Tofu Scramble

Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Filed Under Breakfast and Brunch, Tofu, Vegetarian | 36 Comments

Hey, stop, don’t leave… you are in the right place… No, I haven’t suddenly turned vegan or anything like that. I had some leftover tofu that I was forced to buy, by a very persistent friend, some of which I successfully managed to hide in a guacamole. I was still left with almost 3/4th a block of soft tofu, so I asked my foodie friends here for some suggestions on what to do with it. I knew I could count on this lot, there were a lot of great ideas, and I picked the one dish that the majority favored – a tofu scramble. Rita -a non-blogger foodie I met through this blog – took the effort to write up the whole recipe for me, it sounded so simple and delicious, I decided to try it.

While it didn’t taste exactly like eggs, it almost fooled Siv. The dish looks just like scrambled eggs, and with all the nice spices added to this, it actually tasted great. Though I don’t think I will be replacing eggs completely with tofu now onwards, I will be making this version for my vegetarian friends for sure. I omitted coconut from Rita’s recipe, since I didn’t have any in stock, but grated coconut will make this even more delicious. So, fellow tofu haters, give this a try… I am a convert, I won’t be making disgusted faces at the mere mention of tofu anymore. I am glad I tried something new this year.

Tofu Scramble

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Guacamole is one of my favorite dips. I know a lot of people stay away from it because of the high fat content in avocados. But the fat is mostly heart-healthy mono-saturated fat, it is cholesterol free as well. So do you wonder why I am making a lower fat version of the guacamole goodness? Because of a certain someone who has been pestering me for the past couple of weeks asking - WHERE IS MY SOY ENTRY? So far she has been only sending threatening e-mails, but I have a feeling that it won’t be long before this one shows up on my doorsteps with a gun. So I thought I better make something with soy fast… This in fact is the first time I am buying tofu, the things you do in the name of fear friendship…

I saw this recipe on TV a long time ago,  forgot who the chef was or even which show it was. But I remember that he substituted half the quantity of avocado with equal amount of tofu to keep it low fat, and had sworn that it doesn’t make any difference to the taste, and no one will even doubt that there is tofu in it! So I thought, wow, that sounds like the perfect recipe for me! Yesterday I went to the store to buy some tofu and they had soft tofu, silk tofu, firm tofu, extra firm tofu and what not! I had no clue which one to buy, but I assumed that it could be soft tofu, since that sounded like close in texture to avocado. But after coming home, every single recipe I could find for tofu guacamole had used firm tofu. I still made mine with the soft tofu, and it tasted and looked fine! I have no idea what the difference is! If any tofu experts out there knows why firm tofu will work better, let me know!

Guacamole1

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My birthday is less than two weeks away, and I am so looking forward to it. I love everything about the day, I just don’t understand those people who hate their birthdays! What is not to love - the gifts, the fuss, the food, the gifts, the cake, did I mention gifts? :) Gifts are the best part of the day, yeah I am a little vain, in case you didn’t know that about me already.

Siv tries so hard every year, and with him it is either a big hit or a miss. He has given me some amazing gifts, and some years I have made him return the gifts too, especially the years he bought me expensive jewelry. I am more of a junk jewelry fan, I’d rather buy clothes and shoes and bags for that money. He thinks I need to start wearing classy jewelry -his words, not mine - so some years he tries to inject some class into me, but I always make him return those, except for a Sig pendant like the one Carry Bradshaw wears in the Sex and the City and a very cute diamond ring that I wear everyday now. Finally he has stopped trying to class me up… :)

I have always wanted to print some of my recipes into a cookbook, not for sale or anything, but just for me to keep in my cookbook collection. Since I keep talking about it almost every day, Siv wanted to surprise me with getting a cookbook printed out of my recipes. Luckily I caught him before he went too far with it.  It is a very sweet gesture, but he sure would have screwed it up.  I am too picky- read control freak - when it comes to certain things, and I have a clear vision of what I want this cookbook to look like, how to categorize it etc, and he wouldn’t have got it right for sure! And after all the work he would have put into it, I would’ve had to pretend to like it, which I am really really bad at, and he would have ended up hurt. :) I saved both of us the trouble by finding this out in time. I can’t wait to see what he is getting me though. Every year he gets me stuff related to what I am into at the moment, and these days blogging is all I talk about, so it might be something related to blogging, I can think of so many things I need… Hint hint.. :)

Anyways, speaking of cookbooks, my Modern Indian Cooking book had a nice recipe for Lamb Chops with a Rosemary and Lime marinade with plenty of Indian spices. This recipe is inspired by that, but I made plenty of substitutions and changes. Initial plan was to have the lamb and some steamed baby bok choy, but half way through the process I wasn’t sure whether this was going to be enough, so I made some quick potato wedges as well. During this confusion, I overcooked the lamb, it ended up a bit too well done for our taste. The bok choy got overcooked too, look at the sad little veggies on the side. Anyway the lamb and the bok choy tasted great, regardless of the appearance, so I thought I’ll share the recipe, the way I did it.

