Paper Fruit

Not that it matters to VeganMoFo but I am super-busy and starting to feel a little stressed out. I’m preparing for a parental visit next week as well as World Fantasy Con, while slush reading for Fantasy Magazine, blogging every day, prepping myself for a still-in-the-works secret project, and trying to keep up my recent gangbusters pace on my novel (that part not so good this week, but that’s how it goes). Yeesh. Not that I’m complaining– this is the kind of work I love– but yeesh. So I guess what I’m saying is that today’s entry will be pretty bare bones, but there’s some recipe love in there.

I made myself hungry yesterday posting about Raechel’s bibimbap and so decided to make some for myself last night. Not wanting to be cooking for hours I decided to a “quick” bibimbap, rice with bap sauce and only three sides. I wanted the kitchen to be relatively un-crazy and I get really upset when I have more than a couple of pans going at once (Raech somehow doesn’t, but I am a very “focus on one thing at a time” kind of girl) so I settled on baked tofu, ginger/garlic/shallot bok choy (recipe follows), and modified Korean cucumber/daikon salad (recipe also follows). This way I would only have one oven recipe, one stovetop recipe, and one cold bowl-needing recipe. And the bap sauce. That said, even though it seems complicated, my kitchen was relatively un-destroyed and it took about an hour all told. Nice! The rice cooker helped. Here’s a general tutorial for my Stress-Free Bibimbap For Two:

Set your rice cooker to cook up two or three cups of rice (I used sushi rice and did not regret that decision). Then preheat your oven to 425 degrees. Cut one block of extra-firm tofu into strips and halve them, then set them in a 9×9 baking dish with 1/4 c. soy sauce and enough peanut oil to coat. Turn them over once while your oven is preheating then stick them in and forget about them. Flip them once, when you think you’re about halfway done with everything, but it’s not a science. They’ll be fine

Make your bap sauce, courtesy Fat Free Vegan.

I used less sweetener than the recipe called for, instead of a tbs. of sugar I used a tbs. of agave nectar, and added no additional sugar at all. The sauce was pleasantly sweet but I think I’d only do two teaspoons of agave next time. I also thinned it out with several tablespoons of water so it would be more spreadable.

Then make your salad-type dish. I riffed off this recipe.

This was basically similar to the above recipe, but I have a horror of raw onions and so used the following recipe:

Modified Korean Cucumber Salad

2 small daikons, cut into rounds

1 large hothouse cuke, seedless or seeds removed, cut into rounds

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp. peanut oil

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper

the juice of one lemon

3 tbs. white vinegar

2 tbs. sesame seeds

Mix everything, cover, throw in fridge until ready to serve.

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So after that was made, I started on the bok choy. I again riffed off of this ginger-garlic bok choy recipe, but I streamlined it and added shallots. When done, it looked like this:

Ginger-Garlic-Shallot Bok Choy

2 golf ball sized shallots, minced

1 tbs fresh ginger, minced

3 cloves garlic, pressed

4 heads baby bok choy

2 tbs. soy sauce (I used tamari)

2 tbs. peanut oil

Fry the shallots in the peanut oil until soft, then add the garlic and ginger and saute until fragrant. Then add your bok choy stems. I do my bok choy like this: I cut off the weird ends where you pull them off at the bottom, then slice off the leaves with a v-shape, leaving the stems. I chop the stems into half-moons (put the stem down horizontally, slice once vertically– just look at the picture, already! Throw the stems in with the garlic/ginger/shallot mix as well as the soy sauce and saute until the stems are tender. Chop the leaves into big pieces while this happens then add them until they wilt, then cut the heat.

****

That’s it! Everything worked out well, when my rice cooker beeped my tofus were ready to come out as well as my bok, and my salad had chilled long enough that the cukes were vinegary and crisp and lemony. I served up everything with the bap sauce and tucked in. Serious delish!

Sorry I’m such a wretched food photographer. So blurry! But anyways, I hope tomorrow to post pictures from a local Boulder Thai place that does amazing yellow curry. I’m going there tonight with my beloved husband for a date night that I’m sure will be wonderful as our plans currently are Thai food and then playing World of Warcraft. I’m a lucky girl, yes, yes I am!