Artsy fartsy vegan sh-tuff

So I've gotten bored with circles.

It seems like everything

I cook

is a

circle nowadays. There are so many shapes. Why is it always fucking circles? So I looked at a lot of minimalist, abstract, and cubist art, picked up some square and rectangle cookie cutters, and decided to play around a little bit.

Granted, I started off with a circle. I used my circular cookie cutter to pull out some cylinders of tofu.

I seasoned my tofu with some of that M9 seasoning I've mentioned a few times, then I seared it up in olive oil. Since I was doing vegan, that meant no butter, which made me sad. I'm sure it's probably marginally healthy or something, but goddamn I love butter. I started up a pot of rice while the tofu was cooking; I included some sautéed onion and mushroom with the rice, puffed the rice up a little bit by sautéing it in the oil, too, then dumped in some water seasoned with salt, turmeric, parsley, and thyme for it to steam.

When the tofu was done, I swapped out the oil and dropped in some chopped carrot.

I had to let the carrots cook for a while until they started to caramelize and softened up enough that I could cut them in half with my wooden spatula.

I added in some spinach and let that cook down with some salt and pepper. I was wanting to make mashed carrot, but I eventually got to the point that I didn't want to deal with that shit. So what could I do?

Food processor, bitches! I chopped up some of the green ends of a green onion and dumped those bastards in there, too. I didn't want a puree or a paste, so I just pulsed the mixture a bit until it was a gooey, chunky mess.

I also threw the rest of the green onion into the carrot pan with some salt after I pulled the carrots and spinach out. I just rolled it around every now and then to get a nice browning all over it.

So now for the fun part: the plating. I was thinking having a rectange, a square, and a circle would be a fun slight variation.

Honestly, I kind of dig it. I think having a square or two and a rectangle or two kind of bumping up against each other might be a fun look, but I'll need to actually plan that out a little better next time.

Oh, and that green onion? I liked the way it looked diagonally across the tofu just to give a little more visual dissonance. I'm gonna keep playing with my food.

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