My day? Mostly bread and mushrooms.
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Archive for the ‘Food and…’ Category
Bread and Mushrooms
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, food, Thoughts on May 14, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Good Things
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, family, food, recipes, Thoughts on April 28, 2022| Leave a Comment »
My doctor may not agree* but some days you just need to go all in. This recipe is one example**:
Mom’s Mashed Potatoes
Peel, cook, mash, mix. The secret to success is lots of everything good; more butter, more milk, more salt.
Simple. Good.
* I use this rule in moderation, which makes the times when I do even better.
** Lest one accuse my mother of writing an incomplete recipe, I admit that there was originally more to it than this. I’ve stripped it down to the essentials:)
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To Spring!
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, food, Spring, Thoughts on April 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »
It’s Monday and it’s Spring and (despite the fact that we are expecting snow tonight) what better time to direct you to this helpful video about asparagus?
America’s Test Kitchen reviews the basics and useful methods of preparation, but also busts several asparagus myths wide open.
I know, I’m excited too!
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Tofu Pudding, I Can’t Quit You
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, chocolate pudding recipe, food on March 31, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I’ll go back and update the main pudding page once I’m sure I’m done, but the experimentation continues!
This latest version worked out well, so here’s the recipe.
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Mocha Tofu Pudding
- 1/3 C. sugar
- 1/2 C. strong coffee
- 349g / 12 oz. silken tofu, firm
- 170g / 6 oz dark chocolate
- 1 t. vanilla extract
- pinch of salt
- Stir sugar and coffee over medium heat just until sugar is dissolved. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then add chocolate and stir until melted and smooth.
- Blend all ingredients together until smooth, scraping down the sides as necessary. Chill for at least 30 minutes, although longer gives a denser texture and reduces the tofu flavor.
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I Don’t Drink Coffee But…
Posted in Food and..., Other, tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, chocolate, creativity, food, inspiration, Thoughts, work on March 29, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I spent a little time last night working out a new recipe for the mocha tofu pudding. What’s different? Double the espresso.
And am I using post-lunch dessert as an excuse to test the caffeine-fueled recipe results right now, on this busy busy Tuesday?
Why yes! Yes I am.
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The Canonical Pudding Page
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, chocolate pudding recipe, home on March 3, 2022| 3 Comments »
You may be tired of hearing about chocolate tofu pudding, and honestly, I’m a little sick of making it. But! I didn’t go through another five batches of the stuff not to document the results, so here we go.
In the end, I tested five different versions of this chocolate pudding: caramelized white, orange caramelized white, milk, maple milk, and dark.
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Hang on, you may say, you made five batches and each batch made five pudding cups?
That’s right.
That’s hmm, let me think, a *lot* of freaking pudding!
You aren’t wrong. The good news is that it turns out that this pudding freezes quite well. My initial research discouraged freezing, and it’s true that regular tofu undergoes a fairly dramatic texture change when frozen and then thawed. It’s a great way to make a ground meat substitute, but I wasn’t sure what would happen to the creamy texture of the pudding. Fortunately, the silken tofu had no trouble with the temperature change and after defrosting a few hours in the fridge I couldn’t tell it had been frozen.
My favorite variant changes depending on my mood. The orange white has a really good citrus flavor, but there’s something about the acidity that keeps the tofu taste more front and center. I like it anyway, but Mr. Man liked this one least. He wouldn’t eat it straight from the blender but after two days actually liked it. Surprisingly, after a concerted lobbying for the milk chocolate option, his favorite is the dark chocolate. (Also, caramelized white chocolate straight from the spoon.)
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Chocolate Tofu Pudding: The Recipes*
Ingredients vary slightly but the method is the same for all.
Instructions
- Caramelize any chocolate that may need caramelizing.
- Heat sugar and water or syrup over medium-low heat. Cook until sugar is dissolved, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then stir in any additional liquid, add chocolate and stir until melted and smooth.
- Blend all ingredients together until smooth, scraping down the sides as necessary. Chill for at least 30 minutes, although longer gives a denser texture. Serve straight, or with fresh fruit and whipped cream.
- Serves four. Or two. Or one. You’ll find no judgment here.
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Additional Notes:
Chocolate, flavor and related characteristics
- the dark chocolate option was much thicker than the other variants, especially after chilling; thin with a little heavy cream if desired.
- chocolate quality is front and center with all versions of this recipe, but even more so with the white chocolate
- I still want to try mocha, with half syrup and half coffee, but that will have to wait. I’m out of tofu. Again.
Tofu, obviousness of
- firm and extra firm tofu both worked well, no discernible difference in the end result.
- the tofu flavor was more obvious with the lighter chocolate versions, but mellowed after a day or two
Sweetness, excess of
- replacing the simple syrup with maple syrup worked structurally, but wasn’t my favorite. The end result was both more sweet and less maple-flavored than I’d like, and it seemed like waste of good Canadian tree juice. That said, I still want to try it topped with a bit of crumbled bacon.
- cutting back even more on the sugar would be possible, particularly with the already sweetened lighter chocolates.
