Stir-fry is my default dish, my lazy option, my fallback, my "ah shoot what are we gonna eat tonight" standby. Stir-fry is what I make when I haven't planned far enough ahead, or left myself enough time, or worked up the energy or motivation to put a real effort into dinner.
So stir-fry is something I make a lot, in other words.
But it doesn't mean I make it well. Practice doesn't always make perfect, you know. You were lied to all along.
Or maybe not. Maybe practice does sometimes lead to perfection, because I actually managed to make really good stir-fry! I was excited!
(That's right, eating it straight out of a tupperware container. On dance lesson nights, we really class it up.)
I mean, making stir-fry is simple. Chop stuff up, heat the wok, toss stuff in and stir. Add sauce, cover and steam, then serve over rice. But simple doesn't mean easy, and like many deceptively simple things, there is a definite art to making stir-fry. I think it's actually a pretty even combination of science and art. The science is in the prep work; slicing, dicing and chopping so that the food is all of a consistent size and thickness is very important. The art is in the timing.
Oh, the timing! When to throw in the vegetables so that the protein is browned but not overdone, all the vegetables cooked, but not mushy... how long to let it steam with the sauce, so that everything is flavorful but nothing overdone. I almost never get it perfectly right, but tonight, I think I really almost did!
Of course, that means I totally bollocksed the rice. Crunchy and wet. Mm. Delightful. But it's okay! I'm over it! It keeps me humble! Sure, I thought I had conquered the whole inability-to-make-rice thing months ago, but it's okay! I improvised.
Those noodles that look all cool and asian, maybe like soba noodles or something? Leftover whole-grain spaghetti! That's what I'm talkin' bout!
Anyway, stir fry is an awesome Young Broke and Clueless meal. While it may be very difficult to make really excellent stir-fry, it's quite easy to make decent stir-fry. It's also very quick; not counting the half-hour that the tofu was pressing dry, it took my 40 minutes from 'oh, should I start making dinner?' to stuffing my face. And despite all those books advertising '30-minute meals' and '20-minute meals,' I'm not sure I can cook anything worth eating quite that fast. 40 minutes is pretty good.
Best of all, it's cheap! Tonight's meal used 1/2 a block of tofu ($.50), 1 carrot ($.08), 1/2 an onion ($.07), 1 squash ($.50), 1/4 of a green pepper and 1/4 of a red pepper ($.50 total), 1 egg ($.16), a clove of garlic, a bit of ginger, and a tablespoon or two each of canola oil, soy sauce, and sesame oil. I won't even bother adding the cost of that up. If I'd used rice, like I'd planned to, that would have been 1 cup, and my bag (50 cups) cost twelve bucks (wonder how much it would cost me now...), so that's $.24.
All told? $2.05 for two people, generously. I think my math might even be right!
Long story short? Stir fry is amazing!
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Tofu, carrot and squash stir-fry
Thursday, April 10, 2008
mucking around
Last night I made potato pancakes with carrots, peas, bell pepper and corn in them. They held together poorly and were incredibly greasy. It's a pity, because I think there was a lot of potential there -- even in that sad state, they tasted pretty good. William, of course, liked them -- greasy hash browns with vegetables? What's not to love?
While trying to figure out how to made them, I looked up recipes for classic potato pancakes, for croquettes, and for boxty. Heh. Boxty. I've had boxty... they're, um, potato pancakes. With a funnier name! Next time, instead of mucking around (fun though that is), I think I will just straight-up make croquettes. Well. I think that's what I should do next time... but in all probability, I will just muck around.
I tell myself that "just mucking around" is actually a complex learning process in which I am experimenting in a natural and holistic way to discover what works and what doesn't in a kitchen, and that if I keep it up, I will someday be a cook -- someone who does more than just follow recipes. It will give me a deeper understanding of the true nature of cooking and allow me to follow my whims, and the constraints of my pantry, and truly create dishes of my own. I strongly suspect, however, that it really is just mucking around.
Speaking of just mucking around, I have 4 pielets in the oven. Pielettes? Minipies? I could say tarts, but they're sort of... I dunno. Taller than that.
