Cabbage, tofu, Anasazi beans

Tofu and chicken soup

The last of the family pack chicken thighs.

That had its crispy skin picked off and eaten, all of them at once, by a voracious pig.

The sauce is a combination of exotic flavors derived from spices too remote, removed and arcane to mention. 

You shouldn't be troubled with exotic species like coriander and cumin and hot red chile peppers. Ginger and garlic, who keeps those things around? Oops.  

Now the cat's out of the bag, as it were -- who puts a cat in a bag anyway? -- so you might as well have the rest, soy sauce, anchovy paste, chicken broth, butter, sake. I think that was it.

Tofu soaked overnight. A woman I met at a restaurant told me she does that. Man, did she ever go on and on. Told me all about herself. All about all the places she's tried around the area. Named places I hadn't heard of. Knew all their histories. Went on for a good thirty minutes at least, maybe forty-five and never once indicated a single trace of interest in me. Not one single question.  

Napa cabbage, mushrooms, onions, tofu, Asian sauce

That brown there ↑ is pan sear not sauce. The other brown area is mushroom. The wetness is from the cabbage.

On the heat, singe, off the heat. All the things in the pan are singed on one side, not turned, lifted out of the pan.

This is exactly what I wanted. With South River sweet brown rice miso. There is a thick strongly flavored sauce poured onto the plate. The tofu cubes absorb the sauce so each tofu cube presents two altered sides: a singed side and sauced side. 

Sauce:

In amounts you think are reasonable except where indicated

*  soy sauce or tamari sauce (salt, this is the umami base, contains wheat)

*  mirin (something sweet, sugar will do. )

*  saki

*  fish sauce (anchovy in Western cuisines, depth, extremely strong and disagreeable on its own. Just a few drops. I'd try tamarind paste if I objected to fish sauce, which I don't, but if I did, and tamarind is a good choice besides, Worcestershire has tamarind)

* rice vinegar

* chile pepper flakes

* corn starch

* water

The basic idea of the sauce is something sweet and sour for the cabbage. A base of soy sauce then provides three basic flavors right there: sweet, sour, salt.  Anything beyond this is pure adventure. 

The ingredients are poured into a coffee mug then clamped with the palm of the hand and shaken vigorously to dissolve the cornstarch. The contents are poured into the pan that seared the vegetables and placed on coals at the edge of the campfire. The sauce is fully thickened when the liquid boils. 

Did I just now say coffee mug, hand, and campfire? I'm sorry, I meant to say "glass jar,"  "lid,"  and "microwave."  

Shrimp, vegetables and tofu

I'll get a craving for tofu and theoretically that should suffice but it never does. Around here tofu always ends up being combined with another convenient protein. 

Part of the vegetables are frozen. That's another convenience. I saw the capsicums in the grocery freezer, and thought, "Those look kind of good." They're not bad, but not as good as fresh. Freezing does quite a number on their delicate little cells. 

The marinade is my favorite Asian things all combined in small amounts. I didn't even taste it. Water added to top the tofu.

* soy sauce (salty)

* mirin (sweet, if not mirin then honey or sugar)

* fish sauce, about 1/2 teaspoon (umami)

* saki (I don't know what that does, it's just everything is better with sake. If I didn't have sake then I'd use any white wine. If not that, then vinegar, preferably rice vinegar, so I suppose sake is sour)

* cayenne

* black pepper

* coriander because I love it

Your marinade can be anything you prefer. A hint to interesting marinades is to consider the areas on the tongue and try to hit those with something, and then balance out the hits. 

