Deb's Night: Tower of Tofu Terror!

This night is dedicated to Stass, loyal reader that she is.  Happy birthday, Stass!  We hope you're enjoying the west coast.  

Tonight's Deb's night, and she has come up with recipes for

BALSAMIC-AGAVE TOFU WITH BEET INFUSED COUSCOUS
(which can be found at www.olivesfordinner.com/2011/01/balsamic-agave-tofu-with-beet-infused.html)

MUSHROOM WELLINGTON
(recipe at www.theveganversion.com/2012/01/mushroom-wellington.html)

and for dessert, HOMEMADE DIVA DING DONGS
(http://thediva-dish.com/uncategorized/homemade-diva-ding-dongs/ --scroll down past the opening paragraphs about her butt; there's a recipe on the page, honest)

Alex and Jim aren't even here yet and we've already steered slightly off-recipe by getting golden beets for the infusion, but this is a teeny deviation and fresh farmers market beets naturally trump Whole Foods Argentinian Flash-Frozen Cargo Hold Beets (tm), our other choice.  Hold onto your hats, there are bound to be bigger deviations to come.

Deb has hit the ground running, experimenting with appetizers and getting the tofu marinated.  We have a lot of smoked cheddar, which A & J don't like, so naturally we're going to offer it to them with hot pepper jelly!  To my own surprise, the jelly and the smokey taste of the cheese blend together really well.  We also have chocolate-covered almonds, a.k.a. Deb's UP!-All-Night pills, and dangerously addictive salt & pepper potato chips from Trader Joes.

First complication: for the vegan ding-dong filling, the recipe called for "One can full fat coconut milk, top open and covered with plastic wrap, that has been sitting in the fridge over night".  Um...one out of three isn't bad?  We have a can, it's been sitting in the fridge for a couple hours, we've just now opened it...how wrong could things go?

The recipe, you'll note, also calls for melted coconut oil.  Deb sets to work chiselling it out of the jar so we can melt it.  It smells awesome; it looks like you could stick a wick in it and sell it for $7.99 at Yankee Candle.  For all we know, they do.

The potato part of the mushroom wellington calls for them to be dusted with salt, pepper and olive oil before getting roasted for 20 minutes.  Deb is a saltophobe.  Guess how she goes off-recipe now?  Go on, guess.

ALSO also, in place of puff pastry for the wellington we're using phyllo dough, spelled "fillo" on the box.  Which will affect cooking time, thickness, taste, and the evening's soundtrack.  (Well, not that last part.)

Pre-baked 'fillo wellington' or very bad origami project?

"Why did I stop cooking the beets?"--Deb

In other news, Deb's playlist reminds us that we miss Amy Winehouse.  *sigh*

As a history major, I sort of feel compelled to drop some knowledge-bombs about the origin of the name Wellington, which everyone assumes was named after the famous Napoleonic hero but which apparently didn't exist until 1966....in other words, it's either named after Wellington, New Zealand, or it was named by a chef with very odd priorities.

"Oh god, at some point I took every single oven mitt and put them all in the laundry"--Deb

Jim and Alex arrive!  Deb tells Alex she's going to force him to eat beets!  Snackage and greetings ensue!

Stass, if you're still reading at this point we need to tell you about a YouTube series called "Cooking With Dog" (http://www.youtube.com/user/cookingwithdog) which our friend Andrea hipped us to.  DOG NARRATING A COOKING VIDEO.  If that doesn't get your artistic juices flowing, I'm a cabbage.

While I was distracted looking at a poodle wearing aviator goggles, something Happened--there seems to be confusion about how the layers of the tofu-beet "tower" are supposed to go.  It's supposedly layered like a lasagna, but three layers or two?  We decide to forge ahead.

There's further confusion about the coconut milk which we're supposed to use for the ding dong filling; for something that's supposed to be the consistency of whipped cream, it's looking a lot like flow-y splashy water.  Alex decides to turn it into pudding.

At this point the beets are about five minutes from done, the couscous is about twelve minutes away, and we've JUST remembered to take the phyllo dough for the wellingtons out of the freezer.  Eep!  We place it near the stove and cross our fingers.

As part of the ding dong recipe Deb's faced with the recipe demand that we blend up 1/2 cup of dates into a paste.  To Deb this sounds like way too much sweetness, but we cross our fingers and follow the instructions.

At this point Jim begins the sauteeing of the filling for the wellington...or, at last, the prepping of the filling to be sauteed.  Deb's dates have turned into sort of a chunky jelly, not the paste we were promised.  The dough is still warming up.  And we talk about the meaning of the word 'elope'--if you live together for years and wander over to the justice of the peace one day, can it be called eloping?  It seems like you have to at least climb out a window and slip off to get married without telling a housemate, at the very least, before you can use the term.

"There will be no mention about MY butt in the blog!"--Jim

The shiitake stems seem very hard, and we ponder whether or not to cook them up with the rest of the wellington filling. We decide, no.

Deb is STILL wrestling with the consistency of the dates, and the blender is struggling.  She's doing all the loud chores tonight!  The liquid part of the cake recipe finally blends well, and we add it to the dry ingredients and pose for an incredibly artful picture before we pop it in the oven.

