Category: Food

Tofu foo yung

I was having a protein craving, which caused me to think of egg foo yung. When I had my own chickens, I used to make it. But it occurred to me that mashed tofu, with the right seasonings and some sort of binder, might make a nice foo yung. After Googling, I saw that tofu foo yung is a thing. I’m certainly not the first to think of it.

As with just about everything I cook, I read recipes for ideas, then I do what seems right for my diet and my taste. So, for my version of tofu foo yung:

Mash the tofu with a fork. Add just enough gluten flour to serve as a binder. Season it well. Turmeric or curry powder will add color. As with all Chinese cooking, umami is the key. Trader Joe’s umami seasoning, which relies largely on dried mushrooms, works great in all sorts of meaty vegetarian dishes. To give the gluten flour a bit of a boost as a binder, I add about a teaspoon of potato starch. Brewer’s yeast adds color and protein as well as umami. The moisture in the tofu probably is all you need. But if you include too much gluten flour and need a little liquid, try tomato juice. Peas and some chopped onion are good additions. But I think that tofu foo yung doesn’t have enough binding power to hold a lot of vegetables together the way eggs can. The gluten flour adds protein, and it also gives a nice meaty bite to vegan protein dishes. The bite and texture of tofu foo yung is a lot like eggs.

In the frying pan, I start with almost round balls of the mixture. But I gradually press it down and flatten it as the gluten sets up. You’ll need a nice, savory gravy, of course. I use flour as a thickener, with tamari and some Better Than Bouillon to darken the gravy and add umami. Garlic powder improves all Chinese sauces.

Garden chowder

It’s really too hot for soup. But I’ve been making some fine chowders out of summer vegetables, centered around fresh corn. As always with my cooking, there is not an exact recipe. Just use what you’ve got.

Coarsely chop some onion and mild peppers. Sauté them in olive oil with a little butter. Add corn fresh cut from the cob, and sauté the corn with the onions and peppers. Five minutes of sautéing should be enough. Add water. Cut a fresh tomato in half and drop the tomato into the pot. Add a cup or so of precooked white beans, if you’ve got them. I’m not ashamed to use canned beans when I need beans quick.

Simmer all that, covered, for half an hour. Remove the chowder from the heat and move the tomatoes to a saucer to cool. When the tomatoes are cool enough to handle, remove the skin and put the tomatoes back into the pot. Whiz the chowder with a hand blender. Season it. My secret ingredient for seasoning soups are the vegetarian versions of Better Than Bouillon. Add a little cream.

As a concession to summer weather, serve the chowder warm instead of winter hot.

Marmite

I am embarrassed to admit that, for the longest time, I didn’t recognize the difference between Marmite and Nutella. I filed them both away in the seldom-referenced category of mysterious European goop in small jars that people make jokes about.

But Marmite and Nutella are very different. Nutella, made in Italy, is a sweet concoction made of hazel nuts and chocolate. Marmite, though it originated in Germany and is now made in Britain, is a salty, savory brown goop made from yeast salvaged from brewing. I recently came across an article in British newspapers about the health benefits of the high concentrations of B vitamins in Marmite. But watch out for the salt!

Marmite, which is very rich in the umami flavor, is no doubt a less refined relative of monosodium glutamate, which also is extracted from yeast, though the MSG is of course refined into a white salt. I am not among those who disparage MSG. Back in the 1970s, MSG got a bad reputation based on falsehoods. Again and again studies have shown that MSG does not cause headaches and that it’s not bad for you. The truth is that yeast extracts are used in many foods to enhance flavor. I’m guessing, though, that there is no yeast extract more flagrant than Marmite. There is a slight bitterness — hops from the brewing? — but the umami flavor goes on and on. There’s a boozy, old-world flavor about it that I like. Marmite has been made for 120 years. It reminds me of a pub, and I like anything that reminds me of pubs.

No doubt Marmite is an excellent seasoning for dark soups and stews. I’ve seen recipes for Marmite pasta sauces. All that is something that I will definitely experiment with this winter. It’s too hot right now for that sort of thing.

Planting pumpkins

I’ve written here previously about the nearby farm where I’m buying most of my summer vegetables this year. They sell the vegetables for $1.50 a pound (mix and match) from the shade of an old barn right beside the fields. You can see in the upper right of the photo that the corn will be ready soon. The crew (they are from Mexico, and they are very good) are planting fall crops — three varieties of pumpkins including what I call pie pumpkins, and sweet potatoes.

