Mixed Vegetables – Bell Pepper, Beans and Tofu in Tomato

An easy mixed vegetable dish with tofu – something new for your tongue and at the same time healthy.

Today I want to give you the recipe for a mixed vegetable dish. When discussing about the name of this mix, we were not sure whether to best call it bell pepper or capsicum. We decided to call it bell pepper even though in our usual talking we use the German word ‘Paprika’ or the Hindi word ‘shimla mirch’. The ingredients are not difficult to get, it is easy to prepare and it tastes delicious. Try cooking it yourself with this recipe and let me know if you liked it.

How to cook this Mixed Vegetable Dish

First of all you need to prepare the vegetables by washing them thoroughly. Then you cut the tomatoes, the bell pepper and the beans into medium-sized pieces and keep them in separate bowls. Finally you cut the tofu into small pieces, too.

Heat up the olive oil in a deep pan or a pot. When it is hot, put cumin, garam masala, coriander, turmeric, ginger and the curry leaves and stir them so that they can unfold their aroma. The first of the vegetables to add into the pan are the tomatoes. Mix them well with the spices and fry them for a while until they have become a bit soft.

In the next step you can add the beans, stir once to mix them with the tomatoes, and then add the bell pepper which you also mix among the other vegetables. This is the point to add salt into your food. Let the mixture cook for about three minutes.

We personally like the taste of smoked tofu, so we try to get that but if you have bought plain tofu, you can use the time while the vegetables are cooking. Take a pan and heat up half a tablespoon of olive oil in which you then fry the plain tofu pieces until they are golden.

Add the tofu into the vegetables, stir, and let the dish get fully cooked. You need to stir from time to time but can easily prepare the remaining parts of your meal in the meantime.

When the beans, the hardest vegetable in this dish, are soft, your mixed vegetable of bell peppers, beans and tofu in tomato is ready.

Enjoy your meal!

Ayurvedic Values

The bell pepper and the beans that we used as well as the tofu increase Vata in the body. As we don’t want to have a lot of gas production in our digestive system, we have added the ginger and cumin in a higher amount. You can of course further increase the ginger if you like its taste and its Vata pacifying effect onto your bowels.

Bell peppers additionally increase Pitta in the body but this effect is balanced by the beans and the tofu, which both reduce pitta.