Plant-based how-to : Tofunaise

It’s fresh, tart and silky.
Here is a light plant-based sauce, resembling mayonnaise.

Silky tofu, that you buy or make yourself.
It’s the base.

Sudachi citrus as a flavor.

Recipe :

A :
1/2 cup silky tofu
B :
1/4 ts hot mustard
1/8 ts turmeric for color (optional)
juice of a sudachi lime (or 1/3 lime, or other citrus)
salt, pepper to taste

Poach the tofu in hot water 2 minutes or cook in microwave, let water out. When it’s cooled, add in a blender with other ingredients listed as B.
Keep refrigerated up to a week. If the texture has changed, you just need to stir it with a spoon a little before using.

Rem : you can replace up to 2/3 of the tofu by more olive oil to get a fatter mayo closer to the classic version. That depends on your goal, it will still be vegan. I do it mostly to get a lighter sauce so I have oil just enough for flavoring.

Matcha tres leches

My second tres leches cake has a Japanese tea twist.

The idea of adding tea was good, but this recipe has a big flaw, read at the end.

More about “tres leches” cake and basic recipe.

I made a simple cake with flour, baking powder and matcha green tea.

The cake was nice and fluffy but it didn’t hold its shape as well as the classic one when soaked.

Syrup of tres leches (3 milks) :
condensed milk + cow milk + DIY almond milk.

I had a leftover of syrup that I thickened with potato starch. I’ve used it to fill between the 2 layers of biscuit.

As you can see the filling became runny and the cake more like a pudding. But I liked the almond flavored matcha au lait taste.

Verdict : good in taste, not great in texture. Next time, I won’t use that type of biscuit. I think the basic sponge (biscuit de Savoie with egg) or okara cake keep their texture better when soaked.

Romanesco and cauliflower green quiche

Get the green burgeoning quiche out of the oven…

Take a generous wedge ! That’s another fancy plant based meal.

Two cousins : romanesco and classic white cauliflower.

Dough : 1/2 cup flour + 1 ts of matcha green tea + a pinch of salt + 1 ts olive oil + hot water
Batter : 1 cup pasted cauliflower, 1/2 block of tofu, 1tbs potato starch, 1 ts miso, 1 tbs sakekasu (sake lees), marjoram, salt, pepper, nutmeg
Garnishing : young onion, cauliflower, romanesco, fresh marjoram

I pre-baked the crust together with the onion, before garnishing, then drizzle olive oil on top and rebake till the top gets sunburns…

Yum yum…

Carrot tofu pancakes and ‘caramel salé’ spread

Soft red pancakes, with a very creamy spread of caramel salé, caramel flavored with salty butter.

Tant pour tant, equal weight.
(1 : 1 : 1) sugar : cream : salted butter.
Melt the sugar into blond caramel, add in the warmed cream. Remove from stove, add butter.
See what you can do with it here, I mean besides eating it all with a spoon.
You can also continue :

To the hot tant pour tant caramel, I have mixed in 2 additional volumes of cream. It became very liquid, it has a cream textured when cooled. I have then added a few bits of rock salt.
It can be used like a jam or a spread.

The pancakes are also tant pour tant, 1:1:1. It’s flour (plus baking powder), tofu, carrot paste (grounds when I juiced kintoki carrots with mandarin oranges).

Calling the Spring with a green tempura

Japanese tempura would be related to Christian Lent. That sound weird but it seems the dish appeared when the Portuguese Jesuits visited the reclusive Japan of 16th century and brought many new things. The habit of frying food in batter is one of them. Particularly, the missionaries would do donuts for the Carnival preceding tempora (Lent in kitchen Latin), so the Japanese associated fried food and the word tempora, tempura~whatever and it became tempura. Maybe.

Greens. Fresh herbs and veggies.

Fried into tempura.
It’s totally plant-based as it’s a simple eggless tempura batter. The batter is flour, ice cold water and tempura baking powder that I bought. It is like ordinary BP with turmeric added for the color.

tempura tutorial