I first observed this planting protocol from commercial strawberry fields. The plastic, of course, keeps down the weeds and preserves moisture. A drip irrigation pipe runs under the plastic in each row. The water for these fields is pumped from a pond just below the fields, but rainfall has been good here this summer. The soil look pretty terrible, doesn’t it? But it is typical of the soils in the North Carolina piedmont and foothills — very red. The high white fence is to keep the deer out.

The mountain in the background is part of the Saura mountain chain. It’s the location of Hanging Rock State Park here in Stokes County, maximum elevation about 2,500 feet.

An 18th Century cooking show

Delicious has a remarkable 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was released in France in 2021 as Délicieux and is now available for streaming at Amazon Prime Video.

It’s set in 1789, just before the Revolution got violent. A duke’s chief cook, humiliated by the duke’s obnoxious dinner guests, leaves the duke’s household and returns to his family home, accompanied by his teen-age son. The place is a shambles. But as the cook recovers from his depression, he begins to cook again. Encouraged by his son and a mysterious visitor, he turns the place into an inn and stagecoach stop. Whether it’s historically accurate or not, the story is a parable about how fine cuisine — and dining out — became available to everyone, not just to a pampered and bored aristocracy.

Not only is Delicious visually beautiful, it’s a highly entertaining comedy.

Squash and walnut fritters


Squash and walnut fritters with pesto

Especially if you have a garden, you’re always looking for ways not to get tired of summer squash. I made squash fritters a few days ago and noted that they were just a bit too mushy. They needed something to give them some extra substance and a better bite. Walnuts worked. The fritters were greatly improved.

Grind the walnuts in a food processor. Grate the squash and some onion. As a binder, I’ve been using potato starch. An egg would work, but using egg as a binder would require an ingredient to offset the liquid. Potato starch works well. Add just enough to get the fritters to hold together before frying. After the potato starch sets in the frying pan, they’ll be fine.

The walnuts somehow made the fritters a bit reminiscent of crab cakes. How you season them would make a big difference. It occurs to me that a little crab, or small shrimp, would work well in squash and walnut fritters, and a little bit of crab would go a long way.

A haul from the farm stand


The vegetable gardens are to the left behind the tractor.

Here in the middle of nowhere where some people consider Dollar General a grocery store, the best thing that has happened in years is the new farm stand. Two years ago, they started with strawberries. This year they expanded to include summer vegetables. Strawberries and vegetables are picked in the morning. The farm stand, which is right beside the fields, opens at 10. They sell all their produce into the local market. People flock in to buy it. By sometime in the afternoon, everything for that day is sold out. The fields are irrigated from a rain-fed farm pond. Vegetables are all $1.50 a pound. The tomato crop should start coming in next week. The produce is not organic, but they promise no pesticides.

The economic model makes so much sense that I don’t understand why it took so long. We have plenty of land here and lots of ponds for irrigation. We have the odd farmer’s market or two, but those are poorly attended, the prices are too high, and with some items such as tomatoes I’m skeptical that the sellers actually grow what they sell. In the past, though most have gone out of business, we used to have produce stands that sold trucked-in commercial produce. The quality was poor, and nothing was ever fresh, partly because it was never refrigerated. A farm stand eliminates all sorts of expenses and impediments to quality. There are no transportation costs and refrigeration costs. When you sell out every day, there is no waste. Everything is fresh. Not only do you meet the farmers, you see the fields. I hope this is a trend that is growing, nationwide.

The farming work here is done by a crew from Mexico, on visas for seasonal farm workers. The farm provides the workers with housing. From the quality of the strawberries, which were perfectly cultivated and perfectly picked back during May, I knew that the summer vegetables would be good, too, because the farm workers know what they are doing, and they work the fields every day. For example, a common mistake in gardening is to pick vegetables such as cucumbers and squash after they’ve gotten a little too big. Late picking increases the weight of the crop, of course. But the vegetables aren’t as good because they start to turn dry and seedy. These vegetables are picked on just the right day for maximum quality in the kitchen.

