Vegetarian Dish: Soy Glazed Tofu and Lime Stir-Fry

Dear bakers,

Now for something completely different: today I will share with you my favorite vegetarian dinner consisting of tofu glazed with soy sauce and deliciously stir-fried veggies with a super fresh lime flavour. The original recipe contains fish sauce, but if you're against that or want a proper vegetarian dish, you can just substitute it with soy sauce, water, or even leave it out.

Ingredients:
(serves 2, 20-30 min)

For the glazed tofu
1 block of pressed tofu (packaged or even better the freshly-made tofu on sale in your local Asian grocery store)
1/4 cup / 60 ml soy sauce
2 tsp / 10 ml fish sauce (but you can substitute it with soy)
4 tsp / 16g  brown sugar
2 cloves of garlic (finely cut)
1 cm piece of ginger (or about the size of your thumb)
Sesame oil

For the stir fry:
1 lime
2 gloves of garlic
1 tbsp/ 15 ml of oyster sauce (or soy sauce)
Vegetable oil
Your choice of vegetables, but if you need inspiration, here's mine.
    1 small leek or long green onion
    1/4 piece of cabbage, shredded
    1 big carrot, cut into 6 cm long strips
    1-2 stalks of celery
 
Directions:

1: Start with the tofu. Take it from its container, discard all the moisture and wrap the tofu in kitchen towels. Place the tofu on a flat surface and top it with a cutting board and a heavy item. I recommend a jar of peanut butter or similar. You want to press the excess water out of the tofu so it will take up the glazing instead. Don't put too heavy an item on top as you might squash the unfortunate thing.

2: Prepare the tofu glazing. Combine the soy sauce, sugar and fish sauce (if using) and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Peel your garlic and cut as fine as possible. You could also use a garlic crusher for this. Skin your piece of garlic root, and try to take off as little as possible: the root closest to the skin is the best. Once you've completely skinned it, cut it lengthwise so that you cut straight through the tough strings. Slice very thinly. After that, take your slices and cut them up further so that they equal the garlic in size. Add both to the soy mixture.

3: Prepare your vegetables. Wash and cut your vegetables in your desired stir-fry shape. Cut up your garlic similar as in step 2, and keep it apart from the vegetables.

4: Heat up your two pans, preferably non-stick. Remove your tofu, cut it into your desired portion and brown all sides of your cubes in a pan with sesame oil. When they have browned slightly, add the sauce.
Meanwhile, add your vegetables to the other pan and start stir frying. Grate the lime directly above the pan so the zest will fall into it. Cut your lime in half and squeeze both halves into the pan as well and keep stirring while you wait for the tofu. After the vegetables have absorbed most of the lime juice, add a tiny bit of oyster or soy sauce to provide a bit of saltiness.

5: Your tofu will be in the process of absorbing the glazing, so keep turning your blocks for an even flavour distribution. Continue to do so until your glaze has become syrupy and/or has been completely absorbed by the tofu. Make sure your garlic and ginger doesn't burn, though.

6: Serve the vegetables and the tofu with some white rice and enjoy! 

I'll post pictures soon as I forgot to take any whilst making this.
Let me know how your glazed tofu and lime stir-fry worked out!

Dairy Free Chocolate Pudding

Today's potential failure is a deliciously sweet dessert: coconut chocolate pudding, or as I like to call it, coco-cocoa pudding. *ba-dum-tsshhh* Homophones, anyone? No? Not funny? Oh well...
You can find the recipe here.

One of the best parts of this recipe is the fact that it is completely milk-free. Very handy if one of your guests has a milk allergy, like my cooking buddy/teacher and boyfriend =3
When he was over for Christmas we made this as a dessert, and good lord was it good. We didn't add the curry spices (I'm totally a hardcore choc fan), and it worked perfectly without.

As you can see, this recipe requires something called arrowroot. Here in the Netherlands, that's a pretty rare ingredient, and I was lucky to have bought it on a trip in England last year. Hurray for Waitrose! (they have the cutest series of baking stuff, and I bought the complete set of baking powder, baking soda, arrowroot and cream of tartar while I only knew what to do with the baking powder and soda, initially) Try to get this, but if it's to difficult to find, try it with some other kind of starch, like potato.

Okay, so for the Christmas desert we made twice the prescribed batch because there were quite a few of us (no there weren't, but my dad counts for two if not three), errr, more than four in any case. It was absolutely delicious! Trust me on this one. Because there's actual chocolate in it, it has a really intense chocolate flavour. It also has that rich consistency that you associate with melted chocolate and that I find to be so appropriate for choc desserts. If you want to, you can play around with the consistency, which is exactly what I/we did.

So, the original recipe has a lot of arrowroot in it. When I say a lot, I mean a LOT. For about half a litre of pudding (and this is a rough estimate) according to the recipe you have to add 1/4 cup of arrowroot, equaling 60 ml. When my boyfriend tried out this recipe (and this was a long time before Christmas) he followed the recipe, and ended up with something less than ideal-looking. With its brown shade and all, it kinda looked like something else entirely.. I kid you not.

Not very appetizing, now is it?

Clearly, something had to be done in order to get a more appetizing result. We halved the amount of arrowroot, so instead of half a cup for twice the amount, we just stuck to 1/4 cup. That batch came out a lot better, really.  Suitable for Christmas too, which is always a plus. Still, we agreed there was a bit too much arrowroot in it. It was a bit, uh, too stiff?

Anyway, I tried it again, considering I had opened a can of coconut milk to make some satay, and had only used half of it. Half a can doesn't give you much choc pudding, so naturally, a second can had to be opened. Aww yeah. Mooaar deliciousness. Six reasonably-sized portions made from 600 ml of coconut milk (sounds like small portions, doesn't it? Yeah I admit, they are small, but heck, it's so incredibly rich that small portions are very reasonable). Two days of fabulous pudding. It doesn't get much better.

The Problem: I don't know how much thickener to add. There's too much thickener in the original recipe.

The solution: Add less thickener (obviously). The question is, how much less? That's the adventure, isn't it?
Okay, so in my final batch, the recipe and a half, I added a total of 15 ml arrowroot, also known as a tablespoon. It was very liquidish in while cooking (that's an adjective because I just made it so), and I feared I'd end up with some sluggish chocolate milk, but it turned out well in the end.

Pretty milky, don't you think?

The Problem: I can't find arrowroot for the life of me! What do I do?

The Solution: Although I haven't tested it yet, I think your best bet is potato starch. Corn starch is also possible, which has been tried and approved. The whole point of using arrowroot is, I think, that arrowroot is transparent when used, gives your dish a nice gloss, and is taste-neutral. Cornstarch, on the other hand, always turns your sauce or pudding opaque, and adds a bit of texture, when added in large quantities. In my experiences, potato starch is also translucent, also a bit glossy, but I don't know about taste. I really don't use it that often (because I can never find the box, which is small, and my cupboard is big 'n messy).

Do you see the gloss? Ooh, you so glossy!

Have you ever made your own pudding? What are your experiences with thickeners in desserts? Leave it in the comments.

Happy failing!