A week of vegetarian dinners...Monday and Tuesday

I will admit that although I love all food, to totally bastardize and misuse a famous literary quote from  Animal farm, all food are equal, but some food are more equal than others (I am cringing inside that I even went there).  What I mean to say is that although I am game to try all food and love food in general, there is one thing that I honestly love less: vegetables.

This aversion to vegetables isn't unique, however I don't like vegetables as much not because I don't like the taste but because I have no clue as to how to prepare vegetables creatively.  My go to is salad and even that starts to get old after a few days.  Another side dish I commonly serve is steamed veggies with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Feel my angst!

Wanting to be healthier and integrate more vegetables in my life, I challenged me and P to eat vegetarian meals this week.  Eating vegetarian meals will require me to be creative or I will have a meltdown.

Each day I will prepare a vegetarian meal.  I will rate it from 1 to 5 with 1 being I am clawing at my face craving for meat and 5 being a dish that gets me on the verge of conversion.

Let's do this!

Monday:

FAILURE!

Too tired to cook, I went to T & T, the local Asian market, and picked up a few ingredients for vegetarian week.  I grabbed some cold sweet Thai chili sauce tofu (one of my favorite dishes at T & T) and this was going to be our dinner with some rice.  But as I was walking by the hot dishes section, I saw crab legs with oyster sauce, ginger and green onions.  Crab legs are one of my weaknesses so I had to have it. 

Get home and gorged on crab.  Sigh!

I will rate the cold spicy tofu though.

Score: 5.  Cold spicy sweet Thai chili sauce tofu from T & T is an old standby I could eat almost everyday.  So good!

Tuesday

SEMI-FAILURE!

Okay so this time I actually meant to eat vegetarian and prepared a vegetarian dish, but we still had a 4 crab legs so I nibbled on them while I cooked the vegetarian meal.  Hate wasting food.

Keep your fanciness to yourself. 

Today I prepared a childhood Filipino favorite of mine that my Mom makes: Filipino potato torta. Torta is similar to a frittata.  It is the ultimate poor man's dish.  It's potatoes, eggs, salt and pepper.  That is it.   My Mom makes this when she wants something fast and simple.  When my Mom makes it though, it is something truly magical.  The potatoes are soft and fluffy.  The eggs have some crispy parts, but it's also salty, eggy, and fluffy in some areas.  The omelette is always intact.  It's nothing fancy, but to me, very tasty.   When I make it, it's never as good.  Mind you, Mom's (any Mom's) cooking is always better.  One day my omelette will remain intact...one day. 

I don't really have a recipe for you because it's really about taste.  It's too simple a recipe to write out, but for all you who require instruction, I adapted this recipe from a blog post written by Ramona French titled "How to Cook a Filipino Torta without Beef".  Usually you do make torta with beef, but I'm not a fan.

Potato Torta

6 eggs

Salt and pepper

Oil

3-4 potatoes (my Mom usually uses Russet)

Cut potatoes into sticks like this:

You could peel the potato.  My Mom usually does, but the nutrients are in the skin so I always keep the skin on.  You could even chop them into smaller sticks, but I like the chunky cut.

Heat enough oil in a large pan to coat the bottom (I used approx 2 tbs canola).  Cook the potatoes until they are brown and soft.  

Meanwhile, beat your eggs.  I beat my eggs until air bubbles form.

Once the potatoes are done, put onto a plate.  Replenish oil if needed to cover the bottom of the pan.  Work in batches at this point.  Put a portion of the potato back into the pan.  Pour some of the egg, enough to cover the bottom if you lift the pan off the heat and rotate it.

When it comes time to flip (raw side is somewhat half cooked), take a plate and put on top of torta like so:

Take pan off heat.  With one hand on the plate, flip torta over so that raw cooked side is exposed when you lift pan up:

Cooked side up

With the help of a spatula, slide raw side into pan.  Continue to cook.  Take a peek after a few minutes and remove from pan once cooked.  Continue cooking in batches until all the potato and egg are used up.  Serve with rice and some salad.

Unfortunately, my omelette broke.  I was none to gentle slipping it onto a plate and it broke like crazy.  I was in a rush!  I usually eat my torta with ketchup (told you it wasn't fancy) and my secret little indulgence: a healthy squeeze of sriracha sauce on the ketchup.  

Score: 4.  I love potato torta, but like I said, I never make it as well as my Mom so I subtracted a point.  I didn't miss the meat, but I did miss my Mom.  I should go visit her sometime this week.

More on tomorrow's meal in the next post!