secret special sauce

Maybe it's just me and maybe I've just heard one too many nasty rumors about the "cooks" in fast food restaurants, but does anyone else get skeeved out when they see "Chef So-and-So's Special Sauce" listed on a menu?  My brain just goes right to, "No, thank you!"  Yes, even in fancy restaurants with real chefs.

Anyway, I'm going to share tonight's dinner tale first, since it's relevant to the title, then we'll backtrack to last night's meal and activities.  My goal, both when I bought my groceries and even as I set out to start my chopping and cooking and whatnot tonight was to make Panang Cucumber Curry from the hallowed pages of the September Vegetarian Times magazine.  As I was going along, though, I realized that I made so many tweaks that what I made didn't actually resemble the recipe at all, aside from that they both involved cucumbers and the end result was a delicious curry.

Since I departed so far from the original recipe that I didn't actually consult the magazine at all once I started cooking, I feel completely clear to give you my easier, pared down recipe:

Tofu-Veggie Curry with Special Sauce
makes 4-6 servings (4, if you're piggy like me and Mister)

Ingredients:
1 cup basmati rice
1 3/4 cups water


14 oz extra firm tofu, cubed and drained
1 large hothouse cucumber, cubed
1 medium red bell pepper, sliced thinly lengthwise
1 Tbsp peanut oil
2 Tbsp tamari, divided
15 oz jar of prepared curry cooking sauce*


Boil water in a 2.5-qt saucepan with a tight-fitting lid.  Stir in basmati rice and cover, reducing heat to its lowest setting.  Steam for 20-25 minutes then turn off heat and allow to sit for at least 5 minutes, preferably 10.

Meanwhile, cube the tofu into 1" pieces and allow to drain on a towel.  [Alternately, you could press it for an hour, but my main goal here was a quick and easy meal.]  Heat the peanut oil and 1 Tbsp tamari in a saute pan or large, deep skillet until the tamari starts to bubble a bit.  Add the tofu and stir, gently but thoroughly, to coat all tofu with the tamari-oil mixture.  Cover and saute on medium heat 7-10 minutes, stirring occasionally, while you prep the pepper and cucumber.

About 5 minutes into the tofu sauteing time, lay bell pepper slices over top of the tofu and replace cover. Dice your cucumber, then stir the cucumber in with the pepper slices and tofu; at the same time, stir in the prepared curry sauce and the remaining 1 Tbsp tamari.  Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer gently 3-5 minutes, just until the sauce and cucumber are warmed through.

To serve, plate a bed of basmati and then spoon the curry over top of it.  You could garnish with a thai basil leaf if you want to be fancy.  I didn't.

* I used Patak's Original Jalfrezi Curry Cooking Sauce for our dinner and I quite liked how it came out.  It was not terribly spicy at all, so if you're looking for that aspect, you may want to also stir in any spare harissa or sambal oelek you have lying around.  Patak's has a whole line of curry cooking sauces, but be sure to check the ingredients - this one is vegan, but others use real cream.

Anyway, when I got home from work last night, my home was dark.  How many times have I started a Leftovers story like that?  Does anyone have the next line memorized?  I'll give you one hint.

So, since Mister was unconscious and slightly delirious and taking up the whole bed, I decided to try to "enhance" what was left of our totally anticlimactic Orecchiette con Broccoli.

I started out by heating some olive oil and white wine together in a skillet.  I added the last of the leftovers and sprinkled everything generously with my Mediterranean sea salt, but then I decided to also add some tamari.  There are very few things in the realm of stove-top cooking that I don't think would be improved by the addition of tamari.

Fortunately for me, this was definitely one of those things!  It was so tasty I was disappointed there was so little left!  In the end, though, it left more room for dessert: Soy Delicious Fruit-sweetened Chocolate Almond "ice cream."

My internet connection crapped out before I could come on here and babble, but that gave me a great excuse to do two things I'd been meaning to do for a while: I mended a hole in my bathrobe and a whole mess of socks while watching "Pretty Woman" for the first time in at least a year (that's a long time for me to go without!).

Did someone say Pretty Woman?


Purely by coincidence, there just happens to be a new post up on Pretty Woman in an Ugly World.  It's not about the Whole Foods experience, rather, I take on an even bigger giant - the Starpower of Starbucks.  Check it out if you have a chance!

it's right around the corner

"It" could be any variety of things.

It is currently approaching Midnight, which means it's almost Friday.
When I wake up, it will be Friday, which means all I need to do is survive the day and get home to begin my weekend (aside from that pesky working-on-Saturday thing).

Two weeks from today will find Mister and I settled into our hotel room in sunny San Clemente, looking forward to a well-deserved vacation and fun with our distant, beloved family.  The day after we return home will be our anniversary, so our next romantic dinner at Horizons is right around the corner.