Right before frying, the tofu is drained, the marinade reserved. Now, chefs will always tell you not to reuse marinade for sauce to avoid cross-contamination, and I suppose there is wisdom in that caution, but it is not a rule I live by. I ask you, what here is being cross-contaminated? The shrimp is not soaking. If anything is alive in that marinade it will be killed by boiling. So for resource conservation purposes, and because I'm incredibly lazy, one teaspoon corn starch is whisked directly into the marinade after the tofu is added to the pan of frying vegetables. The shrimp is added to the pan of frying things last, of course, and removed before it cooks completely, confident that carryover heat will finish the job in a reserve bowl. All the combined fried items are heated in sequence as a stir-fry; mushrooms with garlic, then tofu, then fresh courgette and yellow squash, then frozen and thawed vegetables, finally shrimp. It's all removed to a separate bowl, caryover heat finishing off the shrimp.  

Now the pan is still hot and available for the tofu marinade with whisked corn starch. The mixture is re-wisked because the corn starch tends to settle, the whole bowl is dumped unceremoniously into the hot pan. It thickens immediately into a glossy syrupy bubbling sauce, a thing of real beauty to behold, if only plain brown. 

Once set up, the cooking is done very quickly. No fussing around at the hob. 

Oh, I forgot to mention, but it's showing in the photo, the tofu is squeezed between layers of kitchen towel to rid it of excess water before being placed in the marinade. The idea is to help the tofu to be a better sponge, so that towel ↓ is damp with tofu-water. 

ARTS !

Miso with tofu

Soup prepared in the manner of a very wet stir-fry, in a pan rather than a pot for its improved surface area. 

*  Tofu cubed and fried in olive oil.

