Having had quite a bit of animal protein last week, I started out this week with a vegetarian and a vegan dish. Actually the pasta was only vegetarian because I added some fish sauce and grated some parmesan cheese on it so the pasta could definitely be vegan as well.

Since I was making a quick sauce I started with a jar of spaghetti sauce and enhanced it. To the plain sauce I added parsley and basil, red wine, and pepper flakes.  It tasted too sweet to me so I added some fish sauce to give it a more savory flavor.

Spaghetti with tomato sauce

The second dish was our attempt to replicate our favorite Thai dish, Spicy Basil Eggplant with Tofu. It is really pretty easy to make. You stir fry the components and then you add the sauce and it’s done. Our problems with it came from too spicy fresno chiles and using globe eggplant instead of Chinese or Japanese eggplants. We are going to have a redo later in the week and in the meantime I will find the correct types of eggplant.

Spicy Thai basil eggplant with tofu and brown rice