HALF-ASSED RECIPE: Tofu Chilaquiles

Happy birthday, America! Here's something Mexican. I woke up at a ridiculously early hour this morning, and for some reason, was thinking about chilaquiles. I've had it many times, and I'm a big fan, but I never took a shot at making it before...so here's my version.

14 oz firm tofu (1 package)
6-8 dried chiles (any type or combination)
2 c vegetable stock
4 cloves garlic
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
1 cobb of fresh corn (de-cobbed)
1 28oz can of diced or crushed tomatoes
8 oz cooked pinto beans or black beans (drained and rinsed)
2 TB cumin
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp smoked paprika
2 corn tortillas
Olive Oil
Cooking Spray

Here' we go. Snip off the stems of the chiles and empty out the seeds. Then roughly cut them into 1 inch strips (scissors work best for this operation). Put them in a small pot with the vegetable stock, the whole garlic cloves, and half of the diced onion and bell pepper. Then bring it to a boil and drop to a simmer for about 10 minutes. This will rehydrate and soften the chiles.

In the meantime, lightly spray both sides of the tortillas with cooking spray or coat them with oil, put 'em on a sheet pan, and bake in the oven at 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes, until crisp.

When the chiles are soft, add the canned tomatoes to the pot and puree with your immersion blender (or simply add it all to a blender or food processor). Season it with salt, pepper and 1 TB of cumin (or to your taste). Your sauce is done. If you removed it from the pot to blend it, return it to the pot and let it simmer on low, while you do the rest.

In a large pan, over high heat, sautee the corn, and the remaining onions and peppers in a little olive oil. When they start to brown, crumble the tofu into the pan, and season it with the rest of the cumin, the tumeric, paprika, salt, and pepper (or use the spice blend from my Breakfast Burrito episode). Sautee it all for 6-8 minutes, then add the beans and a couple ladles of the sauce. Oh, and...DON'T FORGET ABOUT YOUR TORTILLAS!!! As soon as you take them out of the oven, hit them with some salt and pepper, and lay them on a paper towel to drain.

Build your chilaquiles as follows:

One small ladle of sauce in the middle of the plate
One of the tortillas on the sauce
A couple spoonfuls of tofu mixture
Another tortilla
More tofu mixture
Some vegan soy cheese if you have it...I didn't...I also didn't have any avocados that I would have sliced and added to the top, and I was being too lazy to make any sour "cream" like I did in my Pancakes II: Addendum episode. I also would have added a fresh jalepeno or a couple fresh serrano chiles to the initial simmering stage, but this was pretty impromptu, so I went with what I had.



I recommend you make this right now, and you'll have a ready made breakfast to cure your hangover tomorrow, or to bring to your pyrotechnically challenged uncle in the recovery room. Two fingers down, eight to go...an American tradition.

HALF-ASSED RECIPE: Agar-Agar!!!!

Nope, I’m not angry. Agar-agar is an all-natural vegetable gelatin derived from seaweed, usually used in deserts like jellies, puddings, and custards…so I of course attempted to use it to make cheese to put atop my whole wheat lavash pizza.

So here’s what I used:

½ package of firm silken tofu (Mori-Nu)
2 TB nutritional yeast flakes
1 heaping teaspoon of yellow miso paste
1 tsp olive oil
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp Agar-Agar flakes
½ cup of water

I simply blended all of the ingredients together with my handy dandy hand blender…you can use a food processor of course. Then, in order to activate the gelatin, the mixture needs to be heated so the flakes dissolve. In a small pot, I heated it slowly on low, stirring constantly, until it was slightly bubbling. Be careful, because the bubbling mixture tends to shoot out tiny specs of piping hot liquid that kept landing on my hand, so stirring constantly is vital. The texture at this point was smooth and creamy like an alfredo sauce. I kept it at the slightly bubbling level for 2-3 minutes.

I let it cool a bit, and then poured it into a small container in order to refrigerate. The goal is to have a block of “cheese”, so be sure to use a container small enough so that the mixture just barely fills it. I refrigerated the mixture for about 3 hours.
In the meantime I coated some fennel, asparagus, and zucchini with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and went out to the grill. When the veggies were done I chopped them up, in preparation of topping my pizza. I also made a pesto like this one.
When I determined that the “cheese” had chilled for long enough, I started topping my lavash. First a layer of the pesto, then the veggies, some chopped fresh oregano and then, well, what was supposed to be the “cheese.”



