaware.  My dad mail orders mahani pickles that he used to eat in India growing up from the West Coast to their house in Atlanta.  My mom packs food and makes me check it in my suitcase back to Brooklyn.

Not only are we all food obsessed, we are obsessed with sharing it with each other.

I’ve been thinking about that Kung Pao Tofu for awhile now.  All of the vegetarian chinese restaurants in Philadelphia, Boston and New York combined haven’t been able to replicate that taste.  It’s actually not on the menu at most.

So I did what any sane person would do. I called Vegetable Garden to see if they would mail me some.  Just kidding.  I didn’t do that. But it might not be a bad idea.

I set out to make it myself.  This recipe from Use Real Butter seemed simple enough.  I didn’t have all of the right ingredients (like black soy sauce), but the taste was spot on.  You can find Use Real Butter‘s recipe here and the slightly modified version that I used below:

Kung Pao Seitan (slightly modified from Use Real Butter)

1 package seitan (or tofu), roughly chopped into bite size chunks
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
8-12 dried red chili peppers
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, diced
8-10 stalks asparagus, sliced on a diagonal
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 cup roasted peanuts or cashews

Sauce:

4 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup water
2 teaspoons corn starch

Make the Kung Pao Seitan: Place the seitan in a bowl and cover with the cornstarch, soy sauce and sesame oil.  Mix well until all of the pieces are well coated.  Let it sit for about 30 minutes to an hour.  Heat two teaspoons of cooking oil in a wok.  Cook the seitan until browned on all sides, about 8-10 minutes.  Remove to a plate.  Add additional cooking oil if needed.  Add the ginger, garlic and red chili peppers.  Saute for 3-5 minutes until fragrant.  Add the asparagus, red bell pepper and nuts.  Cook for about 10 minutes until the vegetables are softened.  Add the seitan.  Make the sauce: Mix together all of the sauce ingredients in a small bowl, whisking with a form to break up any clumps in the corn starch.

Add the sauce and mix well until the seitan and vegetables are well coated.  Reduce the heat to medium low and continue cooking for a few minutes.  Serve hot over rice.

We had our Kung Pao Seitan over Spicy, Sweet Corn Fried Rice.  The mildly sweet rice with creamy fried egg balanced the spicy Kung Pao Seitan.

Update: I didn’t follow a recipe for the fried rice, but in response to a question in the comments, here’s how I made it:

Heat about 1-2 cups of day old rice in the microwave. Heat a tablespoon of sesame oil in a wide skillet. Saute 2-3 dried red peppers and half of a yellow onion, sliced in the oil on medium heat until the onions get glassy, about 3-4 minutes. Add about 1/2 cup of frozen, yellow sweet corn to the skillet and cook for 5-8 minutes until tender. Push the onions and corn to the sides of the skillet. Crack an egg in the center of the skillet. Allow it to set slightly then scramble with a spatula until well done. Push that egg to the sides and repeat with a second egg. Add the rice to the skillet and mix well with the egg-onion-corn mixture. Drizzle with sriracha and stir. Drizzle with soy sauce and stir. You should use enough soy sauce that the rice has a light brown color and tastes slightly salty. Cook for another few minutes and serve hot. I garnished with cilantro, but that�EUR(TM)s optional. Peas would make a great addition to the rice as well.

After multiple failed Tofurkey attempts, I was skeptical when my brother told me about Tofurkey Sausages.  We’ve Rajat has been dicing them up and putting them in scrambled eggs for ages.  But never used them in a real main dish for dinner.  I found some beautiful, delicate tuscan kale (tuscan kale is as to regular kale as waifs are to cavemen) at the market, so when I saw this recipe from TheKitchn for Orecchiette with Sausage and Kale, I decided to take Tofurkey Sausages to the next level.

Vegetarian sausages are not pretty.  They do look like meat. I have no idea whether they taste like real sausage.  BUT they are full of protein and spiced nicely.  They make a hearty, chewy addition to regular old bowl of pasta.

