Home-made (Seasoned) Tofu

Many of you guys seem to be very impressed by me making tofu at home. Well, not that I wouldn't be pleased to hear it (my favorite is : `I thought tofu came form a SOY COW´ ;-), but my modest ME urges me to reveal the truth: Making Tofu from scratch is NOT A BIG DEAL! Trust me, if I can do it, YOU can do it (dramatic music in the background).
I know why you re still hesitating. There are tons of recipes that advise you to have all kinds of thermometers, special dripping containers, ...etc, but my input on those is, unless you are about to win Pretty Tofu Contest this month, don't worry about those...

So, there are two ways of making tofu:

1. Long process (when you start from plain happy soy beans).
2. Short process (when you start from ready-made soy milk).

Either or, you end up having a nice smooth yummy block of warm fresh Tofu:

I have already blogged about making Soy Milk (there is also slide show available), so I will stick to the quick version. (a recipe is easy to multiply, since one liter doesn't feed the cow).

TOFU FROM SCRATCH:

prep time: 50 minutes

• 1 l soy milk
• 1 generous tsp Terra Alba
• 1 dl warm water

Note: Yes, terra alba or gypsum is that white powdery stuff you use to make paper, ceramics or whiten the walls with. HOWEVER, .... you can also use it (in small quantities) to make food items, such as tofu. Now, I don't know how healthy this is, but everybody (who is it anyway?) says that tofu is good for you, so as my primary school mathematician says: If A and B equals C, then A and C equals B... If she wasn't lying to me all those years, then terra alba must be good for you, too... Maybe it whitens your teeth, what do I know?

What I know is how to make a good tofu. There are tons of super elaborate recipes out there, but believe me, no matter how clumsy you are, you will always succeed. The worst you get will be a tofu that crumbles too much.

Bring soy milk to boil, let simmer for 7-8 minutes, let cool to about 75 degrees (no need to fiddle around with thermometer, I usually turn the heat to the lowest and let it stop bubbling for about 5 minutes).
Meantime, mix the terra alba with warm water, so there are no lumps left.
Pour this mixture slowly into the soy milk, mixing constantly. Stop and let the soy milk curdle.
When you see the ´meat´separating from the water, turn of the heat and let sit for another minute or two. Strain carefully.



Transfer the tofu (by now it is mainly a homogenized goo of not really holding together tofu) into a musselin cloth (or something a bit ´airy´) and onto a colander.


Wrap it carefully and heavy with a plate. Let sit in the sink.
The water will drip away and tofu gets firmer and firmer. It is up to you to decide when it is ´ripe´.
Unwrap the cloth, take the tofu out and enjoy.

If you don't want to eat it immediately, transfer to a container that has been filled with water, soak in and close. Keep in refrigerator. The water keeps it fresh. However, eat within 5 days (change the water once or twice)...

Now, this much for the plain tofu. Now what I like to experiment with is:

1. Savory variety
2. Sweet variety
   

Often times when making tofu (right before I wrap it to let the water drip away), I like to add diferent spices (cumin seeds, paprika powder, black pepper, oregano and salt is a good combo) and let sit to absorb all the flavors.

My sister, on the other hand, likes to add vanilla or cinnamon-flavored sugar.
Both taste great.

Stinging Nettle - Remedy or Food ?

My passion for herbs has always urged me to participate Kalyn´s Weekend Herb Blogging event. I use herbs in each and every one of my recipes, so that is not the problem. I just felt like all the herbs has been already blogged about, with some great detailed info, which I wouldn´t come up myself. I was looking for something unusual. Trying hard, I realized the only thing I needed to do is go back to my native Slovakia and there they are, growing wildly all over the place....

Besides parsley, dill or celery leaves, stinging nettle (Žihľava or Pŕhľava - hard to pronounce, I know) is one of the most common and widely available herb in Slovakia. There are enormous ways of utilizing it, whether dried or fresh, as a remedy, a cooking herb, as a tea or even as a cosmetic item. I will not go into the details, since they are more profound articles written about it, I will just outline some of my personal usage of stinging nettle.

• Being a great anti-rheumatism, my dad would always cut a big bunch of them (found anywhere in the countryside growing wildly in the fields) and whip our legs with it .... NOW, I see you going: `Ok, ... aaand?` WELL, the ´aaand´ part means that the adjective ´stinging´is not there for fun. Just couple of friendly whips with this thing will make your legs itchy and scratchy and .... just unbearable... (bleh, I am a real city girl, what can I say, running around the stinging nettle field is just not my thing)

More interesting usage for me is the one in the kitchen:

• drink - dried stinging nettle makes a great tea. The tea has a mild minty after taste and is rather thick (I guess it is the furry leaves).
• food - dried chopped stinging nettle leaves are great with eggs to make your breakfast omelette.

• cosmetics - lots of companies use stinging nettle to make shampoo. At home, rinsing your hair with a cup of stinging nettle tea leaves your hair shiny and dandruff-free.
• remedy - being digestive-friendly, a cup of stinging nettle tea helps with urine troubles and eases menstruation pains.

