I've never been much of a fan of Thanksgiving, and with a huge dead bird and salt oozing in a gravy boat the symbols of the holiday, it doesn't exactly conform with my current diet. Still, there's a bit of nostalgia to reckon with, and, even more, I've been wanting to cook up a pumpkin pie ever since Halloween. So I searched the net and found a couple of recipes: one for lentil "meatloaf", and a couple for kabocha pie (using kabocha, Japanese pumpkin).
The lentil loaf was pretty tasty and chock full of healthy stuff, but it tasted nothing like meatloaf, as you might expect; rather, it tasted like filafel (not at all a bad thing!). It did have the consistency of meatloaf after it cooled, though, and it went well with a tofu gravy I had used as a white sauce for pasta earlier in the week. It lasted a couple of days (as all Thanksgiving meals should), and the best meal I made out of it was when I spread it on bread and poured on some hot salsa.
The interesting thing about the meatloaf recipe is that I used an automatic recipe maker that lets you put in the ingredients you have and get a fair recipe. The site is here.
What turned out for me (note I used tahini as my binder rather than any of the options in the loaf maker above, and I baked in a toaster oven at 1000W for ~45 min):
Lentil Loaf
Ingredients:
2 cups cooked lentils
1 cup cooked brown rice
1/2 cup pine nuts
2 Tbsp olive oil
One onion, diced
One large garlic clove, minced
One large carrot, peeled and grated
One cup mushrooms, cleaned and chopped
One jalapeno chile, seeded and minced
1/4 to 1/2 cup vegetable broth, as needed (I used kombu dashi)
1 heaping Tbsp tahini
1/2 tsp. dried sage
1 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. ground cumin
2 TB soy sauce
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350º. Spray a loaf pan or 8x8 square baking pan with nonstick spray and set aside (an 8x8 pan makes a crisper loaf).
Be sure to cook rice and lentils before beginning: the lentils should be cooked with kombu (use 5-10in of used kombu) for about 20-30 min.
1. Grind the pine nuts into a coarse meal using a food processor or spice/coffee grinder. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside.
2. Sauté vegetables in the olive oil until soft. Add to the large mixing bowl along with all the remaining ingredients. Mix and mash together well, adding only as much liquid as needed to create a soft, moist loaf that holds together and is not runny (you may not need to add any liquid if the grains and protein are very moist). Add more binder/carbohydrate as needed if the loaf seems too wet.
2a. Optional: mix together in a food processor for about 3-4 min.
3. Press mixture into the prepared pan and bake for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until cooked through.
Let the loaf cool in the pan for 10 to 15 minutes, then turn out onto a plate or platter and slice. Serve with potatoes, vegetables, and vegetarian gravy, if desired.
The vegan white "gravy" recipe is available here.
In retrospect I wish I had added a glaze using the following:
10g sliced ginger
1 Tbsp soy sauce
2 Tbsp dashi
1 Tbsp arrowroot powder (kuzu 葛)
Mix them together and brush onto the top of the loaf, and tell me the results! I find this has a very nice "steak sauce" flavor, especially when the dashi is cooked off.
Finally, the kabocha pie was very good, but too sweet. I ended up using cinnamon graham crackers for my crust, which turned out to be the best part. I found the soy milk in the recipe for the crust was far too little: just add more until it is easily malleable. The recipe I used was here, but I (unfortunately) added 1/2 cup of sugar, which was too much. Use brown sugar or beet sugar, not white sugar!
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Mabodofu
Looking at the recipe book I've put together over the past couple of months, I see I've made a fair number of dishes. Some have been good, some great, and some were terrible. My favorite so far, a dish I make at least once a week, is Mabodofu. It comes from China, and is traditionally served with pork, but I like it better without.
The recipe I have is adapted and translated from Macrobiotic Start Book, a great, full color guide to macrobiotic philosophy with 200 recipes. It is a compendium of recipe books published by Orange Page and is largely to blame for my current vegan tendencies.
First--a note about kinds of tofu.
The recommended tofu for this recipe is Momen, a medium-firm tofu that I didn't really like much before I started making this recipe. It is in contrast with the two tofus most westerners know--"Silk" tofu (kinu in Japanese) and the very firm tofu that is preferred in western groceries and restaurants (this kind is rare in Japan, but I've found a version called "kara kara," "very dry," in a few stores). I've come over to the momen camp, at least for mabodofu: though it crumbles easily and can make things a bit mucky, it absorbs the other ingredients much better than hard tofu, which tends to taste "tofuey" at its core even after cooking in sauces. It is also much better for this than silken tofu, which falls apart in a slight breeze.