Lamb Chops

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As promised, here is another of my Quick fix healthy dinners. In case you missed the salmon post, Siv and I are trying to eat healthy at least a few days a week. We do go a little overboard on weekends, eating out or cooking the fattiest cuts of meat. But last year we used to get a lot of take-outs during weekdays, so we are in a much better place this year. Also, by not cutting the sinful foods completely out of our diet, we are not deprived and hopefully will stick with the plan longer.

During these healthy-cooking experiments, I think I’ve figured out the secret to making perfectly fork-tender baked chicken, that too with no oil. The secret is to bake the chicken in a covered pan, so it gets cooked in its own steam. I have tried different marinades with this method, and have always ended up with the most perfect tender chicken. It works best with the dark meat though, chicken breast doesn’t always end up so tender.

 No-oil baked Chicken in a Garlic-Cilantro-Mint Marinade

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Siv’s birthday was on a Wednesday this year. We had a private celebration at home, with just the two of us, where I cooked a bunch of his favorite dishes. Then Friday night, we had another celebration with the gang, and after considering a bunch of places, I picked Red Fin as the venue. Siv’s favorite cuisine is Pan-Asian, and Red-Fin was advertised as Asian Fusion, and had some rave reviews too.

Red Fin is owned by the same sushi chef who owns the famed Wasabi Bistro in Belltown, and it is adjoining one of the hippest Seattle hotels Hotel Max. The restaurant is very stylish, completely decorated in Red, with a very nice bar with a large communal table in typical Seattle style. The place is supposedly a sushi bar, but the non-sushi menu is huge! The long list of small plates, followed by a really good selection of large plates, and a bunch of soups and salads along with a whole separate sushi menu provide even the pickiest eaters a bunch of options to choose from. The name suggests a predominantly seafood restaurant, but there was one person in the party who doesn’t eat seafood. That is when I scanned through the menu to find all the meat options, and I was surprised to see that there was almost an equal proportion of surf and turf dishes! I spotted a couple of veggie items in the small plates section, but none in the big plates. There were some nice salads as well, but lack of vegetarian entrees wasn’t a problem for this group.

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I know, I made this big announcement about eating healthier this year… Well, we are still sticking to it for the most part, especially during the weekdays. But over the last weekend, I slipped… :oops: I was in Uwajimaya (our local Asian grocery store), and I was looking for some lean chicken, when I saw this packet of pork belly sitting there. If you are familiar with different cuts of pork, you will know that most cuts you get here are the lean variety, with all the fat trimmed off. But the belly has a nice layer of fat on it, and it is the most delicious cut of pork. It is also the closest in taste to the pork meat we get back home in Kerala. My mom seldom cooked pork at home, but I used to have it from different relatives’ places, hence it used to be a big delicacy!  

Well, anyway as I was saying, seeing the pork belly in the store, I got this unbelievable cravings for fat. I do think that it is okay to succumb to temptations once in a while, otherwise we will never be able to stick to any diet. So I got a packet of the belly pork and another packet of lean pork, mixed those two and made a very authentic Kerala preparation called Panni Ularthiyathu meaning Sautéed Pork.  We had just salads for the next two days to compensate though…

Pork  

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A Minty, Gingery Frozen Papaya Delight

Monday, January 14th, 2008

Filed Under Desserts, Ginger, Papaya | 36 Comments

I have eaten a lot of papayas in my life. Back home in Kerala, we had plenty of papaya trees in our backyard. They didn’t need any special care or attention; you eat a papaya, throw the seeds out into the backyard, boom.. the next season there are a bunch of new papaya plants sprouting out. During the season, mom would make a variety of dishes with green papayas and we used to eat a lot of those ripe too. I love the crunchy texture of the semi-ripe papaya, but at the same time I prefer the sweetness of the overripe ones. To combine the two, we used to cut up the ripe papayas into cubes and freeze them - crunchy sweet papaya cubes, best of both worlds!

When Papaya was picked as the fruit of the month by my hometown gal Nags of For the Cook in Me, I had grand ideas as usual… I picked up a fully ripe papaya last week without any specific recipe in mind.  But it was a bad week to pick up a random perishable ingredient, we had way too many things going on last week. The only day I cooked, I had to cook up a feast, it was Siv’s birthday, and I made all his favorite items. Needless to say, I couldn’t fit a ripe papaya into any of his favorite dishes.

