Let's try some tofu!

Helloooooo world! I am back after an uber long hiatus.....2 months. Yikes! I need to write a few blog posts in quick succession to make up for that. I am not going to bore you with long tales of how I was busy working. Let's just go on to more interesting things......food!

I would say I have pretty good memory. I remember names and faces of people I've met just once. I also remember random conversations with strangers. But when it comes to planning dinner ahead, I am that person who forgets that the chicken needs to start thawing much before you want to cook it. And don't say thaw it in the microwave.....it ends up getting half cooked! So anyway, I bought some beautiful green beans at the farmer's market to make an Asian stir fry with the beans and chicken. Aren't they nice??

Twenty minutes before starting dinner, I remembered that the chicken was in the freezer......fail! So in my search for a substitute, I thought of tofu. 

Now I am not really a huge fan of tofu. I didn't like the way it was cooked when I ate it for the first time. And being a non-vegetarian, I didn't have a reason to force myself to like vegetarian protein sources. A while ago, I made myself try some tofu that a friend had cooked. Surprise, surprise........I liked it. Since then, I've wanted to try my hand at it and I finally picked up some cubed super firm tofu at the grocery store. Yes, I'm lazy and don't want to bother with cutting up tofu. 

Anyway, I whipped a spicy tofu and green bean stir fry for dinner tonight. Don't let the spicy scare you......just leave the red pepper flakes out and that will take care of the spicy.

Spicy Tofu and Green Beans

For the tofu :
8 oz. package of extra-firm tofu
1/2 teaspoon five spice powder
1 teaspoon soy sauce
a dash of red chili sauce

For the beans/sauce :
green beans, as many as you like
2 large cloves of garlic, minced
1 inch piece of ginger, minced
3-4 button mushrooms, sliced
2-3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon chili sauce
1.5 teaspoons light brown sugar
1/3 cup water, chicken stock or vegetable stock
1/2 teaspoon five spice powder
1 teaspoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon white vinegar
2 teaspoons oil
red pepper flakes, as much as you can take.....or none

If you're not using cubed tofu, chop the block up into small cubes and mix it with the other three ingredients listed above. It should look like this. Leave it aside for 20 minutes. 

In the meanwhile, trim the ends of the beans and cut them into medium sized pieces. I ended up with a little over a cup of green beans.

Heat a teaspoon of oil in a skillet or saute pan. Add the tofu and cook for about 5-6 minutes or until it is lightly browned. Take the tofu out of the pan. This is what it should look like.

Now add the remaining teaspoon of oil to the skillet. Add the ginger and garlic in and cook it for a minute or two. Add the beans and saute for 4-5 minutes. Add some of the stock/water, cover the pan and let the beans cook, about 6-7 minutes. Mix the soy sauce, chili sauce, sugar, five spice powder, pepper flakes and remaining stock/water. Add the sauce mix to the pan when the beans look about done. Let it cook for 2 minutes. Add the tofu and mushrooms and cook until the mushrooms look done. Dissolve the cornstarch in a teaspoon of water and add it to the pan. Stir until the sauce starts thickening and then turn the heat off. Finally, stir in the vinegar.

Eat it with steamed rice, noodles or just by itself.

Notes :

1. With all those sauces and stocks, there's enough salt in there. Add more if you think you need it.

2. As always, customize the quantity of spices and sauces to whatever your palate can enjoy. If you follow it as is, you just might need a sweet side dish.

Pat-a-(cup)cake

New day, new post and a step away from the usual. Let's give the stove top a rest today.....it's baking time folks!! I rediscovered baking when I moved here to start grad school. The baking aisles in grocery stores made me feel like a kid in a candy store....so basically I felt like buying baking supplies and using them. Besides, who doesn't like a homemade sweet treat when hit with the 3 pm slump? Yes, the baked goods in stores 'look way tastier' than most things you could bake at home'. But if you have a little bit of time, simple homemade baked goods taste just as good as the store-bought stuff (barring major ingredient mishaps, of course....). As an added advantage, baking at home means being able to put a healthy spin on yummy desserts without really compromising on the taste. 

Anyway, healthy baked goods are for another day. This recipe is for incredibly light and delicious orange cupcakes with orange cream cheese frosting. The use of cake flour (or its substitute...more on that later) makes the cupcakes light, while the oranges and cream cheese add enough tang to ensure that the cakes are sweet without inducing a sugar coma. On a regular day, butter and cream cheese in one recipe would be a strict no-no for me.....how easy it is to pile on the pounds with all that fat. But these cupcakes were a friend's birthday gift, so all indulgences were forgiven.

The original recipe for the cupcakes is here and that for the frosting is here.

