Blow Up Food

Black Pepper Tofu

Once upon a time Blow Up Food was a slightly neglected Posterous blog. As from today Posterous will cease to exist, so I thought I’d have a quick rummage to see if there’s anything I’d hadn’t yet salvaged and I found this old post on Black Pepper Tofu.

Black Pepper Tofu is an Ottolenghi recipe from Plenty. It’s super spicy and fairly easy to make, though the heavy use of different soy sauces means it’s sadly not wheat-free. I’ll have a play around with some Tamari and update this post when I’ve figured out what will work, but if you’re fine with gluten then I recommend giving this a go.

Ottolenghi’s Black Pepper Tofu (Serves 4)

• 800g firm, fresh tofu (if you’re near an Asian supermarket, try to get there early in the morning and you can get it still warm)
• Grapeseed oil, for frying
• 150g butter
• 12 small shallots (350g), peeled and thinly sliced
• 8 red chillies, thinly sliced
• 12 garlic cloves, crushed
• 3 tbsp chopped ginger
• 5 tbsp crushed black peppercorns
• 3 tbsp sweet soy sauce
• 3 tbsp light soy sauce
• 4 tsp dark soy sauce
• 2 tbsp sugar
• 16 small, thin spring onions, cut into segments 3cm long

Cut the tofu into 3cm x 2cm blocks fry the tofu in batches in the oil, turning the pieces as you go. Once they are golden all around, and have a thin crust, transfer to a paper towel. Remove the oil and any sediment from the pan and throw in the butter. Once it has melted, add the shallots, chillies, garlic and ginger, and sauté for about 15 minutes on low-medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the contents of the pan are shiny and totally soft.

While you wait, crush the peppercorns, using a pestle and mortar or a spice grinder. They should be quite coarse. When the shallots and chillies are soft, add the soy sauces and the sugar, stir, then stir in the crushed pepper. Warm the tofu in the sauce for about a minute, then add the spring onion and stir through.

Original recipe

Aubergine and Wild Rice Salad

Yoghurt & Spelt Flatbreads

— Guest post by Gregory Povey, @topfife.

Last week, I bought Jaq Jerusalem, the new book by Yotam Ottolenghi (and Sami Tamimi). It’s a love letter to Jerusalem, taking in Israeli and Arab dishes, and covering a lot of the influences from the Mediterranean — about 60-70% of which is vegetarian or vegetable-based.

We’ve been a fan of Middle Eastern and Jewish-heritage food for a long time. Mostly through a lot of obvious things - rice dishes, lamb (me), hummous, falafel, boregi, pickles, baklava - and their massive love of salt. Oh, the salt. It’s a bit tricky, as there is obviously a lot of food that falls so far outside the remit of ‘vegetarian’ as to not be approachable, but we’re trying. This week we’ve tried a few - imam bayildi, dukkah, and flatbreads.

The flatbreads present another tiny problem as Jaq is experimenting with a wheat-free diet. Most other flours don’t seem to have the strength of wheat, but spelt is working out well. It’s got a slightly earthier, wholemeal flavour to it, but it’s light enough to fill in for white wheat flour.

A look in Ottolenghi’s Plenty and a couple of tweaks, leads us to Yoghurt & Spelt Flatbreads.

RECIPE:

• 500g spelt flour (probably wheat, if you like)
• 500g low-fat Greek yoghurt (TOTAL 2% from FAGE is the best greek yoghurt we’ve found in supermarkets)
• 1tsp olive oil
• 1tsp baking powder (a healthy 1 tsp)
• ½tsp salt
• Chopped coriander (optional)

Set aside the yoghurt in a bowl and mix in the olive oil. This will loosen the yoghurt up a little and provide a bit of lubricant when kneading.

Add the baking powder and salt to the flour and blend together. Scoop the yoghurt on top of the flour, before making a dough with your hands. This will get sticky. If it’s too dry, add some extra yoghurt until you’re happy with the texture.

Turn out onto your work surface (it doesn’t need to be floured, really) and work the dough. Now spend a good few minutes of kneading, it will be a proper heel-of-the-hand kneading job and your triceps will benefit. (see top image)

Before long, you’ll have a luxurious, stretchy dough with a smooth texture.

Wrap it up in cling film and stick it in the fridge for about an hour, or upto a few days. The longer you leave it, the more tangy yoghurt flavour you will have in your final bread.

When you want to make the flatbreads, make a long roll on a floured surface and cut it up into equal sections. Make a ball out of each section, then roll them to about about ½ inch thick - until they look like flatbreads - and put them to the side.

There are now two options of how to cook them:

1. Pan Fried.
This will give you a flatter, paratha-like flatbread with a crispier texture.

Heat up a pan and add some olive oil. Lay your flatdough into the pan and let it cook. When bubble start to appear, turn it over. Cook for ~90 seconds each side, or until you’re happy with the colour and satisfied that the dough is cooked.

2. Baked.
This will give a lighter, puffed-up bread along the lines of a pitta.

Pre-heat the oven to about 200dC and place the flatbread dough on a floured tray mid-high in the oven. If you’ve got a pizza stone, use that. After about 5 minutes, your dough should be puffed up and proud like a morning cockerel. Turn the bread over and leave for another five minutes.

Take out, let it cool a tiny bit, then scoop up some tahini, olive oil & dukkah, or a load of tzatziki.

Potato, samphire, baby spinach and pine nut salad

This was my lunch today (yes, I remembered to make something!)  It is a variation on an Ottolenghi recipe, made with what I had in, rather than what the ingredients are supposed to be, and was obviously not warm. It was pretty tasty though, and I’ve got enough for tomorrow too.
I’m finding it hard to find good recipes for samphire that don’t involve fish, so if you know of any send them my way.

Quinoa, breakfast radish and broad bean salad

At the start of the week I always intend to take my own lunch to work, but by Wednesday (probably Tuesday if I’m honest) I’ve given up and have resorted to stuffing my face at my desk with M&S hummus and pitta breads. This is one of my more successful lunch attempts. It’s an Ottolenghi recipe from Plenty (I forgot the avocado) and was pretty good. I used lime instead of lemon (all I had in), but it worked well with the cumin. Wish me luck this week!