Chef pensif avec le dough des ding-dongs

There's a war going on about the proper way to sautee--Alex wants to put the oil in the pan before turning the heat on, but Deb feels that the pan needs to be very hot before the oil's poured in.  "You know, the Chinese way!"  Deb's night, Deb's rules.  (I look around for our smoke alarm...for no reason...)

On a side note, the "Mexicane Cola" which Whole Foods sells a) claims to have caffeine but really really doesn't FEEL like it does, b) was brewed in Maine and is about as Mexican as a reindeer, and c) misspelled "protien" on the ingredient label.  For this I promised to not drink any diet coke?  FML.

We pause for a few seconds to watch the beginning of cookingwithdog's Omurice episode (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcJlmhoYNfI&list=UUpprBWvibvmOlI8yJOEAAjA&index=9&feature=plcp).  That's right, even while cooking food we're educating ourselves about totally DIFFERENT food!!

The tofu-ganza kicks into high gear, as we get out the Big Pan and start cooking them all.  Deb is unwrapping the fillo sheets.  Alex, meanwhile, is straining out the mushroom juice from the solid bits.  We note that it's hard to tell the difference between couscous cooked with beet juice and couscous that's burnt. :( 

"One more joke about how I need to follow recipes and you're in trouble!"--Deb
"They're not jokes!"--Alex

We pause, noting that at this point we have a "shit ton" of kale and phyllo left over, and ponder whether we want to create a kale-spanakopita, a kaleakopita, as ANOTHER course.  We're mixed--Hungry Deb likes the idea, while Cautious Jim points out all the extra tofu we're already going to have.  Deb remembers we have feta, and that tips the scales.

At this point, we note that the two mise en place stations have gone the way of the dodo and we're pretty much improvising with the wellington fillings, sizes and shapes. 

wellington innards

We're at the dessert assembly stage now where the filling of the ding dong becomes an issue.  Unlike the recipe, we have no pastry bag or nozzle; also unlike, we still don't have a firm filling.  The semi-liquid filling goes into the freezer to chill; meanwhile, we decide that in lieu of nozzling the filling into the middle we'll be slicing the dings open and adding the filling as a middle layer....a sort of ding doreo, if you will.

Or, if you prefer, "d'oreos"

We NOW begin thinking about another dessert using fillo dough and various fillings--strawberries, honey, cookie butter!  Little individual sachets with one, or both, or all three!  While we wait for the wellingtons to get done, we're apparently JUST GOING TO KEEP COOKING.

The coating for the ding doreos raises eyebrows...the recipe calls for a blend of 1/8th cup of coconut oil to 3.5 ounces of chocolate.  Hungry Deb having thrown in a random amount of chocolate, we try to guesstimate the right amount of oil in the double boiler.  Yee to the haw.  Since we used Taza 85% dark chocolate, we decide we need to add some agave to get it up to snuff.  It's a very coconutty-tasting dessert, overall.

"Oops! This one's mine!"--Deb, trying to put together a ding dong and having it crumble.
"Oh crap...this one's mine too!"--Deb, five seconds later.

Sad update: the couscous is a total fail, having burnt on and become "couscous brittle".  Which Alex takes to mean no beets!  He's dancing!  We're going to flash-fry some kale to make sure we have enough of a main course.

The pouring of the chocolate over the diva ding doreo-a-lings is tricky, as the melted chocolate & coconut oil seems to have separated into liquid top and solid lower layers.

The d'ousing of the d'oreo

With enough stirring it's accomplished, though, and they go into the fridge just in time for Deb to suddenly remember the wellingtons in the oven!  We rescue them and get ready to see how they wound up while the kale and 'kopita cooks and Jim begins to build the tofu towers.

(If this was Cake Boss I'd be sculpting out tiny little King Kongs to be scaling the towers.  Have you noticed how little they talk about how the stuff on that show actually tastes, though?  Suspicious.)
Oven off at 9:27.  Woo!

Post-eating scores....actually, FUNNY STORY HERE, but it turns out trying to record the scoring on an iPad while watching 'The Stand' is actually pretty difficult and they...um...weren't 100% saved.

In summary, though:

The tofu towers were viewed as fairly tasty, even with the couscous debacle.  A bit insubstantial.

The mushroom 'wellington' had a tasty filling surrounded by a pretty useless crust.  Tinier chunks of mushroom might have helped.

The dessert score stands out the most, because for the first time ever Alex gave something a whole letter grade higher than anyone else, yo.  In defending himself he said "they tasted stale and overprocessed, just like real ding dongs!"  So caveat emptor, recipe followers.  In particular, it was felt that the dates left a bad aftertaste, warped the consistency and were just generally a Bad Idea.

Was trying to eat while watching 90 minutes of people dying of super-plague also a bad idea?  Could this have affected our grading?  Mmmmmmaybe...

Next week: Jim's night!  Homemade goat cheese!  Four people and one dog urgently praying that our heat wave ends before cooking starts!  And Deb has a startling revelation about her heritage!