*  Brussels sprouts charred with the tofu

*  Baby yellow squash cubed and seared in the same oil

*  Scallion sliced on the bias

*  One clove garlic smashed and diced finely

~~~~~~~

*  Soy sauce

*  Sake

*  Mirin

*  Fish sauce (Fermented anchovy in water. Dreadful by itself, great in combination)

*  Sriracha chile sauce

*  Mild blond South River miso

*  Homemade chicken broth

Vegetable tofu soup

In homemade chicken broth. That is the thing that makes this impossible to fail. I could throw anything in it and the result would be good. Nearly. 

The chicken stock was already a broth because it was produced from the carcass of a chicken that soaked to saturation in  a heavily seasoned brine, which included sugar, about half a cup of ground spices, sage, rosemary, black pepper, along with a glass of wine. The chicken soaked excessively long, overnight and a full day following, basically, twenty-four hours, and that is outrageous. Although the brine diluted as time passed by the removal of liquid with the regular additions of ice. Finally, the skin of the chicken was seasoned heavily then roasted. That skin was included with the stock. The remnant pieces of meat contained salt. So there is all that in the plain chicken stock which tends to transform it into broth. But it is not enough.

* Sake. I urge you to go out and buy a bottle of sake just for cooking purposes. It makes everything better. 

* Mirin. This is a sweet sake. There are different types. I am not sure about the type that I buy. It is like a sweet syrup, but it beats a regular syrup and it beats honey for cooking. Once I bought a bottle of Mirin that wasn't so sweet. It was so awful I threw out the whole bottle. I really do not understand the world of mirin. I am not sure I am using the real deal.

* Soy sauce

* Fish sauce. This is absolutely awful if you were to taste a half a teaspoon. It's fermented anchovy in water. Used sparingly in combination, it adds a great deal of depth to nearly everything. It seems strange to add a fish sauce to chicken broth, but it does work admirably. 

The vegetables are added to the pot as if it were a stir-fry, sturdiest first, most tender last. The pan is deglazed with those ↑ liquid additions, and then the chicken stock (broth) is added. This chicken broth is an aspic, so it is like adding chicken-flavored jelly. The tofu is added. The aspic melts, then boils.

The following bullets are purely stylistic choices. There is no good reason for any of them. I am trying to show how a great soup can be whipped out on impulses. 

* You will notice two capsicums types and two alliums. 

*  It would have been reasonable to add bits of the chicken that was frozen at the time the stock was made, but I decided against it to concentrate on the tofu. I struggle with the impulse to overdo things.

* I also decided against noodles. 

* There are no mushrooms here. 

* There is no cabbage. 

* There is no egg

Vegetable sauté with tofu

This is one of my favorite things.

* yellow squash

* zucchini, courgette

* onion

* olive oil

* sea salt / fresh cracked black pepper

* herbes de Provence  (I say that in the flat country accent of Eb Dawson on Green Acres. It happens by itself every time. I have no control. )

* IMPROVED!  Now with firm tofu. 

* tomato, not cooked. 

I like to make irregular cuts because I just hate regular cuts because I like to make irregular cuts because I just hate regular cuts because I like to make irregular cuts because I just hate regular cuts.  

Chicken broth, tofu, napa cabbage

This is the first test for the homemade chicken stock prepared earlier, here. As expected it is concentrated, more concentrated than even consommé, so concentrated, in fact, that it must be diluted by 100% to be palatable and even then it is quite strong. 

Could I ask for anything more?

The flavor is rounded with 

* half a small onion

* one  large garlic clove

* one dried arbol chile broken up

* a hefty splash of sake

* a moderate splash of soy sauce

* one  teaspoon of sugar

* a dash of gray sea salt

* 1/8 teaspoon Mexican oregano

* 1/2 teaspoon dry rubbed sage. 

* water, 100% of the volume of stock 

Included for substance

* one sliced layer of tofu cubed

* 1/8 of a huge napa cabbage. I didn't want to buy such a big one but the others were tiny. 

Oh, I forgot, one tomato cut into the bowl more as garnish than a soup element. It is not cooked at all if you discount residual carryover heat. 

Buffalo bun, beef broth, tofu

Lunch, which turned out to be about the time people ordinarily have dinner. 

* This is the second-to-last of the bison buns made earlier. 

* The last of the carton of beef broth

* The top layer sliced off a container of tofu so that the tub it came in can be refilled with fresh water without sloshing. 

That's it. 

Tofu

Why isn't this tofu white? It's been marinated!

* two tablespoons thick tamari, standing in for less flavorful soy sauce. But without tamari, soy sauce would have to do.
* two tablespoons saki
* two tablespoons rice vinegar
* 1 tablespoon cane sugar
* 2 tablespoons sweet mirin
* tablespoon Sriracha hot sauce
* two teaspoons Hoisin sauce
* water sufficient to cover a whole package  tofu cut into cubes. As it turned out, my tofu fooled me by floating so I added slightly more water than was needed. I realized it was floating rather quickly. So the marinade wasn't badly diluted.

So there's that. I wrote amounts, but frankly, I didn't measure anything. I just kept adding my favorite things and taste-tested for acceptability. It turned out to be delicious. I would consider peanut butter or tahini, pineapple juice, scallion, onion, chives, or garlic. Ginger would also be fantastic.

Mixed with the tofu is a little of the leftover cow meat, also cubed and marinated. The tofu is better than the steak.

The vegetables were seared separately.

I reserved the marinade and heated it to boiling in the microwave. I used that as a dipping sauce, but then I got tired of dipping so I dumped it all into the sauce as if it were sukiyaki. Once I saw Florence Tyler screaming like a bitch at a contestant who either intended to do or actually did this very thing -- reheat and serve the marinade.

 "WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO, KILL EVERYBODY?"


Then he marked down the contestant severely, maybe even disqualified her, and repeated his overwrought objection to reheating marinade, because the viewing audience really did need to have all his lordly objection drilled in repeatedly, we're all short of attention that way.

Tyler, get over yourself.  The contestant didn't say she intended to serve the used marinade raw, just that she intended to make further use of its flavor magic. I assumed she intended to cook it, which would effectively kill anything that found lodgment and had grown in the meantime.

I don't like him anymore. Sad too, he used to be my fave.

Aaaaanyway, this tofu hits the spot.

I'm thinking about flavoring tofu, coating it with batter, then frying it so it has a crispy exterior and a soft interior. Does that sound like a good idea?

Before I go, check out the bokeh in the photo up there ↑. Now, that there is mighty fine bokeh.