what to do with Tofu?

When I was little my older sister went through a vegetarian phase. Given that the period of vegetarianism broadly coincided with her worst teenage behaviour I rather suspect that the whole thing was thought up just to be awkward. However, my mum did go to quite a lot of effort to accomodate her, and some tasty discoveries were made.

On the otherhand, there was also tofu.

I don't quite know what made me decide to try cooking with it this week. Perhaps it was that my new cookbook (the Wagamama one) has loads of recipes which use it, but whatever the reason was, I decided it was time to cast aside some old prejudices and give tofu another chance.



I chose a flavoursome-sounding stirfry recipe in the Wagamama book, made an expedition to the chinese supermarket for tofu (a feat in itself given the icy state of the pavements!), and set to work on moyashi soba. And it was easy. Also the tofu was not bad - it took on the flavour of the other ingredients very well, and bumped up the meal so that it was filling. Definitely edible.

The failure in all of this was the fact that I had bought silken tofu rather than the firm tofu I should have used. This did mean that it disintegrated more than would have been ideal for a stirfry. Ah well, I'll do it right next time.

This left me with 200g silken tofu that I now knew would not be much use for stirfrying, but I do hate to throw food away. What to do with it?

A bit of googleing told me that silken tofu is often used in desserts, and is also quite a good egg-substitute, so I decided to make a mousse-ish pudding. My made-up recipe needs a bit of refinement, but we did both enjoy it as it was, so here it is (without final tweaks which may or may not come in time):

Dairy-free Chocolate Mousse with Apricots (for 2)
200g silken tofu
20g icing sugar
35-40g dark chocolate (I used a chocolate with orange and ginger, but any dark chocolate would work)
35g dried, ready-to-eat apricots

Mix the sugar into the tofu.
Melt the dark choclate in a bowl over gently simmering water. Once completely melted pour it into the tofu and mix through.
Divide the apricots between 2 ramekins. Spoon the chocolate-tofu mixture on top of the apricots. Refridgerate overnight. Serve.

NB: I like my choclate quite dark and slightly bitter, but if you prefer yours sweeter then add a little more sugar to the tofu.

PS I also made the smoked salmon salad from the Wagamama book this week. Seriously delicious. I wolfed it all down in about 5 minutes flat. Yum scrum! I would never have thought to put apricots, noodles and smoked salmon together, but it definitley works.

more middle eastern explorations

Sumac onions with hazlenut dukka, white fish, and couscous for dinner tonight.

And so, hurrah for the fact that I have found another use for pomegranate molasses! I bought it for making fesanjan a little while ago. It turns out it also very nice indeed with red onions.

I'm not completely convinced that the combination of the dukka, fish, and onions was the best use of the 3 elements, but I really liked them all individually. The dukka would be good mixed with olive oil and spread on sourdough toast, the onions would be fantastic with lightly spiced burgers or roasted vegetables. I used Tilapia for the fish, which was a nice firm white fish.

So a successful foray, with room for improvement. First time I'd used sumac too.

Here's how to make the onions (enough for 2):
Fry 1 1/2 thinly sliced red onions in approximately 2 teaspoons of olive oil. Fry them over a low heat until soft, then stir in approximately a teaspoon of pomegranate molasses. Turn the heat up and cook for a further 2 or 3 minutes. Stir through a teaspoon of sumac and serve.

Teriyaki Cod

Sorry to say that I had an uninspired week. Maybe it was the cold. Or pehaps just that we were away over the weekend, but I made one quite tastey, but a bit unexciting new recipe this week.

It was teriyaki cod with noodle broth, found on the BBC website, chosen purely because I had some cod in the freezer.

Find the recipe here. Its very easy, and a nice, quick week-night dinner. I suggest that you pimp your noodles with some ginger and garlic - its just better that way.

Winter warmers

First things first: a major announcement.
We have heating in our house!
After over a year of living in our cotswold idyll, including through the coldest winter in 30 years, snow, ice and seriously sub-zero temperatures, we finally have a heating system! Oh the bliss...

And to celebrate, particularly given all Dan's hard work on getting the radiators plumbed in, I gave Dan a free card to request any dinner he fancied this weekend just gone. He chose beef stew and dumplings.

Now, I don't eat beef. I'm allergic. So, I'm always a little anxious cooking it as I don't feel all that confident that I know how to do it. I found some instructions in the Jamie Oliver magazine though, so followed them to the letter to make a very rich-smelling beef and ale stew with dumplings.

