Tofu, more tofu, test recipes, and a burger recipe

March 22, 2010 in Allgemein

When I wrote the last post I was at the beginning of a nasty cold. I don’t know where it came from or who to blame. Maybe my body can’t deal with the reappearance of warmth and sunshine? I didn’t feel much like cooking until Saturday. So when I was at work, P. visited a small farmers market in a park nearby and stopped at a little tofu booth, to bring back tofu feta, smoked tofu, and two tofu burgers. I happily munched on the burgers after coming back from work:

Tofu burger made with smoked tofu and seeds

Okay, I did squeeze this burger into a bun, I just was too lazy to take another picture.

Tofu feta with olives and herbs

This tofu preserved in oil and seasoned with dried herbs and olives was wonderful, too. Unfortunately it was almost saltless, otherwise it would have been perfect!

Smoked tofu with herbs

That beautiful little piece of smoked tofu was absolutely delicious, too. Inspired by this and the burger above I decided to come up with my own burger recipe. It will be at the end of this post.

As I already mentioned, my cooking mojo has been a little bit moody. P. helped me out a bit by making this fantastic North Indian Curry from “Asian Vegan Kitchen“. Instead of regular potatoes he used purple ones and some parsnips. Funnily the turmeric in the recipe dyed the potatoes yellow:

Curry in a spicy tomato sauce

Right before the sneezing and coughing forced me onto the couch, I had made this lovely lentils soup. It’s a test recipe for Melisser. You can read all about her project on her home page. The soup was easy to make and very hearty. In this household a good lentil soup is always appreciated, so I thankfully tried the recipe and wasn’t disappointed:

Melisser's Lentil Soup

Some more items I managed to test were two kinds of rolls. We were out of bread and desperately in need of some good carbs.  As usually Joni and Celine came to my rescue who still provide me with many rest recipes for one of their projects:

Coconut rolls

I went a little crazy and shaped the rolls above into Kaiser rolls. I also made some Pinto Bean Rolls which are my new favourite! (I used one of them as a bun for the burger I posted above. They freeze very well.)

Pinto bean rolls

But now back to my own recipes. Here is the recipe for a batch of tofu-oat burgers made with smoked tofu (from above) and whole oat berries.

Smoked Tofu Oat Burgers (makes 7 patties)

95 g (1/2 cup) whole oat berries (groats work too)
1 cup water
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
1 carrot, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic
100 g (3.5 oz) smoked tofu, cubed
2 tablespoons water
1/2 – 1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
45 g (3/4 cup) panko bread crumbs

Combine oats and water in a small saucepan and cook until the water is absorbed and the oats are soft, about 30 minutes. If you can’t find oat berries or groats, use wheat berries (they have to cook longer though) or regular oats. Yield: 1 1/4 cups cooked grains.

Put onion, carrot, and garlic in a food processor and pulse, until finely minced. Add tofu, water, salt to taste, pepper, and thyme. Process until everything turns into a smooth paste. Transfer to a bowl and combine with bread crumbs. Mix until well combined. Form into 7 equally sized patties and set aside. To fry them with the least amount of oil, brush or spray a non-stick skillet with oil. Over medium heat, fry the patties for 1 minute, then reduce the heat to low. Fry slowly for 5-7 minutes on every side. We served these with chard and chickpeas, hummus, and freshly baked Turkish flatbread:

The burgers were good, but the freshly baked bread was even better!

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