Green curry with tofu and CSA veg

When I find myself in need of a spicy, delectable, and comforting dinner, my thoughts turn lightly to coconut milk curry.

Curry is one of those dishes that can take anything you throw at it. This makes it particularly vital as a tool for coping with the weekly CSA onslaught.

For instance, in this pan, we have:

- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- 1 purple kohlrabi, peeled and cubed
- 1 small white turnip, peeled and cubed
- 1 random broccoli stem, peeled and cubed
- 1 purple bell pepper, chopped
- 1 handful mixed green bush beans and scarlet runner beans, chopped
- 3 green onions, whites only, chopped

With cubed, seared tofu, coconut milk, and green curry paste, plus a base of jasmine rice, this made a totally delightful dinner. And, as an added bonus, the crisper was substantially roomier afterward.

Hooray for curry!

Green curry with tofu and CSA veg

1 block firm tofu
peanut oil
1 medium to large onion
2-3 cups mixed vegetables of your choice (or as above, if you happen to subscribe to my CSA)
1 cup coconut milk
~2 tbsp green curry paste, adjusted to taste
scallion greens or cilantro to garnish
your choice of grain or noodle accompaniment

Start an hour or two ahead of time by pressing your tofu. Cut your block of tofu in half, creating two thin, wide slabs. Put your tofu between two cutting boards and weigh it down with a heavy cast-iron pot or a bowlful of water. If you like, put a towel under one end of the bottom cutting board to keep the whole contraption at a slight angle. Let your tofu press for at least an hour to eliminate excess water.

When you're ready to cook, slice your tofu into cubes. Heat a wide saute pan, preferably nonstick or cast-iron, on medium to hot. Add a generous slug of peanut oil. Sear your tofu cubes, turning occasionally. When your tofu is golden brown on all sides, remove it to a plate and set it aside.

Now it's time to tackle your vegetables. Chop your onion into 1-inch chunks and add it to the residual oil in the pan. Cook, stirring or shaking the pan occasionally, for about 5-7 minutes, or until the onions begin to soften.

While the onions are cooking, start peeling and chopping all the rest of your vegetables, beginning with those that take the longest to cook. After your onions are tender, add the longer-cooking vegetables to the pan. Cook them for about ten minutes before adding any delicate vegetables. I started with kohlrabi, turnip, and broccoli stem, and reserved my peppers and beans until the end.

When all your vegetables are just barely tender, it's time to get your curry on. Add your coconut milk and curry paste to the pan and stir to mix. Bring everything to a simmer. Put the lid on the pan, reduce the heat to low, and simmer for about five to ten minutes. Taste and correct seasonings as necessary.

Add your reserved tofu to the pan for the last two to three minutes of cooking. When the tofu is hot through, you are done. Hooray!

We ladled our delightful green curry over big spoonfuls of jasmine rice and garnished it with scallion greens. You can eat yours over any grain you choose, or over a pile of slippery rice noodles if you prefer. It's all good.

What strategies do you use to transform your kohlrabi and turnips into a feast?

Summer rolls with fresh herbs & peanut-chili sauce

What's next on the it's-too-hot-to-cook menu? I propose the summer roll: seared tofu, slivered crunchy vegetables, and handfuls of fresh herbs rolled in a delicate rice paper wrapper and dipped in a rich, tangy peanut sauce. Obviously the tofu requires some minor stovetop heat (although you can always use raw, or just make rolls minus tofu if you prefer), but everything else is cold.

For vegetable fillings, I went pretty classic. In place of the usual rice noodles, I used shredded cabbage, which provided a nice extra crunch and eliminated a pot of boiling water on the stove. And of course summer rolls need an assortment of herbs, so I grabbed some mint and basil from the garden and a bunch of cilantro from the store.

The classic sauce for Thai summer rolls is peanut. I've been looking for a good recipe for way too long, and now I finally have one. I based it on Minimalist Baker's Thai peanut sauce, with a few key changes. For one thing, we don't have any chili garlic paste hanging around; instead, I used sweet chili sauce and omitted the extra sugar. The result was the best Thai peanut sauce I've ever made.

Summer rolls with tofu, veg, and herbs

firm tofu
peanut oil
cucumber
carrot
red bell pepper
cabbage
fresh cilantro, mint, & basil
rice paper wrappers
peanut sauce to serve

Start by cutting your tofu into long batons and searing them on all sides in a little peanut oil. Let them cool before you assemble your rolls.

Seed your cucumber, peel both it and your carrot, and sliver up all your vegetables. Strip your herbs off their stems; if the leaves are particularly huge, cut them into smaller pieces.

To assemble a summer roll, first soften your rice paper wrapper by soaking it in a shallow dish of water for about 1 minute. I used a pie plate, which was a bit smaller than ideal, but worked nonetheless. Only soak one sheet at a time, or your papers will get too soggy. You want them to be just flexible.

Put your rice paper on a work surface and pile your fillings in a line 2/3 of the way down, leaving a bit of space at either side. If you want a lovely decorative herb presentation, you can arrange your herbs in a line another third of the way up the wrapper, but it's also fine to just pile them up with the main filling. I decided to go for the fancy presentation not only because it's pretty, but because we have a cilantro-hater in the house, so I wanted to clearly distinguish between rolls with cilantro and those without.

Roll the bottom edge of your rice paper up over the vegetable and tofu filling. Fold in both sides to seal, and then continue rolling from the bottom up to create a long egg roll shape. Repeat until all your fillings are used up. I made ten rolls with half a block of tofu.

Serve your rolls with peanut sauce. If you have leftovers, cover them with a damp paper towel in a sealed container and they should keep for a couple days.

Thai peanut sauce

2 giant honking spoonfuls natural peanut butter
2 tbsp soy sauce
2+ tbsp Thai sweet chili sauce
juice of 1 lime
1/4 cup hot tap water

Stir the living crap out of your peanut butter before you use it. I'm just saying. Natural peanut butter naturally separates into oils & solids, so you want to be super sure you've gotten the oil well mixed down to the bottom of the jar before you start scooping. Do it! Otherwise you'll be facing a quarter jar of dry peanut paste in a few weeks.

Combine all ingredients but the water in a medium bowl and mix well with a fork. Add half the water and mix again. If you're happy with the consistency, go ahead and serve. If you want to thin it down a bit more, incorporate the rest of the water.

