Oden for Vegetarians

Oden is a traditional Japanese one pot dish that combines vegetables with meat and seafood cooked in a soy sauce broth. I have been looking for a way to come up with a vegetarian version without much success– until now. In addition to making it veggie, I also wanted it to be tasty and interesting without relying on too many hard to find specialty ingredients. The appeal of this dish is the wide variety of textures as well as flavors that comes to you all in one bowl. After a series of fairly mediocre attempts, I’ve finally hit upon the right combination of flavors and textures. I’m sure this recipe will continue to evolve.

Dashi stock is super easy to make from scratch. I think that Just Hungry has the best advice for vegetarian dashi variations. The only required ingredient is kombu, dried kelp. Other variations include dried bonito (tuna) flakes, ginger and dried shitakes. Instant dashi powder works just fine, too. You can find it in Asian markets. I know Mom’s House Chinese Food Market in Amherst carries it (they don’t have a website).

You can vary the stuff you put in it to suit your tastes and what you have around. I think you could use most vegetables, you’d just have to vary the timing of when to add them (probably not tomatoes, though). If you do want to throw in some meat or fish in, hey go for it. I do suggest frying the tofu. I also suggest seeking out the mochi, a japanese style rice cake that bakes up puffy and chewy. Most health food stores carry the Grainaissance brand in the refrigerated section (make sure you don’t accidentally buy the cinnamon raisin variety!)

I realize this recipe is full of multi-tasking, but that’s just the kind of cook I am. Please break this down into one thing at a time if you need/want to.

Vegetarian Oden

The stuff
1 lb block of firm tofu
rice flour or cornstarch to coat the tofu
neutral vegetable oil to fry the tofu (canola, corn, or peanut)
1 lb of red or yellow potatoes, peeled and diced ½”
2 medium sized carrots, peeled and sliced into thin rounds
1 ½ to 2 cups of broccoli, stems peeled and diced ¼”, crown cut into ½” florets
8-10 button or crimini mushrooms, sliced
1/2 package of mochi, about 6 oz., preferably a savory flavored variety, cut into one inch square

The Broth
4 1/2 cups of dashi
5-6 dried shitake mushrooms, soaked in hot water for at least 10 minutes
6 tblspoons of good soy sauce or tamari
4 tbs of sake or 1/3 cup of white wine
4 tablespoons of mirin
1 inch piece of ginger, peeled and sliced into thin rounds

The mustard dipping sauce
1 tsp or so of wasabi powder
4 tbs or so of dijon mustard
1 tsp black sesame seeds (optional)
or
japanese mustard sauce -the kind they use at japanese steakhouses, another thing to look for in Asisan markets and there are many recipes out there

Start by making your dashi, either by soaking your kombu or from instant powder.

Take your tofu out of the packaging, wrap in a clean dish towel for about 20 minutes (to remove excess moisture)

Meanwhile, combine the potato, 2 tbs soy sauce, 1/2 cup of dashi and a little more water to cover the potatoes in a big soup pot. Cook over med-hi heat until tender. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon, keeping any leftover liquid in the pot.

While the potatoes are cooking, coat the tofu in flour and fry in oil in a small pan. Drain on paper towels.

Heat the oven to 450. If you are making the mustard sauce in this recipe, mix wasabi powder with a little water to form a paste. Set it aside.

Add the rest of the cooking liquid ingredients to the pot (include the soaking water from the mushrooms). Bring to a boil and then lower heat and keep at a simmer for 20 minutes. Then add all of the vegetables except for the broccoli florets. Simmer for 10 minutes.

Put your squares of mochi on a cookie sheet and put in the oven. Add the broccoli florets to the broth. Simmer your soup and bake your mochi for another 10 minutes. Take the mochi out of the oven, they should be puffy brown and crisp. Turn the heat off of the soup and fish the dried mushrooms out of the broth. Squeeze the water out of them with tongs backinto thre soup and slice very thin (discard any stems that are too touch). Return slices to the soup.

Stir dijon mustard and sesame seeds into the wasabi powder.

