Healthy One Pot Carrot Cabbage Tofu Meal with Lime and Peanuts: Nasi Goreng

This delicious recipe comes from Anna Jones’ cookbook One Pot, Pan, Planet; A greener way to cook for you, your family and the planet. Here’s a link to her website where you can find a lot more yummy recipes and info about her book.

Why this recipe, especially after my long hiatus from contributing to this blog? Well, delicious, healthy, meal in a bowl: those are my favourite dishes. Plus most of the ingredients are things I normally have in my kitchen, with the exception of the crispy shallots. I found some crispy onions at a Mediterranean store for about $5 – close enough for me!

The title of this recipe in the cookbook is “Carrot and Peanut Nasi Goreng,” but I wanted a title that explains a bit more about the recipe. I’d say the cabbage, tofu, and peanuts are the main features here, with lots of flavour from ginger, garlic, herbs, lime, and the sauce that gets drizzled on at the end. My guests liked that they could add as much of the toppings as they wanted – not everybody loves cilantro and hot sauce it seems . . . so they can choose what they want to add the theirs.

Was a hot summer day the best time to make this? Only if you love standing in front of a hot frying pan . . . with a big fan running at least.

Was my frying pan big enough for this recipe? Of course not, even though it’s a big pan . . . so I just stirred carefully when it was fully loaded.

I only made a few little changes to the recipe: I did not use the complete half of a cabbage because I just couldn’t fit it in the pan; maybe I was meant to use half a small cabbage. I also didn’t put in as much rice as the recipe asked for; the recipe asks for 350g cooked rice, and I started with 1/2 cup dry rice, so that would be a bit less than called for. I used tofu; tempeh is given as an alternative, but I really don’t like tempe, and I really enjoy tofu! I also wrapped my tofu in a towel for about an hour before using it, to soak up some of the water. I put in only a little chilli oil, but put a bowl of it on the table to drizzle on later, so everyone could choose their own spice level. I have a batch of Wil Yeung’s chilli oil, which I highly recommend. I used the 50/50 mix of honey and soy sauce instead of ketjap manis. I didn’t use the optional fried eggs. I always keep ginger in my freezer – so I have it when I need it, and because it is so easy to grate it when it is frozen.

This recipe makes about 4 servings.

Please let me know if you try this recipe and what you thought of it! I’d love to hear from you!

What you need:

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 200 grams firm or extra firm tofu, cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1 small onion or 2 shallots
• thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated (easiest to do this with frozen ginger)
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
• 300-350grams cooked basmati rice (cold, day old rice!)
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon chilli oil or sambal oelek, depending on your heat tolerance
• 2 carrots, peeled and grated
• 1/2 a head of cabbage, chopped (or other green veg of your choice)

For serving:

• juice of 1 lime
• small bunch of cilantro, chopped
• 100 grams chopped peanuts
• 2 spring/green onions, thinly sliced
• crispy shallots or onions
• 1 tablespoon ketjap manis OR 50/50 mix of soy sauce and honey
• (optional 2 eggs for frying)

What you do:

1. Begin by laying out all the ingredients you need and chopping all the vegetables up as listed in the ingredients.
2. Heat a large frying pan over medium/high heat, adding a little oil. Fry the tofu (I did mine in 2 batches) for about 5 minutes, turning frequently, until browned. Remove these from the pan into a bowl for later.
3. Turn the heat to medium and add a little more oil to pan. Fry the shallots until soft, taking care not to burn them. Add the ginger and garlic and fry for another minute. Add the turmeric and fry for another minute.
4. Add the rice to the pan, then pour on the soy sauce and chilli oil, stirring to coat the rice.
5. Add the grated carrot and chopped cabbage, frying for about 2 minutes.
6. Add the tofu and continue to fry until everything is hot. If you choose to fry eggs for this dish, do that now in another pan.
7. Squeeze the lime juice over the rice and vegetable mixture.
8. To serve, spoon some ketjap manis/ soy and honey sauce, on each serving. Sprinkle on the cilantro, spring onions, peanuts and crispy onions. Add extra chilli oil if you like a bit more heat!
9. Enjoy!! Please comment!!

Thanks to everyone who has been so patient in waiting for a blog post! I’ve had some incredibly busy years, completing a Masters degree while working a very full-time job. I got out of the habit of taking photos my new dishes, and sure didn’t have time to write up a blog posting. I also wondered if anybody is out there… I get a bunch of hits on my site, but very few people comment, so I sort of thought no one would really care if I quit this blog. I’m going to make an effort to post from time to time, so I hope you’ll stay tuned!