Extremely flavored vegan Lunch spelt salad with cucumber, nori and home made tofu-yogurt

How to keep track of all those recipe(-idea)s you want to try? Finally I found a solution for that, tested it out and made up this (vegan)  Lunch spelt salad with cucumber, nori and home made tofu-yogurt.

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I tried it every possible way. Cut out many recipes from magazines and newspapers and kept them in folders, organized in my own peculiar way: pasta, rice, couscous, oven dishes, Asian food, all kinds of other dishes, pastry and deserts. While separating meat, fish and vegetarian dishes as well. Wrote the recipes I tried and loved in a blue notebook. Later just printed recipes and folded them between the pages.
I had bookmarks, but how to find that one recipe? Or get inspired cooking one from the list? For a while I even had a blog in which I copied and pasted recipes I wanted to try. I did that for about 3 weeks. I copied and pasted recipes in a Word-document. Then another Word-doc. And another one on my work pc. Needless to say that I never made any of these recipes.
But I still am collecting. I pin ’em on Pinterest. Started saving some nice ones on Foodies.com, but never looked at it again. Favorite ideas and links on Twitter. I sometimes send recipes to my mailbox (did you know you can receive my recipes in your mailbox? Sign up here.). I make notes in the small notebook I carry around all the time. Proclaimed a new notebook for this sole purpose, but lost that one.

Instead of giving it up, I’m trying out a new method. And I’m so enthusiastic about it, I need to share it. Are you sitting? Well, here it is:

Make the recipe or try the idea within a week. Or just forget about it.

Let me tell you: this works great! This lunch spelt salad with cucumber, nori and home made tofu-yogurt was inspired of this recipe by Redfox who unfortunately quit blogging on Hungry tiger (great name!) long before I found out about it. I read it the day before yesterday, it kept lingering in my head, so – with my new trick in mind – I made it. My way!
I simply took the idea of a grain with Japanese soy sauce, lemon and nori. The avocado in my fruit bowl unfortunately already had passed, so I mashed some silken tofu to become a yogurt-like sauce for smoothness in this strong flavored vegan dish.

LEMONS illustration and recipe by EDIE EATS by Edith Dourleijn

Lunch spelt salad with cucumber, nori and home made tofu-yogurt (vegan)

Vegan meals can be boring and a bit plain. But not if you add some of strong flavors, like Japanese soy sauce, lemon juice and something hot like sriracha. You’ll be surprised!

You need (for 2):
1/2 cup spelt
2 cups vegetable stock
2 teaspoons Japanese soy sauce
some lemon juice
a few drops of sriracha (or some other spicyness)
1/3 or so of an English cucumber
some lettuce leaves
1/2 sheet nori
1/4 cup (soft) tofu
1 teaspoon milk (normal or made from almonds or soy, all is fine)
salt and pepper

You do:
Cook the spelt in the vegetable stock. Check package how long it will take, but don’t run off. Keep an eye on it, to prevent your pan to cook dry. I liked the spelt to be a bit chewy for this lunch salad, so I didn’t cook it until it was completely soft.
Add soy sauce, some lemon juice and sriracha to taste. Make it stand out.

Clean the veggies. Peel and cut cucumber in small pieces. Lettuce bite-size. The nori in very small stripes.

Make your tofu-yogurt. With a fork press the tofu, dilute with the milk until it vaguely resembles yogurt. With a food processor or emersion blender you definitely get a smoother ‘yogurt’, but also more washing up to do.
Add some lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. You want it to be as flavorful as normal yogurt.

Tip: Of course you don’t have to go vegan on this, nor buy tofu for this sole purpose. If you happen to have some plain thick (soy-)yogurt in your fridge; just use that! Or try the original idea: cut some ripe avocado in small pieces.

Serve the spelt mixed with the veggies and nori. Add some salt and pepper to taste and scoop up the tofu-yogurt.

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