You just logged on to find me here with that sad look upon my face 😦
Sorry – I love that classic Gloria Gaynor song and it was all that kept going through my mind when I saw that my last post was in January – January – at least it was this year!
I have been gone because life has been crazy and in truth still is, but I miss chatting about stuff other than work and family and I jumped at the chance when Liz (of “Cooking the Vegan Books” fame) invited me to blog about Ruth Tal’s “Refresh” or “Fresh at Home” cook books.
This was well over a month ago and I immediately leapt into action, cooked a number of recipes from Refresh, ordered the other book as, surprisingly, I didn’t already own it but peaked before I got to write the post. Not a good effort at all.
So here I am – late – but better late than never.
I love the Refresh book, I have found a number of recipes that now I have cooked will enter my repertoire and encourage me to alter the way I approach some of my own “classics”. Savoury Scrambled Tofu is one such recipe, I have only begun to cook scrambled tofu over the past year because I always felt it was tasteless but having been introduced to Black Salt my opinion changed and I enjoyed it as did every member of my family, Vegan or not. The general opinion was that the salt made it very “eggy” which made me stop and think because one reason for moving to a Vegan based diet was that I didn’t like eggs. The recipe in Refresh doesn’t call for Black Salt at all which immediately made me sceptical (having now concluded that it was essential) but my scepticism was totally unfounded because it was (is) delicious.
Before we go further I would like to consider something that has had me thinking in the six weeks since I first cooked this recipe. On the first attempt I, more or less, followed the recipe and since then have made alterations and developments to suit the specific tastes of me and the family, so when does this take it away from being Ruth Tal’s recipe and become mine that was inspired by the original? I ask this not because I am desperate to “own” recipes but I read so much about people “passing off” recipes as their own when they are blatantly copied from a book or a blog and on occasions have even taken the spelling mistakes with them.
First attempt at Ruth Tal’s recipe.
6 weeks and many versions later
The original recipe calls for you to put the flavouring together (Dill, Nutritional Yeast, Turmeric and seasoning) and mix with water to form a paste before you add it to the tofu in the pan, the logic of adding a liquid when I had just spent ages squeezing it out of the Tofu defied me so I kept everything dry before it went in. Maybe tofu is much drier in the States and in which case this may be a perfectly reasonable way to go. The other change I made immediately was to not include 2tsp of garlic powder as there was already 3 cloves of fresh. The original recipe is widely available on the internet but it is very simple:
Saute 1 onion and 3 cloves of garlic until translucent, crumble 3 1/2 cups of tofu and cook for 2 minutes.
Combine 3 tbsp. nutritional yeast, 2 tsp dill weed, 2 tsp garlic powder, 1 pinch turmeric, 1 1/2 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp black pepper with 1/2 cup water and whisk to remove lumps.
Here I used 4 tbsp yeast, a good 2 tsp dried dill weed, 1/2 tsp turmeric, 1/2 tsp sea salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper which I combined and added dry.
Cook until all liquid evaporated.
On occasion I have added red pepper or courgette with the onions also chopped olives or peas towards the end of cooking.
Using Dill and Nutritional Yeast is inspired and they will stay no matter what other changes I make (although I once tried dried Thyme which was nice) but the addition of red peppers and diced Olives this morning earned a “that was the best breakfast ever” from my son and such praise doesn’t come easy. The two photographs above show the changes, it is not a competition but my way is definitely more colourful!
I have cooked a number of other recipes that I want to talk about but I will leave that for another post (earlier than 8 months time, I promise!)
Thanks for reading – it feels good to be back.
Carol
x
Contented Hippy 