Marinated Tofu

This is so simple - why I never tried this before is beyond me but here it is...

I found this recipe in the 'Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special' cookbook. This is a great cookbook IMHO. I will undoubtedly modify it each time, but you can get the basic idea. It is really good and really easy. My 2 favorite things.

1 cake firm tofu, pressed
3 T soy sauce
1T water
1T toasted sesame oil
1 T tomato paste/pesto
1 t rice vinegar
1 t honey
1/2 t anise (I used Chinese five spice)


Preheat oven to 375 F
Cut the tofu horizontally into 3 slices, then slice vertically into shapes you like.
Combine sauce ingredients and blend.
Arrange the tofu into a baking dish and coat both sides with the sauce. Bake uncovered for 35 minutes, turning the tofu every 10 minutes. When the tofu has a taut, seared appearance and the sauce is mostly evaporated, it is ready to serve.

This works well when you are also roasting vegetables. Just start the tofu 1st, then turn up the heat when the tofu is finished. Unfortunately, this does not result in the same chewy texture due to the steam from the vegetables.

Chickpea and Leek Soup

One of our favorite soups shamelessly copied from Jamie Oliver who copied it from a friend who found it in some undocumented recipe book. Very tasty indeed. This is nice with roasted cauliflower.

Yield: 6

This is a recipe that my Aussie friend Bender found in some old recipe book. It is quick and easy to make and it tastes fantastic. The chickpeas go really creamy and moreish and the leeks go silky and sweet. These are just two simple flavours, and even though I?m a bit of a fresh herbs boy, this lovely light soup is very tasty.

Ingredients:

Chickpea and Leek Soup

• 12 oz chickpeas, soaked overnight in water
• 1 medium potato, peeled
• 6 leek, finely, sliced
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• knob of butter
• 2 cloves of garlic, finely, sliced
• salt
• freshly ground pepper
• 850 ml chicken or vegetable stock
• 2 handful parmesan cheese, grated
• extra virgin olive oil

Directions:

Chickpea and Leek Soup

1. Rinse the soaked chickpeas, cover with water, and cook with the potato until tender.
2. Remove the outer skin of the leeks, slice lengthways from the root up, wash carefully and slice finely.
3. Warm a thick-bottomed pan, and add the tablespoon of oil and the knob of butter. Add the leeks and garhc to the pan, and sweat gently with a good pinch of salt until tender and sweet.
4. Add the drained chickpeas and potato and cook for 1 minute. Add about two-thirds of the stock and simmer for 15 minutes.
5. Purée half the soup in a food processor and leave the other half chunky this gives a lovely smooth comforting feel but also keeps a bit of texture.
6. Now add enough of the remaining stock to achieve the consistency you like. Check for seasoning, and add Parmesan to taste to round off the flavours.
7. This is classy enough for a starter, but I like it best for lunch in a big bowl with a good drizzle of my best peppery extra virgin olive oil, a grinding of black pepper and an extra sprinkling of Parmesan.© Jamie Oliver 2002
   http://www.jamieoliver.com

Gorditas

We made a nice soup of fire roasted tomatoes, beans, posole, and kabocha squash. After giving up on finding gorditas in the local Mission St. groceries, we decided to make them ourselves. We already had a bag of masa harina from the Christmas tamales and white flour from the New Year's ravoli. This is the 2nd attempt at making gorditas today. The 1st batch was made with considerably less flour, mostly masa - and was fried in peanut oil. They were heavy and did not poof up like the ones we had purchased. They were also considerably thicker. after frying, I tried toasting 2 of these in the toaster (our preferred way of cooking the ones from the store) and the thinner one actually puffed up some. In hopes that we are on to something, I'm documenting this next recipe as we go.


1 cup masa harina
1 cup while flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt


Add dry ingredients in food processor. Process while adding hot water in a stream until a ball of dough forms - not too wet or too dry, just right.





Let the ball of dough rest covered for about 20 minutes.

Roll out half the dough on a floured board to about 1/8th inch thickness and cut using a glass or other round object of the desired size.





Fry in a little oil on medium heat for about 2 minutes on each side. Remove from pan and drain on paper towels till cool. Save in fridge till you're ready to pop thm into the toaster.


The downside is they did not taste like we liked - more flour than corn tortilla taste. Next time we will try this with more masa and less flour. I think everything else is right.