Tofu-lin’ Around

 

We’re going to continue on a vegetarian theme that we seem to have started and introduce ourselves to tofu.  Chez Venza?  Meet Tofu.  Pleased to meet you!

We’ve experienced tofu before, but we’ve never bought it from the store or even thought about what we should do with it.  It’s actually pretty easy to work with and can be quite versatile.  We decided to do a Chinese stir fry recipe from America’s Test Kitchen.  There were a lot of steps to the recipe, but overall it was very tasty and satisfying. 

We went with extra-firm tofu, because we wanted it to hold its shape, especially since it was going in a stir fry.  The first step is to press the tofu to get rid of any excess water.  Here, our Joy of Cooking book finally starts pulling its weight (haha!).

After about 30 minutes or so, you’ll see a little pool of water.  Just pour that off and you’re good to go.

Then we get all arts-and-crafty with it and cut it into little triangles.  I found this part particularly fun. 

We’ll get back to the tofu in a bit.  There’s a lot more prep work that needs to be done before we get cooking.  It’s better to have all the chopping and mixing done ahead of time!  Here are some of the usual suspects when it comes to Chinese cooking:  sesame oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce, chicken broth, and corn starch.  Corn starch works as a good thickener for the sauce.  It’s also used to coat the tofu, which gets it good and crispy.

We also got to use bok choy for the first time (also known as Chinese cabbage).  I think of it as sort of a cross between celery and spinach.  It has a good crunch factor to it, but the leaves will wilt down like spinach when cooked.

We found out that there are two kinds of bok choy.  Baby and big.  The big were HUGE, so we got the baby.  Pay attention, there will be a test at the end of this blog.  It will be multiple choys.

Lots of slicing and dicing.  We separated the bok choy stalks from the leaves and chopped them up.  We also diced some carrots, ginger, and garlic.

Back to the tofu.  We coated it in corn starch and then fried it in a little oil.

Starting to look yummy, right?

We poured in some of the sauce we made earlier, tossed it around to coat, and then pulled it out and set it aside. 

Onto the veggies.  First up is carrots.  Carrots can take a while to cook, so we steamed them in some chicken broth with the lid on.

The carrots were pulled out and set aside.  Then we cooked the bok choy stalks and leaves along with some snap peas.  I told you there were a lot of steps to this!

Next we added a ton of garlic and ginger and let it heat through.

Now, finally, we get to mix everything back together.  We also added our sauce from before and let it heat up and start thickening.  We’re almost done!

We poured the final dish on top of a bed of rice and garnished with some sesame seeds.

I wouldn’t say that this was faster or easier than ordering take-out, but it was a lot more fun, not as greasy, and totally worth it. 

 

 

Test:

The kinds of bok choy are:

a) Baby and big.

b) None of the above.

Hop Butterscotch

What’s our game?  Pudding, dang!  Ask me again and I’ll tell you the same!

Today we’re making Bourbon Butterscotch Pudding from Bon Appetit magazine.  The name sounded so good, we just had to try it!

Today’s lesson is all about America’s favorite flavor:  Vanilla!  (And also America’s second favorite flavor: Bourbon! )

This was our first ever experience with a real, live vanilla bean.  First of all, they are expensive.  I lost a bet over how expensive they were :-(  Luckily, you get two in each package, so we get to use it again in some other recipe.  Our bean comes from Papau New Guinea and purports to be “fruity and floral.” 

Here are the remaining cast of characters in our culinary adventure:  sugar, cream, more cream, butter, bourbon, cornstarch, gingersnaps, and eggs (somehow the eggs managed to miss the photo op).

Here we get to separate 6 eggs between the whites and the yolks.  We’re basically making a custard, which uses egg yolks (but not whites) in order to thicken the pudding.  Since we are super-resourceful people, we put each egg white in this nifty silicone ice cube tray (conveniently shaped like eggs) and put them in the freezer so that we can use them later (for an angel food cake or something of the sort).

The egg yolks are mixed with sugar and cornstarch and then set aside for now.

Now  comes the fun part.  We split the bean down the middle with a knife and then scraped out all of the seeds.  That’s where all the deliciousness is hiding.  My fingers smelled really awesome at this point!