Eat with summer rolls.

Needless to say, there will be more peanut sauce in the future. I would absolutely make up a batch just to dip cucumber slices and carrot sticks. It would be great tossed with cold noodles and crowned with steamed broccoli or ladled over a plateful of seared tofu and vegetables. I'm also having visions of brushing it over eggplant slices and baking until awesome. It's all good.

Hooray!

Giant tofu stirfry with mixed vegetables and peanut butter

A little while ago I had a delightful noontime visit from my friend Chrissy, who had driven over the mountain from Santa Cruz to go to multiple interviews in one day. YIKES. Clearly, she needed some relaxing downtime in the form of a delicious lunch she didn't have to think about at all. So I broke out the biggest frying pan I have, turned on the rice cooker, and turned out a huge batch of vegan tofu stir-fry stuffed with shredded cabbage and carrot, nice chunks of broccoli, and sweet red bell pepper. Hooray!

I used peanut oil because it has a high smoke point and I like the flavor it adds to the dish. If you're serving someone with a nut allergy, you can simply switch out the peanut oil for vegetable oil and eliminate the peanut butter. Something like tahini or sunflower seed butter might be a good substitute, depending on the specific allergy. But this is also great with no nut content whatever. No worries.

Giant tofu stirfry with mixed vegetables and peanut

firm tofu
peanut oil/veg oil
soy sauce
sriracha sauce
sesame oil
onion
garlic
fresh ginger
carrot
broccoli
red pepper
cabbage
all the other veg in the house
peanut butter
rice wine vinegar

Start in advance by pressing your tofu. Slice the tofu in half horizontally, keeping both pieces as even as possible, and sandwich them between two cutting boards. Weight the whole business down with a pot full of water or something similarly heavy, and let sit for an hour or so. I like to put a towel under one end of the bottom cutting board and hang the other end over the lip of the sink, so all the liquid drains into the sink itself.

When you're ready to cook, slice your tofu into 1-inch cubes. Brush on both sides with a sprinkling of soy sauce, sriracha, and sesame oil. Heat a frying pan to medium-high, add a few dabs of peanut oil, and rotate to coat. Then slide in all your tofu. Fry, tossing occasionally, until your tofu is golden brown and delightful on all sides.

While your tofu is cooking, slice up all your aromatics and vegetables. You can use practically any veg you have in the house for a stir-fry of this nature. I used everything in the ingredient list; things like bok choy, mushrooms, or green pepper would be great additions as well.

When your tofu is done, tip it out of the pan and set it aside. Add another dab of peanut oil and tip in the onions. Cook until golden, stirring occasionally. Add the garlic and ginger and cook for another few minutes. Then start gradually adding in your main vegetables, starting with those that take longer to cook (broccoli, carrot) and ending with those that don't take so long (cabbage, red pepper). Season the pan with soy sauce and sriracha (and powdered ginger, if you don't have fresh) with your first vegetable addition.

When all of your vegetables are tender, add a big spoonful of peanut butter to the pan, along with a bit more soy sauce and sriracha as needed. You might want to add a little bit of water to help melt the peanut butter as well. Add your cooked tofu and toss together over slightly lowered heat until the peanut butter has melted and coated everything and the tofu is hot through. When everything is ready, take the pan off the heat and stir in a splash of rice wine vinegar.

Serve over rice or your choice of noodle. Udon would clearly be pretty great. I think I'd make a spicy peanut-soy sauce separately instead of pouring small bits of everything right into the pan in that case, though.

We ate our stirfry over long-grain brown rice, and then Chrissy went off, full & happy, to her next appointment. Such a satisfying lunch.

What kind of dishes do you love to serve your friends?

Tofu scramble and potatoes rösti

This weekend our friend Chrissy came up from Santa Cruz to hang out. At our house, "hang out" includes not only staying up until all hours gossiping, but also getting up in the morning for a delightful farmer's market expedition and a massive brunch at home. Best brunching forever!

This time, we decided to make a vegetable-heavy tofu scramble and a panful of rösti.

Tofu scramble is obviously pretty widely known as the breakfast of vegetarians and vegans--but what is rösti? Well. It's a Swiss potato cake that bears a reasonable resemblance to hash browns. Essentially, it's grated potatoes cooked in butter or oil until they form a delightful cake. Who wouldn't want one of those at brunch?

Wikipedia tells me that rösti is only eaten in German-speaking parts of Switzerland, but this seems off. For one thing, I first heard of it in a book of essays by Laurie Colwin, a longtime denizen of NYC. For another, we've watched Jacques Pepin not only make a rösti but also tell us what it's traditionally called in France--pommes paillasson, which translates to "doormat potatoes"--so obviously rösti is also made in French-speaking areas at the very least. The finished cake does indeed look like a doormat! It's just a much tastier doormat than you can find just about anywhere else.

Let's go!

Tofu scramble with fresh garden veg and basil

olive oil
scallion/other onion of your choice
tomato
bell pepper
hot pepper
chard or other greens
firm tofu
turmeric, oregano, marjoram, salt, pepper
fresh basil or parsley

Start by sauteing chopped scallion or onion in some olive oil in a frying pan of your choice. When it's soft, start adding any other vegetable you think would be tasty. I put in a bunch of various sweet peppers, a tomato or two, and a jalapeno. Keep any greens and fresh herbs to the side for last-minute addition.

While your vegetables are cooking, prep your tofu. In a large bowl, break up a block of tofu roughly with a fork. Season with a little turmeric, some oregano and marjoram, and salt and pepper. If you want to go for a totally different spice mix, that should work too. Anything that works with your vegetables should turn out fine.

When your vegetables are cooked through, add your tofu to the pan and stir to mix. Add a couple big handfuls of chopped greens of your choice too. When the tofu is hot through and the greens are just wilted, taste for seasoning and take the pan off the heat. Stir in a couple handfuls of fresh chopped basil right before serving.

Hooray! Scrambled tofu for all!

Rösti aka Pommes Paillasson aka Doormat Potatoes

boiling potatoes
scallion greens
olive oil
salt, pepper

Start by prepping your potatoes. Peel them, grate them, and squeeze them in a dishcloth (or over a bowl) to remove as much liquid as possible. The secret is squeezing out all the water in the potatoes! Be thorough!