What I really like the most is to:

1. Make a large kettle of hot stinging nettle tea and drink it during the day. Making it is very simple. Take boiled water, pour over the dried stinging nettle leaves and let sit for about 10 minutes. Strain, but keep the leaves aside.

2. Leave a cup of the tea to warm down and rinse my hair with it.

3. Use the leaves (from making the tea) to make :


STINGING NETTLE PATTIES:
(Žihľavové fašírky)

prep time: 25 minutes

• stinging nettle leaves (leftover from making tea or soaked and drained well)
• salt
• black pepper
• oatmeals
  

Take the leaves, squeeze out most of the water and chop them really finely. I usually buy pre-packaged tea, so after making a cup, I simply open the pack and use the ´mush´). Sprinkle with salt and pepper and mix well. Add oatmeals and form into a big compact ball. Leave for at least 10 minutes for the oatmeals to soak up the liquids and homogenize with the tea leaves.
Break up the ball into small pieces and form small patties.
Shallow fry them from both sides in hot oil. Serve with any kind of dip or salsa while still hot. I served mine with roasted bell-pepper salsa (the yellowish mush on the pic below). I´ll post a recipe some other time.


This time, the WHB Event is hosted by Haalo of Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once. I hope you ll enjoy this one...

Poppy Seed Banana Muffins

After last week´s success with my home-baked plum cocoa strudel, Tom (with his mouth still full) repetitively encouraged me to keep on baking :) I know how much he loves poppy seeds, and since I didn't want to roll another one of his favorite poppy seed strudels, I decided to go inventive.
A month ago, as one of my B-day presents, my sister gave me a 'Poppy Seed Cookbook' - a little pocket-sized cookbook that she wrote and decorated on her own .




Oh, Gabi, do you have any idea how much I love you? ... big hugs.



(The title is untranslatable. Play on words... It pretty much says 'Poppy'.. in a funny way. Poppy = MAK in Slovak)

Why poppy seeds, you ask? Well, you cannot go more traditional in Slovakian sweet cuisine. The poppy seeds have been my little friends ever since I could eat :) They are crunchy, nutritous and cheap. When I was a kid, we had poppy seeds in/on everything and I never said no...
I have been wanting to bake woth those again, but.... the only 'problem' was that all the traditional Slovak recipes (also featured in my Poppy cookbook) are extremely rich in flour, sugar, fat, milk and eggs, which are things I don´t enjoy any more. BUT! ... I decided to go inventive, remember?
I took one of the recipes (below.. ehm... in Slovakian :))














substituted milk for soy milk, 2 eggs for 1 mashed banana, flour for whole grain spelt meal and sugar for brown sugar (amount decreased by 1/3).... and decided to make muffins instead of a pie.... Wait a minute. Now that I look at it, the only thing that really remained 'according to the recipe' was the poppy seeds :) So, I guess I just invented my very first family of:














VEGAN POPPY SEED BANANA MUFFINS:

spice ladder: none

makes: 6 muffins
prep time: 1 hour

• 100 g poppy seeds
• 2oo ml soy milk
• 100 g margarine
• 100 g brown sugar
• 1 ripe mashed banana
• 100 g flour
• 100g spelt whole grain flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder

* Thinly sliced fresh fruit as garnish. If you decide to use one, use the sour kind like sour apple, plum grapes,... (I used plums for half and sqeezed some lemon juice on top of the rest). Sour fruits and poppy seeds go really well together, for they 'lift up' the mildness of the seeds.

So,... first the hard labor. Grind the poppy seeds in mortar.... I know, it took me about 20 minutes, one tablespoon at a time. Of course you can use spice grinder instead or just by pre-grinded poppy seed paste if available (not here, anyway).

Update (August 4th) :
My laziness made me ground only a half of the poppy amount. Rest of it remained uncrushed. Result? Even more crunchiness. the seeds were crunching under my teeth, great!!! Next time I ll skip grinding at all...

Then, heat up half of the soy milk in a pan and when hot, add the ground poppy seeds. Stir well, let the seeds absorb the milk and 'fluff up'. (This is a traditional Slovak method, also referred to as 'steaming the poppy'). Set aside.
While still hot, mix in the other half of the soy milk, sugar, margarine and the rest. You should have a consistency of a thick batter. Pour (or rather scoop) this mixture into the muffin forms (should make about 6) and decorate the top with sliced sour fruit (if using).
Place onto the lowest rack in the oven pre-heated to 180 degrees Celsius and bake for 20 minutes or until brownish....
You know the muffins are done when a toothpick pierced through the dough comes out clean.

Enjoy the softness and crunchiness !!!


















This is my contribution to Wonder Sophie´s Muffin Monday. What a great idea, gals, thanx for all the nostalgy, I was thrilled to taste the poppy seeds again, after such a looong time.