A Week of Comforting Meals (+ Post-Holiday Melancholy)

Greetings! I hope your new year is off to a good start. For me, the transition between the holidays and the new year always tends to feel a little melancholy. With the days being so short and chilly, I really rely on my meals to give me that sense of warmth and comfort. And during a season when the days can all start to kind of blur together, the daily routine of cooking something nourishing for myself helps me stay grounded. So here's a look at some of my favorite comforting meals I've cooked lately. Let's rewind a little bit because this video starts on Christmas Eve. So that morning, Eric made a special request for buffalo tofu to snack on while watching football. And I'm not a football fan myself, but there is something really cozy about cooking a delicious meal on the weekends with the noise of the game on in the background. I've come to really enjoy it. I tend to do well when I can establish little rituals like this to look forward to. Whenever Eric's planning to watch a game on the weekend, it's kind of like a cue to my brain that I can slow down and relax too. And we usually spend the day cleaning and resetting our space and then we'll make a big hearty meal. So we'll either slow cook something in the instant pot like chili or a stew, or we will make a big pasta dish and it's very cozy. Since football season started, I've been making this buffalo tofu so often I could probably do it in my sleep. It's just tofu tossed in a spicy batter, coated in panko, and then baked or fried. I think it's best if you can freeze and defrost your tofu ahead of time and then give it a good press, but I forgot this time. Once it's crispy, toss it in buffalo sauce or really any sauce. I think barbecue and sweet chili are also really good. And a good vegan ranch or blue cheese dressing is a must. We absolutely devoured this and then I went back to the kitchen and started to prep some of my homemade tofu and almond ricotta to make stuffed shells that night. My baseline mood has always been melancholy, but during the holidays I tend to feel it on an even deeper level. It's so easy to remember the holidays from our childhood with a sort of golden haze. For most of us, life was simpler then, we had fewer responsibilities, maybe we were closer to our families. My father especially loved the holidays and my parents always did everything they could to make the season special for our family. But my dad passed away in 2016 and the holidays really haven't felt the same since. Every year I tell myself that I'm going to put in the effort to make this season feel special again. I want to decorate, I want to mail out cards, shop for gifts, make Christmas cookie boxes for our friends, and watch old movies. I always say this but then life just feels too busy and I usually end up spending most of my time working and then in the blink of an eye it's January. And I wish I could say I finally did all the things this year, but I didn't. I did accomplish a few of those things though and I'm trying not to beat myself up for not having done more because I know traditions are built over time. And luckily food is at the heart of so many traditions and since Eric grew up celebrating Hanukkah and my family didn't really have a set Christmas menu, Eric and I now get to establish our own food traditions for the holidays. So when I was growing up my family never made baked pasta dishes like stuffed shells, baked ziti, or manicotti, but these are popular in New York where Eric is from and since I perfected my vegan ricotta recipe he's been making them for us more often and I feel like dishes like these are perfect for the holidays. So you're gonna keep it twisted. I'm notoriously bad at this. When I say I'm bad at it I just mean it's just for some reason exceedingly difficult for me, but I'm gonna try. Like this. Okay. And you're gonna apply pressure with your palm. Isn't it satisfying? It is. Nice. I put way too much in this. Okay yeah it's satisfying. Our stuffed shells are gonna be our new uh Christmas Eve tradition. Yeah. Should they be? I mean there's no reason for them not to be right? Should we do less? We can start doing a little bit less yeah. So I'm just doing like. Yeah that's kind of what I'm doing too. Don't spill. He's on the naughty list. Right. You can edit that out. Pretty excited because cheese was manufactured in Hackensack so I mean it's appropriate. Who needs a house out in Hackensack? Should we use the entire thing? Yes. The last time when we made manicotti I was like I'm not gonna use the whole thing and I put as much on as I needed and there were like maybe 12 12 shreds left over. It almost isn't enough. It looks like so much in the bag. Cover it. 20 minutes. Take it off. 20 more minutes. Okay. You do that. Okay. I don't think I've ever set the timer on this oven. That's not good. Did I set it for 20 minutes or 20 hours? 