intellectual property theft for dinner

[calimac]

Yesterday davidlevine wrote, "Fixed dinner (broccoli and tofu in spicy peanut sauce, a household favorite)."

"Hmm," I thought, "that sounds good. I can do that." So I did, for dinner tonight. Stir-fried tofu & veggies is a standard in our house (resumed after the little ol' San Jose Tofu makers reopened after a fire last summer - their fresh tofu far outclasses any packaged version), and unlike most of our dishes where keeping the carbs down is the problem, for this one I'm usually looking for ways to boost them up. But peanut sauce is a high-carb sauce, too high for us to use with noodles, so here's the chance.

I improvised my own recipe: steam the broccoli, gently saute corn and onions in a little butter (corn to further boost the carbs, onion because I use onion whenever possible), then add the peanut sauce with coconut milk to cook. When it boils, add the tofu, then add the broccoli a couple minutes later as the sauce thickens. Result: yum.

Comments

[davidlevine]

We use the recipe from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, which you can find in many places on the net. this one is the closest one I found to the version in the book.

[lynn-maudlin.livejournal.com]

oooh, that does sound good - I quite like tofu but I'm not very good about cooking w/it at home... *sigh*

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Tofu is easy to cook in stir-fry. Slice the cube of tofu up in two dimensions so it becomes a collection of short little sticks. Then add it to the stir-fry as you would meat: i.e. let it cook in the pan for 3-4 minutes. With good tofu, most of the sticks will crumble into irregularly-shaped globs in the process.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. A rather different recipe: I may try a less elaborate version of this one sometime.

I was not aware of this cookbook, which is a shame since broccoli is our staple veggie. I do have a broccoli cookbook, a locally-published one that I bought at the Broccoli Festival (!) in a small town in the Salinas Valley some years ago. It has some good recipes, including a baked casserole I make often for potlucks, but it's mostly a "how to cook with broccoli if you come from Minnesota" type of cookbook, if you catch my drift.

[davidlevine]

The Enchanted Broccoli Forest is a delightful cookbook, not least because each page is hand-lettered and illustrated by the author, Mollie Katzen of Moosewood Restaurant. It's earnest early-80s vegetarian cuisine, and some of the recipes are rather a lot of work, but it's given us several dishes that have become staples (one of the others is the Carrot-Cashew Curry). However, it is not specifically a broccoli cookbook.

[benjd.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't like tofu, but thanks to your advice over the phone, I know better how to prepare broccoli!