I bought the new issue of Vegetarian Times and it seems to me that it is getting better and is much less cheese-centric than it used to be. There is a whole article about vegan donuts and I am obsessed with making the apple cider ones except that I can’t find a donut pan anywhere and in the meantime I drank all the cider.
So, last weekend I made two of the recipes from the Zen Kitchen article based solely on how the pictures in the magazine are so beautiful. Incidentally it is impossible to find thai basil in northern Virginia unless you go to Grand Mart. At Grand Mart they have at least 15 kinds of leafs that I have never seen or heard of before. So the first recipe was “Dragon’s Head Tofu” which are these fried tofu balls and let me save you some time by telling you that no you cannot substitute egg replacer for the egg even if you also add panko and the balls instantly disperse into a million bits as soon as they hit the oil. The Zen Kitchen article is all about being in touch with the sensory details of cooking so that does give you the opportunity to be fully present in your body as you experience the urge to whip the pot of oil across the room as though it were an eppendorf tube rack after a bad night of western blots.
So I fried them in a pan and it ended up being like a little falafel made of greasy tofu and it was not that great. I don’t know what all those picturesque tentacles coming off of the magazine picture’s balls are either. Then I was so busy being mad at the stupid tofu that I overcooked the goddamn red curry. Which I bet is pretty good if you don’t overcook all the vegetables. For example I don’t think you need to pre-blanch the green beans. Anyways, this was a terrible meal and it took a thousand years to make plus the thousand years I spent going to every store on the planet in search of thai basil.
The next day I made the tempeh sloppy joes from The Vegan Table and it was a million times easier and better and made enough leftovers for three more meals.
The End.