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.

White Chili with Tofu

In the same issue of Cook’s Illustrated that I found the Baked Manicotti recipe (Jan/Feb ’07) there is also a recipe for White Chili (with chicken). The combination of green chilies and cannellini beans intrigued me. For whatever reason I never actually tried making it. When I made other chili or looked up the manicotti recipe, I’d think “oh yeah, white chili…gotta try that” and that was as far as I got.

Well finally, two years later, I got around to experimenting with this recipe concept to see if I could make it work with tofu. I decided I’d use frozen and thawed tofu, as that would give a nice chewy texture. I browned the tofu in canola oil as the first step in the recipe. I set the browned tofu aside and added it to the chili at the end of cooking. In the future, I would add the tofu a bit earlier, as it would benefit from spending more time with all of the flavorful ingredients.

Frozen and thawed tofu-the texture becomes quite spongy which is chewy when cooked

The heat in white chili generally comes from green chili peppers. Some recipes were specific about which kind to use, some not. Some called for a blend, which makes sense–it’s all heat but different varieties use together makes for a more complex and layered flavor in the heat. In the end, I went with what was available and looked good in the market, poblanos and serranos.

Cilantro, scallions, poblanos and serranos

As far as the beans, all of the recipes I looked at pretty much covered all of the types of white beans, navy, black eyed peas, great northern and cannellini. I went with the cannellini because I thought their creamy texture would go well with the heat of the chilies and the chewy texture of the tofu. I used canned cannellini (Goya are my favorite brand; they have the most consistently good texture and flavor.) This worked out well, but I think in the future I would cook up dry beans for extra flavor.

While the tofu was browning, I minced the chilies and some red onion in the food processor. Once I’d taken the tofu out of the pot, I added a little more oil and cooked the chilies and onions with some garlic and cumin until it was soft (next time I’ll include coriander and oregano as well). Taking a major cue from the Cook’s Illustrated recipe, I pureed some of the onion/chili mix with some of the beans and returned it to the pot and added some (homemade) vegetable stock. This made a nice substantial base for the chili which thickened further after about 20 minutes of simmering. Next time, I will add the tofu at this point as well. I will also try replacing some of the stock with beer as the cooking liquid (gluten-free of course).

After the broth has thickened, the beans went in to be heated through. At the very end the scallions and cilantro went in along with the juice of a lime. These last additions added just the right amount of brightness to the flavor.

This was a chili with heat, but the overall flavor was much more delicate than red chili. I think it was saved from being too fiery when I took away some of the onion-chili mixture after cooking it down (my husband mentioned that his eyes were watering in from the fumes, the other room.) Two poblanos and one serrano would have done it; I started with three poblanos and 3 serranos. I served it with sour cream and avocado which further served to temper the heat. I think you could also add a little montery jack or some mild cheddar, but too strong a cheese would be a distraction. Some queso fresco and/or mexican crema would also be interesting. We also had some good tortilla chips on the side (Our favorites are Green Mountain Gringo, Miguel’s Stowe Away and Garden of Eatin.)

White Chili with garnishes

We really liked this dish. I’ll definitely make it again, soon with the changes I have noted to improve the flavor.

Pictures are here.