The end product didn’t quite gel up as firmly as I was hoping (I have since refrigerated the remainder of the mixture for the rest of the day with no change in texture), but, hey, it was my first attempt. I was hoping to be able to shred it, but I ended up spreading instead of shredding. I totally nailed the flavor though, it was very tasty, but the texture was like a creamier version of cottage cheese…that’s probably the best way I can describe it. I simply baked the whole thing in a 450 degree oven for 7-10 minutes, until the lavash was crisp. You can also throw the whole thing on a grill at medium-low heat. I then hit it with a little dusting of my fake parmesan.



The possible remedies for my semi-failure are numerous:

1. Could have used a firmer tofu
2. Could have used twice the amount of agar flakes
3. Could have dissolved the agar flakes in water first then blended it with the rest of the ingredients (I suspect they did not dissolve completely or evenly, hence the forming of lumps.
4. Could have used agar powder, which I suspect would distribute and dissolve more evenly throughout the mixture, also preventing lumps, and causing the whole thing to gel, instead of just little pockets.
5. Could have looked up a recipe like a normal person…but what fun would that be?

In the end, I enjoyed the whole dish. Roasted/grilled fennel is a gift from the Earth. The Earth is like, “Hey, even though ya’ll are kind of treating me like shit these days, I’m gonna’ give you this anyway, ‘cause I’m that nice of a guy…and I’m hoping that someday, maybe you’ll stop fucking with me.”

Maybe one of you out there want to give this one a shot using one of my possible remedies…let me know if you figure it out…I’ll continue working on it. Later.

HALF-ASSED RECIPE: Pesto Manifesto

Hear-ye, hear –ye! I do, on this day, publicly proclaim that we are no longer shackled to basil-centric pesto sauces! We are free to incorporate an infinite arrangement of ingredients in order to incite culinary inspiration! We are no longer fettered to the…huh? What's that? Oh, you already knew this? You say you saw it in my Pumpkin Soup episode, where I topped my soup off with a bit of non-basil pesto? O.K. well, here’s a variation, smart ass.

As usual, it’s stuff I have in my fridge that I need to use up, and all measurements are approximate:

½ cup baby spinach (packed tight)
½ cup arugula (packed tight)
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
½ cup cashews
1 clove garlic
2 tbsp fake parmesan
some cherry tomatoes (halved)
your pasta of chioce
salt/pepper to taste

Super easy, this one. While the pasta’s cooking (I used rice spaghetti), add everything except the oil and tomatoes to your food processor/blender. Pulse it a couple times to start blending it together. Begin to slowly add the oil and ramp it up to full puree mode. When you have that pesto-ish consistency, stop adding the oil (you may not need it all, or you may need more…”half-assed recipe,” remember?).

When the pasta’s done cooking, drain it, give it a shake, and put it right into a mixing bowl while it’s still hot. Toss in a couple spoonfuls of the pesto, some cashew pieces and the fresh tomatoes. Combine it all, gently, and serve it up.

Oh, and the fake parmesan: just blend equal parts nutritional yeast, and almonds, and some salt to taste in the food processor. I usually do a cup of each and keep it on hand at all times. Got that one from this guy. His videos are in German, but he has an English section on his site. Seems like a cool dude.

Anyway, what you should learn here is that there are endless combos of greens, herbs, seeds, and nuts that you can use for your pesto sauce. Here are the general rules, in an easy to remember poem format:

"Something green,
Something olive oil,
Something garlic,
And something nut,
Makes you something very…oh and fake parmesan too…
you can’t forget…um…thut."

yeah.

HALF-ASSED RECIPE: Veggie Raid

Being that my weekly farmers’ market trip takes place on Mondays, I desperately raid the fridge all weekend trying to use up whatever produce I have failed to consume. Here’s what I found this week:

1 Stalk of broccoli
½ red bell pepper
¼ head of red cabbage
½ English cucumber
4 shitake mushrooms
1 tomato
some mixed greens


Using these ingredients, I made a sandwich and a salad. But first I made a dressing/marinade that I used for both dishes:

¼ cup of Shoyu (or Tamari, soy sauce, Braggs, etc.)
½ cup of sesame oil
1 teaspoon of agave nectar
1 healthy squirt of Siracha chili sauce
Ground black pepper to taste

I whisked all of it together and separated it equally between two bowls.

On to the sandwich:

I Carefully pulled off the stems of the shitakes, discarded them, and dunked the caps in one of the marinade bowls. I Placed them brown side down in a hot pan with a little vegetable oil, and let them sear. I thinly sliced the cucumber, dropping about 8 of the slices in the same bowl where I marinated the shrooms, and stirred them to coat.