Chop up some scallion greens or other onion device of your choice. Add them to the dry potato shreds and season well with salt and pepper. Mix well.

Now heat up a large frying pan of your choice on medium-high. Cast iron is probably the best choice here; we used a large nonstick pan. I'd choose the widest pan you can manage, keeping in mind that you're going to have to flip the potato cake eventually. The thinner you can make your potato cake, the better.

Pour a large slug of olive oil into the pan and swirl to coat. Then lay in your potato mixture, pressing it down firmly as you go. Cook, shaking the pan occasionally, until your potato cake is dark golden brown on the underside. This should take somewhere around eight to ten minutes, depending on your stove.

Now it's time to flip. Wear oven mitts while you're doing this. Essentially, you want to cover your pan with a similarly sized plate or platter, hold the two together, and turn the entire thing over to release the potatoes onto the plate. Add a bit more oil to the pan before sliding the potatoes back in, uncooked side down. Hooray! You did it!

Continue cooking until the underside of your potato cake matches the golden brown of the top. Slide the finished cake onto a cutting board, cut into triangles, and eat.

Rösti cries out for a variety of delicious garnishes. (Or is "garnish" already a mass noun? Hmm.) Anything you put on a traditional potato pancake will be great here. Applesauce? Yes. Sour cream or creme fraiche--maybe with some chopped dill or more scallion greens? Yes. Chopped hard-boiled egg and crunchy salt? Yes. Capers and finely chopped red onion? Yep. Smoked salmon or caviar? Sure, if you like that kind of thing. All of the above at once? Well, maybe not applesauce, but everything else--yes.

Hooray for brunch! What do you guys like to cook on lazy weekend mornings?

Homemade wonton freezer stash!

Look what I made this weekend! WONTONS!

Ok, I'm ridiculously excited to have completed a project like this. Wontons seemed completely insurmountable before I tried making them. Now they seem eminently doable. I can make as many wontons as I want! I can fill them with any combination of delicious items that may come into my head! THE WORLD IS MINE FOR THE TAKING!

I must admit that I used premade wonton skins, but I am ok with relying on them for my first expedition. The Asian grocery had several different options. I chose medium skins, so I could work through my initial awkward folding process without worrying about ripping every wonton in half. I hear that thin skins are the best, however.

Sweet potato-tofu-chive wontons

sweet potato
firm tofu
Chinese chives/scallion/etc
ginger
sesame oil
soy sauce
an egg/flax substitute
wonton wrappers (square)
a bowl of water for adhesive purposes

First, cook sweet potato by your method of choice. I actually cooked mine in the microwave, solely because that method was fastest. Baking or steaming your sweet potato should work out fine, however. Leftover sweet potato is also a great plan.

While your potato is cooking, press a block of firm tofu. I got my tofu out of the 4-for-$1 bulk bin at the Asian market, so I'm actually not certain of its firmness. Just avoid silken tofu and everything should be fine.

If you've never pressed tofu before, don't worry; it's easy. Put your tofu between two cutting boards, preferably in the sink. Put a spoon or something under one end so the whole business is slightly tilted. Then put a pot filled with water (or something similarly heavy and resistant to water damage) on top. Let the business sit for at least fifteen minutes, and longer if you have time. This will let liquid drain out of the tofu and make it a bit firmer.

When your tofu is pressed and your sweet potato cool enough to touch, it's time to make the wonton filling.

Skin your potato and chop it into tiny cubes. Chop your tofu into similar cubes. Finely chop a handful of Chinese chives or scallions. Use a teaspoon to scrape the skin off a one to two inch chunk of ginger; mince finely.

Put all these into a large mixing bowl. Season with soy sauce and sesame oil. Mix everything together until it looks like this.

If you're concerned about cohesion, crack an egg into the mix and stir until well blended. Vegan subs like the flax-in-water trick should work well here, but I also think it would be ok to just leave the egg out entirely.

The filling is ready; it's time to wrap wontons. I followed the method given here, which was not as hard as it looks in the pictures (er, her pictures. I didn't even try to take pictures of my own hands on my first wonton-wrapping endeavor).

It's definitely hard to describe how to fold these, but here's the basic technique. First, make sure you have wrappers, a bowl of water, and filling all in easy reach. Put a scant teaspoon of filling into the center of your wonton wrapper. Use your finger to wet all four edges of the wrapper, and then fold to create a rectangle. Wet the lower left corner of the wonton. Last, twist the opposite right corner down to meet the wet corner, and press together to seal.

I'm pretty sure I did this wrong, as I ended up connecting the front right corner to the front left instead of connecting the back right corner to the front left. On the other hand, the wontons did definitely hold together, and that's the most important part, right?

I put my finished wontons in the tray I'd saved from our last pack of premade wontons. This was an excellent plan until I ran out of space. Oh no! Well, due to our icemaking refrigerator, we also had a stack of unused ice trays in the cabinet. Perfect!

After about an hour of folding, I ran out of filling. I only had one wrapper rip the entire time! Hooray! I will definitely be trying out some thinner wrappers next time.

Finished product: 48 wontons. I actually haven't eaten any of these yet; instead, I froze them all in their trays, then transferred them to a large bag. Gloating accomplished.

So now we have a several-months' supply of tasty vegetarian wontons. I have a new skill, and wontons besides. Now, of course, I really want to make a gigantic batch of various other kinds of wontons as well...we will see.

Breakfast in NYC

Oh, you thought it was going to be bagels? Well, that happens sometimes, but so does this:

Leftover Thai delivery. This one is my default basil/onion/tofu concoction, and after ten minutes in the toaster oven with rice and a little water, it's perfect. Occasional breakfast Thai is one of my favorite things about living in NYC, which is perhaps lame, but whatever. You know why breakfasts like this didn't happen in California? There was no available Thai delivery. How Silicon Valley gets away with that I don't know.

I really have to figure out how to cook tofu that is not just delicious initially but also on reheating. I mean, tofu is notoriously difficult to cook well, but I still manage to make palatable dinners. It's just that the leftovers are another story.

Tofu and veg

I love nigari tofu so much.

