A shockingly large portion of my time in the kitchen is devoted to disaster recovery. (The shocking part is how bad I can sometimes be at cooking and yet have the audacity to have a cooking blog.) I think it’s important to be resilient to errors and able to turn mistakes into something edible. Tonight I inexplicably burnt the bottoms of two loaves of Peter Reinhart’s pain a l’ancienne, which I’ve made numerous times before and which I didn’t overbake. I still don’t know why the bottoms burnt. (They were also too flat, but I suspect they fell because they over-proofed.)

This is the better-looking loaf:

Upon withdrawing them from the oven, I sighed and announced, “it looks like we won’t be having bread with dinner.” But I quickly decided to try to salvage the sad-looking loaves. I sliced off the burnt bottoms of each. This didn’t leave a very tall loaf, since they were too flat to begin with. But if you put them cut sides together, it looked like one normal-sized baguette…one normal-sized baguette that I could smear with some sort of garlic paste and call garlic bread!

I had made garlic rosemary oil earlier in the day and had several soft rosemary-infused cloves of garlic sitting around. I smashed them and whipped in a couple tablespoons of the aforementioned garlic rosemary oil, a little bit of flaked salt, and some vegan parmesan, which I then smeared on each loaf:

Then I wrapped them in aluminum foil and stuck in the oven during the last 15 minutes of lasagne baking. Voila! An even more interesting accompaniment to the meal than I’d originally intended!

Speaking of bread, you may be wondering why it is that I’ve been on vacation all week and still haven’t made that sourdough bread post.

I guess I’ve been lazy:

Oh, I don’t know if that’s entirely fair because I have been cooking and baking a lot, and I spent a lot of time at various grocery stores today, but as for the rest of my time not spent shopping or in kitchen, imagine this picture:

… but me in a “swimming costume” instead of Tigger, on a raft in the pool instead of in the window (and with a book in my paws), and you should have a fairly accurate idea of what I’ve been doing instead of spending time with my computer.

And it’s been great.

I am currently in the midst of a week-long vacation from work, staying home to entertain my close friend from Australia, Muck (because he’s Australian, he doesn’t always pronounce his R’s, so his given name Mark became Muck…although since my husband Mark is Smark, Muck is more often Smuck). Smucky and I couldn’t be more different in terms of palate: he’s a vegetable- and spice-hating carnivore with little sense of culinary adventure and I’m (obviously) a vegan with a taste for spicy food and trying new things. So I try to find some compromises when he’s here. He’s generally pretty good about at least trying most of the things I make and sometimes he even likes them! I do let him keep a quart of milk and sliced deli turkey in the refrigerator (the latter meaning the cats really like it when he’s in town) so he doesn’t starve, but I enjoy introducing him to new things.

Sometimes I am really surprised by the things that are new to Smucky. For example: bagels. I offered him a homemade bagel last summer and he said he’d never had nor even seen one before. What?!? How can you spend nearly three decades on this planet and never encounter a bagel?!?! The good news is he really took to bagels once he tried one. Now I feel obligated to keep a supply of them on hand when he’s here. They are fun to make, so it’s okay. After he took his jet-lagged self to bed early Monday night, I got to work and surprised him Tuesday morning with fresh everything bagels:

Somehow we’ve managed to go through 8 1/2 bagels already, so it looks like another batch is in my immediate future.

Smucky adulterates his with non-vegan turkey and mozzarella (and, surprisingly, sliced “beetroot”…apparently it’s a normal sandwich topping in Australia): he’s never had cream cheese because he “doesn’t like cream”. I, however, smear mine with Tofutti Better Than Cream Cheese, and in this case, jalapeno jelly from my mother-in-law in Charleston. Is it the healthiest way to start my day? Maybe not, but I’m on vacation, damn it!

Another thing Smucky’s never heard of is blueberries, which is possibly even more bizarre than bagels. He and I were in Wegmans tonight picking out sodas to buy for a party we’re having this weekend, when he suggested we try a blueberry soda. I said I was skeptical about the universal appeal of blueberry soda and asked him if he’d ever had it and it came out that he didn’t even know what a blueberry is: he thought it was just a flavor of “lolly”. Once I got over my shock, I abandoned him in the soda aisle, ran back to the produce section, grabbed some blueberries and returned stating he was going to find out what a blueberry was and not in soda form. Oddly, I did buy the blackberry soda he suggested without asking him if he knows what a blackberry is…maybe he just thought it best to keep mum about it.

One of the few meals I can think of that will satisfy both of our needs is Italian-style pasta. Usually we end up having spaghetti at some point when he’s here, but today I decided to go all-out and spring vegan lasagne on him. His eyes got big with excitement when I announced we’d be having lasagne for dinner, although he immediately asked, with concern in his voice, “but what about the meat and cheese? You can’t have lasagne without meat and cheese.” I told him not to worry his pretty little head about it.

