One of my favorite formulas for putting together a reasonably easy, reasonably healthy meal is to combine a grain, a green, and a protein. Around my house, the protein is usually tofu or beans. Really, that’s all you need, so you could stop there.

I love having tons of vegetables on my plate, though, because you get a satisfying amount of volume and nutrition but it doesn’t add up to millions of calories. You can eat a virtual mountain of food and feel quite nutritionally smug (if, you know, feeling smug about nutrition is your thing). At any rate, this meal also has carrots and mushrooms, but it could include any other vegetables you like — I bet roasted bell peppers would be great, eggplant, sweet potato…try whatever.

As an example, tonight I made a different version of this with roasted tomatoes, artichokes, and garbanzo beans, with feta, lemon juice, and kalamata olives as the garnish. It was also really good (but missing something?), and I’ll probably keep working on that variation, too. That said, the version shown below is my favorite:

Ingredients:

[A little disclaimer: Okay, look, I’m not married to any of these ingredients/amounts. This is really more of a meal concept than a recipe, but I did try to include specifics here in case you want to try it. But know that you can change it up, tweak, and experiment. Whatever you make following this concept should basically be healthy and a great vehicle for peanut sauce, is the main point. So here’s what I do:]

• 1 block tofu
• 2 tbsp sesame oil
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• sriracha to taste
• 1 tbsp minced fresh ginger
• 2-3 cloves minced fresh garlic
• 3-4 medium carrots, cut into sticks
• 1 container mushrooms (any variety), quartered
• as much kale as you can fit into a big pan
• quinoa (1/4 cup dry per person)
• lime wedges
• cilantro for garnish

First, you’ll need to follow the baked tofu procedure outlined here. The short version: freeze the block overnight, thaw it, thoroughly squeeze/drain the water out, cube it, marinate it, bake at 425-ish for 20-ish minutes.

In this case, I went with a marinade of sesame oil, soy sauce, sriracha, and minced fresh ginger and garlic.  Don’t worry too much about exact quantities or having all the ingredients. Just go with it — this is hard to mess up. If you’re in a hurry or don’t have fresh ginger on hand, for example, leave it out. It’s fine.

So, first, prepare tofu as described/linked above.

Save the marinade bowl from your tofu and toss the cut carrots around in there. They don’t need much to taste good roasted, so don’t worry if there isn’t much left. A lot of it probably soaked into your tofu.

When you put the tofu in to bake, put in a sheet pan with your carrots on it as well — they usually take about the same amount of time (~25 minutes, checking/turning in the middle).

At the same time, put your quinoa in your rice cooker, per the rice cooker’s proportions/directions, and let that do its thing. No rice cooker? (WHY NOT?!) There’s probably a good stovetop method for quinoa, but I don’t know it. This looks fine.

The mushrooms can be quickly sautéed with a little olive oil and just a dash of sesame oil; same with the kale. They’ll both cook pretty quickly, so I start these when the tofu and carrots have been cooking for about 15 minutes.

If you timed it right, everything should be done at the same time.

I build a massive pile on my plate, starting with Kale Mountain, topped with a big scoop of quinoa, and then adding tons of carrots, mushrooms, and tofu. Then, plenty of peanut sauce, fresh cilantro, and a squeeze of lime. Some sriracha, too, because why not?

Peanut Sauce:

• 1 huge glob crunchy peanut butter (2-4 tbsp? I don’t know. Just glob it.)
• 2 tbsp rice vinegar
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp honey
• sriracha to taste
• 1-4 tbsp of water (to thin to desired consistency)

Mix up everything but the water, then start adding water one tablespoon at a time until you reach the desired consistency. At first, it will look like this mess doesn’t want to come together smoothly, but give it time. It will. And it will be awesome.

CW and I got this cookbook, The Southern Vegetarian, by Justin Fox Burks and Amy Lawrence, as part of our wedding gift from my friend Mel — she gave us several cookbooks, each representing a different region where one or both of us has lived, plus aprons (awesome gift). We’ve been using it a lot in the past few months and I figured I’d share a review of it for those of you who might be interested in a variety of tasty southern food made vegetarian.

I found out that the cookbook stems from the writers’ blog, The Chubby Vegetarian, which I haven’t spent tons of time on (yet), but which appears to have a lot of good looking recipes as well, so I’ll be bookmarking that right about now.

When I decided to start this review, I also connected with Justin and Amy on Twitter (you can follow them at @chubbyveg) and they very kindly agreed to answer a few questions for me:

KW: My husband and I often trade off cooking duties during the week, but we really love cooking together whenever we get a chance. Working together in the kitchen with your spouse can be a lot of fun — and a little chaotic when you’re dancing around each other and trying not to spill hot food or drop knives. How does that work in your kitchen? Do you two do most of your cooking together? Any favorite things about cooking with your spouse — or pet peeves?

