Spicy Vietnamese Lemongrass Tofu Adapation

So I had plans today. Plans to wash the towels and laundry, scrub the stove, do yoga. PLANS.

Then my stomach suddenly freaked out, shortly followed by my head. These plans are being postponed, and replaced with a post and some videogames.

Spicy Vietnamese Lemongrass Tofu Adapation

I'm calling this an adaptation rather than the actual recipe, because I ended up making so many substitutions that I'm pretty sure this dish is nothing like the original recipe. Here is the original recipe. Now, for what I ended up doing (I'm converting it directly from their recipe, because I can't remember how much exactly I used):

2tbsp Black Bean Sauce
About 1tbsp fresh ginger root
2tbsp curry powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2tbsps plus 1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 pound tofu
1tbsp soy sauce
2tbsp olive oil
3tbsp water
3tbsp peanut oil
1 small onion
1tbsp chili paste, or to taste
Peppers, Tomatoes, or whatever vegetables you like
Brown Rice

From there, I think I recall screwing up royally. First off, I'm not sure I actually MARINATED the tofu in soy sauce like the recipe calls for. I do remember I pressed it to get the water out of it, because tofu is near-impossible to stirfry unless you do so. Then I coated the tofu with the black bean sauce, ginger, curry powder, salt, and 1/2 teaspoon sugar.

Then when making the caramelized sugar, I failed to add the extra water, and the caramel solidified in its container. That was interesting. But then I stirfried everything else and let it simmer and got:



A food that won't photograph well.

But taste-wise? It was pretty amazing. All of my haphazard substitutions somehow blended together very well, and forgetting the lemongrass did nothing noticeable to the flavour. It had a good kick to it, though it wasn't as sweet as you may expect from the caramel, likely because I messed up making it.

Of course, I will need to make this again without substituting half of the recipe, but the fact that I did and it still tasted great? Proves that either I know how flavours work better than I realize, or that the recipe has a solid foundation.

8.5/10 either way. I even enjoyed the leftovers.

Until next time...

Tschuess.

Indonesian Red Rice Salad. Sort of.

This is a new idea I have: when I'm near my best mentally, or just feeling antsy and wanting to get it out, I cook. Antsy!me cooks less extravagent foods. Well!me pulls out one of my many cookbooks and makes an impressive meal. Dinner Time posts will be of those meals. With a review of them, and where I can, a recipe. The posts will be pretty short and picture and garbage-talk free. Seriously I hate blogs that talk on and on; just show me the food and the recipe dammit!

So to begin:

Indonesian Red Rice Salad with Boiled Eggs and Macadamias The original recipe is from the fantastic cookbook The New Whole Grains Cookbook", which introduced me to a world of weird whole grains that taste good. The original recipe is also here. But I don't have red rice, macadamias, molasses, or fresh basil. And I HATE green beans and carrots. Soooo.... Bam. Follow the same instructions as the recipe above, but I used this instead:

1/4 cup long-grained brown rice, cooked as desired
~1/2-1 tablespoon peanut oil
~1/2-1 cup frozen chopped onions (but 1 fresh onion would be better)
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/8-1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon Chinese Five-Spice powder
1/4 teaspoon coriander
~1/2 of a large, fresh green bell pepper
~1/2 package of fresh white mushrooms (but baby bella or any type will do)
~1/8-1/4 cup coconut milk
~1 tablespoon of this weird soy sauce substitute I made (just use soy sauce, seriously)
~2 tablespoons of dark brown sugar (I used 3 but it was much too sweet)
1 boiled egg
Lime Juice (I don't know how much, maybe about 1/2-1 tablespoon)

Basically you stirfry the vegetables and spices until they are starting to get tender, or if you've cooked for ages like I have, until they just SEEM ready. You then add the coconut milk, soy sauce, and dark brown sugar, swirl it a bit to mix, and then slice the egg lengthwise and put it in the pan in a space reserved for it. Simmer for a few minutes (I recommend until the liquid level has dropped somewhat, otherwise you'll have liquid sitting in your bowl like I do!), then mix it with the rice and bam. Dinner.

Flavour-wise? Pretty complex! Unfortunately I put in too much brown sugar so I mostly taste that, but upon swallowing there's a very good kick from the cayenne pepper. So I imagine if the sweet was toned down a bit, you could get the rich coconut flavour with a nice kick.

The vegetables still have a good bite to them, and the egg is pretty solid despite all it had to go through. However, I'm not sure the egg adds much to the flavour, so if you're a vegan and want to try this out, go ahead; you won't be missing anything by keeping out the animal products.

Since it does have quite a bit of flavour I'd recommend something cleansing after for a drink or dessert, but if you're crazy you can always have a sorbet with it:  

But I won't be because that cherry sorbet? Freakin' STRONG. I don't know why it needed sugar with it. OR water. or ANYTHING other than sauteed and pureed cherries.

So overall rating for this recipe? 7/10 for now, I need to fiddle with it more, but feel free to check it out.

Tschuess