Tofu is one of the most maligned and misunderstood foods. Common complaints include: “The texture is weird,” and “It doesn’t taste like anything” and “This isn’t meat, you know.” If you’ve only had sad vegetarian stir-frys with mushy, slimy tofu bits, I get why you’re not a huge fan.
But I love a perfect tofu bite that’s crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside. The best – as is true of pretty much all foods – is when it’s battered and deep-fried and covered in sauce. I’ll happily order that dish in a restaurant, but it’s a bit aggressive for everyday cooking.
This recipe uses quick pan-fried tofu (using The Kitchn’s technique), tons of fresh vegetables, a modest bundle of rice noodles and just enough sauce to tie it all together. The veggies are flexible – you could easily swap in snap peas, mushrooms, baby corn, cabbage, squash; the more, the merrier. So go on and get excited about that tofu.
Finely chopped green onions or cilantro (optional)
Sauce
1/3 cup (80 ml) soy sauce
1/3 cup (80 ml) water
2 tablespoons (30 ml) honey or agave
2 tablespoons (30 ml) rice vinegar
2 tablespoons (18 g) cornstarch
Splash of sriracha
Instructions
First, remove excess water from the tofu. Take tofu out of its packaging. Line a plate with a few paper towels, and place the tofu on top. Add another layer of paper towels and a second plate. Place something heavy, like a cast iron skillet or a book, on top of the plate to weigh it down. Leave it for at least 10 minutes.
Cut the tofu into small pieces, and blot excess moisture with a paper towel. Place pieces in a mixing bowl. Sprinkle with salt and cornstarch; mix well.
Whisk together sauce ingredients and set aside.
Cook noodles according to package directions. Rinse under cold water, then drain. Coat with a splash of oil to prevent sticking.
Heat oil in a wok or large nonstick pan over medium-high heat. Add tofu in a single layer. Cook, turning occasionally, until all sides are golden brown, about 5 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.
Add onion, broccoli, peppers, carrots and green beans to the pan. Cook veggies, stirring often and adding more oil if necessary, until they are tender-crisp, 7-10 minutes. Add the ginger, garlic and the sauce the last few minutes of cooking; it will thicken slightly.
When the veggies are cooked, mix in tofu and noodles until warmed through. Serve with a garnish of green onions or cilantro.
If you want to offend an Italian, refer to polenta as “Italian grits.” I’m guessing. I’ve never actually had the guts to do this, after getting burned making a similar wine faux pas a few years ago:
Me: I love Primitivo wine. I think it’s made from the same grape as Zinfandel, which we produce in my hometown in California!
Primitivo Winemaker: **look of disdain/horror** We have been making Primitivo wines for thousands of years. It is not the same as this Zinfandel.
Me: …… [nods/ hangs head in shame/ holds out empty glass for more]
But really, polenta – long a staple in Northern Italian cuisine – is just coarsely ground cornmeal. Just like grits. Depending on where I’m living and what’s available at the store, I use Italian polenta and American cornmeal interchangeably. Both are easy and affordable to prepare. Both make a rich, hearty porridge when cooked in liquid. And both absolutely benefit from generous helpings of butter, salt and cheese.
In wintertime, I love to serve polenta with braised short ribs or some other meaty sauce. But as the weather gets warmer, polenta is an ideal base for lighter vegetable-based dishes. This version combines simple roasted spring veggies with creamy, cheesy polenta. I advise making extra for leftovers.
16 oz./ 453 g jarred or homemade marinara sauce, heated
Instructions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F/ 204 degrees C.
Place vegetables in 2 roasting pans: the asparagus and snap peas in one pan, and the rest of the veggies in another (the first pan might not take as long to cook as the heartier vegetables). Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for 20-30 minutes, or until veggies are lightly caramelized and tender.
Meanwhile, start the polenta. In a saucepan, bring the water to boil over medium heat. Add a dash of salt, then slowly pour in the polenta, whisking to break up lumps. Let polenta cook, stirring occasionally, until it is soft and thick and starting to pull away from the edges of the pan (around 20 minutes). Stir in butter, goat cheese and 1/4 cup grated Parmesan until combined. Season with salt and pepper.
Spoon the polenta onto plates or shallow bowls. Top with marinara sauce, roasted veggies and grated Parmesan.
Notes
*You can vary the veggies depending on what you have, and what’s in season.
All I want, all winter long, is a big bowl of body-warming, soul-soothing soup. And usually I want it instantly, with next-to-zero work on my part. Ramen is the magical concoction that satisfies both of these desires.
I make it a little differently every time, depending on what veggies and toppings we have in the house. It is delicious in its simplest form – broth and noodles – but I love it even more when we have greens, mushrooms, sprouts, soft-boiled eggs and other fixins to add for flavor and texture.
Feeling a little chilly and also a little lazy? Go fix yourself a steaming bowl of broth, noodles and veggies. You deserve it.
