20 posts tagged “stir-fry”

Tofu is starting to grow on me. I've never actively disliked it, but it has neither taste nor texture — there's nothing to like or dislike, really. But you can marinate it and add whatever flavor you want to it, and you can sautée it to create a somewhat crispy crust. It's easy to work with. And I realize that there are countless others, much more exciting things that can be done to it.

Had a bit of a mishap with the noodles, mind you. My grip on the lid slipped as I poured the water out, and the noodles followed the water down the sink. Talk about a sinking feeling, seeing them things skidaddling down the drain like that — voilà; dinner's served: Schezuan tofu, but yeah, I decided against the noodles at the last minute. It didn't really create a balanced meal, you see... Not with the tofu. No need for noodles with this meal. Nope. D'oh.

This is a dish I've made before, but this time around, I decided to add some cabbage that we had left over. It was a good idea — one that I'll definitely try again — but in this case, I cooked the cabbage a little too much, and the potatoes a little too little.

This very simple vegetarian dish relies on hoisin sauce, red pepper flakes and garlic for flavoring. The rest is just onions, asparagus, and mushroom, with scallions for garnish. Some chicken stock and corn starch rounded out the sauce.

And then there was the tofu...

I'm a meat eater who considers vegetarianism and veganism irrational and/or extreme. But then I realized that anti-tofuism isn't very rational either. So I've tried it out a few times, and I've been fairly happy with it. Tofu has two big problems: it has a boring texture, and a boring taste. It does better when it comes to the nutritional aspect of things, but that becomes irrelevant unless you can address those two first ones.

My experience with tofu is very limited, but I like to sauté it, to add a little crispness to the surface. That helps with the texture problem. For the taste, I think it's a good idea to marinade it before you start cooking it. Tofu is very pourous, so it soaks it up ten times faster than meat does.

So that's what I did, in this case. I drained the (extra firm) tofu, and marinated it in soy sauce and toasted sesame seed oil. And then I sautéed it in a pan. The meal turned out great.

But the original recipe just suggested I'd just drop the tofu in as is — just plain tofu, heated up. That would have been extremely boring, I think. This is the first time I've looked at an entirely unfamiliar recipe and just said, "That's wrong. And I know how to do it better" — the first time I've said that, and actually been right.

What kinda idiot would just drop plain tofu in, without adding some taste and texture to it? No wonder people are suspicious of vegetarians.

Very simple and easy. And damn tasty. It was served over noodles, and eaten with chopsticks. This reminded me of an episode of The Sopranos, where Tony went on about the great achievements of Italian-Americans, while having some Chinese takeway with his family. His dim-witten son asked if it wasnt the Chinese who invented spaghetti, which of course irritated Tony no end. But I've gotta admire his answer: "Now, why would someone invent spaghetti, if they eat with sticks?!" So I switched to a fork after a while, heheh.

The tandoori paste is from Gordon Ramsay, and I've used to several times before with great results. But on those occasions, I sautéed the salmon in a non-stick pan. In this case, I decided to grill it. This didn't do wonders for the tandoori paste — it lost almost all its flavors. D'oh. That's a bit of a novice mistake — a friend of mine does a fantastic ribeye steak on the grill, upon which he heaps frightening amounts of garlic and rosemary. The grill reduces the potency of the flavors, and it comes out just right. I should have thought of that. Oh well. The salmon was caught though, and not purchased, so it was of excellent quality and still came out tasting great.

Sadly, I kinda lost my nerve after having pulled it off the grill and discovering that it hadn't cooked through properly (it was frozen and hadn't thawed out properly yet) — and then I sort of lost my nerve and ended up overcooking it a bit.

This dish, I really love. Dead simple, and extremely tasty. MPW says there's no such thing as a perfect dish — there are always things that can be done to it. Not that there has to be anything wrong with the dish per se, but tastes and traditions do change. I agree with that. I just can't think of anything to improve this one.

Avial is a bit of a strange dish. As with almost all Indian foods, there's no set recipe, but it basically contains as many different vegetables as you can lay your hands on. This is stir-fried, before a peanut butter curry sauce is added. Very simple, and quite tasty — although I used far too much sauce in this case. And a little too much peanut butter in the sauce itself. Definitely something I'd do again, but I think I'll tweak the recipe next time around.

