Christmas Dinner

Christmas. The most wonderful time of the year. Especially this year, as Hanukkah was at the same time (so it's very ecumenical). To celebrate, we had an traditional Christmas feast - or as traditional as one can do when one is vegetarian.

The main protein was a Tofurky - slathered in a generous amount of coconut oil and slow-roasted. Not being stingy with the coconut oil is key, as this was the tenderest Tofurky ever (in our experiences - your results may vary).

My partner made delicious puff pastry tarts stuffed with vegan brie and cranberry sauce (you can see the leftover cranberry sauce on the table).

I made a salad with a sriracha vinaigrette, but what I was most proud of was the vegan mashed potatoes.

Vegan Mashed Potatoes

Oil
3 pounds Potatoes (a starchy type like Idaho or Russet)
1.5 cups white wine
Dash of hot mustard
Salt and pepper

Dump the potatoes (unpeeled!) into a pot and fill with water. Bring to a boil and add some salt. Cook for 15-30 minutes. Periodically stab the potatoes and when there's no resistance they're done. Drain in a colander.

If you want you can let dry for a bit and then wrap in tinfoil and store in the fridge. Or, you can start on part 2 right away.

Put some oil in the pot over medium-low heat for about a minute. Then, add the potatoes and start mashing away with a suitable instrument (something that looks like this). Add the wine, salt, pepper and mustard and keep on mashing until you get the right consistency.


Serves 6

The potatoes were really nice and fluffy and I didn't miss the milk/butter at all. Because there were plenty of leftovers, we got to have mashed potatoes in the days to come. I even tried some unsuccessful food experiments with them which will not be blogged (because unsuccessful).

Kimchi Fried Rice

Fried rice. It sounds unhealthy. And yet unlike other fried foods which evoke some seedy diner, fried rice is quick and wholesome. It's not particularly fried.

One of the nice things about fried rice is that it's a great use for leftover rice, rice that's had a chance to sit is an even better ingredient. While you can often just throw veggies that were in your fridge the below recipe relies on a hit of kimchi for a hit of extra flavour.

Kimchi Fried Rice

1 cup rice
1 head broccoli or cauliflower
1 block tofu
1 small bell pepper, diced
2 eggs

1.5 cups wine
1/4 cup soy sauce
pepper
4 cloves garlic
2 cups kimchi
Drizzle of sriracha

Put the rice on in the rice cooker or stove (despite what I said above about using leftover rice, I've given the amount for the dry rice). As the rice is on, cook the broccoli/cauliflower and pepper on low heat, stirring occasionally. Add the tofu a little afterwards.

During this time, you can make the sauce (just whisk the wine, soy sauce, pressed garlic and pepper together). Once the rice is done, add a little oil to another pan and sautee the rice in it on medium-high. After a minute or so, create a little "pocket" in the middle of the rice and crack the eggs into it. Then stir the eggs and rice together.

Next, add the tofu/veggies and the sauce to the rice and stir together. Finally, add the kimchi and cook together until the kimchi's warmed up.

Drizzle sriracha over it and serve.

Serves 5

The kimchi is Daebak brand Kimchi, which is vegan and - I assume - fair trade.

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.

Restaurant: Tibet Nepal House

I lobbied fiercely against the original dinner choice for the night. Inspired by Ezra Klein's cri de coeur against the hated Grilled Vegetable Plate, I took a stand against a restaurant that had only that as its vegetarian option. Blind opposition, of course, is not enough: I needed to propose an alternative. So I googled for restaurants around our hotel and picked the Tibet Nepal House because it sounded fun and I had never had that type of cuisine before. I was glad my suggestion was accepted.

The food was great, similar to Indian but with slightly different spices. We had Daal, Aloo Phulkopi Tarkaari (similar to Aloo Ghobi: potatoes, cauliflower and tomatoes), Aloo-Taamaa (potatoes and bamboo), Vegetable Sekuwa (oven roasted vegetables) and Tse Phing (a noodle dish, which we ordered because it symbolized long life).

In addition, I was particularly excited by the Tofu Saag. I'm not a particular fan of paneer, it's tasteless and just adds fat and unhealthiness to meals. Why have Saag Paneer, I've always said, when you could substitute tofu which is equally tasteless that has the same texture. Finally, I found a restaurant that does this. Also, there were meat dishes, including yak which was apparently quite interesting.

When we flew back to Toronto I had leftover Braised Coconut Tofu for dinner, thus bringing this blog around full circle from the California trip posts. There were other restaurants I went to, including a nice asian fusion place in Pasadena and several mediocre lunches but I think I've done enough items on California restaurants.