One is apple/strawberry/raspberry, one apple/strawberry/pineapple, one banana/strawberry, and one -- aw, shoot, what is that one, hold on while I check -- right, apple/pineapple/raspberry. The raspberries aren't that important, because I'm pretty sure they'll be delicious no matter what -- the real experiment is apple/strawberry vs. apple/strawberry/pineapple vs apple/pineapple. The banana/strawberry is a wildcard.
That was a lot of slashes. The point is, I am just mucking around and pretending it is An Experiment. True story? I wanted pies. Those were the fruits I had. I wasn't confident that any of those combinations would work well, I didn't have that much of any fruit, I improvised.
And, you know, instead of mixing the fruit in bowls with sugar and cornstarch, just put the fruit in and haphazardly sprinkled the dry stuff over it. Sometimes I put in bits of butter... sometimes I didn't. Gosh. If these turn out it will be entirely despite me.
(Dinner tonight was peanut-sauced noodles topped with bell pepper, carrot and tofu. It was going to have bean sprouts, too, but... I forgot. It's like when I put things in the fridge, they don't exist any more! At least I turned the oven off this time... and didn't manage to set off any fire alarms. I'd say that's an improvement.)
ETA: Having sampled the apple-pineapple and apple-strawberry pie babies, I can authoritatively report two facts: 1) Camila really likes pineapple pie, but neither Andrew nor Willikers did, and 2) Camila should have been much, much more haphazard in her sprinkling of cornstarch. By which I mean those things were JUICY.
did you see how that was in the third person? That's right. That's because I was being SCIENTIFIC and OBJECTIVE.
Ayup.
Monday, March 3, 2008
shelf and damn good tofu
exciting news on the kitchen front!
I have a SPICE SHELF!
William and I have been talking about making a spice shelf for basically forever, and now I finally have one. It's pretty awesome!
'Scuz the messy kitchen. Oh man. It's so great. I mean, there are a lot of things wrong with this picture -- namely, I'm pretty sure my spices would prefer to be kept somewhere a little darker and cooler and less exposed to sink-splashing, and also some of those little containers could be more airtight, but WHATEVER. I can see them all now. They fit somewhere! They have a home!
It is pretty much awesome. It was also pretty much free, thanks to dumpster-diving for the brackets and working-in-construction-perks for the wood and tools. Having a spice shelf has improved my life ALREADY. Everything is THERE and ready to be grabbed and not about to be knocked over as I reach behind the pepper and between the curry powder and cumin for the cinnamon. Because it is all right there, all lined up and beautiful.
Yay!
Also: Tofu!
(With leftover stuffed peppers that weren't really that good -- I thought adding lentils to the stuffing was a huge mistake, but the peppers were okay, while William was eating the stuffing up and saying it was the peppers that were flawed, but either way, uninspiring. The rice with onions and peas was okay, but nothing special. Let's talk about the TOFU!)
After the last disastrous dance with tofu (I still love you, mashed potatoes! Never again!), I decided it was time for some really, really good tofu. So I was inspired by a post on pretzel tofu over at what the hell does a vegan eat anyway? They had leftover pretzels, and used it to coat tofu. We had cashews that came in the mail from William's church (along with lots of other stuff. Thanks, William's Church!)
So I basically followed their three-step tofu-coating process, which is described in more detail here. Thank goodness for the internets! I am learning all kinds of wonderful things!
The internet is particularly helpful with regards to tofu. Except for when it isn't (I'm sorry, mashed potatoes! Will you ever forgive me?)
The thing is -- let's face it -- tofu is incredibly boring. A really good slab of meat doesn't need anything else to be good -- if you're into that sort of thing. A really good piece of tofu, by itself? You're living in blahville, hanging out at the local Bland Cafe, heating monotone concerts by bands called Tasteless and Pretty Much Nothing, sitting in empty beige theaters for fun and hanging out with people who might be your friends, but you can't tell -- they're so underassertive you're not sure if they exist. You're wearing clothes that might be a color, but you're not sure, and nobody notices because everybody is pretty much asleep and you go to school to learn nothing at all, taught poorly, and boredom is the single highest cause of death. Am I taking this too far? Point is, tofu is boring, and I'm willing to try most anything to make it otherwise.
How did this particular experiment pan out?
Let's ask William.
A cautious bite. "This is the best tofu I have ever tasted."