Orange Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting(Makes 16-17 regular sized cupcakes)

For the cupcakes:
2 eggs
1 stick (or 1/2 cup) unsalted butter
3/4 cup  granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 cups cake flour, sifted before measuring
2 teaspoons baking powder (NOT baking soda....it's different)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon orange zest (from 1 large orange)


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Ingredient notes:
1. If you don't have cake flour, here's how you can make it. Measure 2 cups of all purpose flour. Remove 4 tablespoons of the flour. Replace with 4 tablespoons of cornstarch. Then sift it all together. Alternatively, you could just use all purpose flour in a one-to-one substitution. The cupcakes will still be alright, but probably not as light.

2. Increase the amount of sugar to 1 cup if you like sweeter cakes.....I don't.
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Make sure the eggs and the butter are at room temperature before starting. Line the cupcake pans with liners and preheat the oven to 375F (190C). Add the baking powder and salt to the flour and sift again. Combine the milk and orange juice.
Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well. Then add the vanilla extract. Add half of the flour mixture to this followed by half of the milk mixture. Mix well. Repeat with the remaining half and mix again. Finally add the orange zest and mix well.  Pour the batter into the pans and bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the cupcakes comes out clean.

EDIT - Cool the cupcakes completely before frosting....or you're going to end up with a melted, drippy mess on the cupcakes.

For the frosting:
1 package of low fat cream cheese (8 ounces)
3-4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1.5 to 2 cups powdered sugar (also called confectioner's sugar or icing sugar)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2-3 teaspoons orange zest

Beat the butter and cream cheese together with an electric mixer on medium speed until smooth (about 3 minutes). Add the vanilla extract and mix. Slowly add the powdered sugar in small quantities and mix until you reach the desired consistency. Finally mix in the orange zest. Then spread the frosting on the cupcakes with a blunt knife or use a piping bag.

Notes:
 1. When you mix in the sugar, add it until you reach 1.5 cups. Then add more if the frosting isn't sweet enough, add more. If you want to pipe the frosting, you could need more than 2 cups of sugar to make the frosting stiffer. I don't have the time or skill for piping bags, so I just used 1.5 cups.
2. Sifting the sugar is a good idea to ensure that there are no clumps. Measure before sifting!

It's Photo Recipe Time!!!

And after a long hiatus (#2?), the absconding blogger is back! It would be fun to say that I was busy coming up with new ideas for the blog, but really I was just busy with a ton of school work. Part 2 of the last post will come up soon. Until then, I have a post that’s different from what you’ve seen here so far. The posts are detailed to the last quarter of a teaspoon with notes about oil splatters. Not this one though! This post is all about pictures. I picked a fairly simple recipe and decided to do a photo sequence that takes you through all the stages. And the chosen recipe is…..<drumroll please>…..Fried Rice! Yeah…quite the anti-climax.

Fried rice is unavoidable at any Asian/Indian-Chinese restaurant you go to. Whether people in Asia really eat what we call ‘fried rice’ is a whole different question. Anyway, the point is that fried rice is very customizable with every recipe using different ingredients and in varying proportions. It’s really ‘as you like it’. So I’ll tell you how I did it, but without perfect measurements. Enjoy…..

I decided to go with a vegetable, shrimp and egg fried rice tonight. So step 1 involved dealing with the shrimp egg. I thawed about a dozen medium sized shrimp and gave them a quick 5-10 minute marinade with a tiny amount of turmeric, a pinch of salt and a little bit of ground red chilli pepper. I love spices, but if you don’t feel free to just stick to salt…..and maybe some pepper if you wish. Next, I fried the shrimp in about a spoonful of oil in my fried rice pan. Took the shrimp out and then scrambled an egg in the pan….I added the same spices to the egg. Here's what it ended up looking like.

Step 2 – Added a tad more oil to the pan and threw in some star anise, diced red onion, ginger, garlic and some Thai chilli peppers. Star anise is a great aromatic and gives off a pretty good fragrance and flavor to the food. That said, it’s not a must have. Feel free to use five spice powder….or nothing. Oh and those Thai chilli peppers can be nasty hot….so use with care.

When the onion looked done, I added diced zucchini and carrots and let the veggies get cooked. Covering the pan at this point is a good idea. The veggies took about 7-8 minutes to get done.

Next up, I added some thawed corn and the fried goodness (shrimp and egg). And here’s where the customization fun comes in. I used soy sauce, a pinch of salt and some ketchup. You could use oyster sauce or some stir-fry sauce…..get creative! And the FINAL step……I added cold, cooked rice to all the wonderful things in the pan. And this is what it ended up looking like…..

So that was my dinner tonight…..hope you enjoyed it too. ;)

And yes….COLD RICE is the secret to a great fried rice.