Tibet Nepal House
36 East Holly Street, Pasadena, California, USA

The Cambrian Explosion

We drove on the edge of a cliff as darkness slowly began to surround us. We were driving to LA on California's Highway 1, which we had picked based on its beauty. We hadn't considered the reason why it was beautiful was because, to repeat, the highway is on the edge of a cliff. The day had started off leisurely, with a drive from a San Jose suburb to Monterey where we had some delicious Mexican food for lunch. The lunch special was two items accompanied by beans, rice and a salad. Honestly, the accompaniments would have been a big enough lunch – but there were also, in my case, a burrito and a quesadilla. We hadn't gone to Monterey for its food though, we went to see its aquarium. There were some truly stunning creatures on display.

No, that's not seaweed: that's a Leafy Sea Dragon. As in it's an actual living animal that looks like that. All the interesting things to see caused us to tarry perhaps a little too long. It was already four pm by the time we started heading on down Highway 1. We realized three facts early on:
1) The aforementioned cliff-edge-thingy
2) That this necessitated a low speed limit, especially around curves
3) There weren't any big population centres that could be stopped at when night hit.

We decided that we should set a goal of arriving at the town of Cambria, knowing nothing about it only other than the fact that it was the next thing that had an "over 1000 people" icon on the map. As the hours ticked past conventional dinner time, I was very happy lunch had been so big. Just when it seemed we might have to sleep in the car or at any random roadside motel, we hit a patch of non-crooked road and made it into Cambria.

Cambria was, in a word, charming. We stayed at the White Water Inn, where the office has homemade cookies and a movie lending library (VHS, natch). While there, the proprietor recommended Robin's Restaurant as vegetarian-friendly and booked us a reservation.

We were seated outside, in a semi-enclosed area. There were plenty of choices on the menu and I ended up going with the Wanton “Ravioli”.

The ravioli was stuffed with arugula and tofu feta and was quite nice and subtle. Once again though, my mom outdid me with her order of the Pan Seared Furikake Tofu. The tofu was absolutely excellent: crisp without being rough on the outside, succulent on the inside and topped with a delicious sauce.

The next morning, the Inn had washed our car's windows for us as is their custom. We drove away to LA, with strong feelings of good will for the little town of Cambria.

Robin's Restaurant
4095 Burton Drive, Cambria, California, USA

The Thousand Year Restaurant

We went to dinner at another restaurant recommended by my cousin, this time he and his girlfriend joined him. Located next to the Hotel California (or a Hotel California, I'm not sure how this works) the Millennium Restaurant also occupies the prime real estate of #1 google hit for "Millennium" .

The restaurant serves haute vegetarian cuisine and was very elegant. It also proved why I'd be a bad food critic, as I really don't know how to describe the meal.

"Excellent" would be accurate, but not very useful. "My meal had a medley of vegetables, tofu and portobello mushrooms" is a bit banal. "I really don't know how to describe the meal" is a bit meta. I'll give it a shot though:

The flavours were complex and daring. The portobellos were delicious and succulent, with a crispy bottom. I asked the waiter how they did it and he explained that they dredged them before sautéing. The meal also taught me that I'm never going to like parsnips. I've never cared for them and if this place couldn't do them well, nobody can.

Coming up, tales of restaurants outside San Francisco but inside California. Where could they be? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Millennium Restaurant
580 Geary Street, San Francisco, California, USA

Braised Tofu and Cauliflower in Curried Coconut Milk

I realized earlier today that I hadn't had anything new this week and would have nothing to blog about. So I turned to Mark Bittman's book and opened it at random. I wanted to have something a) good, b) new and c) something with cauliflower to use up the remnants from last week. The recipe I stumbled upon certainly seemed to fit the first two, and a bit of modifications made it fit the last as well.

Braised Tofu and Cauliflower in Curried Coconut Milk

3 large onions, cut into eighths

1 28-ounce can of tomatoes (with liquids)

5 cloves garlic

1 dried chili pepper

2 tbsp neutral oil

Salt and pepper

1 tbsp curry powder

1 tbsp garam masala

700-900 grams tofu, blotted dry and cubed

2 cups cauliflower florets

1.5 cups coconut milk

Combine the onion, tomatoes, garlic and chili in a blender or food processor. Purée. Add oil to a deep pot over medium heat. When the oil is hot, add the pureed mixture with the salt, pepper and spices. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes: until it becomes saucy. Meanwhile parboil the cauliflower (toss in boiling water for a few minutes) and add the cauliflower and tofu to the mixture. Cook for about about 5 minutes and stir in the coconut milk. Bring to a boil and cook for a little bit more. Serve over rice.

Serves 5?

I thought I'd made it too soupy, but once it was over the rice it turned out quite nicely: with a hearty and complex taste. I'm not quite sure how many it serves, my parents and I all had a meal out of it and there were plenty of leftovers.

