Quickie Dinner

I love a dinner you can prepare in minutes. Okay, okay, the veggies were leftovers, but still. I found a really easy seitan recipe in Simply Vegan and adapted it slightly. Basically, I sliced up a blob of seitan and sauteed it in oil with garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, and salt, then added a cup of water, some flour and nutritional yeast and simmered it to thicken the gravy. It's sort of like a salisbury steak without the mushrooms (hmmm, add 'shrooms and onions next time?). I might use more seasoning next time, though, or change it up a bit. The noodles are from a packet of Thai Kitchen Garlic and Vegetable Rice noodles that cook in one minute! Woo-hoo! It's not the greatest, but for cheap and quick, it'll do. The packet says ready in three minutes, but that's because they're taking into account the time it takes for the water to come to a boil. It makes one large or two small servings. I've had it for a while, so I don't recall just how cheap it was, although it does cost more than most (nonveg) ramen noodle packets.

Why is it so hard to find recipes that make use of seitan? Someone tell me. Every time I want to cook seitan, I'm pawing through cookbooks and websites to find something unique to do with the seitan I make. I guess I'll just have to dig out my one nonvegetarian cookbook and have fun adapting the recipes again.

Tofu, Veggies, and Quinoa

I had some tofu defrosting in my fridge, and realized I really need to cook it. I tend to do that--after freezing tofu, keeping a chunk in my fridge for when I want to cook it. So I found a recipe on RecipeZaar.com and basically tore it apart. I chopped an onion, some mushrooms, celery, scallions, and tossed in the rest of a bag of snow peas from Trader Joes for veggies. I puttered a bit online and by the time I started cooking, my veggies were nice and dry, making them a lot prettier than when I am impatient and get cooking quickly. I think they also tasted a bit better. I cooked my tofu first in toasted sesame oil (which is my preferred oil when I want a sort of Asian flavor), removed it from the pan and then started cooking my veggies in the same pan. I tossed in some almonds and a couple of capfuls of tamari toward the end and served it over a bed of quinoa.

I cooked my quinoa in my fabulous rice cooker, which shut does an automatic switch from cooking mode to keep-warm mode when it senses the food is done. There were a few places where it was scorched, but it was still wonderful. For some reason, today, I was serious about rinsing it (which you must do to get rid of the saponins and avoid a bitter taste), stirring it with my hand in the mesh strainer. As lazy as I am, if I just take a few seconds extra effort--okay, in some cases, half an hour--it's all well worth it in the end.

It's gotten bitterly cold here in DC, and I am debating making another chili recipe or find a good stew. Last night, I heard the wind just shrieking outside my window. The local weather on NPR said the wind chill was supposed to be 6 degrees! Yikes! While a part of me is glad winter is here--this is normal January weather--another part misses the 60-degree days and will be happy when things warm up in the spring. And it doesn't matter if the groundhog sees his shadow Friday; either way, we still have six more weeks of winter!

Sesame Tofu and Tofu Tips

It's said that vegetarians typically have a repertoire of five or so recipes that they make over and over. I'm trying hard not to be that person, so every once in a while I will try something new, shake up the recipe to make it mine, and see if it works. I have a book called The Complete Vegetarian Handbook which has info on various veggie foods and a few recipes. I made a sesame tofu with vegetables, greatly increasing the amount of veggies--two of my favorite veggies are mushrooms and snow peas. It was a little awkward trying to pan-fry tofu slices coated in sesame seeds, and without the seeds, it didn't have much flavor, so I will have to do something about that (find a sesame-flavored sauce?). The veggies had a simple sauce of tamari sauce and toasted sesame oil with a bit of ginger. I think I'll add some garlic next time.

Over the weekend, a local TV station sponsored its annual Health and Fitness Expo. VSDC is there every year, amongst drug companies, the dairy industry, a local hospital, companies that sell health stuff, blah, blah. This year, we were near the "pavilion," so to speak, that the children's hospital had set up, a stone's throw from the FDA booth. My boyfriend and I spent a couple of hours tabling there, handing out information and answering questions. One question I got was about preparing tofu to avoid all the nasty silly stereotypes. When she said she didn't like tofu, I invoked Sarah Kramer's quote -- saying you don't like tofu is like saying you don't like cake flour -- and quickly wrote down steps to take to avoid mushy tofu syndrome. There were constantly people coming to our table, lured by other volunteers standing in the aisle handing out information. And if a kid came close enough and was the right age, I handed him or her a coloring book from Vegetarian Resource Group.

