Marinated dried tofu with vegetables

Dried tofu tastes so very different than fresh tofu. If you don´t add any seasonings, then it tastes and looks literall like a wet sponge,  even exactly the same texture as the sponge used for wiping blackboards 😀 On the other hand if you first fry it and then soak it in a yummy marinade…both the texture and most of all the flavour change and you will be surprised what a transformation that is!

In any case, first you have to soak the slices of dried tofu (they come in small blocks), a couple minutes will do. Then squeeze out the water, but not completely, they should be still quite moist, otherwise they soak up too much oil. Slice up the blocks into strips. Gently pan-fry them in oil of choice, until light golden. Then place in a bowl with a marinade and set aside for at least half an hour – I used water, tamari soy sauce and apple cider vinegar. You can play with the ratios…

When your tofu is almost ready to be taken out, sautee some sliced onion with a pinch of salt, adding carrot slices and broccoli florets/stems and cooking them until softened. Add the marinated tofu strips and heat through.

I served the dish with a rice/hato mugi mixture.

Rice casserole with tofu cream cheese

Anybody missing a hearty casserole with creamy melted cheese on top? Well, try this one, it´s not exactly the same, but it is equally good, I dare say!

I had some cooked rice which I mixed with oil-sauteed leek, mushrooms and carrot slices. For the cheese I purchased a block of smoked tofu which I pureed in the blender with water, lemon juice, salt and black pepper, until I got the consistency of cream cheese. I spread the “cheese” on top of the rice/vegetable mixture, in a deep casserole dish, and baked in the oven for about 20 minutes until the “cheese” became light golden.

Arame with almonds and deep-fried dried tofu

This is quite a fancy way to serve arame, especially to people who are not thrilled by the vision of eating seaweed – and there are too many of them! 😀 Adding rich ingredients such as almonds and deep-fried tofu always helps…

First prepare your tofu – you could use regular firm tofu, OR dried tofu, which has both a very different flavour and texture, that I really enjoy –  if it´s prepared properly. First soak the dried tofu for about 15 minutes, then  squeeze out water with your hands, but don´t squeeze too hard, you want the tofu to stay moist, retaining a bit of liquid, otherwise they soak up too much oil. Deep fry the soaked tofu slices until light golden, let them rest for a while on napkinks to drain excess oil and cut up into cubes when cooled down.

Meanwhile you can take a handful of arame seaweed and soak it, also for about 15 minutes, then drain and rinse with fresh water. Sautee onion in a pot with a tiny bit of sesame oil and a pinch of salt, add soaked arame, chopped carrot, curly cabbage and daikon (I used the green variety). Add roasted almonds (I roasted them for maybe 15 minutes in the oven, on a tray with a silicone baking mat). Season with 2 TBSP shoyu soy sauce, 1 TBSP rice vinegar and about half a teaspoon of dried ginger powder. Add fried tofu cubes and enough water to nearly cover. Simmer on a low flame for half an hour, adding water as needed, but only very little at a time.

I served the arame dish with a rice/hato mugi mixture and some raw greens (edible weeds).

Carrot leaf tempura!

The main meal is not actually something that I would necessarily need to share with you in this blog (though it was really tasty): I made a rice/amaranth mixture sprinkled with dulse seaweed flakes and an ovendish of long baked red onions, cauliflower and seaweed-flavoured tofu (conveniently premade by our local macro company). All marinated for a couple of hours in olive oil with salt, minced garlic and dried thyme.

But the extraordinary thing was the carrot leaf tempura! Carrot leaves can have quite a strong flavour and tough texture so sometimes I´m not sure how to use them properly, but this definitely is a winner 😀 I used a tempura batter of white rice flour, a pinch of aluminum-free baking powder, pinch of salt and enough water to make a runny but still sticky batter (mine was too thin :-p), and then I deep-fried the little “branches” of carrot greens until crispy. Another nice idea is deep-fried daikon greens, I just made a few (without the batter) as a decoration 🙂 I definitely recommend eating your greens quickly blanched, steamed or sauteed 90% of the time, but this is sure a nice treat!

Buckwheat with sauteed onion, roots and smoked tofu

Another one of those quick dishes when you come tired home from work and need something pronto!

I cooked buckwheat in 1:2 grain to water ratio, first bringing the water to boil with a pinch of salt, then tipping in the buckwheat. It cooks only about 15 minutes. Meanwhile I fried fine slices of onion together with tiny cubes of parsley root, celery root and smoked tofu on oil, untill all became crispy and golden. I topped the grain with the mixture and served the meal with blanched savoy cabbage.  The fried root veggies and the smoky tofu particularly give a sensation of bacon 😀

 

 

Tacos with tofu-mushroom filling

Mexican dishes are not so common in macro cooking because of their heavy use of strong spices and nightshades, nevertheless there´s always a way to go around, plus you can always take it easy with the amount of chilli peppers 🙂

I had store-bought taco shells which I filled with a leaf of lettuce, a sprinkle of sweet corn kernels, my Mexican inspired tofu scramble and a dollop of tofu sour cream (not my own, sadly).