The Story Continues... Kimchi Tofu Soup

My last post here was a bit of a cliffhanger because I didn't mention what dish I used the kimchi in (I realize I am using a very expansive definition of the word "cliffhanger"). Well, now all will be revealed (unless you read the title of this post)! As I used Mark Bittman's recipe for kimchi, I thought I'd troll through the index to find recipes that used kimchi.

Kimchi Tofu Soup

dark sesame oil

1 medium onion, diced

1 cup kimchi

1/2 block tofu, cubed (or crumbled if soft tofu)

2 teaspoons chili paste

4 cups water or stock

2 teaspoons rice vinegar

2 teaspoons soy sauce

1/3 cup white rice

Put the sesame oil in a medium saucepan over medium/high heat. Add the onions when it's hot and cook for a miute. Add the kimchi, tofu and chili paste for a few seconds then add the water, vinegar and soy sauce. Bring to a boil. Tone down the heat a bit till it's simmering, then add the rice and cook for 15-20 minutes.

The soup was a nice mix of sour and savoury but, like the kimchi, not spicy enough. I'm going to be making it again this week and I'm going to use soft tofu and more chili paste. Maybe even a couple of my pickled chilies, we'll see if they're still good after I accidentially put them into the freezer.

Green Jade Soup

Green Jade Soup is one of my oldest, favourite dishes. I once referred to it as "the ambrosia of Earth" in a short story I wrote for Grade 8 English. The rest of the story involved my entire class being massacred by superintelligent wasps – so had I written it nowadays they'd probably have locked me up for it and then you'd never get the chance to read this blog. Unlike some other childhood favourites from the Moosewood cookbook, this one has stood the test of time.

Green Jade Soup is, however, so awesome it is probably the exact opposite of being killed by a superintelligent wasp. Plus, it's incredibly easy to make:

Green Jade Soup


4 dried shiitake mushrooms
1 cup boiling water
6 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 tbsp grated ginger root
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced carrots
1 1/2 cups thnly sliced leeks or onions
2 cups chopped chinese cabbage, bok choy, or kale
4 cups firmly packed, rinsed, chopped fresh spinach
1 cake tofu cut into 1/2 inch cubes (3/4 pound)
salt to taste
several drops dark sesame oil

Place the shiitake mushrooms in a heatproof bowl, cover with the boiling water, set aside for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the stock in a large soup pot. When it boils, add the ginger, carrot, onion and greens. Lower the heat and simmer for around 10 minutes. Drain the mushrooms, adding their liquid to the pot. Slice the mushrooms and add them to the soup along with the tofu and spinach. Cook for 5 minutes, add some salt and sesame oil.

Serves 4.

90 Minute Beans

The Paupered Chef's recipe for 90 minute no soak beans may change my life. Just as the name suggests, it's 90 minutes from taking the beans out of their containers to having them done. Now, despite my frugality, I still buy a lot of canned beans. That's because conventional bean-making techniques take a long time. If this proves to be a useful recipe though, I can switch permanently to dried beans and save literally tens of cents. The recipe calls for a "dutch oven", which caused much mirth among my friends when I tried to tell them in person about this recipe. Hopefully, my internet readers are more mature.

90 Minute, No Soak Beans

Dried Beans

Salt

Preheat the oven to 250°. Put the beans into a pot with a tightly fitting lid (I used foil to keep the top on, this makes a big difference. Top the beans with about 4 cm of water and sprinkle with salt.

Bring to a boil (about 15 minutes) and then put in the oven for 75 minutes.

Serve.

I've had mixed results with this recipe, sometimes the beans come out a little too tough. I think that can be traced back to having lids that don't fit well enough. When I can try this with proper pots I may be switching for good.

The chickpeas turned out quite nice tonight, I made a mashup recipe where I combined curried chickpeas and tofu with Mjudraa with some expired mixed greens I got from a friend today (expired for, like, only a day! And he was going to throw them out!)

Curried Chickpeas and Tofu

One of the classic "workhorses" of my diet has been this simple chickpea and tofu curry from the Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home. I don't eat as much of it now, but there was a time I'd have it at least once a week. In fact, my copy of the book is broken open at this recipe. It's a somewhat stripped down version from the cook book, mainly because it calls for a little bit of tomatoes and I don't usually have tomatoes in that particular amount.

Curried Chickpeas and Tofu

1 medium onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 chili pepper, minced

oil

2 teaspoons curry powder

2 teaspoons cumin

1/2 block tofu, cubed

1 cup cooked chickpeas

salt

Sauté the onion in the oil until translucent. Add the cumin, curry powder, garlic, chili and tofu a cook for a few minutes. Add the chickpeas and a 1/4 cup of their liquid if you cooked them from dried or water if you didn't. Simmer for 5-7 minutes or so and serve over rice.