A bigger bite. "Seriously. Including all your tofu. I don't think I've ever had tofu that even came close."
Pops the rest into his mouth. "I am amazed that you made tofu taste like this! I am really impressed. Like whoa."
Fifteen minutes of praise later: "Oh my goodness mffff mm oh man mmffff oh this is so good oh man. You are awesome. Living with you is the best thing ever. Are you going to eat that? Oh man that was so good. You could put that on a stick and feed it to people at carnivals and stuff. Mmmf."
What a strange compliment.
Me: "You could deep-fry anything and put it on a stick and feed it to people at carnivals."
Him: "Yeah, but.. but... but most of it's not good! And this is GOOD!" Pause. "Seriously, are you going to eat that?"
Personally? I think it was a little salty. I need to go a little lighter on the soy sauce marinade next time. And I strongly suspect that deep-frying tofu completely negates any health benefits of soy. But I do like effusive praise.
Do you want to know how to make tofu that will make your favorite dinner companion go "Oh man oh man oh mmmf?" I'm gonna share.
(It's ready for its closeup! This picture does not adequately portray the tastiness. But let me tell you: it was tasty. Crunch on the outside, tender on the inside, flavorful throughout, with just a kick of spice; oh man. Mmf, even.)
Step one: Buy some extra-firm tofu. We buy ours for 91 cents (including tax) at the local Japanese market. Lesson learned: you should shop at ethnic stores, because they are awesome, and also cheap. Every now and again I'll send William, and he'll buy the organic stuff by accident. We'll be in trouble then. That's $1.12. Oh man. Breaking the budget.
Step two: Cut the tofu into triangles -- cut it into halves or thirds on a plane parallel to the table, so you have skinnier rectangles of tofu, and then cut each rectangle into 4 or 8 triangles. Depends how big you like your tofu, if you know what I mean.
Step three: Press those suckers dry. I press mine with paper towels a couple of times, then make a sandwich of folded over towel, paper towels, tofu, paper towels, folded over towel -- and top the whole thing with my entire cookbook collection (4 books, at the moment. Whoopdy-doo.).
Step four: Go do something else and forget about it for a while.
Step five: Put the squished (and drier) tofu triangles in a non-stick skillet and put over medium-low heat. Do something else while you wait for the tofu to brown -- I recommend installing a spice shelf! -- and occasionally press the tofu with a spatula. It's fun. You get to see water seep out and sizzle.
Side note on spatulas: I just bought a $2 metal spatula, and boy, am I psyched! Why? Because my $1 plastic one kept freaking melting onto things! Have you ever had to clean melted plastic off a cast-iron pan? Me neither. But William has, and he says that it sucks!
Anyway. Flip the tofu over when they are all golden-colored on the bottom. Or earlier, if you're lazy and in a hurry. Did I mention that this process takes forever? No? Well, it takes forever. But don't turn the heat up too high, or you will have a scorched-to-the-pan mess. And nobody likes that.
Step six: Marinade the tofu. I plopped it in a mixture of a lot of soy sauce, a good bit of vinegar, a little sriracha chili sauce, a little honey, and a little more sriracha.
Step seven: Do something else and forget about it for a while. (There's a lot of that in this recipe.)
Step eight: Get ready for the three-bowl tofu-coating party! Woohoo! Take each triangle out of the marinade and cover it in:
Step 8.1: A mixture of 1/4 cup of flour, a shake of cayenne pepper and a little bit of pepper, then
Step 8.2: A slurry (whatever the hell that is) of 1 tablespoon cornstarch to 2 tablespoons water plus a bit of sriracha, then
Step 8.3: A combination of crushed cashews, crushed red pepper and curry powder.
Step nine: Drop those babies into boiling hot oil! I use the term "babies" in the metaphorical sense only. I deep-fried half of them, and pan-fried the other half in less than a half-inch of oil. The pan-fried tofu got much browner, almost burnt-looking, but tasted just as good as the deep-fried ones -- maybe even a hair better.
Step 9.5: what the hell does a vegan eat anyway? recommends putting the tofu in the oven for another twenty minutes. You can do that if you like. I didn't.
Step 10: Serve. Bow. Reap in the accolades and congratulatory smooches.
You're welcome.
Mmmf.