I also recommend Koyadofu, or freeze dried tofu, for this recipe; though it has an odd texture, it is overflowing with protein and sucks up the flavorful sauce like the sponge it is. Make sure to soak Koyadofu in hot water for a few minutes, then squeeze the water out, soak and repeat a few times before adding to the dish as per this recipe. Apparently ammonia is often added to Koyadofu and will come out in water as a whitish liquid. Also note that Koyadofu has more calories than Momen. Good for exercising.
Mabodofu
300 g Momen or 2 thick or 4 thin squares rehydrated koyadofu
100 g, or half a medium onion
10 g ginger
5 pieces shiitake mushrooms (dried shiitake works best, soak first and save soaking water!)
1 cup kombu dashi (add 1/2-1 cup extra if using Koyadofu)
1-2 tbsp miso (I use mixed miso, though 1 tsp barley miso + 1 tbsp soy miso is recommended; add 2 tsp extra if making with koyadofu)
1 tbsp kudzu, or arrowroot, powder
1-2 peppers (in Japan, use togarashi, a dried chili)
20 g leek
1 tsp soy sauce
sesame oil, salt
optional:1-2 cloves garlic
1 Cut tofu into 5 cm squares.
2 Finely chop ginger, onion, pepper, mushroom, and garlic.
3 Cut leek into 1 cm pieces.
4 Heat a frying pan and add 1 tbsp sesame oil and fry. ingredients from 2. Add misos, dashi, and soy sauce. Turn down heat and cook until vegetables become soft.
5 Add tofu and add salt and miso to taste.
6 Dissolve kudzu in an equal amount of water and slowly mix in. If cooking with momen tofu, be careful not to disturb tofu too much or it will begin to disintegrate.
7 Remove from heat, add leek, and serve over rice.
It is important to cook the ingredients well in step 4: the longer you cook, the stronger the flavor of the sauce will be. I prefer to cook the sauce a little longer to boil off some of the dashi and have a slightly saltier tasting result. However, it might be too salty if you don't mix with rice.
The recipe I have is adapted and translated from Macrobiotic Start Book, a great, full color guide to macrobiotic philosophy with 200 recipes. It is a compendium of recipe books published by Orange Page and is largely to blame for my current vegan tendencies.
First--a note about kinds of tofu.
The recommended tofu for this recipe is Momen, a medium-firm tofu that I didn't really like much before I started making this recipe. It is in contrast with the two tofus most westerners know--"Silk" tofu (kinu in Japanese) and the very firm tofu that is preferred in western groceries and restaurants (this kind is rare in Japan, but I've found a version called "kara kara," "very dry," in a few stores). I've come over to the momen camp, at least for mabodofu: though it crumbles easily and can make things a bit mucky, it absorbs the other ingredients much better than hard tofu, which tends to taste "tofuey" at its core even after cooking in sauces. It is also much better for this than silken tofu, which falls apart in a slight breeze.
I also recommend Koyadofu, or freeze dried tofu, for this recipe; though it has an odd texture, it is overflowing with protein and sucks up the flavorful sauce like the sponge it is. Make sure to soak Koyadofu in hot water for a few minutes, then squeeze the water out, soak and repeat a few times before adding to the dish as per this recipe. Apparently ammonia is often added to Koyadofu and will come out in water as a whitish liquid. Also note that Koyadofu has more calories than Momen. Good for exercising.
Mabodofu
300 g Momen or 2 thick or 4 thin squares rehydrated koyadofu
100 g, or half a medium onion
10 g ginger
5 pieces shiitake mushrooms (dried shiitake works best, soak first and save soaking water!)
1 cup kombu dashi (add 1/2-1 cup extra if using Koyadofu)
1-2 tbsp miso (I use mixed miso, though 1 tsp barley miso + 1 tbsp soy miso is recommended; add 2 tsp extra if making with koyadofu)
1 tbsp kudzu, or arrowroot, powder
1-2 peppers (in Japan, use togarashi, a dried chili)
20 g leek
1 tsp soy sauce
sesame oil, salt
optional:1-2 cloves garlic
1 Cut tofu into 5 cm squares.
2 Finely chop ginger, onion, pepper, mushroom, and garlic.
3 Cut leek into 1 cm pieces.
4 Heat a frying pan and add 1 tbsp sesame oil and fry. ingredients from 2. Add misos, dashi, and soy sauce. Turn down heat and cook until vegetables become soft.
5 Add tofu and add salt and miso to taste.
6 Dissolve kudzu in an equal amount of water and slowly mix in. If cooking with momen tofu, be careful not to disturb tofu too much or it will begin to disintegrate.
7 Remove from heat, add leek, and serve over rice.
It is important to cook the ingredients well in step 4: the longer you cook, the stronger the flavor of the sauce will be. I prefer to cook the sauce a little longer to boil off some of the dashi and have a slightly saltier tasting result. However, it might be too salty if you don't mix with rice.
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