Try It Again: Non-chilly chili

Six years. Yeah, it's been a while since my last post. While the world's changed a lot in that time, people still have to eat. So I thought I'd restart this blog with - hopefully - better photography. We'll see.

2342 days ago I launched a feature called "Try It Again", where I'd redo one of my older recipes. So today, I'll refresh one of my classic recipes: non-chilly chili. The problem with my original recipe was unnecessary complexity: there were multiple steps. If any recipe cried out for just dumping all the ingredients in a pot it's this one.

Chili con tofu


Oil
1 Onion, diced
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 Chili pepper
1 tablespoon cumin
1-2 tablespoon(s) assorted chili powders
3 cans assorted assorted beans, drained and rinsed
1 can whole tomatoes with juice (28-ounce)
1/2 block frozen firm tofu, frozen for a few hours, thawed (takes about a day), pressed and crumbled

Sauté the onion in the oil for about 30 seconds to a minute. Add all other ingredients and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serves 6

I like to have some black beans and chickpeas in the chili. The beauty of chili is its endless customizability. I put a half a cup of edamame this time and it worked out great. When I'm serving this at a dinner party I like to top it with some diced avocado.

Bonus Birthday Bean Blog Bonanza

As you have probably ascertained, this blog has fallen into a long sleep. More like a coma actually. There are several reasons for this, most of them boring and job-related, but the fact remains that this blog has basically shuffled off this mortal coil. However, it’s a reader and friend’s birthday today so I decided to post as a birthday present (a not particularly great present, granted).

So here’s a two-in-one blog post about the garden and a recipe. And what better way to harken back to days of yore than some absorption pasta with an ugly brown mess of beans on top of it?

Pasta with Fava Beans

1 cup pasta

2 cups water

shot of hot sauce

oil

1 cup fava beans

1 teaspoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon fermented black bean sauce

1 chili pepper, diced.

glass of nice Chianti (optional)

Cook the pasta using the absorption style method and add some hot sauce. Put the oil in a skillet on medium heat and add the beans, soy sauce, fermented black bean sauce. Mash the beans together with the flat end of a spatula. Cook for a few minutes and then add the diced chili. When the pasta has absorbed almost all the water, add the bean mixture and stir until it has a healthy consistency.

Serves 1.

The chili plant has grown even more robustly than it had in the last entry, even as my other plants have withered and died (the mother-in-law’s tongues are doing alright, natch).

Until very recently though, no chilies were produced. Then I did some research and found out that in order to produce chilies, chili plants need to pollinated by insects. To reproduce this effect (no pun intended) – I used a q-tip to move pollen from one flower to another. It knocked several of them off, but within a week I had several chilies – one of which has turned a beautiful orange.

And now, gentle reader(s?), I return the blog to its slumber.

My Garden

The observant reader may have noticed that the last three entries on this blog contained copious amounts of basil. Have I won some form of basil lottery that provided me with such bounty? In a way, yes. I have recreated my garden, this time in rooftop form.

This displays half of the garden: my chives, chili plants and parsley. The chili plants are, so far, the most robust. Yet, they have not produced even the smallest chili. I was ready to give up on them, until a few days ago when I spied a flower opening up. I've only used the chives and parsley as garnish. And I only use garnish when entertaining, which I have only done once so far in my new apartment. Still, even that means that they are pulling their weight more than the chilies so far, though hopefully that will change.

As mentioned, the basil is separately potted. One of the basil plants has done quite well; the other species shriveled and died. I blame society. Still, the basil has been the workhorse of the plants, in that it provides actual value add for stuff I'm cooking.

The garden is rounded out by some houseplants which have the rather evocative name of Mother-in-Law's Tongue or Snake Plant. They stand tall and apparently remove formaldehyde from the air. We'll see how they all work together to build a better tomorrow.

Try It Again: Tofu with Basil and Chilies

Today, I launch a new feature "Try It Again". This involves me giving something that didn't quite work a second chance. On sunday, I vowed to vary up the Tofu with Basil and Chilies recipe and here is the exciting conclusion.