Melding, which is what I’m calling time spent in the fridge for the pudding to think about what it wants from life
- given two days in the fridge for flavors to develop, the white chocolate versions had very different flavors, and all varieties gained more depth and complexity.
And that, folks, is all I have to say about this pudding.**
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* Because I scribble notes on scraps of paper and then forget where I put them.
** For now. There’s still mocha to try, and peanut butter, and raspberry basil white, and…
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Plan for the Day
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, inspiration, Thoughts on February 26, 2022| Leave a Comment »
I have three bags of chocolate, white, milk and dark, 5.5 pounds each. (Thanks, Costco!)
Time to perfect multiple variations of that tofu chocolate pudding recipe, don’t you think?
See you on the other side!*
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* Yes, I’ve been working on my taxes. No, they are not done. Yes, chocolate will help. Obviously!
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Thinking Again
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, dessert, Thoughts on February 20, 2022| 2 Comments »
It’s easy to form an opinion and stick with it. It’s arguably one of the things humans are best at. This process allows us to categorize our experiences in ways that help us move through a complex world.
We all make judgements, snap and otherwise, about topics as varied as food, ideas, books, events and people. We’re also often wrong. A lot.
Perception Is Not Reality | Psychology Today
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Let’s take white chocolate as an example.
“It’s gross. It tastes like fat, and not the good kind.* It’s not even real chocolate.”
I have said all of this and more. Here’s the thing.
Sometimes white chocolate is gross. Sometimes it does taste like paste. And sometimes it bears little resemblance to what we think of as chocolate.
But sometimes, just sometimes folks, white chocolate can both surprise and delight the senses.
Once I started paying attention, I realized that my preconceptions had blinded me to something good.
Caramelized white chocolate does take more time but the flavor was a mini revelation. And now as a result I have a new ingredient in my arsenal and a new version of my tofu pudding recipe. It’s still not quite perfect but I’ll keep at it until it’s right. For me, this one’s pretty close.
Just one of the many benefits of keeping an open mind.
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Caramelized White Chocolate Tofu Pudding
(a.k.a. No Preconceptions Pudding)
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup water
- 1/4 cup orange juice
- 349g / 12 oz. silken tofu, firm
- 200g / 7oz good white chocolate, caramelized
- pinch of salt
Instructions
- Heat sugar and water over medium heat. Cook until sugar is dissolved, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then add chocolate and stir until melted and smooth.
- Blend all ingredients together until smooth, scraping down the sides as necessary. Chill for at least 30 minutes, although longer gives a denser texture. Serve straight, or with Biscoff cookies crumbled on top.
Notes: I had leftover simple syrup so I used 1/4 cup of that, plus another 1/4 cup of juice from the fruit of Mr. Man’s orange tree. (He has a potted orange tree that produces bonbon-sized fruits with very sour yet flavorful juice. If you’re using regular orange juice tweak the sugar ratio accordingly.)
This version has a bit more chocolate than the previous pudding recipe which does a good job of hiding overwhelming disguising neutralizing that distinctive tofu flavor.
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* I’m looking at you, bacon.
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Note to Self
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, #notestoself, cooking, Thoughts on February 19, 2022| Leave a Comment »
Note to self: Do not bake sweet potato fries, then put the half-sheet pan on top of Mr Man’s high-powered toaster oven and forget about it.
Today’s fun fact: “When oils or fats are heated in cast iron at a high enough temperature, they change from a wet liquid into a slick, hardened surface through a process called polymerization. This reaction creates a layer of seasoning that is molecularly bonded” to the pan.
Good for seasoning cast iron, bad for baking pans and the person who has to chisel scrape scrub off that bonded oil.
Go ahead, ask me how I know.
The fries were really good though.
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Fun in the Kitchen
Posted in Food and..., tagged #365Ways, #365Ways2022, experiments, fun, recipes on February 13, 2022| 2 Comments »
Today I am going to caramelize white chocolate, and then use it to make white chocolate passionfruit tofu pudding.
There are a number of ways to caramelize the chocolate, the most traditional being a 250F oven for 45–60 minutes, stirring every ten minutes or so. A second option is to sous vide the chocolate at 90C for anywhere from 4 to 12 hours, but that’s a long time and I have dessert-making to do now.
I think I’ll start with the quickest of the options I’ve found so far: the microwave.
… (time passing)… (muzak from your preferred era)… (stepped away to make a lemon meringue pie because it’s Mr Man’s favorite and, you know, Valentine’s Day)…
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Success! It took seven minutes of microwave time total, plus all the opening the microwave and stirring and closing the microwave door and … you get the picture. I’m glad I tried it but next time I will test the sous vide method. It takes a lot longer but it’s all hands off.
That said, all that microwave time paid off. Caramelized white chocolate is freaking delicious.
I made another batch of tofu chocolate pudding, subbing in the caramelized white chocolate for dark, passionfruit simple syrup for plain, and lime juice for the vanilla. It is quite good but a little too sweet straight from the blender. It may balance out once it chills. If I try it again I’ll reduce the amount of syrup considerably (half? less?) and up the lime. (Actually, next time I’ll probably just toss a block of tofu in the blender with the white chocolate and go from there.)
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