For the tofu scramble/filling heat up oil in a frying pan, sautee one medium onion thinly sliced into rings or halfmoons, until it gets nicely golden, then add a bunch of sliced mushrooms (I had champignons) and sautee until they soften, darken and shrink 😀 Add grated carrot and grated celery root (about 1:1 ratio) and a pinch of salt and sautee more, you might want to cover the pan with a lid to prevent burning, and/or add some water. Towards the end crumble in a smaller block of tofu, season with more salt, mild paprika powder and chilli powder and allow the mixture to heat and blend the flavours. This was really a success, my boyfriend gobbled it up quickly which always means something 😉

Macro birthday cake: Blueberry tofu cheesecake

For my birthday I decided to make a REAL fancy cake – of course within the macrobiotic standards! 🙂 I had quite a hard time finding a recipe I could use though…. In my mind I had a vision of a rich creamy (tofu) cheesecake with a flaky pastry crust and a fruity jelly on top. Somehow that proved to be not so easy to find, as there´s not a whole lot of macro cookbooks, whether printed or online…So I searched and searched and compiled my own recipe using and modifying several different crust/filling/topping recipes I have found 😀

For the crust you will need:

1 1/2 cup spelt flour (you could also use whole wheat flour, preferably 70% whole-grain)

1/4 tsp sea salt

1/4 cup melted coconut oil (or oil of choice)

1/4 cup cold water

Mix together flour, salt and oil with a fork until well combined, then slowly add cold(!) water, while steadily mixing. Use your hands to create a ball and knead it for about 1-2 minutes. Place the dough on a non-stick surface (I used my silicone baking mat) and make it flat using a wooden rollerpin. Make a circle about 1 cm thick, as large as your baking form is (you will probably have extra dough, so then you can make a bigger circle and cut off the excess dough afterwards). Carefully transfer the pie into a greased baking form, pressing it gently inside and up the sides of the form. Prickle the dough with a fork, cover tightly with a tinfoil and bake in a preheated oven on 190°C for about 15 minutes. Then remove tinfoil and bake for another about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

For the tofu filling prepare:

400 g firm tofu

pinch of salt

1/4 tsp vanilla powder

zest of one lemon

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/3 cup maple syrup

2 tbsp tahini (or other nut/seed butter)

1 tbsp arrowroot starch

Blend all in a blender until very smooth, add some water if necessary, but don´t make the filling watery! Pour the cream into the cooled crust, spread evenly and bake for about 25 minutes on 170°C, until light golden and set (but not too stiff, the filling should be very soft to the touch).

For the topping use:

about 1/2 cup blueberries

pinch of salt

splash of lemon juice

1 tbsp kuzu diluted in a tiny bit of cold water

1 tsp agar agar

1 or 2 tbsp rice malt

water

In a small pot, combine blueberries, salt, lemon juice, rice malt and enough water to just cover. Bring mixture to a boil and simmer for about 10-15 minutes until blueberries soften. Slowly add kuzu and agar agar, let boil and simmer for a minute. Pour hot topping over the cake and let cool and set. Serve cake chilled.

Note: This cake is not extremely sweet – for more sweetness add more maple syrup to the filling and/or rice malt to the topping. This recipe makes for quite a lot of cake, but depends on the size of your baking form, mine is roughly 25 cm in diameter. I had to make two cakes – one bigger and one smaller. Don´t overdo it with the filling, it should be the same level as the edge of the crust. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Soba noodles with carrot-tofu sauce

Another supersimple sauce for your pasta is here, this time starring tofu and carrot!

It has exactly FOUR ingredients: tofu, carrot, ume plum vinegar and barley miso. First steam a chunk of tofu (about 50 g per person should suffice) and a small handful of carrot chunks in a steaming basket, about 20 minutes, or until the carrot gets soft enough to be easily prickled by a fork. Then transfer to blender, adding 1/2 tsp barley miso, about 2 tsp ume plum vinegar and warm water from the steaming (amount depends on desired consistency). Serve over noodles (mine were buckwheat noodles – soba) and garnish with cut up nori strips.

Steamed greens with tofu dressing

In the picture below you can see one of my lunches – pressure cooked rice and rye, long-baked onion, carrot and parsnip (sprayed with tamari and a tiny bit of oil, baked for about 45 minutes under tin foil, then 15 minutes uncovered), steamed greens (bok choy, curly cabbage, pointed cabbage, cauliflower leaves, kohlrabi slices, leaves and stems) and tofu dressing.

For the dressing I blanched roughly 50 g of firm tofu for a few minutes (to make it easier to digest and less weakening), placed into a blender with 1 tsp lemon juice, 1 tsp tahini, 1/2 tsp ume paste and 1/2 tsp white (shiro) miso, and blended until smooth adding liquid as needed.

Ume-cha-zuke

This recipe is slightly adapted from Wieke´s cookbook, and it is supposed to be a breakfast meal, but I can easily imagine it eating it for lunch or dinner, with a side of veggies. Ume-cha-zuke is basically a brown rice porridge cooked with tea and flavoured with umeboshi. Sounds odd, but it´s really great and refreshing! You can use a green tea or a roasted twig tea (which has much less caffeine) such as kukicha, which is the one I used.

Bring to boil 2 small bowls of rice (I had a long grain rice/wild rice mixture leftover) with 3 bowls of fresh made tea (1 used a tablespoon of the twigs for this amount). Mix in about a teaspoon of umepaste diluted in a bit of tea. Let simmer for about 10-15 minutes. Most likely you will still have quite some liquid left – I took off the lid, brought the porridge to a higher temperature and let some of the liquid evaporate until I got a desired consistency. It should not be creamy, but also not very watery. Ume-cha-zuke is best served with chopped spring onion garnish and thin strips of nori seaweed (easiest is to cut up the strips with scissors). I also mixed in a 1/4 tsp of wasabi paste, yum!

I liked combining it with a small serving of snow nabe, made simply by simmering a few tablespoons of grated daikon with a pinch of salt, a sprinkle of lemon juice and small cubes of tofu (about one slice for two people is enough). And of course miso soup, as every morning 😀