Justin: We love to cook together. One of our favorite things is for Amy to start something, like a pot of beans in the slow-cooker or a baked sweet potato right from the oven, and I will come in and finish it. It works that way when I work late and we end up eating dinner at 9 or 9:30. Our 3 dogs are the main source of chaos in the kitchen. We don’t feed them any people food except the occasional piece of carrot or apple. They love it, so they are constantly begging.

Amy: I love it when justin helps me make a quick dessert. I jokingly call him my sous chef.

KW: I’m a vegetarian, and my husband is an omnivore, though he winds up eating mostly vegetarian at home. Most of our friends are also omnivores. What’s your favorite dish to make for “mixed company” — something vegetarian that really satisfies even the most enthusiastic meat eaters?

That’s our whole goal, for real! We make good hearty, healthy, satisfying food that happens to be vegetarian. We try to subvert the assumptions that people have when they hear the word “vegetarian.”  They immediately assume that it about what’s missing; the meat. We think about it differently. We think about making delicious vegetable-based dishes with a ton of creativity. So, it become about what is on the plate and not about what isn’t. Sometimes they take their cues from meat dishes like our King Oyster Mushroom Scallops and other times the dish is just a product of our own imagination.

I would say that pizza is the great equalizer. Sometimes “enthusiastic meat eaters” notice if there’s not a chicken wing or a piece of steak on the plate, but pizza can go meatless without a big fuss. We built a traditional Italian pizza oven in our backyard last year. We love to serve fresh pizzas alongside lots of grilled veggies, olives, and maybe a roasted eggplant dip. It’s the perfect party!

KW: Do you have any kitchen tools you couldn’t live without (beyond the basics, like knives, pots/pans)?  

Amy: I really like to have mesh strainers. They double as a colander or sifter as well as straining bits out if a stock or retrieving greens from a pot of boiling, salted water. We like tools that perform more than one function.

Justin: I’m a bit of a gear head in the kitchen. I was just given a Ninja blender after testing it for a TV spot. It’s become my new favorite toy. It can juice a watermelon in seconds and it make for the smoothest soups and sauces you’ve ever tried.

***

Big thank you to Justin and Amy for the interview! I love what they say about vegetarian food being “about what is on the plate and not about what isn’t.” And pizza as the great equalizer? I absolutely believe it.

I thought I’d also share some of our experiences cooking with The Southern Vegetarian. Here are some of the things we’ve made and enjoyed so far:

The first recipe I tried was this BBQ tofu pizza with a beer crust, and it’s now become one of our favorite pizzas and therefore a regular in our dinner rotation.

BBQ Tofu Pizza with Beer Crust

The cookbook has a BBQ sauce recipe, but I have to confess to using sauce from one of our local BBQ restaurants for convenience. In my defense, it’s really good sauce. I also like to add red onions — they give it a little something-something.

The Chubby Vegetarian Gumbo

CW has made this gumbo twice now, and it’s definitely a favorite. He’s an omnivore and he says he might like it better with sausage or something added, but I love it as is and he’s happy enough to eat it vegetarian style, so.

“Chicken-Fried” Portobello Mushroom with Mushroom & Shallot Gravy

CW made this for the first time last week, and I am already lobbying for it to become a more regular item on the menu. The breaded and fried mushrooms are fantastic, and the gravy is by far the best version of any vegetarian/mushroom gravy I’ve tried. Here it’s served on green beans and tomatoes, but we thought this would also be really good with mashed potatoes and greens.

Vegetarian Meatloaf with Garlic Mashed Potatoes

Most recently, I tried this meatloaf recipe. The loaf (I’m sorry, but I have to pause and snicker at the word “loaf” EVERY TIME), is composed of tempeh, walnuts, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, carrots, celery, onion, and green peppers. It’s … a lot of chopping. They say you can food-process some of the ingredients, but not others– next time I may go rogue and dump it all in the processor. This recipe tastes GREAT, but the loaf fell apart when I tried to serve it. Leftovers from the fridge sliced up much more neatly, however (and were also delicious). I was frustrated by the structural integrity problems, but CW said it didn’t matter and he’d definitely want to eat this again, so I’ll probably just keep working on my technique over time.

We have also tried a handful of other recipes that just haven’t been photographed– the Vegan Sloppy Joe, which is one of my favorites, especially with CW’s slaw, pickles, and chips; the Vegetarian Red Beans and Rice with Andouille Eggplant, which was really good, but we wound up having it the same week as the gumbo, so it didn’t stand out to us; and the BBQ Portobello Mushroom Sandwich, which is just a nice and tasty sandwich for your sandwiching needs.

Some of the recipes, like the loaf, involve a little more prep time than we’d usually spend, but they’re still easy enough that anyone could make them. The prep is often just a lot of chopping and measuring herbs/spices.

All in all, this has become one of our favorite cookbooks — if you’re looking to make some really tasty comfort food sans meat, I’d definitely recommend it.