Something struck me a couple of days ago.  It's October (if I haven't made that clear by my obnoxious imaginary jumping around for joy) and I hadn't heard a thing about VeganMoFo!  I enjoyed it so thoroughly last year and have been looking forward to it this year, but a week into the month it occupied last year and not a peep from any of the blogs I followed as a result of last year.  Then, finally, Jess from Get Sconed wrote the post I've been waiting for:

VeganMoFo IV is right around the corner!  This year, it will be during the month of November, which will provide a literary cornucopia of awesome vegan Thanksgiving celebrations from which I can steal ideas for next year to read about and enjoy!  I signed up as soon as the form was available on the Official Home of VeganMoFo and I'm already thinking of things more entertaining/insightful than "here's what I had for dinner tonight" to convince a whole new set of strangers that they want to read my nonsense.

Is that a great segue or what?  Here's what I had for dinner tonight:

Udon Bowl from The 30 Minute Vegan - descriptive name, don't you think?  Regardless of the unremarkable name, this dish was delightful.  I had a realization while I was sitting at the table waiting for Mister to wash his hands as the steam and scent wafted up my nostrils: I absolutely love tamari and ginger as a base.  The olfactory satisfaction I gleaned from just sniffing at my dinner was astonishing.  Fortunately for my other senses, it tasted just like it smelled: a charming combination of sweet and salty.  The recipe doesn't make a whole lot, but it is listed under the lunches so that makes sense, I guess.

Anyway, back to VeganMoFo, last year I solicited topics from my readers, so if anyone would like to leave me a comment with a suggestion for something you'd like me to write about next month for VeganMoFo, I'd be happy to hear from you.  Round-ups? Restaurant, book, or product reviews? Why Angst won't stop his relentless pleading for a piece of my Sweetzels?

Angst hates ghosties, too

A serious cold snap hit Philadelphia out of a clear blue sky (literally). It was absolutely gorgeous throughout September and the first half of this month. In the course of just 24 short hours, the average daily high dropped 20 degrees. I'm sitting here listening to two distinct sounds - the wind howling against the windows and anything else that will help it cry like a banshee* and Angst, scarfing down his dinner so that a) I will give him more food before we go to bed and b) because he's safe from the ghosties as long as Mister and I are up to protect him. Once we go into the bedroom and shut the door, he will be at the mercy of the terrifying sounds outside the window - who knows if a ghostie will find its way in? I hear they like to eat kitties.

(*banshee reference, before I forget - has anyone else seen "Darby O'Gill and the Little People"? I can remember my sister and I being terrified in a way that words cannot describe every time the banshee made her awful appearance.)

Anyway, today was raining, windy, gray, and colder than it's been in many moons. The high was in the low 40s and it took all day to hit it, just to sink quickly back into the upper 30s. When I got out of my car tonight, a huge gust of wind tried to catch my umbrella and help me take flight. Pause - quick story: When I was a senior in high school, I was a big dork - I was the captain of the flagline in the marching band. At Homecoming, the band director thought it would be a nice touch to have me stand on the football field, holding a HUGE American flag at attention, flanked on each side by the captains of the rifle squad. Great idea, except that we were in a great valley, which enhanced the ability of wind to make a flying apparatus out of the flag I was holding and it took three people to hold all 125 lbs of me down. Even then, I could feel my heels lifting up while the drill instructor applied firm pressure to my hips and the rifle captains anchored my elbows. Fast forward back to today - the point I'm trying to make with all this is to set up exactly how perfect the weather was for a soup dinner.

So naturally, we had Seitan Chow Fun from Vegan Express.
I wanted to make my happy Isa soup, but I really couldn't muster the energy to make the soup AND the biscuits and I didn't want the soup without the biscuits. Okay, I would happily eat the soup without the biscuits, but I would really like to have them, too. Besides, tomorrow is supposed to be even better soup weather and I'll probably need something labor-intensive to distract me from the mess Mister is going to make of our living room while I'm at work.

I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the Seitan Chow Fun because I made it before and used up most of my words then. I want to talk about soy sauce. That's right, soy sauce. Actually, Tamari soy sauce.
This is the best stuff ever. When you open the bottle, take a sniff - it's almost like smelling wine to understand its complexities and different flavors. It's not like your normal, store-brand or Kikkoman soy sauce - this is some serious soy sauce. Tamari is a traditional Japanese soy sauce, generally based on the fermentation of miso. It has a deeper, richer, and at the risk of sounding cliche, a more satisfying taste than regular soy sauce. Also, as an added bonus for any gluten-free friends, you can purchase wheat-free tamari.

