I’d planned on posting this recipe anyway, but Michelle over at My Zoetrope has named ginger and lemon as this week’s vegan mofo iron chef challenge. Call it a cop out entry (really, this is a stupidly easy thing to make), but you’ll be grateful once you try it. So simple it’s hardly worth posting yet so good it’s worth sharing, this incredibly simple tea consists of just a few key ingredients and is the perfect wintertime drink.

I discovered this simple tea a couple of weeks ago in Rishikesh, a city in Northern India famous for yoga and hippies. A young man at our hotel restaurant pushed it on me, claiming it would cure my cough. While we insisted the lifetime of my cough goes back to 1990 or so, he continued to proclaim the tea’s natural cough-curing qualities.  Finally I took him up on his offer, and now I’m hooked.

The cough remains.

Recipe Notes

The local recipes used honey, but any sweetener will do. I’ve tried it with sugar and agave both, and it’s just fab either way! I’ve also sampled this drink both with and without the addition of a tea bag and both are acceptable. In fact the only reason I’m talking so much about the tea is because it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever voluntarily consumed anything with a breakfast tea involved. Yes, I think I have conquered my English tea phobia. Miracles do happen.

Of course the quantities I suggest are based purely on my personal tastes. I love lemon and like a bit of a bite, so you may want to cut back on the citrus if you want a lighter flavour.

Kohl rabi is a member of the brassica family, a group which includes broccoli, cabbage, brussel sprouts, and more. Roughly translated from german as “cabbage turnip,” this is a pretty accurate description for this sputnik shaped vegetable. I only discovered it a year or two ago when it was included in a veg box I ordered, and I’ve really grown to enjoy it. Some vegetables are just so much better raw!

Recipe Notes

I go back and forth between using cider vinegar and white wine vinegar in this salad recipe. I think cider vinegar provides a slightly stronger taste, but both are good. Rice vinegar is also an option.

If you’re not keen on the peanuts, try mixing some peanut butter in with the dressing instead. A similar flavour but with a different texture, this is equally good. I know a lot of peanut butter fans who aren’t keen on peanuts (I used to be one of them).

Be careful with the garlic if you’re planning to serve this immediately; I’m as big a fan as the next guy but fresh garlic can be a bit much for some people. This is less a worry if you use a pestle and mortar to grind everything together because you won’t have any lumps of hot garlic to sneak out and bite your mouthly innards.

As with many of my recipes, the ingredient proportions are more of a suggestion. You should taste as you go to decide what you do and don’t like and what flavours you want to stand out or blend in (soy sauce vs vinegar vs sesame oil, ginger vs garlic, etc…). Add more carrot, add celery, add whatever you think works (then report back and let me know how it went)!

An interesting concoction for bean curd lovers at least, this bastardised form of nigari tofu came to me after a discussion with someone about Vietnamese food. Vietnam is the only Southeast Asian country that uses dill (in fact, the Vietnamese use more fresh herbs than any of the others), and this is due to the past French influences (they are also the only country who can bake decent bread, a fact for which I also thank the French).

While not really a Vietnamese style dish in any way, I made the decision to create a tofu packed with this fragrant herb, with a little bit of tomato paste and ginger to accompany.

The end result, which quite clearly included a very stained piece of muslin (it washed out), was pretty impressive. I left the tofu for a couple of days so the flavour of the herbs would fully infuse, and then cut it into pieces and served it immediately after a quick fry. This would be a really cool hors d’oeuvre (think toothpicks and pretty serving trays, baby)!

There really isn’t a proper recipe for this bean curd, I’m sorry to say, but we’re looking at a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste, and inch or so of grated ginger, and at least 1/4 cup of fresh chopped dill. This is for a firmly-pressed block of tofu made with 1 litre of fresh soy milk.

This noodle recipe, as with most of its kind, is all about the broth. It needs to be good awesome. Luckily that’s a task simply achieved in this case, with only a few basic ingredients. Dried shiitake mushrooms are the key ingredient, and if you don’t already use these I would highly recommend them as a basic kitchen staple ingredient. They are incredibly versatile and will add pizazz to any broth or soup, with the added plus of a brilliant flavour and texture.

I recently discovered Edamame (by “recently” I mean within the last 6 months) when walking through London’s Victoria mainline station toward the tube station. England, unlike the U.S., is not generally a land of free samples, so imagine my delight when a young woman shoved a free sample of frozen Birds Eye brand Edamame in my hand (complete with complimentary freezer bag!). I brought the little packet home, shoved it in the freezer, and promptly forgot it was there until a couple of months later.

Then along came one of those nights where my imagination just couldn’t come up with any clever dinner ideas, and at the same time I didn’t feel like doing much at all. That’s when I remembered the soy beans in my freezer and decided to check out some recipe ideas quickly online. In the end I ended up serving them with fried sage leaves and garlic and both my husband and I were impressed with the results. The texture of the beans are lovely and they taste nice, too.

Since then I have cooked them up with margarine (try Vitalite) and garlic (yum!) but wanted to have them as a side to a Japanese-style noodle dinner. That’s where this simple but delicious recipe comes from (and yes, I know it’s not very original… but who cares about originality so long as it tastes good?!)