Favorite Kitchen Appliances that I cannot live without

I have several kitchen appliances

Rice Cooker

Immersion blender

Food Processor

Kung "Pow" Tofu (or why 12 chiles is 6 chiles too many)

Last night we made Kung Pao Tofu by veganizing this NPR recipe. Originally I thought it would be a simple tofu replacement for the chicken in the recipe, but of course we changed about 20 other things too. The recipe calls for 10 chiles, and for some reason we used 12 Tien Tsin chiles. It was really spicy. We were actually coughing while cooking because of the spice in the air. Next time we will only use 6 or 8 (or better yet, go with some crushed red peppers so we don't have to pick out the pepper pods while eating. We also changed some ingredients to more commonly found things that we already had in our kitchen.



Modified Version of the NPR recipe:

Kung Pao Tofu

16 oz extra firm tofu, pressed and cut into 1 inch squares.
3 cloves of garlic, pressed or minced
An equivalent amount (to the garlic) of fresh ginger or jarred grated ginger
1 small onion, thinly sliced
2-3 tablespoons peanut oil
a generous handful of dried red chiles (at least 10), preferably Sichuanese
2/3 cup roasted unsalted peanuts
2 cups shredded cabbage
1 carrot, sliced
1 stalk celery, sliced
1 sm bell pepper, sliced or diced
optional: green beans

For the marinade:
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons light soy sauce
1 teaspoon mirin
2 1/4 teaspoons cornstarch
1 tablespoon water

For the sauce:
3 teaspoons sugar
1 1/8 teaspoons cornstarch
2 teaspoon tamari
3 teaspoons rice wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon water

1. Place tofu in a small bowl and mix in the marinade ingredients. Marinate the tofu for a few minutes or so.

2. Combine the sauce ingredients in a small bowl.

3. Pan fry the tofu in a wok or skillet over high heat with 1 tablespoon peanut oil until lightly browned. Set aside (remove from wok if browned in the wok). We usually put our tofu on paper towels at this point to drain some oil off.

4. Season the wok (wipe with oil), then add 2 tablespoons of oil and heat over a high flame. When the oil is hot but not yet smoking, add the chiles and stir-fry briefly until they are crisp and the oil is spicy and fragrant. Take care not to burn the chiles (you can remove the wok from the heat if necessary to prevent overheating).

5. Add the onions, carrots, peppers, celery, and green beans. Cook until tender. Add the ginger and garlic and continue to stir-fry for a few minutes until they are fragrant. Add the cabbage and a few tablespoons of water and cover the wok for a minute or two to steam the cabbage stirring occasionally. When it has softened, remove the lid and add the tofu back to the wok.

6. Give the sauce a stir and add it to the wok, continuing to stir and toss. As soon as the sauce has become thick and shiny, add the peanuts, stir them in, and serve over brown rice.

Here are some pictures of the cooking process. This is a picture of the browned tofu waiting to go back into the stir fry:



The veggies were stir fried in our cast iron wok:


Then we added the cabbage, cooked it some, added the tofu and sauce:





PS. If comments are not working, please drop me an email: kristin AT beansandgreens dot net. I'm still tweaking them/trying to have spam protection and commenting at the same time, sigh.

Comments are fixed... I think

I was wondering how I could post so much for MOFO and get no comments. A friend emailed me yesterday to tell me that my comments were broken. It must have happened a few weeks ago when I updated my blogging platform. My spam protection was being too aggressive. I think it is fixed now, but I tweaked a couple of settings after the test comments from my husband, so it could still have difficulties. I'd appreciate any test comments on the commenting form. So, go ahead! If you have never left me a comment, now is your chance. :)

If you find that they are not working, please drop me an email: kristin AT beansandgreens dot net.

Seitan Bourguinon on Mashed Potatoes

This recipe is also from Peter Berley's book (his recipes take a long time and I was stuck inside this past weekend due to rain and snow); Seitan Bourguinon. I love any recipe that calls for a 1/2 bottle of red wine. This is a recipe I like a lot, but I don't really like bites of mushroom. I don't mind mushrooms if they are too small for me to notice them in the final product. So, I picked out all the mushrooms and ground them up in the food processor with some of the sauce and some water and added them back to the stew. I thought I would like this better than picking mushrooms out, but I really do like the sauce better without the mushrooms ground into it, so next time i will stick to the recipe. For the seitan, i used one batch of easy baked seitan (Vegan Yum Yum's recipe).

This isn't the best picture in the world and you cannot see the giant pile of mashed potatoes underneath, but it was quite tasty.

Vegan Yum Yum's Brown Sugar Peach Muffins

We've been getting peaches from the CSA for weeks now and I wanted to do something different with them than just eat them. My husband Mike volunteered to make muffins this past weekend with the peaches. He used Vegan Yum Yum's recipe for Brown Sugar Peach muffins. They were very good. They were not overly sweet like many muffins are. He used AP flour in them because we didn't have anything else on hand (the recipe calls for whole wheat or spelt).

Vegan Smores

I've been thinking about smores for about 2 years. I ordered 2 boxes of Sweet & Sara Vegan Marshmallows off the internet and made rice krispy treats with them a couple of weeks ago. The leftover marshmallows in the fridge have been taunting me ever since. The 3rd grocery store I checked today had graham crackers without honey, milk, or eggs in them. Its amazingly tough to find vegan graham crackers. Keebler makes some though; they are just hard to find. We also picked up a ghiradelli dark chocolate bar at the regular grocery. And then within 5 minutes after we got home, we had smores:

If you want to make these at home, place the marshmallows on a pan that has lightly oiled parchment paper on it (nonstick foil would probably also work). Put the marshmallows under the broiler on high. They should be very close to the broiler. Watch them closely and when they brown, turn them 1/4 turn. Do this until you have cooked at least 4 sides. When the marshmallows are melty and brown, place one marshmallow on top of one graham cracker with a square of chocolate. Squash the marshmallow down with the other graham cracker.

Rustic Pumpkin Bread

Did you see this post by Vegan Dad? When I saw it, I knew I had to make this recipe for Rustic Pumpkin Bread. I could not find Kamut flour at my grocery so I subsituted Barley flour (after asking Vegan Dad's opinion). I also reduced the final yeast by 1/2 since I am at high altitude. Here are some pics:





This bread is great. It is so moist with a dense crunchy crust. If you have the time, you should definitely make this.