I brought the bottle to the dinner table so Mister could add more to his chow fun if he wanted and after a thorough inspection of the bottle, including smelling its contents, he decided he was okay with it. After he read the (obvious) ingredients, he wondered aloud about whether there was a warning about soy for all the people who might sue over these things:
Indeed, there is. It's hard to read, but if you look hard you can make out "Allergen Information: This product contains soy and wheat ingredients."

Seriously? I mean, really? SOY sauce has soy in it? What's next? Wheat bread with wheat in it?

Jocalat on one shoulder, Seitan on the other...

I decided to start sampling my treasure trove of bars today. Ordinarily, this is how my day goes, eating-wise:
breakfast
morning snack
lunch
afternoon snack (sometimes)
dinner
The morning snack is usually a piece of fruit - grapes, an apple, a pear. However, I've found that they don't hold me over very long. Usually, I have my snack about two hours into my work day, but today I knew I was going to be too busy to eat something then, so I would have to go at 1 hour into work and make it last until a few hours later when I got lunchtime. I figured a 180 calorie fruit, nut, and chocolate bar would do a better job than my grapes, so I just grabbed the first one I could reach and it was my Larabar Jocalat Chocolate Mint bar.

I have to be honest: when I opened it up and smelled it, I thought, 'I don't know about this..." and when I took the first bite, every impulse in me wanted to be completely unladylike and spit it out in my trashcan. I fought the urge to be utterly uncouth and managed to chew it up and swallow. Upon doing so, there came this kind of nice aftertaste that made me pause and say, "let's try another bite." I realized about halfway through the bar that sometimes you just need to give your tastebuds a moment to shift their paradigm. If you are expecting something chocolatey the way that a Hershey's bar or (ooohh) a Dove bar is chocolatey, you will be sorely disappointed. Once I realized that something that had dates as a first ingredient wasn't going to be creamy, it was actually a delightfully dark and bitter chocolate taste on my tongue.

By the way, that little bar got me through four and a half hours of training before I could have my lunch (leftover "black bottom" tofu).

Tonight, I had more fun with gloppy sauces and once again marvelled that I can make them without gobs of some fatty substance. None at all, actually! I made Pineapple-Tamari Braised Seitan for dinner tonight. Tamari is a japanese version of soy sauce - a little sweeter, a little more piquant, if you will. If you cannot find it (though it is widely available where I live anyway), regular soy sauce will be an adequate substitute. It didn't turn out completely as I imagined, but it was really good, and could be a great noodle dish if I made 3 times as much sauce...and with the huge can of pineapple juice I got (because apparently they don't make single servings anymore), I very easily could have!

Pineapple-Tamari Braised Seitan with Vegetables

Ingredients
2 Tbsp peanut oil, divided
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
8 oz seitan
1 1/2 cups pineapple juice
3 Tbsp tamari/soy sauce
2 Tbsp cornstarch, dissolved in 2 Tbsp warm water
4 cloves garlic, pressed/minced
1 bunch of asparagus*, ends trimmed and bias-cut
2 medium carrots, bias-cut
1 large yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
cooked brown rice

Tear seitan into bite-sized chunks with your hands. Heat 1 Tbsp peanut oil in a large saute pan; add seitan and saute 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until edges start to brown. Combine pineapple juice and tamari, pour into seitan and stir to coat. Bring to simmer, then cover and reduce heat slightly. Braise, stirring once or twice, 10-15 minutes.
Meanwhile, prepare the garlic and vegetables by pressing all garlic into a small bowl and placing all cut vegetables in another bowl. Heat 1 Tbsp peanut oil and 1 tsp sesame oil on high heat in a large wok or a very large pan - it is ready when the oil shimmers. Add garlic all at once and stirfry rapidly for about 15 seconds. Add vegetables and stir constantly for the first minute, and very frequently for another 2-3 minutes.
Dissolve the cornstarch in water and add to seitan mixture, then pour seitan and sauce into wok to thicken with vegetables. Stirfry one more minute until sauce is thick and gloppy. Remove from heat and serve over rice.
* Note:
Asparagus has an early and short season - usually around early- to mid-springtime. I was absolutely astonished to find not-rotten/rotting asparagus at Whole Foods so I bought it because it competes only with cauliflower for Mister's affections.
Asparagus is "ripe" when it is colorful and closed up - the tips should be tight and pointy, nothing should be "blooming," so to speak. If the heads are opening, you're better off skipping it. Also, always eat asparagus as soon after you buy it as possible - it's a finicky little vegetable without a great deal of stamina.
If you cannot find an appetizing bunch of asparagus, broccoli would make a very close substitute - as far as the stems are concerned, I can't taste a big difference in flavor, only texture.
final note: bias-cut means to slice crosswise diagonally.