#made this!

[personwholoveschocolate]

But the words you want to hear You will never hear from me

[thetastytable]

last night, I made these tofu noodle bowls inspired by last week's special at one of my fave local bars/restaurants:

I had it over the weekend and it gave my partner food fomo lol

I used this recipe for teriyaki tofu that I make all the time, put it on vermicelli noodles, and topped it with purple cabbage, red pepper, thai basil, cilantro, salad greens, peanuts, and sesame seeds. for the sauce, I used pre-made peanut sauce mixed with chili crisp. tbh the chili crisp I have is not mind blowing and the peanut sauce was sub par. I'd definitely made it from scratch next time.

all in all, this was a super easy and tasty meal!

[thetastytable]

Spicy Tomato Beans with Hot Honey

These spicy tomato beans are comforting and easy, just what a weeknight dinner should be. They take inspiration from a classic vodka sauce,

hot damn I made these tonight and they were REALLY good and they also really did only take 30 minutes to make!!! 🏆🏆🏆🏆

I made a few alterations for practicality's sake, but don't think they made a huge difference in the result:

there was no way in hell I was turning the oven on when it was 104°F outside i was actually in hell lol so I toasted and buttered some yummy sourdough I had and cut it up to use as croutons. I mixed the hot honey separately and drizzled it on top of the whole final dish. also I left out the parsley.

pro tip: the hot honey is a star of the show so make sure to use hot sauce you like the taste of. I used a mix of sriracha and habenero yellowbird.

one can of beans just didn't look like much when I added it to the pot, so I added a second can. I didn't double any other part of the recipe and it all turned out fine.

[thetastytable]

Saffron Oil Tomatoes & Beans

Sometimes a flavor combo comes into my mind and I’m like “oh yeah, this one is THE ONE.” It doesn’t happen often (this carrot salad is the m

this was delicious! I'm not sure the saffron was totally worth the price, but I will say I could actually taste the flavor of it. I can't say that for all saffron recipes!

[thetastytable]

[thetastytable]

Half-Baked Harvest: Chili Crisp Butternut Squash Dumplings in Ginger Soy Broth

I made this today and unfortunately was a little let down by it! And it was a time-intensive ordeal, for sure. I made two modifications, which I don’t think much influenced the turn-out and, in fact, probably made it better...: I used sweet potato instead of butternut squash for the filling and substituted sake and rice wine vinegar for the white wine.

If I made it again, I would: 

Leave out the curry powder (not sure what that’s doing in there! It doesn’t match the flavor of the broth very well, imo) and maybe use a different filling entirely (mushrooms might work well)

Make my own chili crisp since the one I bought was super salty, albeit tasty, OR cut salt elsewhere in the recipe

I made the unfortunate mistake of using regular chicken broth instead of low sodium broth, so even though I diluted it ~25% with water, it was very salty in combination with the soy sauce and chili crisp. Note that the recipe also called for salted butter and regular soy sauce (I used unsalted and low sodium, respectively), so I can’t imagine it being all that different if I’d followed the recipe. 

I would try using thinner dumpling wrappers, which would cook faster than the ones I used. Mine took about 5 mins to steam, which ended up softening the nice sesame crust on the bottoms. I was also afraid of burning the sesame seeds, so I didn’t fry the dumplings for very long before steaming. I might recommend leaving the sesame seeds off and sprinkling on some as a garnish (since they fall off when frying, anyway).

That’s my long-ass take on how I would make this recipe better! I’m trying to continue keeping track of what I cook and what changes I would make in order to keep this blog useful and organized. One of my goals this year is to meal plan and cook ahead more often, and I’ve done well with it so far this week (Lemon, it’s Tuesday! Yeah, I know).

Lastly, not to be too salty (BAD pun, sorry) this early in the new year, but I’ve yet to find a Half-Baked Harvest recipe that doesn’t require heavy modification. I don’t know why they’re all so popular and well-rated! Teighan seems great, but we must have different tastes or methods of cooking.... This is at least the third one I can think of off the top of my head that I’ve tried and disliked.

[thetastytable]

I made this tonight and it was very good! I do have notes, though, for future me and anyone else who'd like to try it:

The recipe says it takes an hour, it took me about 1.5 hours. Which is pretty good, honestly, I was hustling. Plus I ~embellished~ the sauce and was working with tiny slices of eggplant.

(I used eggplant from the farmer's market, which was small and globe shaped, so I used all 8 or so of those. [I also bought mozzarella that came in 4 medium-sized balls. All of this slicing slowed me down considerably!])

Normally I make my family's spaghetti sauce recipe if I'm making something like this or lasagna, but it adds a lot of time. Here, I just sautéed some diced onions and bell pepper and mixed it in with my fave sauce (Classico fire roasted tomato and garlic 😜). It was fine!

I think the whole dish could be moister. Next time I'd add a 1/4-1/2 c. of water to the sauce so it doesn't dry out in the oven.

I had quite a bit of breading left over after breading the eggplants, so I just used it to top the whole dish before baking it. This also saved me from needing the other 1/4 c. of parm.

I used 2% milk (what we had on hand) instead of almond milk for the wet eggy stuff and it was just fine. I don't know why they call for almond milk.

I did not have fresh basil for topping, which was a shame! I had already maxed out my totally arbitrary quota of fresh herbs I allow myself to buy at the store. But fresh herbs are the star of the dish!

(The fresh thyme was certainly worthwhile.)

I baked the eggplant for 20 mins and really should have cooked it longer (n.b., I think my oven runs cool).

I served it with veggie Italian sausage but it's hardy enough that the sausage was totally unnecessary. A light salad and garlic bread would be 😘👌 That's all!