Desultory internet research reveals that nigari is mostly magnesium chloride, and is derived from evaporated seawater. How did anyone come up with this? Who said "I bet the minerals in seawater, not all of them, but only a couple, would be good for coagulating tofu!"? Humans and food: so awesome and so weird.

I took my awesome, weird tofu and seared it with soy and sriracha. I also roasted some cauliflower in olive oil. Then we only had to chop up some green onion and dinner was ready.

Seared tofu

nigari tofu
tasteless or peanut oil
soy sauce
sriracha sauce
rice wine vinegar
other seasonings if you want them

This will take about five to ten minutes, so if you want roasted cauliflower, definitely make that first.

Cut your tofu into small cubes or triangles, then pat them with a towel to soak up any excess dampness. Get a nonstick frying pan medium-hot, dribble a bit of oil into it, tilt the pan to spread out the oil, and put in your tofu in one layer. It should sizzle.

Mix up some soy sauce, sriracha sauce, and a little bit of rice wine vinegar in a measuring cup, and pour it over your tofu. You could also add things like minced garlic or shredded ginger if you want. I used maybe 3/4 cup for two servings of tofu. Shake up the pan to get sauce on every piece of tofu, then continue to sear, turning occasionally, until the tofu is browned and a little crispy on all sides.

That is it. Delicious seared tofu! Eat it with snipped green onion and roasted cauliflower.

Roasted cauliflower

a head of cauliflower
olive oil
salt, pepper

Heat the oven to 425 or 450F.

Chop a cauliflower into reasonably small florets. Toss the florets with some olive oil and season with salt (lightly) and pepper (more heavily). Spread the florets on a cookie sheet in one layer and put them into the oven. Roast, checking every five or ten minutes to flip pieces and rotate the pan, until the cauliflower florets have attained crispy dark golden brown bits all over them. This should take something like twenty or 25 minutes.

Then put them in bowls and eat them with your tofu.

If I were changing the seasonings here, I might sear the tofu with a bunch of fresh-squeezed lemon, grapefruit, or orange juice, and wilt some spinach in the pan after the tofu was done. Then I'd squirt what was left of the lemon over the roasted cauliflower. Salt for the spinach. It would be awesome.

Mixed genre egg rolls

Yeah, you know how I had the season's first asparagus? If you have some, you should just steam it and eat it with butter or olive oil, like I did with the stroganoff. You should not use it as part of a filling for baked egg rolls.

These sound like a good idea at first, and to be honest, they weren't actually that bad. They're just not the Best idea. This mix would have just been much better in straight up stirfry form, and the asparagus would have been much better being just plain asparagus.

Mixed genre egg rolls

nigari tofu
tasteless oil (sunflower)
garlic
red pepper
asparagus
green cabbage
mushrooms
green onion
soy sauce
rice wine vinegar
egg roll wrappers

Sear tofu; quickly cook vegetables; fill and bake rolls.

Tofu: since I had nigari tofu, it was totally firm and in need of no pressing whatsoever. Yay! Cut it into cubes and sear it on all sides in a medium-hot nonstick pan. I may have put a little oil in here to help it along, but no seasoning otherwise. When your tofu is golden brown and has formed a clearly delicious crust, tip it out of the pan and leave it to the side.

Vegetables: basically we're going to stir-fry the veg. I was a little skeptical that this was necessary, so I made one roll with raw veg to compare. It turned out fine and edible, but I think the lightly cooked filling was a little better. It was certainly easier to work with, since cooked vegetables are flexible. Either way should work, though.

Mince garlic and soften on medium-high heat with flavorless oil (or peanut/sesame oil, if you have those around). Chop up your other vegetables and add them to the pan with a splash of soy sauce and a dribble of rice wine vinegar. You could also use teriyaki sauce, or really any sauce you think would work. It's all good. For veg, I had asparagus, red pepper, cabbage, mushrooms, and green onion, but a more traditional cabbage-carrot-etc mix would also clearly be good.

Cook for a few minutes, stirring often, on medium-high heat. You just want the vegetables to wilt a little. This should take less than five minutes. When done, whip the pan off the heat and tip the vegetables into a cool bowl so they won't keep cooking.

Rolls: I totally used a package of Nasoya wrappers. They were pretty easy to work with, and turned out fine. I think next time I would go to an actual Asian market and find a better kind, though. Or, you know, make them myself. Whichever.

For each roll, turn a wrapper so a corner points to you. Arrange a line of tofu and vegetables horizontally across the wrapper, about 2/3 of the way down toward the point. Lift the bottom corner over the filling, then fold in each side and continue to roll. Put your finished roll seam side down on a baking sheet. Keep going until either your filling or your wrappers are used up. I got about eight or nine rolls out of my batch. I also took zero pictures of this process, which is clearly helpful.

Apparently you're supposed to brush baked rolls with some oil before they go into the oven. I forgot, and so ended up eating rolls with dry, powdery skins. The oil would obviously make the finished product better; brush your rolls with oil before baking.

Bake at 350F until crispy and turning golden brown. I turned mine over about ten minutes into the bake. Clearly, you could also deep fry these. Whatever floats your boat.

Eat!

These want sauce. I wanted to have them with Chinese hot mustard so badly. We didn't have any, though, so I had to go for some more soy sauce mixed with sriracha. One of the Thai honey-vinegar sauces, or a peanut sauce, would clearly be good. Maybe it's mixing genres there too, but whatever. As long as it tastes good, I'm happy.

Food co-op; soba madness

Last week I went down to the east village, found the 4th St. food co-op, gave them money, and became a member. Oh man! Bulk food! Bulk bins from which I can get my desired amount of bulk food! It seems like forever since I walked down to the Ann Arbor food co-op every weekend. It was an excellent first day of new administration.

I bought:

- soba
- quinoa
- green lentils
- pinto beans
- sesame seeds
- green onion
- red onion
- ginger root

I feel better.

The soba is by far the most exciting part. You can feel the rough grain edges down each piece. Clearly, this calls for immediate eating.

Soba with tofu, broccoli and peanut sauce

firm tofu
safflower or peanut oil
garlic
peanut butter
soy sauce
sriacha sauce
water
lime juice or vinegar
broccoli
soba noodles

Put water on for soba at the beginning, then cook at an appropriate time in the process.