We melted some butter and then threw in the seeds as well as the empty pod (can’t hurt, right?).  You can’t really see the seeds in this picture because they’re so tiny.

Then we added some brown sugar and let it melt down a little bit.  This is basically the butterscotch part of the recipe (the term “butterscotch” refers to the flavor made by butter and brown sugar).

Next come our liquid ingredients:  milk, cream, and bourbon (plus a little salt).

This is added to our butterscotch-vanilla mixture. 

Then we mix our cream mixture and our egg mixture together.  We added a small amount of the cream mixture to the eggs (called “tempering”) in order to raise the temperature of the eggs without cooking them (or else you’d get…uhh…scrambled eggs).

Then we strained the mixture in order to get out any clumps and also retrieve that empty vanilla bean pod.  This goes back in the pot and sauted for another 5 minutes or so. 

There was a lot of pouring of mixtures back and forth between various bowls in this recipe.  This bothered me because I didn’t want to lose any of those precious beans.  Look how precious they are!

So then our pudding goes into the blender in order to make it smooth and creamy.  (Side note:  I somehow managed to get all 3 pets into this picture).

We poured the picture into some ramekins and then put them in the fridge to set.  Look how shiny and glossy they look!

Check out those vanilla bean specks.  Pretty cool, eh?

We garnished it with some gingersnap cookies and a little homemade crème fraiche.  It is rich and creamy with just a hint of bourbon and a really nice vanilla flavor.  I think this recipe’s a show-stopper!

Which came first: the chickpea or the egg?

 

It’s time to get creative with vegetarian dishes! 

Doesn’t this look gorgeous?  We spied this recipe in Bon Appetit magazine, and we’ve been meaning to try it for quite awhile now.  It’s a rich, hardy stew made with chickpeas and garnished with an egg (can you garnish things with an egg?).  This dish could have been vegan….except for the whole egg thing.

So we start with a hot pan and some sliced garlic.  It gets nice and fragrant after about a minute in the pan.

Then you add a whole bag of spinach.  If you’ve never done this before, it’s pretty fun to watch  all that spinach wilt down into almost nothing. 

 

Then we added some onion and more garlic.  The smell of onions and garlic cooking is so inviting!

Next we added some cumin and smoked paprika.

Apparently there are like at least three different paprikas: sweet, hot, and smoked.  They are not entirely interchangeable.    It just feels so extravagant to have three versions of the same thing!

So, it started to really smell good at this point.

Now we get to add 2 cans of chickpeas and a can of whole tomatoes.  I rinsed the chickpeas in a colander to get rid of all the starchiness from being in the can.

The recipe calls for 5 whole canned tomatoes.  My can had 6 tomatoes in it, but I’m pretty sure that extra tomato won’t hurt anybody!

Next you’re supposed to crush the tomatoes.  This was probably my least favorite part.  Mostly because one of the tomatoes squirted tomato juice all over the kitchen when I squished it (argh).  Do you see the tomato spots off to the side?

This simmers for about 10 minutes.  See that brown stuff on the bottom?  That’s where all the flavor is!

Then you add 3 cups of broth.  Now technically the recipe said to add vegetable broth, but I cheated and used chicken broth.  I mean, I’m going to add an egg at the end, so who are we kidding anyway?

This simmers for another 20 minutes.  It’s important to mash some of the peas while it’s simmering.  They don’t need to be completely mashed (you want some whole chickpeas after all), but the mashing helps thicken the sauce.

Then you add back the wilted spinach from before, and let it simmer another 10 minutes.  So much simmering!  I was getting hungry.  So you could stop here and have a perfectly satisfying meal.  But of course, we’re going to take it one step further…

…and put a fried egg on top.  The recipe said to fry the egg in a decent amount of olive oil.  I’d never fried an egg this way before, but it was worth a shot.  It got a little scary because the heat was up pretty high and the oil kept spitting and sputtering.  But the edges got all crispy and brown, and it was super fast.  Good thing, too, because I’d waited long enough!

 

 

Mmm…delightful.  Going semi-vegetarian never tasted so good!