After 2-3 minutes, the shitakes were nice and browned, so I gave them a flip, and cooked ‘em for another minute. As they were off to the side cooling, I thinly sliced my tomato and toasted up a couple slices of whole grain bread. I assembled the ‘wich in the following order: Cucumbers, shrooms, mixed greens, tomato. The cucumber dressing seeped down into the bottom slice of bread, doing that awesome bread + dressing thing. Now that I think about it, I could have brushed both slices of bread with the dressing. Ahh, just another of many oversights chalked up to the haste of a hungry fat guy.

...and the salad:

The only cooking involved with the salad was blanching (drop in boiling water for 15 seconds, then cool immediately in a bowl of ice water), and draining the broccoli that I cut into bite size pieces. I thinly sliced the bell pepper, shredded the cabbage and tossed it all in a bowl with the remaining dressing and cucumbers, then garnished with sesame seeds. Now that I think about it, I could have stretched this salad out, and tossed it with some cold noodles...but I, of course failed at awesoming yet another dish.

FYI: I’m a little under the weather, so I typed this entire post from my bed. No, I don’t have a laptop, I have, well…



Yeah, it's a little computer cart with wheels that I pull up to the edge of my bed. Useful in soooo many ways. Just, my neck’s all fucked up, now, from laying on my side...a banner day, really.

HALF-ASSED RECIPE: Thai Red Pepper Soup

There are many decisions in life. Some as simple as, “Should I brush my teeth now, or just go to bed and take care of it tomorrow,” and others much more difficult, like, “ughhh….I should probably go back and pick up that Plasma Rifle, I’m gonna’ need it for the boss in the Corridor of Peril.” And then there are ones that fall in the middle, “What am I gonna’ do with a giant freezer bag full of diced red bell peppers?”

*By the way, my company produces a massive amount of food every Sunday, inevitably saddling me with fresh unused veggies…veggies that I spend every Monday afternoon staring at, trying to figure out how to not let them go to waste.*

In this case, the decision was a no-brainer…the tried and true user-upper of excess vegetables…and, incidentally, my favorite thing in the world to make, was the answer: Soup.


My initial plan was to toss in the peppers with some onions garlic, salt, pepper, smoked paprika, and veggie stock, puree it, and call it a day. Only after I began sweating down the veggies, did I have a thought: Coconut Milk! I think it was a combination of the new bottle of Thai Chili Sauce that I just bought, and the Thai Basil that I held in my hand at the farmer’s market today, but (regrettably) forgot to come back and purchase, that sent me in that direction...it just popped in there. While I wasn’t too psyched about turning off my fire mid-sweat, and making a run to Trader Joe’s for the coconut milk, my psychedness for the soup idea outweighed my non-psychedness about leaving the house.

You’re gonna have to pare this recipe down, since I’m starting with a ridiculous amount of stuff. I ended up with approx. 8 -73 servings with this recipe.

These are mostly estimations (hence, "HALF-ASSED"), but here goes:

4 lbs. bell peppers (red, orange, or yellow only) seeded and diced
2 onions diced
3 cloves garlic chopped
8-10 leaves of Thai basil
1 can light coconut milk
1-2 TB Thai chili sauce (e.g. Siracha) to taste
1 TB agave
Juice of one lime
About 1 cup of water
1 TB olive oil

Olive oil in a large pot heating at medium. Add onion, sweat for a few minutes. Add garlic, sweat for another few minutes. Open a window, or you’ll be sweating too. Add the peppers, and cook the veggies until they’re nice and soft, and have released a lot of their liquid (seems lots of things get soft after releasing their liquid…hmm). Add the rest of the ingredients, except for the basil leaves and two TB of the coconut milk, and let it simmer for a few minutes. The amount of water to add may vary…start with a cup and add more. It’s got to be thin enough to puree into soup form. Next step, puree. I recommend a hand immersion blender like this one. It is my single favorite tool in the kitchen (besides my knife, of course). It’s 17, 000, 000 times easier to clean than a food processor or blender, and can do most of the tasks that they can do. Get one, get one, get one!!

Jesus!! All this typing is fuckin’ ponderous man…this is why I do videos!

O.k., so, once it’s pureed, add the basil leaves whole, and let it simmer for just a few more minutes. Serve it up, and garnish with a basil leaf and a little drizzle of the reserved coconut milk. I had to use cilantro for garnish since, as you remember, I failed to buy the basil earlier.

Enjoy.