Press, cube, and sear tofu. This was the first time that pressing Nasoya tofu has actually left me with something non-crumbling, which was exciting. I used half a block and cut it into pretty small, thin squares. Get a nonstick pan medium-hot, warm a little oil in it, and put in the tofu in one layer. I splashed mine with a little soy sauce too. Sear until golden brown on all sides, then take the tofu out of the pan and stick it in a bowl to wait its turn.

Turn the heat down and let the pan cool off the heat a bit. This should only take a minute. While you're waiting, mince a couple cloves of garlic. Then put the pan back on the heat, add a little more oil, and throw in the garlic. Let it soften while you put together the sauce.

Whisk together a couple spoonfuls of peanut butter, some soy sauce, some sriracha sauce, the juice of half a lime, and a big splash of water. I winged the proportions, as usual. The most important thing here is to go pretty easy on soy, since it's so salty. You can always add more later. Substitutions: if you have any rice wine vinegar, you can use it instead of the lime juice. Lime juice also kind of wants some coconut milk instead of the water, but I didn't have any, so. Mix the stuff together, dissolving the peanut butter as well as possible.

By this point the garlic should be good and soft, so pour your sauce into the pan. Cook, stirring often, for five minutes or so. Taste it and see if you want to add more of anything. I wanted more sriracha. You can also always add more water if it gets too thick.

Now chop up as much broccoli as you want to eat. I used 2/3 of a bunch for two people, but the whole bunch would have been fine. Use as much of the stem as is tender. Do it! You know you love it! You could also use all kinds of other vegetables along with/in place of the broccoli: asparagus, green beans, red pepper, whatever will steam quickly. Things like (peeled) eggplant are really good but require longer steaming time, so I'd probably cook them separately.

Throw the broccoli into the pan of sauce, along with a splash of water. Cover the pan immediately and let the water steam your broccoli. This should take about three minutes. Take off the pan lid, admire your bright green broccoli, and add your tofu. Stir everything together, cooking for a minute or two longer, until the tofu is warm. Now you are done.

Serve bowls of soba with peanut tofu broccoli business on top. Use chopsticks to improve your manual dexterity.

It is delicious!

Double red curry

I don't care about carbohydrate issues. Let's just get that out of the way right now.

I like chard a lot, though, and there was some astonishing chard in the store the other day. John actually gasped and stepped back when he saw it. Plain chard for dinner doesn't work very well, though, even with lots of lemon juice and salt. So we came up with this instead: curry over a mess of greens.

Red curry tofu with red chard

block of nigari tofu
olive/tasteless oil
can of coconut milk
red curry paste
1/2 onion
optional broccoli
salt
a bunch of red chard

Chop your tofu into little cubes, your onion into dice, and your broccoli into reasonable florets.

My main issue with making Thai curry is whether to sear things separately and add them to the curry or just boil them in the curry itself. This time I decided to sear the tofu first. For this method, warm some olive oil and throw the tofu in. Toss the pan around every once in a while to get the tofu browned on all sides. After five or ten minutes, when the tofu starts to turn golden, throw the onion in as well. Cook them together for another five minutes, until the onion starts to soften.

Then shake up a can of coconut milk, open it, and pour it in. Add a few spoonfuls of curry paste and mix gently until it's all evenly distributed. Then bring the business up to a simmer and cook another ten minutes. Taste occasionally to see if you want to add more curry paste. In the last three or four minutes of cooking, add the broccoli, put on the pan lid, and cook everything together. Or you can add no broccoli and instead curry the chard stems, which would be my plan in the future. I think having too many kinds of vegetables cluttered this up.

While the curry is simmering, prep and steam a bunch of chard. You always need more chard than you think, just like you need more spinach than you think, so plan accordingly and use lots of chard. I used half a bunch, which was adequate, but I'd use a whole bunch in the future.

Other greens would also work fine, clearly.

Wash the chard, then cut the stems into small pieces and the leaves into big pieces. Keep the piles separate; the stems need to cook longer than the leaves. To steam, bring a shallow pot of water to a boil and put a steamer basket over the top. Fill the steamer with the chard stems, then put the lid on and steam them. Or you can use them in place of the broccoli, like I said before. After five minutes, add the leaves and put the lid back on. Leave the chard steaming for about two more minutes, or until the leaves are fully wilted. Then take the chard off the heat, salt it, and stir it up.

At this point everything should be done, so whack a pile of chard and a pile of curry onto a plate together. You can plate the curry actually on a bed of chard if you want; this will let the chard absorb the curry liquid really easily. In my case, I plated side by side and let the chard's red juice run into the bright orange curry.

Eat it all.

This was actually really good (albeit liquid) as a leftover lunch the next day, unlike most tofu business I make. It also managed not to leak all over the inside of my backpack, due to the pita I'd put over the curry in its container. It was a nice surprise.

Tahini-miso tofu salad

Playing around with food is great.

I'd been thinking about using the Vcon tahini-miso salad dressing as a marinade for a few days. Since I was making it a marinade instead of a creamy dressing, I used enough water to keep things good and liquid. I also used red miso instead of the requested white, because that's what we had. So I marinated the tofu, seared it, steamed some vegetables with it, and poured the whole business on top of a plate of greens. It was one of the best salads I've ever eaten.

Also, since the dressing as marinade gets soaked up by the tofu, you can make the salad itself with no dressing. MIND-BOGGLING.

Dressingless dressed tofu salad

firm nigari tofu
red miso
tahini
water
carrot, mushroom, red pepper, summer squash, etc.
romaine or other lettuce

Mix equal parts tahini and miso together with a fork. I didn't really measure, just used huge heaping spoonfuls for each. The two should mix easily into a smooth paste. Add at least double their volume in water and whisk until the paste is dissolved.

Cut your tofu into cubes, or whatever small salady shape you like. You could also use tempeh or chicken or fish or whatever sounds good with tahini-miso business. I plan on doing some eggplant experiments in the very near future.

Throw the cubes into the miso-tahini business and let them soak. I ended up letting mine soak overnight, which worked fine. An hour will work well too.

Heat a wide frying pan with a lid, throw in the tofu, and sear on all sides. I kept tossing mine around every few minutes, instead of trying to turn each individual piece to get the whitest side down. It should take somewhere between five and ten minutes (depending on how good your stove is) to get things nice and brown.

