One of the best things to have come from writing this blog, and from cooking more in general, is that I feel much more empowered to make things up as I go along. The other night, I made things up to fantastic success!
This was inspired by the similarly fantastic success of the camp-gourmet adventure a few weeks ago. I received 2 yummy little red bell peppers in my CSA, and I decided to cook up some tofu and quinoa to stuff them with. It turned out SO well and I ate the leftovers for dinner the next day.
Ingredients
Bell peppers (1 per person) - more if they are little baby peppers like mine were
Package of tofu (not super soft, not super firm)
Pre-cooked quinoa, or couscous, or Italian couscous, or rice, or whatever (about 1/2 a cup, but you can use more if you want)
1 or 2 little tomatoes, chopped
1 little onion
Garlic (2 + cloves)
Curry powder
Cumin
Process
-Preheat oven to 350
-Cut the top off your bell pepper (the top being the part with the stem), core, and place open-side-down on a cookie sheet.
-Drizzle pepper with olive oil, maybe some garlic salt if you're feelin' it, and pop it in the oven for 15 minutes.
-Saute finely chopped onions and garlic in olive oil for a few minutes, then add tomatoes.
-Throw a bunch of curry powder in there: probably a tablespoon or so, then let things hang out and get delicious for a few minutes.
-Meanwhile, slice the tofu, then take slices in your hands and CRUSH. This is the best and most fun part of making this dish. Crush the tofu into a bowl until it's all crumbled and delicious-looking. If you're like me, eat a little bit of the raw tofu to hold you over (yum yum yum).
-Add the tofu to your onions-garlic-tomato mixture and combine thoroughly. You may want to add some more curry powder at this point, but taste it first. Add as much cumin as you want, depending on your spiciness threshold. I don't remember how much I added, whoops! :) Probably not very much, as I am a spiciness wimp.
-SALT AND PEPPER
-Add your precooked quinoa. I think I ended up putting in about 1/2 a cup, but you can add as much or as little as you want. My dish ended up being more about the tofu than the quinoa, so you may want to add more if you're into that.
Don't forget about your pepper. Take it out of the oven and tip it over so the steam can escape, let it cool for a little while, then stuff with tofu mixture and eat-eat-eat. Leftovers keep for a few days, and will be delicious re-heated and added to a brand new roasted pepper. This is my new favorite meal, and will probably make an appearance in my dinner regimen two or three times a week from now on. It's just SO quick and easy! Love it!
