Tofu Vegetable Puff Pie!

Hello!! I've been MIA for about a week, sorry about that. But now I'm back and with a delicious, different kind of pie made with Tofu. You can see the tofu above, it's marinading in half a teaspoon of masala curry powder (you can pick some up at your local Indian grocery store, or at a supermarket near you). 

It was our first try doing vegetable pie (xortopita) using tofy as our dairy alternative. It turned out really good, but already we've realized that it would've been better if we had added onion and if we had let the boiled vegetables sit for a while until some water drained away.

Here's what we used.

• 2 1-inch slices of firm tofu, marinated in half teaspoon masala curry powder.
• 1/2cup spinach 
• 1/2 cup celery
• 1/2 cup kale
• 1/2 cup leek
• salt/pepper to taste
• 1 package of butter puff pastry
• spry/shortening to oil our cookware so our pie doesn't stick

We boiled the vegetables, and let them sit for a bit. Put salt/pepper or any other seasoning of your choice. Meanwhile we set out half of the butter puff pastry on our oiled cookware and we started to preheat our oven at 350 degrees F.

 Put your vegetables in the pastry spreading them out.

Add the marinated tofu on top of them. The tofu will provide a spicyness due to it's masala curry taste. We also added the juice that you can see from the photo of the tofu being marinated.

 Start wrapping our filling with the pastry. Don't force it, we don't want it to tear up.

 Add the other half of our puff pastry packate on top, and continue wrapping it up until it's all covered up.

That's it! We placed it in our pre-heated oven at 350 degrees F for about half an hour, or until golden-brown.

It tasted great. BUT, we also thought that next time, we'll put a medium onion chopped up in our mixture. However, unlike our vegetables, we aren't going to boil it beforehand.

What do you think?

Delicious Vegetable Pie

So... the title of the blog entry is "Vegetable Pie"...Hm...what could we be using this time??

I'll give you a look first at the final product.

This is what i had for lunch today, vegetable pie with tofu! :)

 Like what you see?? The crust was so light and flaky, it was heaven. The question is, what did we use?

Kale, Spinach, Leek and Celery

Yup, we had some kale that was near the end of its life, so we made a large pie with it as well as the other veggies we had in the fridge.

Here's what we did.

Ingredients

• a whole bunch of kale
• a few stalks of celery
• spinach - about 2 handfuls
• Leek - chopped up, quantity is up to you
• half a halloumi cheese (in this case) - you many also use feta or any cheese of your choice
• salt for taste
• margarine/butter for coating the cookware
• butter puff pastry leaves - about 15 or more of them. 
• onion - quantity is up to you

Instructions

Start by pre-heating the oven at 350 degrees Farenheit.

Wash and chop the vegetables up. Chop up the onion. Grate or slice the cheese and mix it up if you wish. We layered the cheese on top of the vegetables instead. I find it preferable for my taste buds to suddenly get a nice chunk of halloumi rather than get a small constant dose of it throughout the pie. Mix the vegetables and onion up, add some salt to taste.

Lay out the butter puff pastry leaves. The main difference between phyllo and butter puff pastries is in their name, "butter"; it makes it easier for me to work with since they are already buttered up. I bought one package of them and all of it was used to make this flaky pie.

Layer the halloumi and vegetable mix. Close up the pastry leaves into a shape you desire and place the pie in a margarine-coated cookware so it doesnt stick.

Place it in the oven for about 30 minutes or until flaky and golden-brown in color.

That's it!

Our Vegetable Pie is ready to be consumed. It's so good, I really recommend trying it out.
It doesnt matter what vegetables you have handy, it doesnt have to be anything specific, any green and leafy vegetable works (lettuce, cabbage, kale, spinach, you name it!).

Bonus!

In order to get our share of protein during our lunch, we cut up some tofu in 1cm-thick slices and put Masala curry powder on it, then lightly fried it, until it was crispy on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside. Tofu doesn't absorb much besides salt (so be careful when you marinade it in soy sauce), so the outside of our tofu is slightly spicy while the inside is pretty bland. Yummy!

 

Spicy Meat-alternative lunch.

Food is food. The combinations are endless as long as you let your fantasy roam.
But, in order to stay healthy, you have to ensure that you always have your serving of protein, greens and carbs.
A good guide is this :

vegetables 50%
protein 30%
starch 20%

To make it a little easier, just make sure the protein you are eating is as thick and wide as the palm of your hand. It's different for each individual. Opt for rice and potatoes for starch, instead of pasta. In my diet I've substituted pasta with rice noodles/egg noodles or rice.

In this case meat-alternatives made of tofu are being used as the source for protein.

You'll notice that in most recipes I will be listing frozen vegetables.
The reason is simple.:

• Frozen vegetables as cheaper than fresh ones. 
• They are washed at the collection site right before freezing (with water cleaner than tap water in your home).
• they are more fresh than "fresh" vegetables since they are frozen right after collecting them
•  therefore their nutrients are unaltered while for "fresh" vegetables a lot of nutrients are lost in transit.
• they last a loooong time in the freezer.

this is the final product:

Ingredients

• firm tofu - half the size of your palm, as thick as your palm.
• half a tofurky spicy italian sausage - google "tofurky" it's a company name
• frozen vegetables of your choice - thawed
• one portion rice vermicelli noodles
• masala curry powder for marinating the tofu in
• a smidge of oregano
• soy sauce to taste

Start by spreading some masala curry powder on your tofu and let it sit for about 5-10 minutes. 

In the meantime start making the rice vermicelli noodles in a pot, add some soy sauce in the water.

when they are ready, take it off the stove and drop in your vegetables. They will be warmed up but 

not boiled.

Take your tofu sausage and your masala curry tofu and lightly fry it in a heated pan with olive oil for 2-3 minutes on each side, depending how strong your heat is. It should get crispy on the outside while staying nice and soft on the inside. Sprinkle some oregano over it for the aroma - but careful, don't want to put too much since oregano is bitter!

And that's it!

The spicyness of the sausage is balanced by the vegetables and the noodles. Adjust it to your tastes.

Recipes should be your starting guideline. If you have any ideas then let me know! 

It's a delicious meal for cold days :)