I can probably count the number of times I’ve eaten tofu in the past couple years on one hand. Sure, there are a lot of recipes that I love that use the stuff (like this one and this one), but I just never really jumped on the soy bandwagon.
So what’s a girl to do when she wants a neutral vegan protein base for recipes but eschews soy because of the potential health risks? Thankfully the good people of Burma have the answer: chickpea tofu.
This dish reminded me of the old math question: how many combinations can you make with __ numbers? Because with just chickpea flour, water and salt you could either end up with French Socca crepes, or this Burmese tofu. And probably plenty of other dishes currently unknown to me.
Use this in place of regular tofu in your favorite vegan or vegatarian recipe, or wait it out for a couple days for a recipe for a punchy Burmese tofu salad that’s packed with plenty of fresh herbs and a kicky garlic, ginger and sesame dressing. It’s worth the wait, I promise.
Yield: about 2-1/2 pounds
Prep Time: 5 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes`
Total Time: 2 hours
Ingredients:
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon ground turmeric (optional)
Directions:
Combine the chickpea flour, 2 cups of water, salt, and turmeric, if using, in a large bowl. Whisk until smooth, pressing the mixture through a sieve, if necessary, to remove any lumps.
Grease one 9-inch by 13 inch or two 8-inch by 8-inch baking dishes with a neutral oil.
Bring 4 cups of water to a boil in a heavy-bottomed wide, shallow pot. Turn heat to medium-high on your induction cooktop. Give the chickpea mixture a stir to ensure that the mixture hasn’t separated. While stirring the water with a wooden spoon, slowly and carefully pour the chickpea flour mixture into the simmering water.
Lower the heat to medium-low, stirring continuously, until the mixture has thickened and is nice and glossy, about five minutes. Pour immediately into the prepared baking dish(es).
Let cool to room temperature and then set in the fridge for at least one hour. The longer it sits, the more water will drain out of the tofu and the firmer it will get.
Adapted from The Burmese Kitchen: Recipes from the Golden Land by Copeland Marks and Aung Thien and Burma: Rivers of Flavor by Naomi Duguid.
If you have any leftover chickpeas, you can use them up in this delicious chickpea yogurt recipe from RecipeLibrary.net
I was pretty much floored the first time I saw a friend of mine make egg drop soup. I mean, who knew that making the popular Chinese appetizer basically just involved heating up a lightly spiced broth and stirring in beaten eggs in a steady stream until they cook into delicate ribbons?
Most egg drop soups are far from filling, however, so in an attempt to make this into something of a one-dish meal I used more eggs than usual as well as a substantial amount of spinach. The spinach wilts down to far less than its original volume but still provides plenty of bulk and a nutritional boost.
Quick and Easy Spinach Egg Drop Soup
I did plenty of cooking for Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday week, but didn’t have time to take any photos. So I’m back, much sooner than I hoped or anticipated, with another kitchen renovation post. I’m hopeful that this post will help my fellow kitchen design fanatics who check Gardenweb forums and/or Houzz incessantly looking for photos of countertops.*
If any of you saw Something’s Gotta Give, then you might remember the kitchen above, which was, quite possibly, more popular than the movie itself. But after almost a decade (!!!), it seems like the tides are shifting from black to white countertops.
Marble might be a great choice for some people (those who like patina, those who don’t actually cook in their kitchens). But I don’t want to worry about guests accidentally spilling wine or tomato sauce on my kitchen counters.
I gathered as many light-colored and marble-look quartz samples that I could find and then threw in some Kashmir White granite and Corian Raincloud for good measure. Here’s the round-up.
And the LG Hausys Viatera in Cortina seems like it’s a pretty good match for the Cambria Torquay. They’re both creamy whites with grey and taupe swirls/veining.
Here are some photos of the large samples at a showroom that I visited. The Torquay looks much more natural while the Bianco River almost has a snow leopard print feel to it.
Most of the photos that I’ve seen of Cambria Torquay have been in bright, natural light, which always made the veining seem very subtle. This harsh, indoor lighting inside the Homeowner’s Design Center really seems to make the swirling/veining more pronounced.
And finally, here’s the display sample of the LG Cortina. I have several dozen other photo comparisons of the samples above. So if you are looking for more photos of one of the quartz varieties mentioned above, just let me know.