While the tofu is cooking, prep the other salad vegetables. For my main salad, I peeled and chopped half a carrot, diced half a red pepper, and chunked a handful of mushrooms. On the second batch, for John, I chopped up a small globe summer squash instead of the mushrooms. You can use any other vegetable that will steam to doneness easily: green beans definitely sound like a good idea. Use as many vegetables as you want.

For the base, I just washed and chopped a lot of romaine and threw it on a plate. You can use any leaves you want, but a crisper lettuce will stand up best to the heat of the cooked salad.

When the tofu is seared, scrape all your steaming vegetables into the pan, add a quarter cup or so of water, and clap the lid over everything. Let it cook for about five minutes, shaking or stirring occasionally. Then take the lid off the pan and let it sit for a minute, so any extra moisture evaporates. Take the pan off the heat and let it cool a little, so you don't wilt all the lettuce instantly. Then pour the pan contents over your plate of lettuce.

Eat. Oh man, isn't it great?

A salad this great demands wine. I had been pretty excited about even finding this business: Frey organic no-sulfide-added sauvignon blanc. However, it was not an especially good wine. The actual mouth taste was ok, but the aftertaste was pretty bad. We drank it anyway, as it wasn't That bad, but it definitely wasn't as good as I would've liked it to be.

Some better sauvignon blancs to try:
- Zolo, Argentina: sharp and crisp. We drink this all summer.
- Veramonte, Chile: sharp and thin, a little harsh.
- Page Mill, CA: sweeter and more rounded.
- Cartlidge & Browne, CA: this one's actually organic too, and good.

And that's the limit of my wine knowledge.

dryfry

I've been making dryfried tofu, pretty much a straight lift from Vera at The Hungry Tiger, for years. For some reason, though, it hadn't occurred to me to experiment with other spices until the other night.

I was going through the spice cabinet, trying to figure out what to do for food, until I found a half-full jar labeled "shawarma". Apparently, this was all my brain needed to jump straight to dryfried shawarma tofu. Completely inauthentic! Done by a totally different cooking method! Not meat! DRYFRIED SHAWARMA TOFU.

Dryfried shawarma tofu

block of firm tofu
shawarma spices (mine are a mix from spicely)
green onion
zucchini
water
lemon wedge for juice

I didn't even use any garlic or ginger! You could dice some of those and fry them with the tofu, though.

Cut your tofu into appropriate searing squares. Toss them with enough shawarma spices to coat (or use any other spice blend you find appealing: tandoori, for instance, would be really good here). This is why it's called dryfried: the spice rub (so to speak) is all dry. Brown the tofu bits on all sides in a nonstick frying pan over medium heat, tossing them around occasionally.

While they're cooking, find a handful of green onion and a zucchini. Cut the green onion into pieces maybe two inches long. Cut the zucchini in half, then in strips to match. You can experiment with other steam-prone vegetables here; any softish green, summer squash, or reasonably delicate green bean would probably work.

When the tofu is sufficiently browned, toss the vegetables on top. Add a splash of water and a big squeeze of lemon juice, then whip on the pan lid. Leave things to steam for maybe three or four minutes, then take off the lid. If there's still water kicking around, cook it off. You'll notice that the green onions have magically become not just garnish but real vegetables with the character of sautéed greens! Yay! How awesome is that?

(Fairly awesome.)

Now eat! We had ours with long grain brown rice; any grain would be good. Or you could whip the whole business over a plate of ginger mashed potatoes: delicious and soporific.

Salvage is ok

This dinner was actually a few days before the whole cauliflower cheese business. It was what started me thinking about cream sauce in the first place. I killed two different attempts in a row, one through burnt roux and one through boiled and broken sauce. After that I said FUCK IT loudly and proceeded to just use plain melty goat cheese in no sort of sauce whatever.

Ahem.

I also made broccolini and tofu. That part went very well. It would easily have stood on its own, and did in John's anti-dairy case. It's like the dairy case, but not! Uh. Yes.

You could clearly use several other green vegetables instead of broccolini: green beans, asparagus, bok choy, chard, or other sturdy chopped greens. It's hard to think of a vegetable that wouldn't work.

So.

Super easy broccolini with tofu

nigari tofu
broccolini
garlic
olive oil
soy sauce/other preferred

First, cut the tofu into nice little squares or triangles. Sear them on both sides in a hot frying pan.

While tofu is cooking, wash broccolini. I used an entire bunch. Chop up several cloves of garlic. Garlic is delicious.

When tofu is done, tip it out of the pan and turn the heat to medium. Add some olive oil, swirl it around, and tip in garlic. Cook to soften for several minutes. Then add the washed broccolini. Stir to get garlicky oil on everything. Then put the lid on the pan, turn the heat down a little more, and let it steam in its own water.

Check things after five minutes or so. Is the broccolini bright green? Does it look tasty? Add the tofu and a slug of soy (or any other sauce that sounds good to you: oyster or hoisin?), stir, and put the lid back on. Let cook another two or three minutes, or until the vegetables reach the texture you like best.

Serve with rice, or

Failure pasta

hot cooked pasta
creamy goat cheese
lots of pepper
maybe some olive oil

Boil and drain pasta. Mix immediately with chunks of broken goat cheese. Stir vigorously to melt the cheese. Pepper. Maybe add olive oil if you want some. Eat.

This one has a lot more issues with standing on its own. I would at least do some steamed spinach.

Red curry noodle delicious

Things are so busy it's unbelievable. I had to look on my camera to remember what I ate sufficiently to write about it. Apparently, I ate red curry noodles. I even ate them for lunch again today. Curry is delicious.

This kind of thing is an excellent idea for when you're in need of instant dinner, right now. Sear tofu, boil noodle, heat curry: bang.

Red curry noodle delicious

rice noodles (or you could just make rice)
firm nigari tofu
broccoli
onion
coconut milk
Thai red curry paste
a tasteless veg oil (or peanut oil)

First, cut a block of tofu into nice small squares or triangles. Sear them on both sides in a hot nonstick pan. You can use some oil to do this, but I didn't.

Tip the done tofu out of the pan to wait a bit. Instead, put in some oil and half an onion chopped however you like. I cut long thin strands. Cook on medium until the onion has started to soften.

