Accidentally the Same

Every September my college holds a celebration called the Gourmet Gala, wherein restaurants from all over the state gather in our converence room to show off their food and talk to foodies and rich people from... all over the state. Our Culinary department provides dessert and a chocolate fountain, which for the past two years I've been in charge of operating and I've not been happy about either time.

I love working the Gala and quite happily twelve to thirteen hours of my Saturday at school working and carrying on and generally having a good time. As the resident student VedgeHead my chefs are really good about making sure there is something for me to eat whenever we do functions or when we have lab classes. This is fueled by the fact that two very important members of the college faculty are also vegetarian. And one in particular loves me, to be sure, because he associates with our vegetarian journey of locating good nonmeat foods in a state that is very pro-meat.

In any case, around about lunchtime while working the Gala, Chef told me we had tofu floating about and said I was free to use it to make myself something to eat and to make sure I had enough for Dr. L, the not so high ranked vedge among our faculty, who was wandering around the conference room making sure everything was set up properly for the night's festivities.

At this point I ought to mention that I love Siracha. If you have ever eaten at a suishi bar, you'll recognize it as that red bottle with the green cap and a rooster on it. It is very, very potant pureed chiles and the poster child for 'a little goes a long way'. I love this stuff but never get it at home. When I found out that I was making something to share with Dr. L, I was thrilled because she likes spicy food. I was set!

I started with cutting the tofu into quarter-inch slabs and setting them up to press for a good half hour or so to pull out excess moisture and improve the texture. After I had that set I took about a pint to a pint in a half of heavy cream and put it in a saute pan (I was too lazy to go get a sauce pan from the dishroom) to simmer and reduce until thick. This took a good fifteen to twenty minutes because I had the thing on fairly low since I was doing several other tasks at the time and did not want to walk away and let it potentially burn on high. Once it was about to my desired consistancy, I added the Siracha. And remember, a little bit goes a long way so I did not add a lot. I just continued to gradually add it until I got the kick that I liked. But it was missing something. After some musing, salt, pepper, and getting a classmate to try it, I had a little lightbulb- duh, an acid! So I hurried off and found myself a couple lemons to juice into my sauce; tried it again, adjusted the Siracha, salt and pepper, and put it on a backburner so I could take out my tofu.

I like my tofu crispy. Since I'm weird about texture, I press (and sometimes freeze) my tofu in order to remove enough moisture to get rid of what can be a mushy, gummy texture in bean curd and then cook it so that the outside is crispy and that crispness actually goes a little deeper than one would normally have a meat. This gives it an illusion of a skin. I found myself a nonstick saute pan and a fish spat (those long, thin spatulas with long vents in them and it flexes easily) and put a bit of vegetable oil into it to heat. While waiting on that, I coated the pieces of tofu, which I had cut into two-bite triangles, in cornstarch. While flour works well to create that crispy layer, cornstarch does so just as well but it does not get soggy when it sits. It also literally, when you dip tofu in it and toss it into a deep fryer, creates the exact color and texture of a Chicken McNugget. I kid you not. This was discovered when I was assigned in Food Prep II to make a Hawaiian dish using tofu. I needed to figure out the best way to fry up the tofu, tossed them in several coatings, fried them, and then my chef and I went over them. She and I were amazed by the cornstarch's McNuggetness and used that in our dish. Since I grew up eating McNuggets, this held a certain fondness for me.

After lightly coating my tofu in cornstarch, I set it into the pan on a medium to low heat that allowed it to cook without burning. The tofu took longer to cook, but the result is that crispy skin I mentioned above. Once that was finished, I grabbed our underclassman dishwasher and gave him a piece and told him to tell me what he thinks. He liked it. My favorite thing to do at school (and in general) is hand people vegetarian food and tell them to try it without telling them what it is first. It's only AFTER they admit that they like it that I crush their illusions and tell them there was no meat involved. Hey, Mikey, the dishwasher liked it! So I explained to him what it was and how I did it and then set aside my lunch, Dr. L's lunch, and put out the rest for everyone to try. My head Chef came along and tasted it and told me it tasted like buffalo sauce.

This is my accidental coincidence. Before then, I had never HAD buffalo sauce before. Buffalo wings became popular AFTER I had given up meat consumption so I had never before had the opportunity to taste it and, in all actually, had no idea what it was (although now I know it's butter and hot sauce) aside spicy. I thought that was pretty cool.

While my classmates and I ate without flourish, I garnished Dr. L's portion over a small bed of spinach leaves topped with some crumbled blue cheese to help take the edge off, keeping the sauce on the side to let her dip as desired. I then spent twenty minutes hunting her down to give her her lunch. She loved it and hunted me down later to tell me.

All in all, the by product of two accidental discoveries made for a very good lunch. Incidently, did you know that tofu was made on accident? True story. Historians believe that a Chinese cook was flavoring a soup made from soy milk (a popular concept at the time, the soy milk soup) with an acid that curdled the milk on accident. Tofu, boys and girls, is nothing more than Soy-Cheese, made in a process similar to the making of cheese. An acid is added to milk (or soy milk in our case) to cause it to curdle. The solids are collected and processed as various cheeses (or tofu). Depending on the milk (cow, sheep, goat, etc), acid, process, and storing, the cheese will have its own distinct flavor and, yes, blue cheese is moldy cheese, however the process used to make it these days is completely clean and it is perfectly harmless (and delicious).