Soak mushrooms in warm water until they soften (20-30 minutes); rinse and drain. Slice mushrooms.
Heat sesame oil in a large pot over medium heat. Cook garlic and ginger for 2 minutes, then add miso and cook for another minute. Add broth, a splash of soy sauce and Sriracha, 5-star spice (optional) and mirin (optional).
Stir in mushrooms. Bring the broth to a simmer and season to taste.
While broth is heating, boil water in a separate pot and cook noodles until al dente. Drain and rinse with warm water; set aside.
Add greens to the broth and cook for a few minutes until wilted.
Put a serving of noodles in each bowl, ladle soup over the top, and garnish with toppings.
In a previous post, I talked about what inspired me to do my thesis on food and cooking. Now that it’s done and turned in, I thought I’d adapt some portions of my writing and focus on them here. One of the first, and most significant topics when talking about our food, is that of food processing.
Scientists, doctors, nutritionists and health organizations all acknowledge that the production and consumption of processed food and drinks are important causes in the current pandemic of obesity and related chronic diseases.1
As food writer Michael Pollan so eloquently puts it, big food corporations “cook very differently from how people do (which is why we usually call what they do ‘food processing’ instead of cooking). They tend to use much more sugar, fat and salt than people cooking for people do; they also deploy novel chemical ingredients seldom found in pantries in order to make their food last longer and look fresher that it really is”.2
These novel techniques and ingredients, along with excessive amounts of sugar, fat and salt, create a diet that health professionals describe as “intrinsically nutritionally unbalanced and intrinsically harmful to health”.3
Shall I go on? OK, I will…
Carlos A. Monteiro, Director of the Center for Epidemiological Studies in Health and Nutrition at the University of Sao Paulo, proposes that the amount of processing our food undergoes is what determines how healthy or unhealthy it will be, not the food itself, nor its nutrient parts.
Across the globe, government food recommendations do not recognize this difference, and as a result, food like whole fresh fruit, fruit canned in sugary syrup and reconstituted sugary fruit beverages all get classified as “fruit”.4
Side note: A 2010 study found that the diets of nearly the entire US population did not fall within federal dietary recommendations. So, even with sugary fruit beverages being classified as fruits, we still do not meet the recommended amounts of fruits and vegetables.
Monteiro argues that most food today has some degree of processing and that there is little use in classifying food into only processed and unprocessed groups. Instead, he proposes three levels to describe the drastic differences in processing that occur between, for instance, pre-washed fruit and a gummy fruit snack.
The three categories are:
Group 1: Unprocessed and minimally processed foods: No processing, or mostly physical processes used to make single whole foods more durable, accessible, convenient, palatable or safe. Group 2: Processed culinary or food industry ingredients: Extraction and purification of components of single whole foods, resulting in producing ingredients used in the preparation and cooking of dishes and meals made from Group 1 foods in homes and traditional restaurants, or else in the formulation by manufacturers of Group 3 foods. Group 3: Ultra-processed food products: Processing of a mix of Group 2 ingredients and Group 1 foodstuffs in order to create durable, accessible, convenient, and palatable ready-to-eat or to-heat food products liable to be consumed as snacks or desserts or replace home-prepared dishes.
The groups are described more thoroughly below (from Monteiro’s research) but it’s easy to see that foods like cookies, snacks, pre-prepared meals, processed meat like chicken nuggets and burgers all belong in Group 3.6
From “Food classifications based on the extent and purpose of industrial processing”. by C. Monteiro, 2010, Cadernos de saude publia, 26, p. 2042. Copyright 2010 by Carlos Monteiro.
He does not propose that healthy diets are made up of entirely unprocessed/minimally processed foods, but rather a healthy balance of the three groups.
The problem is, that across countries like Brazil, the UK and the US, we seem to completely lack the ability to maintain this balance.
In Brazil, ultra-processed (Group 3) foods made up 20% of consumed calories. As income increased, so too did the presence of these ultra-processed foods. In the households with the highest income, nearly one-third of all calories came from ultra-processed foods.7
In the UK, ultra-processed foods made up 45% caloric intake.8
In the United States, the five most commonly consumed foods were all considered Group 3 foods: sodas, cakes and pastries, burgers, pizza and potato chips. These five foods alone made up 20% of the total calories consumed in the United States.9
A similar study in Canada showed that 61.7% of dietary energy consumed came from ultra-processed foods and that 80% of the Canadian population had diets consisting of more than 50% of ultra-processed foods in terms of caloric intake.10
Yeah? So what does that mean?
