5 Quick Meals I’m obsessed with right now. (easy, vegan & unique)

Hello, hi, welcome back. This video features five to six simple but unique vegan lunch ideas. Some you might also consider elaborate snacks, depending on what you serve these with, but they're all really really good, very satisfying. A lot of them are once again inspired by things I've been seeing and saving online, but of course with my own twists and vegan alterations. Also thank you to Squarespace for sponsoring this video. This first idea could very well be described as a one plate recipe. Truly the hardest part of this recipe is trying to get the tofu out of the packaging in one piece, but basically what you want to do is add all the flavoring ingredients straight onto the tofu, starting with a layer of gochujang, a minced clove of garlic, a finely chopped spring onion, agave syrup, rice vinegar, vegan fish sauce, and light soy sauce, and last but not least, a generous sprinkle of roasted crispy seaweed. Now heat up the vegetable oil. You'll know the oil is ready once when you add something like a chopstick, there's bubbles forming around it, but you also don't want it to be smoking. Now pour the oil over the tofu slowly, allowing the garlic and onion to pretty much cook instantly, and that's basically it. By itself it's a lovely side dish that I highly recommend you serve with some sticky rice, instant noodles, rice noodles if you're short on time, and also perhaps some steamed vegetables. I've never really been a big fan of just serving cold silken tofu, but this way it's really delicious because with the oil it's halfway cooked I guess, and there's so much flavor added from all the other ingredients, so it's sweet, sour, spicy. This next recipe has got the most amazing texture in my opinion, and the main idea for the noodles I saw on Instagram, full credit to this person, I had to try this immediately. But first I'm preparing the peanut sauce by combining creamy roasted peanut butter, a bit of tahini, some light soy sauce, chili crisp oil, fresh lime juice, and agave syrup. Then I'm also adding a splash or two of hot water to adjust the consistency, and then I'm setting that aside. Now for the noodles, I'm using square rice paper, kind of felt that to be more fitting, and then using a vegetable peeler, I am cutting the cucumber into thin long ribbons to the best of my abilities. They definitely weren't all equally shaped, but that's okay. Now to create a noodle, grab a sheet of wet rice paper, just make sure that it's equally wet. Next, add one to three slices of the thin cucumber, and now by the time that the rice paper starts becoming soft and malleable, you want to roll it up. Now this first one here felt a bit too thick, almost like tteok, like Korean rice cakes, which could also be interesting, but I wanted more flat noodles, you know? So what I ended up doing is cutting my rice paper in half. Now this depends here on the brand of rice paper you're using, the size and thickness of it, because if you have more thin rice paper, then you might not want to cut it in half, but just play around with different sizes, see what works best for you. I mean there's no right or wrong way to go about this, and these are pretty fun to make. Make as many as you want, I made around eight, and of course serve with the peanut sauce. This is so delicious. Like I said, the texture is truly perfect. It's chewy, slightly crunchy, yet creamy at the same time. Next, we've got even more noodles. This is Lebanese-inspired yogurt lemon pasta. Bring some salt water up to a boil to cook some pasta of your choosing. I'm going with spaghetti. Now in the meantime, peel two to three cloves of garlic. No need to chop them, just cook them whole in quite a bit of olive oil for about five minutes over medium low. Next, add the following ingredients to a large blender. Unsweetened soy yogurt, silken tofu, lemon zest, lemon juice, the cooked garlic, plus all the oil that the garlic was in, a dash of cumin, salt of course, and feel free to add other spices. Obviously my version is not fully authentic, but usually this comes with some sort of crunchy pine nut topping. I only had walnuts at home, so that's what we're working with here. And then it's time to assemble. Mix that well. Taste test, see if you need more salt, more lemon juice. Feel free to serve this with some fresh mint, and then can't forget about the walnuts. This was so fresh, highly recommend. I spontaneously put together another version of this dish, where instead of spaghetti, I'm going with the cucumber noodles from the previous recipe. And that kind of turns this into an even more summery gluten-free version. Now moving on to another real inspired recipe. I love this Instagram account here. It's so wholesome, and this idea on shapeless onigiri spoke to me. First, prepare the filling by combining cold salted sticky rice, light miso paste, vegan feta, and a splash of water. Next, you're going to grab some tofu skin. I went to GoAsia and I could only find these ones here, which come in this brine, unlike the ones in the video, but I feel like that's okay. It just has that typical sweet inari flavor, but I did kind of pat them dry a little bit before filling that with a few tablespoons of the rice mixture. The tofu skin is a bit delicate, so be gentle here. Also filling each pocket with a little bit of fresh baby spinach. Like in the real, you could add a toothpick, but after frying a couple of these, I noticed that the toothpick isn't 100% necessary, unless you really want to fry all sides. So it's kind of up to you. You could just cook them kind of like dumplings, where you only fry the bottom. They're savory, slightly sweet, and just so satisfying. There's more delicious handheld bites in this last recipe. It's for these instant noodle rolls. Also inspired by something I saw on Instagram. I've been spending too much time on that app. Anyway, for this idea, boil instant noodles without the flavor packaging. So that should take around three minutes. At the last second, I threw in some fresh spinach and transferred that to a big plate. Next, add the flavoring packet or packets. Also add some vegan pizza cheese and, optionally, some silken tofu and a squeeze of fresh lime or lemon juice. You could also add some spring onion. There's really endless options here. And now that's our filling to add to wet rice paper. Yeah, these ones here were on the smaller side, so I'm rolling these up kind of like a burrito. So folding over one half, pulling the filling towards me, then tucking in the sides and rolling the rest away from me. I'm pan frying these over medium-high heat in a nonstick pan for about three to four minutes per side. But yeah, serve these pretty much right away. These are so delicious. They're gonna stay hot for a while, so be careful there. I still really wanted to be able to achieve the viral snail type look, so I made another batch here using large rice paper. This is such a kid's meal or kid's snack, but it's also delicious to me. So yeah, there we go. That's it for today's video. It was a bit of a quick one, but I feel like I was able to squeeze a lot of ideas in there. This is a lemon cheesecake brownie that I've attempted today for my friend's birthday. It smells really good and I think it's gonna taste really good. Visually, I feel like I've done better. The base is my classic brownie recipe. It's in my cookbook. Normally, I add like a pumpkin swirl to it, and so I did that chocolate base minus any pumpkin pie spice. But then for the cheesecake part, which turned out a bit too liquidy, hence there not being many distinct swirls, but it's basically vegan cream cheese, vegan butter, vegan yogurt, lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, vanilla, vanilla, and I think maybe next time I'll just skip the yogurt, and then it should be more firm. If you want the detailed recipe, let me know. Anyway, thank you so much for watching. I feel like I've been in a little bit of creative rut. Usually, I have so many ideas all the time, but lately it's been a bit difficult. So if you have any, let me know in the comments. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. But I know that like once September starts and cozy season ensues, my creative video juices will flow again, I feel like. But until then, let me know. Let me know what you'd like to see from me in the comments. Thank you so much for watching, and thank you to Squarespace for the support. 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