Feed Me!

Inspired by several recent taste bud escapades and an apparent abundance of free time on my hands I have decided to try my hand at a little food blog.  As this is an area in which I have very little expertise (self-proclaimed food snobs feel free to navigate away now) yet very discerning appreciations (read: picky eater) I hope to do one of two things: 1) Describe my own relatively successful forays into cooking, baking and/or drinking; one of these things I am more accomplished at than the others... or, 2) Describe the blissful experience of enjoying someone else's successful forays.  Given a little time and a well-stroked ego I may even write about my own food disasters.

Business first.  You may have deduced, given the name of the blog, that I am a vegetarian.  (Less obvious is my love of irony and sarcasm which I seriously considered showcasing by making my background image that of a giant, juicy burger).  If this seems limiting to the palate I must confess that until the last several months of my three-year vegetarianism I was resigned to the happy little thought that at least my indecisiveness was cured by a lack of options.  Out for a quick bite one night my lovely boyfriend, Derek, suggested a salad in response to the "chicken", "beef" and "shrimp"-heavy menu.  To which I could only respond by asking which chicken or shrimp salad I should pick.  It has taken many Thai and Indian restaurants and quite a few amazing food excursions in Seattle to show me that variety, creativity and beauty are totally a part of vegetarianism.  On a completely different point the emphasis on veggies may also come from the fact that as a picky eater I am averse to many kinds of fruit that apparently make the world go round for most people.  To that end I will be signing off each post with "The Veggie Monster" - a title lovingly given to me by my little sister.

The real point of this first post, of course, is to show off my most recent and absolutely most successful cooking experiment.  And what kind of showing off would it be without a couple photos?  The menu for the evening consisted of Curry-Ginger Honey Glazed Tofu & Peanut Sauce Egg-rolls; Cheddar Cheese & Green Onion Crisps holding an Avocado, Wasabi & Soy-Soaked Red Pepper Dip.  Phew. Quite the mouthful (as you will soon notice a trend: pun totally intended).  As previously mentioned, as this is an area in which I have almost no expertise this meal took me about three hours to prepare.  Although I would like to keep it together with some semblance of modesty, I'm not sure that's entirely possible with this meal since even looking at the photos is causing my mouth to water and my stomach to grumble unabashedly.



I started out with the cheese crisps which, to be fair, in the end weren't quite as crisp as I would have liked them to be - but the combination of the cheddar and the green onion was surprisingly nice and did not end up reminding me of a giant taco like I feared it might.  Overall, though, I think that when making cheese crisps harder cheeses may prove simpler.  The cheddar was very greasy so I spent half my time trying to keep the cheese from burning and the other half trying to keep the grease from running off the pan.  I did not, however, mix my cheese with flour as many recipes seem to call for - this may have taken care of the grease beast.  The peanut sauce was very easy to put together and the recipe that I used in reference can be found here.
I also referenced a pretty rocking recipe for the Avocado-Wasabi Dip that can be found here, before adding the soy-soaked pieces of red pepper. Derek and I both agree, though: less mayo or vegenaise, whichever you prefer to use. Also, I will most likely use the term reference when talking about recipes because I am not a recipe purist.  I will absolutely stray from the recipe in cases of creative spark, making do with what I've got, or problem solving when something goes wrong.  I'll give you three guesses as to which one happens most often...

Now, for those of you who say: "Ew, tofu".  Me too. I am not a fan of the texture.  Even though everyone claims that tofu has no taste and that it will just "take on" the taste of what it's cooked with I say nu-uh, no way.  I am not a fan of the taste.  But for some reason I keep on trying it. It just feels like some sort of vegetarian rite of passage, a kind of vegetarian categorical imperative; if you can't eat tofu they kick you out of the club. This, however, was the magical combination.  I cubed the extra-firm tofu up pretty small (I do NOT like tofu, remember?), coated it in curry powder, minced some fresh ginger and dropped it all into a bubbling mixture of honey and vegetable oil over medium heat until it appeared that the tofu had soaked up all the oil and honey.  Drizzled with a bit of the peanut sauce and wrapped in a crispy egg-roll shell seemed to be the silver bullet to my tofu. There was just enough variety in texture and flavor to actually make me forget what was lurking below.  The whole meal got paired with a Yellowtail Moscato with just a little hint of carbonation to it - a very happy mistake of my wine ignorance which makes up for a recent purchase of the worst Chardonnay ever.  It was sweet but not sickeningly so since the carbonation actually made it crisp which went really well with the fresh ginger and wasabi flavors.

As to the leftovers sadly (or not so sadly depending on how you look at it) there were none.  I did, however, have a good deal of peanut sauce left over which has ended up mixed with shredded carrot in egg-rolls for this week's lunches and on a package of ramen noodles; a significantly less elegant display that shall not be pictured under any circumstances.

Signing off,
The Veggie Monster