In the meantime, put on the water for your noodles. Then chop up a head of broccoli. Other vegetables like green beans or peas or zucchini work fine here too. Add the bits to the pan and cook another five minutes, or until the broccoli turns bright green.

Then add a shaken can of coconut milk and a bunch of curry paste. I added two or three teaspoons at least, and it wasn't spicy enough for me. Bring the whole business to a simmer and let cook for another five or ten minutes. Taste, add your tofu and any more curry paste you want, and simmer a little more. When the tofu is hot and you're satisfied with the spiciness level, you're pretty much done.

While you're simmering the curry, watch the noodle water. When it boils, add rice noodles. They should be done in five minutes or so. Drain them and add them to the finished curry. Stir it all up and serve it in big bowls.

CURRY.

Hey vegans! Did you like bacon?

Do you hate buying packets of fake soy meat with stripes painted on them? Feel terrible yet decadent ripping into a fake corn dog with ketchup? Shall we try something the hell different?

Behold! TOFU BACON. Or BACON TOFU. I think that second one has a better ring to it, how about you?

Bacon tofu is easy. All you do it cut good tofu thinly, quickly fry it in sesame oil and ginger, and toss it into a bowl. Then you eat it. It is crispy. It is savory. It is salty and tasty and crispy and BACONY BACONY BACON. And yet it is tofu, and requires no frozen processed product of any kind. I don't know, do you really count tofu as processed? I don't.

I think this stuff is particularly great because it comes close to the crumbly texture of well-cooked bacon.

Bacon tofu!

good nigari tofu
fresh ginger
sesame oil
optional things such as garlic or sesame seeds

Cut tofu into thin slices. You want them to be 1/8 inch thick at the most, and preferably a little thinner. Cut the slices whatever shape you like; we like them in squares or rectangles a couple inches long.

Peel ginger and chop. If you want garlic, chop that too. Use a big piece of ginger the size of your thumb or so.

In a good sauté pan, warm a big slug of sesame oil. Get it pretty hot, then add the tofu pieces in one layer. Fry until golden brown and crispy on one side, then flip and get the other. When the second side is about halfway done crispening, add the ginger and potential garlic. If you want sesame seeds, or maybe some hot pepper sauce like Sriracha, you can add them in here too. Toss things around a bit and continue to cook.

Make sure everything is crispy, then remove from heat. You are done!

What are you going to serve it with? A salad of some sort, to combat the oil with some juicy greens! We used half a head of frisée for ridiculous curly deliciousness. Spinach would also be good, for fake bacon and spinach salad. Torn romaine would be good. I am having trouble thinking of a salad green that would not be good. Just toss the sesame-ginger oil left in the pan over the greens and whack the tofu on top. This way you not only get crispy bacon tofu, but also warm dressing.

You win!

Happy time stirfry factory

The other day I was feeling terrible, so John made me dinner. I am well satisfied with my lot in life.

half block nigari tofu
spinach
garlic and onion
sesame oil (or olive, it's fine)
sesame seeds
ginger, salt, whatever other spice you like
rice

First, put on a pot of rice.

Put a handful of sesame seeds in a little frying pan and toast. This should only take a few minutes. When they've barely started to brown, get them out of the pan to cool.

Sear the tofu. Cut it into strips and brown it in a non-stick pan. This should take somewhere around five minutes per side. John made little thin rectangles, so he only had to brown two sides.

While your tofu is browning, chop up some garlic and onion. Also wash, destem, and chop up some spinach. Use lots of spinach; it is delicious. I think we used about 2/3 of a bunch just for me.

When tofu is done, take it out of the pan and instead add some sesame oil and minced fresh ginger. Powdered ginger will work too; it doesn't matter that much. Throw in the onion and garlic and let them soften. You can do this either really slowly, to get things sweet and caramelized, or quickly, to get things bright and sharp. Whichever way you like is fine.

When onion and garlic are nearly done, add tofu and let it warm back up. Then add your spinach. Stir a few times quickly. When the spinach has wilted, take the pan off the heat. Add a handful of sesame seeds and a little salt, stir it up, and serve it with rice.

tired stirfry

I am about at that point where I want to make a big batch of refried beans and a pot of rice and just eat tacos and quesadillas for a week. Maybe I'll buy what's left of the decent tomatoes and a handful of jalapeños and make some jars of salsa to go with them. That sounds like a good plan.

In the meantime, I had this for dinner:

Eggplant and tofu stirfry

eggplant
nigari tofu
garlic
green beans
dry vermouth for deglaze
pot of rice

marinade:
soy sauce, olive oil, vinegar, mirin, ginger

Cube your eggplant and tofu and marinate it for at least a half hour. I don't even come close to measuring amounts for my marinade; I just pour in roughly equal amounts of soy and olive oil, with a little less vinegar and mirin, and add copious powdered ginger. Fresh ginger would work even better, but in this case I was lazy. Mix it all up and soak things in it, stirring and turning occasionally so as to marinade all sides.

When you're ready to fry, put on a pot of rice or other grain of choice. Heat up a big sauté pan, maybe add a little swirl of oil, and toss in your eggplant-tofu mixture. Arrange it all into one layer and let it brown for a few minutes. Stir and repeat to get all sides browned and tasty, adding marinade if necessary to keep things from sticking. Well, it's sticky marinade, so maybe we should say something more like, "to make things more delicious".

When the tofu and eggplant are just about done, chop up some garlic and green beans, and add them to the mix. If you have any marinade left over, add that too. Stir it up and cook until garlic and beans are done.

Throw stirfry over rice and deglaze the pan with dry vermouth. You could also use broth or water. Throw the results over your plate of stirfry.

Eat with cup of tea.

Tofu = delicious

I often do not know what to do with tofu, which is unfortunate since it is totally cheap, vegetarian, and filling all at the same time. Mostly this is because preparing tofu well is difficult. Freeze press stomp cube! et al. Then you have to know/figure out what to do with the prep and spicings of a culture you did not even remotely grow up with, especially if you are Me: White Girl From the Midwest. I mean, you would perhaps not know it to read these entries, but a normal dinner at my house was almost always meat plus 3 vegetables, whether frozen, starchy or salad. Can you imagine making that many individual dishes for one meal? I suppose that's why the advent of frozen junk and the microwave adventified.

