Corn Simmered in Coconut Milk with Basil and Tofu

This dish is phenomenal! I was wondering what I could make from the book, and I had some leftover light coconut milk from making a coconut pound cake yesterday, some frozen corn, and a block of tofu that needed to be used.  So I looked up "tofu" and found this recipe, realized that for once I had all the ingredients, and made it for lunch! The curry powder and mustard in the corn have a really nice warm flavor that is absorbed by the corn kernels and just gushed out with every bite.  The tofu was nice and chewy from a quick fry in the pan, and then it marinates in the juices from the corn and becomes very flavorful.  I will be making this again!

Carrot Almond Cake with Ricotta Cream

This is the first recipe I made from the book, mostly because I love to bake and also because it looked like a simple but delicious way to use up some lingering carrots in my refrigerator. I made it for a lunch party that I hosted for some friends, and everyone loved it.  One thing I will say about this cake, despite what Deborah writes about it being very moist, I found it a little dry and it really needed that ricotta cream to moisten it.  If I make it again I will probably reduce the amount of sour cream in the ricotta cream because it tasted a little sour.

What this is All About

I'm a vegetarian and I love to cook, so when I finally got this fantastic new cookbook called Vegetable Literacy, by Deborah Madison, I was really excited that I would finally be able to take a cookbook and cook every single recipe, like Julie in Julie and Julia.  I've always wanted to do this because there are so many things that I don't try because I think they'd be strange or they're too complicated or have obscure ingredients, or simply because there is no photo of them in the cookbook, so I want to be forced to try these new things and see what I learn.  Some rules for cooking through this book:
1. I won't cook recipes that I've already made before.
2. I will make the recipes as I have the vegetables available, so I won't go in order.
3. I will try to use all the specified ingredients with as few replacements as possible.

I hope you enjoy this journey as much as I do!