Tofu Ground Beef

I am not a fan of fake meat. I've tried it, admitted that it wasn't bad, and subsequently never ate it again. For me, there is little point in being vegetarian if you spend your meals pining after that which is forbidden. Rather, I enjoy vegetables and grains and legumes on their terms--as vegetables, grains and legumes.

However, like all things, there are exceptions. One dish that I sorely miss is mabudofu: hearty, slightly spicy, totally delicious and belly warming. Unfortunately, the main ingredient is ground beef. Besides ground beef, there are chunks of tofu, and green onions for garnish. All this served on top of steaming, hot rice. I tried making vegetarian mabudofu once. I opened up the packaged, forewent the ground beef, and just added tofu.

It was a disgusting mess.

Since then, my desire for good, but quick vegetarian mabudofu has only increased. This was a childhood favorite for me and a quick standby for my parents. We'd often have a roll of frozen ground beef in the freezer, and our fridge was always stocked with multiple boxes of tofu. I would also heavily encourage my dad to make it whenever I saw we had ground beef (i.e. almost every week). I was nothing short of obsessed. I probably still am.

So there a few obstacles in my way to obtaining a good recipe for veg mabudofu. One, a ground beef substitute. I could, of course, go the fake meat route. For reasons outlined above, I'd rather not. Although it may be my Plan Z, should all other options fail. Trader Joe's sells a meatless ground beef, though I've yet to try it. However, there is something I have found that sounds perfect: tofu ground beef. Now, this is not a store-bought soy product chemically manipulated into looking like and tasting like ground beef. Rather, it's a seemingly straightforward and simple way to give tofu a ground beef texture. I found it buried in a cookpad recipe. I've yet to try it, but I'm writing about it and posting it so that I'll hopefully get around to trying it out sooner rather than later.

Tofu Ground "Beef"

Ingredients
1 block of firm tofu (Probably the firmer the better, although some experimentation is certainly in order to determine whether extra-firm [sold in the plastic tub filled with water] or super firm [sold vacuum packed without water] would be better. The original recipe recommends the extra-firm sold in water.)
Sesame or neutral oil
Soy sauce

Instructions
1. Wrap the tofu in paper towels, place on microwave-safe plate and microwave for 2 minutes.
2. Drain off the excess moisture completely.
3. Heat up sesame oil (or neutral oil) in a pan over medium heat. Add the tofu, then scramble. Chopsticks probably work best for scrambling them into ground beef sized pieces. Keep scrambling and browning them until it begins to resemble ground beef.
4. Add a teaspoon or so of soy sauce, stir fry quickly (a bigger utensil would probably better at this point, once it's been broken up into pieces), then remove from heat.
5. Serve in place of ground beef in mabudofu.

Crispy Tofu from kitchentreaty.com

I'm dying to try this recipe I just found on kitchentreaty.com when I was looking up flatbread recipes. Sounds like it turns out with a great texture!

Crispy Salt & Pepper Tofu

Ingredients
1 block extra-firm tofu
1/4 cup vegetable or canola oil
1/4 cup corn starch
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly-ground black pepper (or to taste)
Additional salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

Press tofu to remove excess moisture. To do so, line a plate with several paper towels. Place tofu on paper towels and top with two or three more paper towels. Place three or four more plates on top of the tofu, making sure they're well-balanced. Drain for 20 - 30 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure plates are still balanced (toppling plates = bummer!)

Remove tofu from paper towels. Place on cutting board and cut tofu into squares or rectangles, as desired.

Add the vegetable or canola oil to a large skillet over medium-high heat.

Add the corn starch, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper to a large plate or shallow baking dish. Mix.

Working in batches, dredge the tofu in the corn starch mixture, turning to coat evenly.

Carefully add tofu to hot oil in skillet. Cook over medium-high for about 10 minutes, turning occasionally to brown all sides.

Remove tofu from pan and place on several paper towels, blotting to remove excess oil.

Serve as desired.