Monteiro’s claim that the act of processing food is a culprit in our rapid decline in health is being confirmed more specifically in subsequent studies. One recent study showed a link between two commonly used emulsifiers and the development of metabolic syndrome and low-grade inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract of mice.11
Emulsifiers can be found in nearly all processed food and are used to prevent ingredients like fats and oils from separating. They go by many names, but some of the common ones are: polysorbate 80, lecithin, carrageenan, polyglycerols and xanthan gum. The “metabolic syndrome” that these items are linked to is a term used to describe a group of risk factors, including high levels of cholesterol, high blood pressure and high blood sugar, as well as obesity. Someone with metabolic syndrome is more likely to develop more serious health issues like type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems like heart attacks and strokes.12
The addition of emulsifiers is by no means the only cause of obesity, but the inflammation that it causes in the gastrointestinal tract appears to interfere with the feeling of “being full” while eating.13 Not feeling full often leads to overeating and, in turn, the development of more fat.
So what can I do about it?
Simple! First, decrease, limit and/or eliminate ultra-processed foods from what you eat. It has clear benefits in preventing disease and promoting general well being, Monteiro says.14
Second, even with the downward trend of cooking, more than two-thirds of caloric intake for adults in the US still occurs in the home.15 Therefore, the most good can be done by focusing on food and meals we consume at home.
I think these point to a clear path forward: cut down on processed foods by cooking more at home. It is one of the easiest daily acts we can do to improve our health.
Numerous studies have the same conclusion, one even suggesting that, “Efforts to boost the healthfulness of the US diet should focus on promoting the preparation of healthy foods at home while incorporating limits on time available for cooking”.16
An increase in cooking at home has been shown to relate directly to a decrease in Body Mass Index (BMI),17 and lower BMI decreases the risk other health issues like diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease and many types of cancer.18
So what are you waiting for? Put down the fast food and the pre-packaged meals and make your next meal from simple, fresh ingredients.
If you want to read my Masters Thesis in its entirety, you can download it in the Download section. You can also see a shorter slide show here. Enjoy!
It’s five o’clock. We didn’t really have much of a lunch, and anyway, that was hours ago. Dinner is a bit of an elaborate one, so it won’t be ready for some time.
We’ve worked out a color system for these situations, very similar to the DEFCON levels, or the Homeland Security Advisory System, to describe our hunger/angry (hangry) levels. Right now we are both in the orange. Deep Orange.
Something must be done, and thankfully, our past selves put a healthy stock of nonperishable foodstuffs in our cabinet. In this particular case, little crusty bread, canned cooked beans and assorted fishies in cans.
Crusty Bread and White Beans.Assortment of Canned Tuna, Sardines and Clams.
With these, a little olive oil and salt and very little work, we were able to throw together this tasty little snack, and live to fight another day (the hangries, that is).
I have a tendency to cook as though I am feeding the entire Duggar family instead of two normal-ish adults. As a result, we often have leftover grains and beans to get creative with.
This week, we had a ton of extra bulgar and a bag of dried garbanzo beans begging to be used, so I cooked up some tasty (and shockingly vegan, minus the tzatziki sauce, which I do think is a necessity) fritters.
The great thing about this kind of fritter is that you can adapt it to fit whatever you have on hand. We’ve been eating a lot of bulgar lately (quick cooking instructions: 2:1 ratio of broth or water to bulgar; boil liquid, add to bulgar, cover and let sit for 30 minutes), but you could easily substitute couscous or rice. We also happened to have chard and peppers, but you could use zucchini, carrots, spinach, whatever your little heart desires.
Of course I made twice the amount in the recipe below, so I did not actually cut down on the leftover count. You get a fritter! And you get a fritter! Fritters for everyone! I think tomorrow I’m going to add poached eggs to them and call that brunch…
Easy mint tzatziki sauceSautéed chard and peppersGarbanzo and veggie mixtureDelicious fried goodness
Garbanzo, Bulgar & Veggie Fritters With Mint Tzatziki
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes
Serving Size: 4
Ingredients
Fritters:
1 1/2 cups cooked garbanzo beans (about 1 can)
1 small bunch Swiss chard, tough parts discarded and roughly chopped
1/2 red pepper, diced
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cups cooked bulgar (or couscous, brown rice, etc.)
Juice of 1 lemon
Flour
Olive oil
Spices and herbs to taste (salt, pepper, cumin, red pepper flakes, mint, cayenne, etc.)
Mint Tzatziki Sauce:
1 cup Greek yogurt
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
1 clove garlic
1 T. olive oil
1 T. vinegar
Small handful of fresh mint, finely chopped (or a few T. of dried mint)
Salt
Instructions
Make the tzatziki by mixing all the ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate while you make the fritters.
Heat a little olive oil in a large frying pan. Sauté onion, pepper and Swiss chard until onions are soft and chard is wilted. Drain excess liquid using a strainer, and set aside.
Add garbanzo beans, lemon juice and garlic to a food processor and combine until it forms a rough paste. Add chard mix and spices and blend until mostly smooth.
Transfer mixture to a large mixing bowl and add bulgar, adjusting spices if necessary.
Heat a thin layer of olive oil to medium-high heat in a frying pan. Form small patties from the mixture, and coat in flour.
Fry patties in oil until crispy and brown on each side, a few minutes per side. Serve with tzatziki sauce, salad and bread.