Tofu with Basil and Chilies, Again

Oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

4-6 [!] chili peppers, finely chopped

Salt

100 gm firm tofu, cubed

1/2 tbsp soy sauce

2 tbsp lemon

2 tbsp water

1 tsp sugar

pepper - 2 pinches

Large handful of basil leaves

Heat a wok or pan on high and then add the oil. Before the oil is smoking, add the chilies, garlic and salt. Stir-fry for about 15 seconds and then add the tofu. Mix the soy sauce, sugar, pepper, lemon and water together well, and add to the pan after the tofu has been stir-fried for a minute. After another minute, tear the basil leaves with your hands and add.

Serves 1

This was better but, honestly, still isn't worth it. Conventional basil really isn't doing any value-added here. If you're going to make this I'd suggest upping the soy sauce to 2 tsp or 1 tbsp and reducing the lemon down to 1 tbsp. There are plenty of better things to do with tofu and chiles though. While this is a bit of a downer start to the TIA series, I'm glad I gave it another go. From now on though, my basil is just going to go into pizza and pastas. Due to Canada Day plans, there will be no post next Sunday so this one subbing in for that.

Tofu with Basil and Chilies

I've been thinking about recreating that type of Cambodian tofu for a while. Now that I own some basil plants, I decided to try it out using this Thai tofu recipe as a base.

Tofu with Basil and Chilies

Oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

4-6 [!] chili peppers, finely chopped

Salt

100 gm firm tofu, cubed

2 tbsp soy sauce

1/4 cup stock or water

1 tsp sugar

pepper - 2 pinches

Large handful of basil leaves

Heat a wok or pan on high and then add the oil. Before the oil is smoking, add the chilies, garlic and salt. Stir-fry for about 15 seconds and then add the tofu. After a minute, add the soy sauce, sugar, pepper and water. After another minute, tear the basil leaves with your hands and add.

Serves 1

This recipe didn't work out that great for me. First, no kidding on the "large" part of the "large handful of basil". It wilts. A lot. Second, there was too much soy sauce for me and it overwhelmed the other flavours. Third, sweet basil is not really a substitute for thai basil. Fourth, the chili peppers I bought could have been hotter (the outsides almost tasted like conventional red peppers, though the innards and seeds still packed a punch). Fifth, the sugar didn't really mix as well as it could've, so there were some bites that were sweet and others not affected.

I could stop here, but I'm not going to.

That's because, I'm going to redo this dish and post how it goes! I know, I know: the suspense is killing me too.

Tofu Stir-Fry

I like stir-fry's quite a bit. Traditionally, I adapted a recipe from the Moosewood but this one is from Mark Bittman's book. The adaptation is very loose though, as such the recipe listed below is not intended to be comprehensive, there are so many different vegetables that can be added. So I talk about baby corn, but water chestnuts or bamboo are awesome substitutes (or really any vegetables). That said, I really like all the ingredients listed below. I love the bright green colour that broccoli turns when you cook it and it makes a welcome change from my usual colour schemata.

Tofu Stir-Fry with Broccoli

1 block tofu, cubed

3 large mushrooms, cubed

Oil

1 onion, chopped

1 head of broccoli, floretted

1 can baby corn

1 tablespoon garlic, minced

1 chili, diced

1/4 cup Shaoxing wine

1/3 cup water

2 tablespoon soy sauce

Cook the onion in some oil for a couple of minutes on high and then add the broccoli and the water and cook for about 5 minutes. Remove with slotted spoon and add some more oil. Add the tofu and mushrooms and cook for a few minutes until browned. Add the baby corn and the wine and cook until it evaporates. Return the onion/broccoli mixture, add the garlic, the chili and the soy sauce and cook for a few minutes. Serve over rice.

Serves 2

Tragedy struck when preparing this meal. I had lovingly diced the red chili I mentioned below and was about to add it into the frying pan when the fragments jumped off the plastic cutting board and on to the floor. Only a few pieces loyally stayed on board. As a result the stir-fry was underspiced. The bites I had that contained red chili were excellent, the other bites couldn't live up to them.