20 hours. It literally says hours. All right okay uh 20. Good job. Minutes. On Christmas morning Eric made us breakfast. He fried up some beyond sausages and made a just egg scramble with spinach and we also watched the Santa Claus and a Charlie Brown Christmas. Eric had never watched either of these and I hadn't watched them probably since I was a child so that was a fun little blast from the past. We also had cinnamon rolls. I finally perfected my recipe. I've literally been working on this for years and I finally got them to come out as fluffy and soft and gooey as I remember from before I went vegan. I'm really proud of these. These are definitely going to be a Christmas breakfast tradition moving forward. We were living in Washington last December and we made vegan steak and mashed potatoes for Christmas dinner. I think that's what we're adopting as our tradition moving forward. Last year we ordered the juicy marble steaks which were incredible but we couldn't really justify the price again. It's something like $60 plus shipping but we did see this brand Meaty on sale at Sprouts and we grabbed a few of their steaks which are made from the protein from mushroom root. I thought that was so cool. So Eric seared up those steaks with garlic and butter while I made some super garlicky mashed potatoes. By the way my secret ingredient for mashed potatoes is chicken style bouillon dissolved in plant milk. I guess I hadn't unpacked my potato ricer since we moved because I couldn't find it anywhere. I would usually use that but I had to settle for the potato masher. We also treated ourselves to some oyster mushrooms that Eric sauteed once again in garlic and butter. Are we sensing a theme here? And I roasted some asparagus with lemon and olive oil in parchment paper in the air fryer. The steak's pretty tasty. I didn't like the texture quite as much as the juicy marbles but I would definitely buy it again. Tiramisu used to be my favorite dessert and I have made it a handful of times since going vegan but it hasn't been the most authentic. If you're not familiar the base of tiramisu are savoiardi or lady fingers which are basically little sponge cookies and one of the key ingredients for those is whipped egg whites. So whenever I've made vegan tiramisu in the past I've just used vanilla cake in place of the lady fingers for the sake of ease but this time I really wanted to try my hand at making actual vegan lady fingers using whipped aquafaba. I used the recipe from School Night Vegan and it's pretty incredible how the aquafaba whips up just like egg whites. It's very satisfying and I definitely want to play around more with this ingredient in 2024. Attempt number one. It was looking good until I added the flour and then it just got way too thick. It was very hard to pipe. They're also just kind of dense and like kind of chewy. Here's a little cross section. They did puff up a little bit but not as much as they should have. So I think I'm going to either reduce the flour or add some extra moisture. I don't think I have it in me to do it today but I'll try again tomorrow. After tidying up from lady fingers attempt number one I moved on to prepare dinner. I wanted to break up all of my indulgent holiday cooking with a dinner that was going to be really easy, healthy, and budget friendly so I made a pot of my lemon orzo soup. This is probably one of my most cooked recipes of 2023. It's on my blog. I'll link it in the description box. You should definitely try it out. And what actually prompted me to make this was the need to use up more chickpeas to liberate some aquafaba for another batch of vegan lady fingers. But you don't have to use chickpeas. It's actually equally good with white beans or even little pieces of vegan chicken. It's kind of like chicken noodle soup but instead of chicken it's chickpeas and instead of the egg noodles it's orzo. I've been loving this Calabrian chili pepper paste. If you've been around a while you'll know we love spicy food and this to me serves a similar function to sambal chili paste but it's got basil in it which gives it a little extra something and it's amazing in soups. After the pasta is cooked I add in a couple big handfuls of spinach and let it wilt and then right before serving I love to add in plenty of fresh dill and fresh lemon juice. I love to serve this with a drizzle of really good extra virgin olive oil or some grated vegan parm and it just hits the spot every time. Here we are back the following day for attempt number two at vegan lady fingers. I followed the same base recipe but I reduced the flour considerably this time to make it easier to pipe. I really think I want to try making vegan macarons again soon since those also begin with whipped aquafaba. I did make them a few times way back in 2017 but I think I've learned a lot since then so they'd probably come up better if I made them again so maybe I'll attempt those for Valentine's Day this year. There really are so many recipes I'd like to master in the world of baking but sometimes it just gets to be too much food for two people and I think I enjoy the process of baking far more than I actually enjoy eating sweets. Earlier that week when I was meal planning and writing out all my grocery lists I had planned to make the lentil stew recipe from Rainbow Plant Life but since I ended up making those two extra batches of lady fingers I had so many chickpeas to use up and I decided at the last minute I would just sub those in for the red lentils in this recipe. And this stew was so flavorful so first I prepped my aromatics including onion, garlic, serrano peppers, and fresh ginger. And then there are quite a few spices in this one including cumin, coriander, turmeric, curry powder, chili powder, and garam masala so I measured all of those out. Then you just start out by sautéing the aromatics in some oil and add in the spices and toast those for a few minutes. Then you add in canned tomatoes and then in go your red lentils or in my case chickpeas. Then you can add in extra water or vegetable broth and I let those simmer for quite a while on low heat while I got some other work done. Then when I came back I added canned coconut milk that makes this so creamy. And of course I had to add in a big handful of fresh spinach just to get some greens