Serves 2.

I have been experimenting with adding the chili later to maintain the heat, I probably should have added it even later (maybe with a few minutes to go?). Speaking of chili peppers, the one for this meal was the last from the garden. With its picking, my garden is now officially de– I mean taken to a nice farm where it will have lots of room to run around and such. Actually, the garlic is still there – I have to decide when to harvest it, and where to store it (maybe ask my landlords if I can use the garage?) Still its kinda sad, I guess I'll pull out the stakes supporting my dead tomato plant.

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.

Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu Korean Restaurant

I have to admit that until I decided to do this blog post I had no idea about the actual name of this resturant. I'd always previously just called it "The Korean Restaurant near Clinton's" or merely "The Korean Restaurant". Its usually pretty busy but they have a platoon of orange clad waiters who try to shuffle things along. Its clean, spartan and pretty afordable.

One really nice change this time I came was that it started of with a bottle of cold water at the table. Usually its pretty hard to get water and its a place where water is pretty great to have. The meal started off with a selection of appetizers, some of which I could identify (kimchi) and others that I couldn't.

The restaurant was a little less busy than usual (though still pretty crowded) so they refilled the mung bean dish a few times before the entrees came. The first time I went – my uncle took me – I had the Bi Bim Bop and, quite frankly, didn't enjoy it much. A few years later, I started coming back for the tofu soon soup.

The soup comes to your table in a big bowl still bubbling from the kitchen. Its filled with a delicious spicy mix of tofu, broccoli and zucchini. This is why the water comes in handy. You can either sip the soup directly, or pour it over purple rice to cool it. The practice is to crack an egg in the soup, which gets cooked by the boiling broth. I tend not to do that, though I think I'll probbaly start doing it again. The rice water is left at the table, I have a silly tradition wher I take a sip of it (though I sometimes forget, including at this meal. Dinner comes out to be $8 a person which is very reasonable in my opinion.

Buk Chang Dong Soon Tofu Korean Restaurant
691 Bloor St. West, Toronto, ON

Restaurant: Khmer Thai

It's a bit disingenuous of me to review Khmer Thai as a restaurant. Sure, it has my usual likes in a restaurant: not expensive, a little shabby and vegetarian selections but that's not why I go.



I only go to eat a Cambodian tofu dish I used to eat all the time back in Kingston. Alas, I haven't been able to get back to Kingston recently and thus have not been able to have the real thing at Cambodiana Restaurant. I had it last when I was in town for a wedding, staying at my grandfather's empty condominium. Everything had been cleared out for his move to Toronto, leaving rooms hauntingly devoid of anything. I sat on the floor (as there were no tables), eating the tofu with a plastic spoon (as there was not cutlery) and hoping not to drop anything and stain the carpet. That's a rather long winded way of saying that since then I have to get my spicy basil-chili-tofu fix at Khmer Thai:



I generally don't like sweetness in my meals but this dish combines sweet, sour and hot beautifully together. If this dish doesn't sound appealing to you, I can't recommend this restaurant in good conscience. After all, I'm only in it for the tofu.

Khmer Thai
1018 St Clair Avenue West, Toronto, Ontario

Zheng bai dou fu

Fuschia Dunlop (aka Fu Xia Dunlop) is an accomplished travel writer, chef and MI6 agent. She travelled around China collecting recipes and military secrets from ordinary people (okay, the last part is a joke. Ms. Dunlop is not an MI6 agent, PRC counterintelligence operatives). Today's meal is my version of one of these recipes from her book on Hunanese cooking, The Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. It came from her trip to the Kaifu Temple in Changsha – which is run by elderly nuns. Chinese Buddhist monastic food shuns meat and the Five Acrid and Strong Smelling Vegetables (so no, inter alia, onions and garlic). While the monks and nuns developed elaborate fake-meat for pilgrims and patrons, the following recipe is more reminiscent of ordinary Chinese vegetarian fare:

Steamed White Bean Curd with Black Beans and Chiles

Block of tofu

2 tbsp black fermented beans, rinsed

3 chiles

1 tbsp oil

1 tbsp soy sauce
Slice the tofu and pile into foil along with rinsed black fermented beans, sliced chiles, vegetable oil and soy sauce. Steam over medium heat for 20-25 minutes. Stir well and serve over rice.

Serves 2.

The green chili came from my garden and the red ones (pickled) came from my friend Leo, who gifted them to me before he travelled o'erseas. The fermented black beans also came from him. They add a complex and pungent flavour to food, unfortunately they make your kitchen smell somewhat like feet. The original recipe calls for the use of a heatproof bowl– as I'm not sure which (if any) of my bowls are heatproof I constructed my own out of foil. Your results may vary.