Not only did I make lasagne, I decided to make my own noodles:

I made a very Veganomicon lasagne, with some alterations.

I substituted one spinach layer with commercial vegan “ground beef” in hopes of better appeasing the one who thinks lasagne can’t exist without meat and cheese. I’m very impressed by the fact that he ate two pieces despite the fact that I kept a spinach layer! (He did ask, suspiciously, “what’s with this green stuff?”)

(My homemade noodles didn’t retain layers very well, I’m afraid…)

One thing that I make that Smucky eats without hesitation or suspicion is ice cream, about which honestly I was at first a bit surprised. He’s such a fan of cow milk that I expected resistance to vegan ice cream…but he’s eaten about three quarters of a quart since yesterday!

Smuck’s favorite is mint chocolate chip, so I make it especially for him. Smark’s favorite is cookies and cream, so I made that tonight:

… although it looks like I’ll have to make another batch of mint chocolate chip tomorrow night. I also bought pistachios today in order to make pistachio ice cream for the party, although Smucky today informed me he hates nuts, so I guess he won’t be having any of that. Sigh.

At the nearby sushi restaurant, I often order tofu teriyaki, which they will make spicy upon request. I love spicy. Although we go to this restaurant many Fridays, I had tofu I needed to use up this week and decided I’d try to make something similar myself. My attempt turned out similar to the restaurant’s, although my tofu, which I baked instead of frying, was much crispier than theirs.

First you need to make the spicy teriyaki sauce, which you can use on many things other than this dish. Here is how you do it:

Spicy Teriyaki Sauce

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup mirin
2 Tbsp agave nectar
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated
sriracha sauce to taste

Mix all ingredients together.

You would eliminate the sriracha if you wanted regular, non-spicy teriyaki. But what’s the fun in that?

I also wanted you to see how nicely my Pyrex bowl (which used to be my mother’s) goes with the sriracha bottle.

Spicy Teriyaki Tofu with Vegetables

1 pound tofu, sliced into triangles
1 cup panko (Japanese bread crumbs)
1/2 cup soy milk or water
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 crown of broccoli, cut into florets
1 carrot, julienned
1 green pepper, julienned
1/2 white onion, sliced
3 scallions, chopped
1 Tbsp sesame seeds
1 cup spicy teriyaki sauce

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Slice the tofu into triangles. I cut mine in half lengthwise, but I make a very firm and therefore very flat tofu. You may be able to slice yours in thirds or quarters lengthwise.

Create an “assembly” line for the breading of the tofu. In a small bowl, place the cornstarch, and in another the soymilk or water. I went all wacky and used a mix of water and sake, myself. It looks like soymilk here because the cornstarch got into it. I also used whole wheat panko, which I have only just begun seeing. Panko is usually white. The white stuff in this panko is cornstarch again. I got cornstarch all over the place last night.

Dip each tofu triangle into the cornstarch, shake off the excess, then dip into the soymilk or water. Finally roll it around in the panko. It helps to use one hand for dry ingredients and the other for wet. As you finish each triangle, place on a baking sheet. They don’t have to look pretty; you’re just going to be pouring sauce over them later. (Whole wheat panko seems to be a little harder to work with than regular panko, or maybe it’s just more obvious because it’s not the same color of the tofu you’re breading.)

Spray lightly with oil (optionally) and place in the oven and bake until crispy, about 30 minutes, flipping halfway through.

Meanwhile, steam the broccoli. You can just stir-fry the broccoli with the other ingredients, but I prefer to steam it lightly first and just fry for a minute or so. I think it has a better texture that way.

Prepare all other veggies.

In a large saute pan or a wok, heat a small amount of oil (I used peanut with a splash of sesame oil), then add the onions. Fry for 2 minutes, then add peppers. Fry for 1 minute and add carrots. Fry for 1 minute, then add scallions.

Add the steamed broccoli and fry for another minute.

Add the sesame seeds about about a third of the sauce. You don’t want to drown the veggies in the sauce, you want them sort of delicately flavored with the sauce. Stir for a minute or two until the sauce cooks down.

Remove the veggies from the pan or wok and set aside. Add the baked tofu to pan or wok.

Pour about half of the remaining sauce over the tofu and stir to cover. You don’t need to coat the tofu completely with the sauce, you just want to soften the breading a little bit.

Serve with sushi rice. Spoon the remaining teriyaki sauce over the tofu on individual plates.

By the way, I owe you a sourdough bread tutorial and I’ve been very bad about getting it up. However, I’m about to hit the pool, so I’m going to continue to be bad. I’m off all this week, though, in order to entertain my dear friend from Australia, who is arriving on Monday, so I should have plenty of time for posting!