And for some protein, I heated up some frozen Dal Makhani — an excellent black lentil stew.

In the wok, purple onions and garlic, green onions, and finally asparagus, stir-fried. Meanwhile, the tofu was sautéed in a non-stick pan with toasted sesame seed oil. A sauce of low-sodium soy sauce, rice wine vinegar (that's the sour part), water and corn starch, along with lots of red pepper flakes and Schezuan peppers. The tofu was dumped in, and served, garnished with shredded basil.

It was quite good, but the tofu didn't take on much of the toasted sesame seed oil, though.

I didn't intend to use asparagus, but we had some left over, along with the red bell pepper I had intended to use (would have given it a nicer color combination, I thought). And red bell peppers last a lot longer than asparagus. So asparagus it was.

Given that this was a completely improvised thing, I'm pretty happy with it. I'm getting better at improvising, and coming up with my own stuff, these days. Hurray for confidence.

Chicken tikka and aloo mutter. Making the same stuff back to back isn't too cool. Except, since I were cooking for different people, I didn't feel too bad about it all — the only person who suffered from a culinary repetition were me, and I didn't mind. Especially since I knew I would learn a lot more from cooking the same stuff twice in a row, would help me learn a lot more about what I was cooking.

I do try to take notes, but even the best of notes taken weeks or months ago cannot compare to the fresh memory of what you did the day before. I mean, this is the whole reason why professional cooks have such confidence, compared to home cooks. They do the same stuff, repeatedly. So I decided this was a good chance to learn something about my chicken tikka and aloo mutter recipes.

Saag is most often interpreted as spinach, but it can also mean other greens like collared greens. In this case, I used frozen spinach, and for whatever reason, it turned out very badly. I can't remember if it was the frozen spinach itself (I know I've done this dish before, but I can't remember what I used) — as opposed to using fresh spinach (if that was what I was using), or if the frozen spinach had gone of, or maybe it already was bad when it was packed? I don't know. But it didn't turn out good at all. A real bummer.

Well, enough about the bad stuff. I remember dopiaza from English Indian restaurants. But I can't remember if I had any. Ironically enough, it turned out to normally be a meat dish, but in this case it uses potatoes. It's ironic because I've made some vegetable meals lately that had meat (the recipes called for it), while trying to find some good vegetarian stuff. This time, I lucked out. This was excellent. With taters, no meat. Hence the irony.

It was very simple: stir-fry onions chopped until browned, add two diced tomatoes; 3 hot chili peppers finely diced/crushed; 1 tsp roasted, ground cumin; 3 roasted, ground cloves, 1 tsp roasted, ground black peppercorns and the seeds from 3 green cardamom pods. Stir-fry for 5 minutes more and add enough water to cover and 1 lb. small red new potatoes, or just cubed potatoes. Cover and let simmer for 15-20 minutes. Serve with cilantro.

A note on vegetarianism: I've had a nagging desire to make more vegetarian meals. I think a vegetarian meal once a week would be perfectly reasonable, for an omnivore of today — no one's gonna think you're about to become a Petard just because of that. Meat was mostly something for special occasions, up until very recently in our history as a species. Or actually, until a few centuries ago. Meat was expensive. Today, it's cheap, and people eat it every day.

I'm a realist, and I hate the maudlin and/or hysterical "meat is murder" idiots. But if people ate meat a little less frequently, they might be able to buy "humane" meat, from animals that weren't treated a Matrix meat electro popsicle. This wouldn't make me feel all fluffy and fuzzy, and sleep well at night in its own right, but meat from animals who are raised in those factory conditions is inherently dangerous.

You've got Gordon Ramsay swearing at a Hell's Kitchen contestant because the chicken was undercooked, and Mr. Angrypants wants to know if the cook intended to murder his customer. And then you've got the original Iron Chef where they serve turkey sashimi. Chicken meat is not inherently dangerous if undercooked — but the factory produced stuff, is. I think that's a good argument for slipping a few more vegetarian meals into your calendar.

All that being said, I'm gonna hunt for some meat dopiaza next.