Recipe: Baked Tofu Bowl With Miso-Tahini Sauce

So I didn't gain! I actually lost half a pound, which I was pretty pleased with.

In my last post I mentioned eating more mindfully to try and hit things like my protein, calcium, iron etc goals and so I've been tracking in Cronometer.

I must admit I've been going over syns as sort of an experiment and I'm not expecting a loss this week as I was not tracking or on plan at the weekend (we were celebrating!).

Anyway what I am leading up to it's that it's been super interesting seeing where I'm short on nutrient goals and where I'm winning.

I always hit my protein goal and stay under my fat goal, but I was finding myself low on the Omega 3 (I do supplement that anyway as I have dry skin and creaky knees!), Iron is a bit low (again I supplement as I have a history of iron deficiency/anaemia. I was finding calcium a bit low but not too bad, but am keeping an eye on that to make sure I'm getting enough. The one thing I am always getting almost zero of is Vitamin D! So although my soy milk is fortified, I'm obviously not having anywhere near enough to cover that. So may have to look into a supplement. I'm not an expert on nutrition, so I'm going by what Cronometer tells me mostly but have upped the suggested protein goal a bit.

Last night I made this yummy bowl for dinner that is packed full of protein, has a tonne of calcium thanks to the tofu and also, the nooch in the sauce is almost your RDA of B12 (my fortified soy milk made up the rest and I do supplement B12, as it's advised by RDs that everyone do this, not just vegans!)

The sauce from this recipe is inspired by a couple of recipes from Isa Chandra, who has a tonne of awesome recipes on her website: HERE.

Baked Tofu Bowl With Miso-Tahini Sauce
Serves: 1
Syns: 3

Ingredients (the purple ingredients have syns, the rest are free foods):
1/2 a pack of Cauldron original tofu
Chinese 5 Spice Powder
Soy Sauce
Frylight

Cooked basmati rice (mine was about 50g or 1/4 cup dry, but use as much as you like)

1/2 a cup of frozen edamame/soy beans, thawed
Stir fry veggies of choice - I used:
Onion
Pepper
Carrot
Asparagus
1 tsp tahini 
2 tsp white miso
1 tbsp (scant) nutritional yeast (with B12)
Sriracha (technically has syns but the amount used is so small it is negligable)
Hot Water

Method
Cut the tofu into pieces, the size/shape is your choice. Place on a baking tray, sprinkle with 5 spice powder and spray with frylight. Bake at 200°C for 20 minutes. Flip, sprinkle the other side with 5 spice, spray with frylight and bake for another 15 minutes. When you remove from the oven, splash some soy sauce over them to season.

While the tofu is cooking, cook your rice and stir fry the veggies (you could do the edamame along with the other veg, but I wanted them separate) until soft. About 30 seconds before you take off the heat, splash some soy sauce over the veg and stir through.

To make the sauce, mix together the tahini, miso, nooch and a squirt of sriracha to taste (optional). Then add hot water a tbsp at a time and mix until you have the consistency you like.

Arrange everything in a bowl and drizzle the sauce over. I added a sprinkling of black sesame seeds as well but you can leave those off if you don't want the extra syns.

And here is the nutritional info from Cronometer for this dish (the protein is actually not quite that high, but they didn't have Cauldron brand listed, so I went with the nearest one).

Sal xXx

Easy Weeknight Meal - Mushroom 'Risotto' Recipe

I put the 'risotto' in quotes because I used basmati and so I guess it's really more of a mushroom savoury rice. But .... pahtayto pahtahto! or something.

There's no potatoes in this. OK I'm rambling....

For this simple weeknight meal you'll need:

1/2 a cup of dried mushrooms
1/2 a tsp of marmite (optional)
1 small onion, diced
Frylight of choice
3 large Portobello etc mushrooms, chopped
a pinch each of dried thyme and sage (or whatever fresh or dried herbs you like and feel free to up the amount!)
1/4 tsp (or more to taste) dried garlic
1/2 a cup of basmati
1/2 a cup of frozen peas

Method
Cover the dried mushrooms with about 1.5 cups of hot water and leave to soak. Add in the marmite too so that it dissolves easier later.

Fry the onions in frylight for a few minutes. Add the mushroom and a pinch of salt (in batches if need-be) and cook until they start to sweat down.  Add the herbs, basmati and the dried mushrooms and stock (making sure you get all the marmite out too).

Add the stock cubes and a good grinding of black pepper. Once boiling, turn to a medium heat, cover and cook, stirring occasionally for 15 minutes; if you need to add more water, do so. Turn off the heat.

Stir in the peas and leave off the heat, but covered for 5 minutes.

Before serving if you want to, go ahead and add in about a heaped teaspoon of Alpro plain Go-On yogurt (not enough to syn it) but you don't have to, I just like the extra creaminess. You can also stir through a couple of tablespoons of nooch* - 1 tablespoon is 1 syn.

Then stuff it in yer gin hole!

I served mine with some broccoli on the side and about 2 syns worth of baba ganoush on the brocc to make it extra yummy!

*nutritional yeast :)

What's your favourite quick weeknight meal?

Sal xXx