The blueberries come from a nearby farm. While peaches are in season in South Carolina, they’ve been sending a truck to South Carolina once or twice a week to bring a load of peaches. The peaches, they say, sell out almost immediately. The best peaches in the United States (sorry, California) come from South Carolina and Georgia.

The fall crop will include pumpkins. They assured me that, in addition to those horrid bright-orange pumpkins that people use these days for Halloween, they’ll also have “pie pumpkins.” That’s a huge deal for pumpkin lovers like me. I haven’t had much luck growing them, and besides they need a huge amount of space. For years, it has been difficult to find pie pumpkins in the fall — a terrible cultural failure if there ever was one. Even most country folk these days make pumpkin pies from canned pumpkin. Never in my life have I done that, and I never will.

I still have my garden, but this year I’ve reduced its size, given how much easier it has become to get fresh-picked summer vegetables at a reasonable cost. I’m growing tomatoes, basil, and cucumbers.

If you’re in this area, Manuel Farms in on Stewart Road northwest of Walnut Cove, North Carolina.


My haul, after I got home

No basil yet, but pesto season begins


Romaine pesto with walnuts

After weeding the garden this morning and telling the young basil to grow, grow, grow, I couldn’t get pesto out of my head. So I made pesto from Romaine, because Romaine was what I had.

That means that the pesto was still what I would consider a winter pesto. Though the Romaine was surprisingly good, only a basil pesto made from just-cut basil at the height of summer is a proper pesto, to my lights.

This year I have the smallest garden I’ve ever had here at the abbey. My reasoning is that, this year, a nearby farm is going to be selling summer vegetables, all varieties $1.50 a pound, with discounts when you buy in canning quantities. The vegetables will be picked the morning they’re sold from fields within sight of the farm stand. Each morning on Facebook, the farm puts up a post to say what they have that day, and how much of it. Within the next couple of weeks I’ll have photos of my garden and of the farm stand. I’m going to eat well again this summer, and I’ll do some canning, too.

Cooler summer cooking, outside

Even if cooking on the deck didn’t keep the heat out of the kitchen, cooking on the deck would still be worth doing. Cooking outdoors is as much fun as eating outdoors.

I have long used my gas grill for cooking on the deck. But not everything wants to be cooked on a grill. Today I tried out an iron Dutch oven on an induction hot plate. It worked great. The Dutch oven serves perfectly as both an oven or a frying pan, depending upon whether the cover is on it.

I bought the induction hot plate a couple of years ago as an audition for an induction range. I ended up liking it far less than I expected and easily made the decision that an induction range is not for me. Part of the decision was related to the kind of cookware I use. I have several well-loved copper pots, as well as glass cookware. Only steel and iron, of course, will work on induction stoves. So the induction hot plate ended up abandoned, at the bottom of the pantry. As for the Dutch oven, that’s an essential kitchen item. I have a both a glazed and an unglazed Dutch oven, both made by Lodge.

In the photo above, the chicken nuggets are Impossible’s vegan chicken nuggets. You can get them at Trader Joe’s, and they are very good, probably the best of the new fake meats that I’ve tried. Potatoes like nothing better than hot cast iron. The broccoli likes it, too, as long as you give the broccoli some steam during part of its cooking time.

I could have done a better job of regulating the heat. The Dutch oven got much hotter than I expected, even with the induction plate set for 400 degrees or lower. But that’s OK. The slightly burned bits gave everything that mysterious campsite flavor, which I suspect can only be achieved outdoors.

Strawberry preserves

… Or maybe it’s more like strawberry syrup. Though I reduced the sugar a bit, which is probably what made the preserves too thin, I did cook the preserves until they reached 220 degrees. I greatly prefer preserves that are slightly runny, even if this batch is a bit too runny. To my taste, it’s a crime to use pectin in preserves. Runny preserves are better than any recipe that uses pectin. Many store-bought preserves contain not only pectin, but added water as well. Homemade preserves are much better and much cheaper.

A gallon of strawberries made just over five pints of preserves. If you’d like to make strawberry preserves now that it’s strawberry season, there are many recipes on line. The recipe I used called only for strawberries, sugar, and lemon juice. After boiling the mixture until it reached 220 degrees, I put the preserves in jars and used the water-bath method. That is, I boiled the jars for ten minutes. All of the jars sealed nicely.