Stir fried roasted eggplant, carmelized golden tofu, with green beans and red peppers
stir fry
Originally uploaded by ereneta. If you ask my wife, my stir fries have notably improved in the past two years (which is the amount of time we've owned Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone). The secrets?
1) Roast the eggplant for an hour, and then shred it before it ever hits the wok. Sure, it falls apart but that melt-in-your-mouth goodness makes up for many years of the bitterness of slightly undercooked eggplant slices.
2) Sugar. It goes against pretty much everything I know about human nutrition, but sugar is the secret to getting my wife to eat tofu. (Hasn't worked on my kids yet). Fry the tofu, and then cook it in a soy sauce and brown sugar (or molasses) glaze. And when you add a liquid to finish the broccoli or the green beans, add some sugar (and some crushed red pepper, for heat) to the soy sauce-rice vinegar-vegetable stock.
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I'm playing host this weekend on the ol' livejournal for writer Ayun Halliday on her virtual blog tour as she promotes her latest book, a "self-mocking autobiography" food memoir, Dirty Sugar Cookies.
Which is really the only reason I have for including a picture of a recent dinner. Just sprucing the place up. (Ayun's been making the round of quite a few foodie blogs).
Full disclosure: Tonight I threw some frozen Meatless patties in a pan and some frozen French fries in the toaster oven.