Vegetarian Day & Recipes

Happy World Vegetarian Day!



As part of being a member of the EtsyVeg team, I'm posting a vegetarian recipe to celebrate World Vegetarian Day. I'm actually posting two recipes, but they sort of go together. Even if you're not a vegetarian, you should still try it out. :)

Marinara Sauce



I make marinara sauce a lot and this is basically the recipe I use. I do variations of it each time, but I wanted to post it for people who haven't made their own sauce before. You can use it as pasta sauce, pizza sauce, the tofu recipe below or whatever you want. By the way, this recipe is also in the Cooking with Compassionate cookbook.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 tomatoes (if you can, get them fresh)
1 can of canned tomatoes
1 can tomato paste
1/4 cup water or vegetable broth
3 tablespoon fresh basil leaves or 1 tablespoon dried basil
1 tablespoon fresh oregano or 2 teaspoons dried oregano
about 1/4 cup fresh, chopped parsley
salt and pepper

1.) Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Saute the onion and garlic until they are clear, but before they become brown.
2.) While the onion and garlic are heating, chop the fresh tomatoes. Add them to the onion and garlic and heat for a few minutes until tomato is soft.
3.) Add the canned tomatoes, tomato paste and 1/4 cup water or vegetable broth (you can do more or less depending how thick you want it).
4.) Add all the spices except parsley. You can add any other spices you want, but the spices I listed are recommendations. If you don't have fresh onion or garlic, you can add onion powder or garlic powder here.
4.) Let the sauce come to a boil and reduce to low. Simmer for 15-20 minutes or until flavors are blended, stirring every once in a while. If you want to develop the flavors more, you can let it simmer longer.
5.) Stir in the parsley last or use it to garnish your sauce. Add the salt and pepper to taste.

Tofu with Marinara Sauce

Once you have marinara sauce, you can use it with this recipe. I actually accidentally made up this recipe while I was playing around with tofu the other day. Even though it's kind of a cliche for vegetarians to eat tofu, I don't make it too often and I never know exactly how to cook it. I bought some at the store and decided to use it and I like how these turned out. The recipe is just from what I remember doing. Feel free to share your favorite tofu recipes. :)

Ingredients
1 block of firm tofu
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup marinara sauce and extra for serving
Your favorite spices
Fresh parsley

1.) I had the tofu in the freezer. Freezing gives it a different texture. I think freezing it makes the tofu taste more like a meat texture. You can play around with it and see which texture you like best.
2.) Squeeze out any extra liquid from tofu by pressing it between paper towels. Chop the tofu in to long strips.
3.) Put about 1 cup marinara sauce in a bowl. Add about 1/8-1/4 cup extra water to the sauce if it's really thick. Add any additional spices you want. Soak the tofu strips in the marinara sauce for 30 minutes.
4.) Heat olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Place a few strips on the sauce pan. Cook for about 3-4 minutes or until it starts to brown.
5.) Use a spatula to flip the strips oil and fry on the other side for a couple minutes. The length you let it sit depends on how brown/crunchy you want your tofu.
6.) Put a couple paper towels on a plate. Once the tofu strips are ready, put the tofu strips on the towel to help drain some of the liquid. Fry the rest of the tofu strips, doing about 3 at a time.
7.) Serve the tofu strips with additional marinara sauce if you desire. Garnish with parsley and add salt and pepper to taste.

Enjoy! Let me know if you try any of these and how they turn out.

I'm also having a sale in my shop just for today. Just enter the code "VEGDAY" at checkout and you can get 10% off any item.

The Vegetarian House (that I live in) is having a college event where we're having a vegetarian dinner. I don't know how many people will show up, but I'm excited because it's our first event of the year. I'm actually not going to be able to make the event though because I'm going to an Etiquette Dinner just for juniors. You have to dress up for it and I heard they serve you good food. It should be fun. :)