To serve, ladle soup into bowls, place a couple of pieces of tofu and a couple of poieces of mochi on a small plate with a little dish of the mustard sauce. Take one piece of tofu or mochi at a time, let it sit in the soup for half a minute and then take out and dip in the mustard sauce to eat. Alternate with spoonfuls of soup. I like to use chop sticks to eat the tofu/mochi and eat the veggies out of the soup.

Thanksgiving Feast 2008

I’ve been thinking about restarting this blog for a while. It seems only fitting to make the first post on a holiday centered around food.

This year, it was just the two of us for Thanksgiving dinner, so I decided to keep the meal fairly simple. I enjoy cooking, however I was looking forward to a relaxing few days off, and I didn’t want to spend all of my time in the kitchen. I also wanted to keep the leftovers to a minimum. I like leftovers, but not days and days of them.

We don’t eat dessert very often, so the Thanksgiving pies are something we really look forward to, and definetly made the cut. Another perennial favorite is oyster casserole, which is very rich, so I made that the main course. I wanted two vegetable sides that were relatively simply and not at all rich. We love roasted sweet potatoes so that was a natural departure from the more complex sweet potato casserole. I decided on skillet green beans with orange, maple and pecan. I also usually make another old favorite cumberland cranberry sauce from my battered copy of the Vegetarian Epicure.

Unfortunately none of the pictures came out well enough to be worth posting.

Since their classic recipe has been our favorite for years, I tried the revised pumpkin pie recipe in the current (Nov/Dec 2008) issue of Cook’s Illustrated. It was a bit lighter on the spices and replacing dried ground ginger with grated fresh was definetly an improvement. Maple syrup was added as a sweetner, something I had sometimes used as I appreciate the flavor of dark maple syrup in baked goods. It also incorporated sweet potato with the pumpkin. I have to say I like sweet potato pie as much as I like pumpkin pie, but I’d rather keep those two flavors separate. For future pies I think I’ll incorporate the fresh ginger and maple syrup in the classic recipe.

Instead of apple pie, I decided to make apple crisp, which I usually make a couple of times each fall. I used the three varieties of heirloom cooking apples that I have been enjoying in crisps this fall: calville blanc d’ Hiver, Black Gilliflower (a.k.a. Sheep’s Nose) and Belle du Boskoop. Each has a different level of sweetness and acidity and different texture when cooked. These heirloom varieties also have a floral quality missing from the modern varieties. I keep the seasoning of the filling simple, cinnamon, dark maple syrup, lemon zest and juice. As usual, I baked extra sharp cheddar cheese in the crumb topping. It was a success.

My husband is an idea man. On our way back home from a late morning stroll, he suggested having dessert first. So we had our pies (made the day before Thanksgiving) at lunchtime and ate the rest of the meal for dinner. We’re going to do this every year! We had a chance to enjoy our pie on an empty stomach and still have our fill at dinner.

For the roasted sweet potatoes, I again turned to the Nov/Dec 2008 issue of Cook’s Illustrated. Their excellent technique made this simple and delicious dish the best roasted sweet potatoes I’ve ever had. This is how I will be cooking them from now on.

For the green beans I improvised from a few different recipes combining orange juice and zest with maple pecans in a skillet. This would have come out better with younger and more tender green beans. In the future, I am going to stick with roasting any green beans that do not come fresh from the garden.

I have been making baked oyster casserole for years. Oysters, a little cream, bread crumbs and a little butter on top. It’s good, but I thought it could be better. I looked around on my usual recipe sources on the internet for ideas. I settled on Nathalie Dupree’s Southern Oyster Casserole on Epicurious. I left out the mushrooms (that just seemed odd to me) and replaced the bell pepper with celery and the scallion with shallots. It was delicious, the creamy sauce wasn’t too heavy and really allowed the briny taste of the oysters to shine through. I had planned for the cumberland cranberry sauce to complement the creamy casserole, but I forgot to serve it! I’ll have to come up with another dish to serve it with this weekend.

And there you have it, a mix of old tried and true favorites and some new ideas made for a great meal.