To me, this is a friendly way of getting out our message and one of the most effective. A lot of people are curious about eating less meat, and most of them wanted recipes -- and we had numerous magazines and brochures to give out with tons of recipes. While I would be happy if everyone went vegetarian -- or better yet, vegan -- anyone who strives to reduce consumption of animal products is taking a step in the right direction.

So here is how to have tofu without the dreaded stereotypical mushiness:

1) Make sure you have the right type of tofu. The stuff in the aseptic boxes on the shelf is for creamy sauces and soups, desserts, and smoothies. Unless you're making one of those, put it back on the shelf and head for the refrigerated section commonly called the dairy case. I get the Whole Foods Firm tofu because it's coagulated with calcium salts, so it has more calcium than the Extra Firm, but do feel free to experiment with what brands work best for you.

2) When you get your packages of tofu home, cut open the package and drain out as much water as possible. Wrap then in plastic freezer bags and toss in the freezer. You want to freeze them for at least 24 hours, but you can store tofu in the freezer for a few weeks. I usually have three or four packages in the freezer.

3) Defrost in the fridge. It takes a couple of days, unfortunately, but you can also leave it in the fridge for five or six days before using it. You probably could also do the hot-water method, but you're going to want to press out all that water later.

4) Press. Line a plate (or a flat-bottomed colander) with paper towels, plop your block of tofu on top (some people slice the tofu first) and put more paper towels on top. Put something heavy, like one of those aseptic quarts of soy milk or vegetable broth, on top of the paper towels to press the tofu. Leave it for about 1/2 hour.

5) This is time to do your prep work--cutting veggies, mixing the sauce ingredients, etc. You may want to change the paper towels during the pressing process.

6) After finishing the pressing process, it's cooking time! And then dinner time! And those should not need any further explanation.

Hats off to the incredible, edible tofu!

It's good to be back

I have a good reason for not posting in a while. Something went wrong with my Blogger account, but the good folks there fixed up my problem (somehow, there was a typo in my e-mail address), and I can post again. Yay!

I've done some cooking, not a whole lot, in the past month, including a Christmas Eve chili. I was on my way home from work when I suddenly got a chili craving. I wasn't 100-percent sure Ben's Chili Bowl would be open (they have really good vegan chili fries), although they probably were, considering they're one of the few places open late at night (after a concert at the 9:30 Club, my boyfriend and I usually grab a bite there). So I went home, found a recipe for tempeh chili, cooked it up, heated up some fries, and chowed down.

Chili is one of several foods that I never ate before I went vegan. Now, I love the stuff and think nothing is better on a chilly night. Which is why I made a chili "casserole" with cornbread topping from La Dolce Vegan earlier this week that was fabulous (but I need to find a better way to drop the cornbread mix on the chili part). Yes, it has gotten cold. Saturday, the temperature got up to 70-plus degrees, and now it's in the 30s. Part of me is relieved--normal January weather--but another part of my kinda liked the warmer weather.

So tonight, I made a soup called On Golden Pond Mushroom Soup from La Dolce Vegan. Hey, I had a packet of mushrooms I needed to use, and this seemed the least time-consuming to make. I also like that it provides two Danielle-sized servings (or one hungry person serving). Normally, I don't care for creamy soups, but with some biscuits I baked up while prepping the soup, it was more like biscuits-and-mushroom gravy. I think next time I'll use a little more veggie stock and less soy milk so it's not as thick. I also don't care for the dill, so I also want to find a different herb. Maybe sage.

I'm looking at casserole recipes to make for next week--I downloaded and printed a tempeh nut casserole that looks good. And remember the Magical Loaf Studio from Vegan Lunch Box. There are thousands of possible combinations, and I won't even try to go through even half of them!