Occasional cooks: weird pasta bakes, roast chooks and tofu

Here is your weekly thread to talk anything and everything food. 

Share what you're cooking this week, ask for tips or recipes for a dish, tell us about your meals out.

Via goodfood.com.au

I was drawn in by the picture of this dish, but then rather put off by the description - it's a cheeseburger gnocchi bake. Make this one at your own risk, but please report back to us if you do!

Shredded chicken bibimbap via goodfood.com.au

If you're needing something quick and with not too much cooking to heat up the kitchen, here's a list of 30 recipes that use a supermarket roast chicken.

Mapo Tofu from seriouseats.com

Can you cook tofu? I've found that winging it with tofu is definitely not the right idea. 

Here's a great article all about tofu, including the useless fact that a letter from Benjamin Franklin is the earliest mention of tofu by an American. After reading this, I finally feel confident about tofu!

I'm looking up tofu because I'm trying to get better about subbing out meat more frequently. I like plenty of vegetarian meals, but some dishes don't lend themselves to all vege; you need a meat-like protein. And I need to get comfortable with the techniques and terms, so that I can make a mental substitution while planning meals in the supermarket, rather than giving it up as too hard.

Last night, I made the hoisin mince noodles dish I keep talking about, but this time I used Quorn mince. The Quorn tasted fine (well, it was tasteless), but it also had no texture at all, so the dish was a little lacking. I'm thinking some cubed tofu, like in a Mapo Tofu, might do the trick. 

What's happening in your kitchen this week?