Thursday's Table #1: Minced tofu bowls and the best fake meat on the market

🍴 We’re a household of many cookbooks. In fact, I got three new ones for my birthday.

And yet every week when we do our Sunday planning of what’s for dinner, we end up relying on the same old staples. Burrito bowls, pesto pasta (homemade, so we tell ourselves it counts as effort), and inevitably a barbecue at this time of year.

Still, there’s a reason people buy me cookbooks. I love cooking, I love baking, and more than both, I love hosting a dinner party.

It doesn’t need to be fancy or over-complicated, just a few friends around the table, wine flowing, my BELOVED Gluggle Jug making an appearance—that is perfection to me. Sharing food with my favourite people is definitely one of my love languages.

And my love of hosting spills into the everyday, too. It's a running joke in our house that I plate everything like we’re expecting guests. Garlic bread? It gets its own side plate. Even if it’s just the two of us having a quick dinner, I genuinely believe the extra washing up is worth it.

But I am so over cooking the same old dishes week on week. To help us overcome this rut, Fraser and I have made a new rule: every week, we each need to cook something brand new from one of our cookbooks.

And that’s probably what this newsletter will contain 99% of the time.

The meals I think worth a mention, the recipes I reckon you’ll enjoy, and maybe the odd restaurant rec if we’ve been to a particularly good one.

So, let’s start with my table highlights this week. ✨

This week’s new recipe comes from Christina Soteriou’s new book, Big Veg Energy.

Both Fraser and I are huge fans of Christina. Last month, we actually attended a cooking class hosted by her, where we prepared recipes from this very book.

As she used to work at my favorite restaurant of all time, Bubala, I was confident when ordering the book that Christina’s recipes would be 10/10, and so far, she hasn’t disappointed.

This minced tofu was so easy to prepare, and we just served it with jasmine rice and the sriracha mayo as guided.

We didn’t have a cucumber in, but wanted some greens to go with our meal, so I made the sesame broccoli side from Bazaar, by Sabrina Ghayour. I generally hate making anything that uses a pestle and mortar (mainly because of the washing up), but dare I say this was worth it.

Our other highlight this week was an obligatory BBQ on Monday night.

Not only are barbecues a summer staple in the UK, but when you’re in a heatwave, it’s pretty much the only reasonable answer to ‘what’s for dinner’.

We had (vegan) sausages and lamb skewers from the ‘This Isn’t…’ brand. As two former meat lovers turned skeptics of fake meat (mainly because a lot of it tastes awful), these lamb skewers are the best we've tried. The texture, flavor, and even the smell are spot-on. For people who gave up meat for ethical and environmental reasons, this really hit the spot.

We served it with some leftover olive bread, a big old pasta salad (full of olives, sundried tomatoes, and basil), and Fraser made a tahini and mint dip to go with everything.

I have no idea how interested people will be in this weekly segment, but I wanted to try something a bit different, and I really hope you enjoyed having a big nose at what was on the table this week. ✨