Dan's parents also came over for Sunday lunch. Its strange how anxious cooking for Dan's parents makes me; they're lovely and uncritical but I still get a little stressed by it! But the beef stew went down a treat with all of them. Apparently it was the perfect dinner for a cold day. I can't vouch for the flavour myself as I had trout, but since they polished off the whole stew pot of stew between 3 of them I think its safe to say it was a winner!

I followed it up with rasberry and white chocolate souffles. I'd meant to make these a week or so ago but couldn't buy white chocolate in the local shop so just went with rasberries. The white chocolate did make them just a touch sweeter and slightly more decadent feeling.

Oh how lovely to have a chilled out weekend (no DIY!) in a warm-as-toast house. Ahhhhh....

Daring Cooks November Challenge

So... here we go with another Daring Cooks Challenge.
Dave and Linda from Monkeyshines in the Kitchen chose Soufflés as our November 2010 Daring Cooks’ Challenge! Dave and Linda provided two of their own delicious recipes plus a sinfully decadent chocolate soufflé recipe adapted from Gordon Ramsay’s recipe found at the BBC Good Food website.

However, I'm not really a chocolate puddings person, and the challenge did say that any sweet souffle was OK as long as it was a true souffle and you hadn't made it before. So instead I made rasberry souffles.

I followed this method (enough for 2 people):

Take 130g rasberries and heat over a gentle heat. Once they start to release their juices add a splash of water and 10g caster sugar. Cook, stirring occasionally for about 10 or 15 minutes until the sugar is dissolved and the rasberries have disintegrated. Set the pan to one side to cool.

Once the rasberries have cooled slightly push them through a sieve, discarding the seeds and pips. Allow the rasberry puree to cool.

Grease 2 ramekins with a little butter and then place about a tablespoonful of rasberry puree in the bottom of each.



When you're nearly ready for pudding preheat the oven to 200C.

Whisk one egg white until it holds soft peaks:



Then add 40g of caster sugar and whisk again until the mixture is glossy.

Next gently fold in the remaining rasberry puree using a metal spoon:



Spoon the egg white mix into the ramekins. Some people like to smooth the tops flat, but personally I like them a bit imperfect and blobby on the top:



Put them on a hot baking tray in the centre of the oven to cook for 10 minutes. Serve straight away.

Mine got scorched a bit on the top, but that didn't seem to adversely affect the taste.



Yum.



Souffles are a marvellous Recipe-of-the-Week discovery. They are pretty easy to make, quick to cook, delicious, and (depending on the kind you make) surprisingly low-fat.

banana soda bread

Branching out and looking for interesting, easy breakfast recipes I came across a banana soda bread recipe. It looked pretty simple to make, even pre-coffee, and I loved the idea of a warm banan=y bread with runny honey and a good cup of coffee for breakfast.

Just to help my fuzzy head out, I weighed the flour the night before - 50g each of white and wholemeal flour - added 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, and 15g (about 2 1/2 teaspoons) of caster sugar and mixed it all together.

Th next morning I set the oven to heat up to 220C. Mashed 1 banana to a pulp, then mixed that and 125g yoghurt into the flour. (You could also add a splash of milk if the mixture is still a bit dry.) Kneed the mixture until it makes a smooth but sticky dough. Form into 3 round loaves and place on a greased baking tray.

Bake for approx 15 minutes.

Serve warm with honey.



I enjoyed these. Very banana-y.Definitely one to serve warm though - I don't imagine they would work cold. Soda bread has a quite cake-y, crumbley texture so I'm not sure how well they would toast. Tastey warm from the oven, and even my sunday morning sleepiness didn't make the recipe unintelligible so they must be easy!

This week's colour is green

Green...It's the new black.

And it was the theme of this week's cooking. First up I made Lamb koftas's with green sauce. This is an indian dish of mildly spiced lamb meatballs in a yoghurty-herby sauce. It was something I found here on the BBC website and I've been meaning to make it for a little while. It makes a good winter night dinner with its comforting blend of warming spices and the creamy yoghurt sauce. You can make most of it ahead of time so it can be made quickly when you're ready to eat. Its definitely a tasty dinner, but not extraordinary in any way in my opinion.

Then at the weekend I made slow-cooked courgettes with lemons and dill to have on toast for lunch. This was from the Riverford Farm cook book, and can also be found here on their website. It was very good. I love the distinctive flavour of dill, so perhaps its unsurprising that I enjoyed the dish so much.

Not green, but a new twist on an old favourite, was a goats cheese souffle topping for fish pie. It worked well. Dan really enjoyed it. Because the souffle only needs a short time in the oven everything else does need to be cooked before you put the topping on - it doesn't spend long enough in the oven to cook the other ingredients.

Hope you enjoyed bonfire night!