in. The original recipe also says to add in almond butter but by this time I was really hungry. I just wanted to eat so I didn't add it this time but next time I definitely will try it. I think it would add just an extra level of creaminess. We served this with fresh basmati rice and cilantro and it was so delicious. Even more delicious the next day too. I'm definitely going to make this again soon with the red lentils as originally intended. I ended up doing two redos of the ladyfingers but I think I'm happy with the result finally. So I ended up reducing the flour which made it way easier to pipe them out. I didn't know how much they were going to expand though so the first redo I piped them kind of too big because they puffed up a lot. So I made them one last time and I made them smaller. I think this is a more appropriate lady finger size. The texture is not exactly as I remember real lady fingers with eggs but for the purposes of tiramisu I think it's going to work just fine because we're going to make them soggy anyway. It is finally time to assemble my tiramisu. Can you believe it? Again I followed the school night vegan recipe for the cream and that consisted of silken tofu, vegan yogurt, melted vegan butter, vanilla, and sugar. To dip the ladyfingers I combined espresso, sugar, and a few tablespoons of rum. But next time I make this I think I'm going to shell out for actual coffee liqueur because I was kind of missing that stronger slightly boozy flavor. The assembly is just alternating layers of the cream with the coffee soaked lady fingers. Then you let it chill for several hours or preferably overnight so that the lady fingers have a chance to absorb the moisture and all the flavors meld together. Then as a finishing touch you can dust it with cocoa powder or even add chocolate shavings. I asked my sister to send me her Japanese curry recipe. She cooked it for me when we were living in San Diego back in 2020 and since then I just haven't been able to make it taste quite as good so I wanted to try her recipe. My favorite thing to serve with Japanese curry is tofu katsu which I would normally fry. I think it tastes better if you fry it but I was feeling a little lazy so this time I tried baking it. Since panko breadcrumbs don't brown very well in the oven I went ahead and toasted them in a pan first. This is a tip I got from the Just One Cookbook blog. I actually think I let them get a little too dark but let's look past that. So I salted and peppered extra firm tofu steaks and dredged them in flour. Then those go into a slurry made of water, cornstarch, and flour. And finally into the toasted panko and from there into the oven. For the curry you can add really any vegetables you like but I kept it simple with just onion, potatoes, and carrot. I recommend using a waxy potato like yukon gold so they hold their shape. Japanese curry is a great recipe if you're craving comfort food but you don't want to put in too much effort because you just simmer everything in one pot and then you add the curry roux and a few seasonings. My sister once made it for me with some impossible beef in it too. She just rounded off before adding in the veggies and it was incredible and it was even more hearty. After the potatoes are tender we add in a few special ingredients to augment the flavor of the store-bought curry roux. So I had ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, curry powder, and instant coffee. And I'll admit I was a little skeptical of this last ingredient when my sister first emailed me the recipe but I trusted the process and it was good. It doesn't make the curry taste like coffee but it just adds some extra depth. Then you need a box of curry roux and if you live near an Asian market you'll be able to find lots of different varieties to choose from but sadly I don't and this is the brand that you'll most commonly see in just like regular grocery stores. And you just want to make sure to stir it very thoroughly so that it dissolves. Then let it simmer until it reaches the thickness you like. I served my curry with fresh steamed rice, my baked tofu katsu, and I also steamed up some broccoli. I'm trying to be better about always having a green vegetable in my meals. It was really delicious and this is going to be my go-to recipe for Japanese curry from now on. Now it's New Year's Eve and we were planning on having our two good friends over to celebrate so I wanted to make a fun dessert. I love making chocolate mousse out of silken tofu and I thought it would make a really good base for a vegan chocolate pie. So here I'm making an Oreo cookie crust just by blitzing up Oreos with some melted vegan butter. For the mousse you need a container of silken tofu. You don't need to press it ahead of time but it does help to kind of blot out some of the extra moisture by setting it on a clean towel and put the tofu in a food processor and blend it until it's smooth. Then you add in melted chocolate, vanilla extract, a pinch of salt just to balance everything out, some instant coffee, cocoa powder, and powdered sugar and blend it again until it's all perfectly smooth. This needs several hours in the fridge to set and I ended up also topping the pie with a I used the kind from Silk and it whipped up beautifully but you could also use coconut cream. And that wraps up today's video. Hopefully this inspires you to make something cozy and delicious for yourself this week. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate you and again I hope you're having a very happy and healthy start to your new year. I will see you very soon. Bye!