So, the weekend came, and I had to think of something fast to use up the poor papaya waiting for it’s destiny in my fridge. The first idea I thought of was to cut it up and freeze the cubes like we used to. But I couldn’t send that as an entry, and show my face around the foodie community, could I? So, I decided to make an infused sugar syrup to coat the papaya pieces and then freeze them… As long as I used my stove, I can get away with calling it a recipe, right?

But as fate had other plans, I had to use one more kitchen appliance along the way, increasing the authenticity of calling this a “recipe“. Instead of frozen papaya cubes as I had originally planned, I made a papaya puree, using a hand blender as my second appliance. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t wait to cool my sugar syrup completely before mixing the cubed papayas. The hot syrup on the ripe papaya cubes produced some thick juice from the papayas. The liquid tasted so good, so much better than the syrup coated papaya cubes, I decided to make the whole thing into a thick puree to totally integrate all the good stuff that went into my sugar syrup infusion. With the addition of the blender, this is a recipe for sure…

Wow, that is a long-winded introduction for a simple dish, huh? Let me get into the recipe without any further delay..

Frozen papaya delight

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I am sure all the food network fans out there are familiar with the name Rob Feenie - one of the few chefs to win the battle against the ultimate Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto on Iron Chef America. He used to be the executive chef at Lumiere in Vancouver, one of the best restaurants in Canada, and has consistently won the top restaurant in Vancouver award for years. We had the most amazing meal there in 2005, where we even met Rob Feenie. Well, we didn’t really meet him, we saw him sitting at the bar. I was looking forward to meeting him this visit, and possibly get a photo opportunity.

Dining at Lumiere is an experience on its own, not to mention expensive. It is truly a special occasion dining destination, but Feenie’s - the more casual bistro next door- is more relaxed and much less expensive. So, if you want to experience an iron chef’s menu, without putting a dent in your wallet, Feenie’s is the place to go. That is exactly what we did on our last visit to Vancouver during the Christmas holidays. 

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One of our New Year resolutions is to start eating a little healthier. We have been pigging out the entire holiday season; too many dinner parties, restaurant visits, vacations etc caused both of us to gain a few extra inches around the waist. No regrets, because we sure had a lot of fun doing all those, and that is what the holiday season is all about, isn’t it?

Anyway, now that life is back on track, we’ve decided to be a little more careful about what we eat, and try to get back into those old jeans. Some of the decisions we have made are to reduce the frequency of eating out, incorporate a lot of greens into our diet, avoid deep fried stuff and cut the rice intake way down. As part of this plan, we have been eating a lot of quick fix meals on weekdays, with baked/roasted fish or chicken with a fresh greens salad or sauteed vegetables on the side.  I have been experimenting with a lot of different marinades and sides to keep these meals interesting. It is surprisingly easy to eat healthy, and you don’t have to compromise on taste either. I am starting a new series here called Quick-fix healthy meal ideas. Most of these meals are going to be some variety of seafood or chicken. I will share my successful experiments here.

The first meal in the series is this flavorful salmon roast which just took less than 1/2 tsp oil to cook. The salmon was steam-roasted on a bed of potatoes, fresh fennel and leeks, so that the fish absorbed all the flavors from the veggies and vice versa.

Salmon

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Once in a while I get e-mails from readers asking for menu suggestions for a dinner party they are planning. This is my absolute favorite part of any party- coming up with the menu. Siv and I spend days planning a menu for the parties that we throw, and come up with an over-ambitious menu comparable to that of a tasting menu at a fine restaurant. But due to utter laziness and the tendency to procrastinate doing any kind of job till the absolute last minute, more often than not we end up ditching the pre-planned menu and do a d-day scrambling to buy groceries, cut, chop, marinate etc. and make a bunch of dishes that we have tried and tested, but not the cool stuff we had been dreaming of for days. Somehow we still end up with a decent dinner, our guests have never complained, but we could never pull off that dream dinner, with all the courses perfectly synchronized…sigh… One of these days….

Anyway, the job is much easier when I am doing the planning for someone else. But the few who asked me to plan the menu, had a mainly Indian menu in mind.  Of course that is fun too; depending on the number of guests, the amount of time the host is willing to spend in the kitchen and the guests’ dietary requirements,  one can really come up  with a bunch of interesting combinations for a three/four course Indian dinner. When I was doing this for someone recently, I noticed that some basic recipes are missing from my site. These are dishes I cook normally, but somehow never got around to blogging these. I ended up pointing them to other fabulous blogs for these dishes, but I wanted to eventually post these in here, just so that I can have a complete collection for a dinner party. A simple Indo-Chinese fried rice is such a staple, and I finally managed to take a picture during the holidays.

Vegetable Fried Rice

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