ANYWAY

I've definitely done lots of tofu experiments. I now know to always press my tofu, for instance, though it seems like I would get better results with a real press lined with cheesecloth instead of two cutting boards weighted with a pot of water. I know how to crispify my tofu via dry-fry. I know how to spice.

This means I can now do things like "take the spices from one thing I made once and try them with tofu." It was a good idea.

I got the spicing here from a Pakistani curry recipe. That link doesn't match where I found it, but it's the exact same recipe with same title and measurements, and my printout has a specific reference to that blog as well, so there you go. I remember first making this to the letter several years ago, and being very excited that the aroma of the spicing exactly matched the aroma of the perfect in every way tandoori swordfish at Shalimar in Ann Arbor. I worship the tandoori swordfish. Clearly, this is a good set of spices to apply to anything whatever. Perhaps tofu would be an idea!

I didn't have any yogurt, as required in original as well as tandoori versions, but clearly the spices were still good. I would totally add yogurt to this in future, however.

Curry tofu business

extra-firm tofu, pressed
small eggplant of the Italian or Asian variety
green pepper
olive oil
garlic
fresh ginger
coriander, cumin, turmeric
rice over which to serve

Pressing tofu is easy. Cut it into wide layers about a centimeter thick, put it between two cutting boards, put the whole business in the sink, and stick something heavy on top. I use the aforementioned pot of water. Leave it there for at least a half hour, preferably more, and let the weight of the pot compress the tofu and squeeze out the extra water.

When you're ready for main prep, put rice on and remove tofu from the press. Get out a big sauté pan and warm some olive oil. Smash and chop garlic; peel and chop ginger. Use as much as you like. Stick those in the warmed oil with a good huge shake of coriander plus smaller shakes of cumin and turmeric. Let them soften and aromaticize while you cube the tofu.

Add the tofu to the pan; stir to distribute spices; dice up the eggplant.

When tofu has browned a little on its first side, add eggplant. Stir to distribute spices; turn tofu so unbrowned sides touch the pan; let cook; chop a green pepper.

Add the pepper and stir a few more times so the tofu gets browned on all sides. Taste. Do you want more spice? More spice. Now is also the point at which I might add yogurt.

Cook a little more to get any new spices infused, then eat with rice.

Experimental barbecue sauce

We had a slab of tofu sitting around waiting for someone to use it. So tofu is hard to cook well, even hard to cook edibly. I also don't especially like tofu. However, it was there, and demanded to be eaten NOW or else it would rot among the cheese and yogurt. Because leftover tofu belongs in the spot with cheese and yogurt, apparently.

Ok. We'd had dry-fried Indonesian tofu the day before, so we couldn't have it again. We'd failed spectacularly the last time we tried to make sesame tofu. Stirfry isn't that interesting, and tofu never gets a good texture in a stirfry anyway.

I hit on seared marinated tofu. The marinade? Barbecue sauce. So you might assume that we had a bottle of a good sauce lying around, or at least some A1. No. I wanted to make the barbecue sauce myself.

This is not so hard, or so unheard-of. What happens at (or probably before) barbecue cookoffs? The contestants clearly can't use premade sauce--that'd be really generic, and besides, what if the judge recognized it? Impossible! So everyone makes their own secret sauce, swathes their pork belly in a quart of it, and hopes for the best. I can do that, even if there is no pork belly within a mile of my refrigerator, ever. I looked up some sample recipes, made a list of necessary ingredients, and started experimenting. My results were sweet and caramelized, almost raisiny--next time we're certainly going to have to add more hot spices--and quite good on the tofu.

Barbecue sauce

1/4 yellow onion
cooking oil
some mustard powder, black pepper, red pepper flakes
about 3/4 cup ketchup
2 spoonfuls molasses
1/2 spoon white vinegar
couple good glugs of vermouth
1 spoonful spicy brown mustard
maybe a cup of water
pinch salt
a little lemon juice

Mince your onion within an inch of its life. Throw it in a pan--not too wide, like mine, but a little saucepan--with a glug of cooking oil of your choice. Add some mustard powder, black pepper, and red pepper flakes, and cook everything on low until the onion is sweet and melty. This will take a while. Go do something else while it's cooking. However, remember to check on it as well--I burned the hell out of my first pan. It was awesome. Spicing: I used only a couple shakes of each spice, but in the future, I'd definitely use more. The mustard was not such an issue, since I added some actually mixed mustard later, but red pepper flakes? I want LOTS of those.

When your onion is sufficiently soft, add all your other ingredients but vermouth and stir to mix. I didn't measure at all here, which was possibly a mistake. Ketchup should predominate the mix, closely followed by water. The rest are all spicing components and should be added according to taste. The problem there is: who knows what your tastes are if you've never made barbecue sauce before? The solution: add spicing components slowly, and taste your results continually. I would also say smell your results continually, but I don't want anyone to end up with a sinusful of vinegar fumes like I did. Do the chemlab thing and waft.

Let things cook on low, with the pan lid on, for a good half-hour at least. You may want to stir occasionally, check on the texture, and let some steam escape. Eventually your mixture will mellow to a raisiny (again) brown-red color, and thicken to a nice saucy consistency. If you have a stick blender, you may want to puree those onions into the rest of the sauce. I don't have one, so I just took things off and let them cool.

So we come to the tofu part.


Seared marinated tofu

slab tofu
barbecue sauce
a little more vermouth
uh, pan and spatula

for presentation:
wheat bread
green onion

Cut the tofu into 1/2 inch thick cutlets and press it, if you haven't done so already. Trim it into 1-person servings and marinate in the cooled sauce for at least an hour. I left mine overnight, as we were getting up to the two in the morning area and I really wanted a quesadilla right then anyway. When you're done marinating, heat a wide saute pan on medium-high. Slap the tofu into the heated pan and sear for a few minutes on each side. Throw in a glug of vermouth and let it steam away.

In the meantime, toast some wheat bread, one piece for each serving of tofu. Chop up the greens of a green onion or two. I love those greens. When everything is done, slide a slab of tofu onto each slice of bread and top with copious onion. Eat with a fork, or top with more toasty bread and eat like a hot sandwich if you are so inclined.