Hot and Sour Edamame

So, finally, another recipe. That makes what, 3 recipes all this month. Partially this is a problem with what I eat. I mean this week has been all lentils and pasta and there's only so much I can milk out of that [maybe you should have thought of that before starting a food blog! --ed]. I was going to have another lentil dish, but then remembered I had bought some shelled edamame on an impulse buy. So I decided to make a varient of Mark Bittman's Hot and Sour Tofu with Edamame (the varient was, I had no tofu). It taught me a valuable lesson though, if you have a recipe you're downscaling fourfold, do the calculations beforehand. As a result, the proportions are wonky.

Hot and Sour Edamame

oil

1/2 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 cup frozen edamame

1/4 cup vegetable stock

2 small chilies

3/4 teaspoon fermented black beans

1 heaping tablespoon Shaoxing wine (I used Fukien Loh Chiew, which may or may not be Shaxoing wine)

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

1/2 tablespoon soy sauce

couple of squirts of honey
Sautée the onion in the oil on high for about 3 minutes. Add the edamame and the stock and cook for a few more minutes. Add the garlic, chilies and black beans and cook for another minute. Add the wine, vinegar, soy sauce, honey and a little water and simmer for 5-7 minutes. Serve over rice.

Serves 1.

For a very ad hoc meal it was quite tasty. Because it was ad hoc I grabbed, edamame right out of the freezer, if you were making this with foresight the edamame should go in with the vinegar. I used a pickled red chili and the mottled green chili from this picture. It worked out well and I hope to make the real thing at some point.

Garden Scramble

So I've been away for a bit with real world stuff, this post is therefore a bit like time traveling as the events contained herein occured in the past (woooooooo). I was planning to make a meal using items from my garden and the last vegetables in my fridge (some onions and some mushrooms). It was going to be a pasta dish, but then you-know-what decided to wreck my pasta. So I had it as a breakfast instead, sans starch.

Garden Scramble

Handful of mushrooms

1 chili, chopped

Oil

2 small onions, diced

1 garlic shoot, chopped

1 cherry tomato, garnish
Saute the onion in some oil on high for about 5 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook for a few more minutes. Then add the chili and the garlic shoots. Add the tomato on the plate.

Serves 1
I think this would have been nice served over something. I probably could've cooked these particular mushrooms for a shorter period as well. The tomato complemented it surprisingly well, if I'd had more ready I would've put more on (say 4 cherry tomatoes).

Non-chilly chili

Chili is probably a better dish for the winter. But even if the weather outside is hot, I love making a big pot of chili. Though you'd think I might get tired of eating chili for an entire week, I don't. Thawed frozen tofu crumbles to have a ground meat like texture, its a great addition to any chili:

Chili con tofu

Oil

1 Onion, diced

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 Chili pepper

1/2 cup water

1 tablespoon cumin

2 tablespoon assorted chili powders

1 cup salsa

2 carrots, chopped

3 cans assorted assorted beans, drained and rinsed

1 can whole tomatoes with juice (28-ounce)

1/2 block frozen firm tofu, frozen for a few hours, thawed (takes about a day), water pressed out, crumbled

1 can of corn

Put in a little oil and sautee the onions, garlic and chili pepper for about 30 seconds to a minute. Pour in the water and cook on high heat for about 4 1/2 minutes - 4 (or don't use any oil and just combine water, onions, garlic and chili pepper for 5 minutes).

Stir in the salsa, carrots and spices, lower the heat, cover and simmer for about 5 minutes

Dump in all other ingredients and simmer for about 20 minutes, stirring ocasionally. Add tabasco sauce at the end if you want.

Serves 6

I generally like to have some black beans and some chickpeas in the chili. I didn't have either bean in this particular chili as the Great Canadian Superstore was having a sale of a can of beans for 50¢s, and all the black beans and chickpeas were gone. There's usally a lot of variance in what I put in this recipe, the corn happens to be in here because one of my friends gifted me a can of it.