Also, don’t skip out on the toasted garlic breadcrumbs.  They do a really good thing for an otherwise routine weeknight bowl of pasta.  They are chunky and crunchy and garlicky.  I made my own using stale bread in a mini food processor (see here for instructions on DIY).  My processor didn’t grind them to smooth, uniform crumbs like store bought crumbs but we loved the combination of big and small pieces (which you can see in the picture).

For those of you who don’t like tofu, I want to make a case for it.  If you are already sold on tofu, skip to paragraph 2 below.  Saying that tofu has no flavor is like saying an uncooked chicken breast tastes gross.  I’ve never had one, but I’m assuming you have to season and cook a piece of chicken for it to taste good.  Tofu is no different.  It picks up the flavor of just about anything you mix it with or coat it with and the texture is suitable for pan frying, deep frying, steaming, sauteing and so on and on. I use it a lot in our dinners because sometimes just a bowl of pasta or just stir fried veggies isn’t enough. I need a little extra oomph to chew on, to fill my belly up, to get a protein fix. You can use it like you would use ground beef in chili.  You can substitute it for paneer, Indian farmer’s cheese, or potatoes for a healthier alternative.  You can crumble it up and substitute it for scrambled eggs.  The possibilities are quite endless.

These tofu medallions are a mix of crumbled, chunky tofu and pureed creamy tofu, peppery arugula, bread crumbs, garlic, Italian seasoning and nutty garlic rounded off with a sprinkle of red pepper for a little kick. I love nothing more than slurping up a big bowl of saucy spaghetti.  But adding a few tofu medallions on top gives a nice crunchy/chewy addition that’s light on the waistline and provides you with some needed protein.

Removing water from tofu: If you don’t remove the excess water from tofu, you can end up with really bland, watery tofu.  There are a few different methods that I use to drain the water depending on how much time I have:

1 – The Long Method: Place the block of tofu on a plate with another plate on top it and a heavy-ish object (like a sugar bowl). Don’t weigh it down too much because you don’t the tofu to crumble.  Leave it to drain and periodically dump the water.  After about 30 minutes or so, place the tofu between two paper towels and gently squeeze out any remaining water.

2 – The Quick Method: Wrap the block of tofu in two paper towels.  Holding it over the sink, gently squeeze with both hands until all of the water comes out.

Tofu is a good “substitute” for paneer.  I use the word “substitute” lightly because, tofu doesn’t give you the same taste (obviously – what tastes like fried cheese but isn’t?! If you know, please tell me).  Biting into a piece of pan fried tofu is a nutty, savoury-sweet chewy and slightly crispy experience. So yes, not paneer but still quite yummy and satisfying.  And tofu soaks up Indian spices and sauces and takes on their taste.

So, here’s my riff on Kadai Paneer, a traditional Indian dish of paneer and bellpeppers, using tofu instead.  While I can’t say we don’t miss the paneer when eating Kadai Tofu even the slightest bit, I can say that we each have a huge second helping and don’t sit around feeling sorry for our paneer-less state.

For my third and final Spicy Basil-Mint Pesto dish, I only had about 2 tablespoons of pesto left.  I got a little creative, borrowed some elements from Rajat’s tofu scramble and came up with a hearty breakfast of spicy pesto mixed with scrambled tofu, potatoes, onions and tomatoes topped off with chipotle flavored tostada shells.  It made for a healthy, egg free breakfast.  

You might be also be interested in this tofu scramble and these other pesto dishes, pesto marinara and pesto bruschetta.

Earlier this week, I posted a recipe for a really easy stir-fry sauce with the forewarning that it’s really saucy.  It was so saucy and flavor packed that I thought it might work well as a soup and gave it a shot with the stir-fry leftovers.  As we watched President Obama address the nation, the only sound in our living room was “Slurp.  Slurp.  Slurrrrrp.”  We drenched buckwheat soba noodles in the broth-y sauce and veggies.  This is the kind of soup you’ll need a fork AND a spoon to fully enjoy.  

Here are some other soba noodle recipes that you might enjoy:

Soba Noodles in Green Curry Sauce

Soba Noodles and Tofu in Cilantro-Tamarind Sauce