Food Swap - Round II

Second edition of the food swap! The haul: some yummy baked goods, like chocolate chip pumpkin bread, brownies (already baked this time), and some cumin-spiced Indian butter cookies. We also got something neither of us have tried before--dried jujubes! They're very chewy, and kind of like a very dry date, but a bit firmer and tougher. The brown airy flesh has a pleasant, slightly fruity, but not overwhelming sweet taste. Also in line with the sweet items was a tub of whipped cinnamon butter--oh my god amazing. I could eat that stuff straight.

We also got some homemade thyme, oregano, garlic croutons made from the most amazing bread ever from BREAD Artisan Bakery in Santa Ana. Also in the bounty is a nice big bag of homemade granola.

Some ready-to-eat items were a cold orzo salad, hummus and salsa. The salsa had oregano in it, which I never understand because it makes it taste like pasta sauce instead of salsa (Trader Joe's has a salsa that they add oregano too as well... Bought that once, never again). So I tossed it all in a pot (we got 3 containers of it!), added a can of tomatoes, some tomato paste and herbs, and made a great pasta sauce for the spaghetti squash I cooked up last night (and had no idea how I was going to eat).

On a side note, I'm not really convinced that spaghetti squash is all that great. It's pretty bland, the texture is meh, and it has a pretty high moisture content, making the resulting dish kind of soggy. I think I'm going to try to put the leftovers into a casserole with a hearty sauce. I much prefer regular pasta over squash, but it was fun to try! Also, the shells of the squash are fascinating and I want to figure out something to do with them. They're almost like a very thin, hard plastic material. Maybe a planter for bromeliads?

Back to the bounty: peach salsa (Jim wanted this--I'm not a huge fan of peach salsa), salsa verde (delicious!), prickly pear jam (wasn't able to try it but sounds intriguing), and nut "chorizo!" Very excited about the salsa verde and the chorizo for breakfast this week. We also just coincidentally made some pico de gallo on Saturday, which will be great with all of that too.

I've also tasted just about the best mustard I have ever had in my entire life. It's the Oktoberfest beer mustard in the picture. We got 2 jars of it because it's soooo good. We got a couple of pretzel rolls that they sell at TJ's ($.99 each!) and just dipped chunks of bread into the mustard. Amazing. We also got another jar of mustard that was only so-so; it had a really spicy kick at first and then it mellowed out and had an almost sweet aftertaste. I'm going to let it mellow out some more in the fridge for awhile; it must have been freshly made.

From the same woman that made the beer mustard came infused kosher salt: sriracha and pinot noir. The sriracha salt is so good! We dipped some of the pretzel rolls in the sriracha salt with the mustard and I swear you couldn't tell the difference between that and a real pretzel.

On the non-edible (but still delicious-sounding) side, I got a bar of cucumber-avocado soap and a small jar of coffee facial scrub. Actually, the facial scrub is edible, although it probably doesn't taste very good.

And finally, a bottle of bouquet garni vinegar that I'm not really sure what to do with but am excited to have! All in all, a very successful swap. However, I did feel like at the last swap, there was a better selection or at least some more exciting items. At this one, there were only a few items that I really, really wanted. The rest of them were otherwise fairly meh. Although, maybe that serves as a good reminder to bring good stuff. The pomegranates were, surprisingly not as popular as we thought they'd be, although that may have been due to the fact that someone else had also brought pomegranates (and pomegranate wine, and pomegranate arils...). What WAS popular (and surprisingly so) were the green apples from Jim's dad's backyard! I think there were a couple factors that helped the apples: (1) telling people that they were sweet green apples, as opposed to tart and (2) offering samples to prove our point. We ran out of apples by the end, except for the few we wanted to save for ourselves. We had probably 6 small pomegranates and 4 large (which we never set out anyway) left over by the end. My 3 jars of pumpkin spice syrup I easily traded away, although I think it was better that I didn't bring a whole bunch of jars. They weren't quite as popular as I thought they would be, though people still seemed excited about them. All in all, a lovely day :)