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Pteraluna
26
Nov 21, 2017
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What are the elements to make vegetables taste indistinguishable from meat?
b9d9ffdad3ac59e7f6f
135
Nov 23, 2017
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PteralunaPut them all in the same sauce and overpower the palate with flavor. Seriously, if you try South Indian curries with beef or chicken they're kind of indistinguishable in context. You can also smoke vegetables if it's appropriate to the dish. Smoked eggplant is one of my favorites.
The texture is your problem, though. There's nothing like like a slab of dead animal muscle. You know how to fix that? Make something that normally uses ground or very finely cubed meat. Then you can chop up vital wheat gluten or seitan really small. Then saute them and put a splash of soy sauce in there to deglaze and let it evaporate. The rest is up to the sauce.
The texture is your problem, though. There's nothing like like a slab of dead animal muscle. You know how to fix that? Make something that normally uses ground or very finely cubed meat. Then you can chop up vital wheat gluten or seitan really small. Then saute them and put a splash of soy sauce in there to deglaze and let it evaporate. The rest is up to the sauce.
Pteraluna
26
Nov 23, 2017
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b9d9ffdad3ac59e7f6fHappy Thanksgiving! I love the smoked eggplant idea. I've used soy meat a lot in the past, and want to know what you think about tofu. I'm not very proficient with Indian cooking, so any insight on spices would be greatly appreciated :)
b9d9ffdad3ac59e7f6f
135
Nov 23, 2017
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PteralunaHappy Thanksgiving!
I personally love tofu and think it's a shame some people view it only as a meat substitute. Mapo Tofu, for example, has silken tofu and ground pork celebrating each other to great effect. It's particularly useful accompanying eggplant and other vegetables/grains to provide a texture contrast (imagine silken tofu with cracked spelt in a spicy fermented bean sauce). Flavorwise, it's a great canvas since firm/medium tofu tends to absorb certain flavors around it. Fry firm/medium cubes up and you have yet another texture!
The only combo I've found to be awkward is a plain tomato sauce, as the tofu doesn't really absorb the tomato juice. They kinda just sit together. This can be addressed by incorporating other liquids and spices into the mix, such as coconut milk, to make a tofu coconut-tomato curry.
As for Indian, it's very regional and everyone's mum makes it differently so you'll get a lot of variations. So you generally want to become familiar with certain ingredients and spices so you can leverage them to personal taste. Take this Madras chicken recipe: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/7100/myree-s-chicken-madras.aspx
The key ingredients are the ginger-garlic combo (not quite a trinity), cumin (#2 spice in the world), cloves, cardamom, coriander (cilantro seeds), turmeric. If you're not familiar with these spices, they're somewhat earthy but very fragrant. Cardamom and coriander are a bit piquant/spicy so you may want to go easy on it at first. A little bit of turmeric adds a lot of color, what many people perceive as the orange-brown "curry" color. Coriander seeds don't do that thing cilantro leaves do to people with the OR6A2 gene variant where they think it tastes like soap, so don't worry about it.
Also listed is Garam Masala, a semi-standard powder mix. I usually make this myself but you may want to obtain a pre-mixed one as a baseline reference (Madras powder is available as well). It's some of the same characters (The 4 c's: cumin, cardamom, coriander, cloves), as well as black peppercorns, fennel seed, cinnamon, star anise, and mace. Another spice you should get familiar with is called Asafoetida. It smells fetid but when it cooks down it adds a rich leek-like flavor.
Then there are the chilis. You can use fresh chilis, whatever you can find at your local market, like jalapenos, and dried chili like cayenne. Fresh will be a lot brighter, dried will tend to build up and linger.
All of these spices benefit by being toasted whole, then ground into powder. The toasting activates oils and other fragrant molecules. I grind them in a Thai granite mortar and pestle. You can dedicate a coffee grinder to it if that's not your style. Cumin, in particular, begs to be bloomed. Smell and taste the difference and you won't want to go back to pre-ground.
I personally love tofu and think it's a shame some people view it only as a meat substitute. Mapo Tofu, for example, has silken tofu and ground pork celebrating each other to great effect. It's particularly useful accompanying eggplant and other vegetables/grains to provide a texture contrast (imagine silken tofu with cracked spelt in a spicy fermented bean sauce). Flavorwise, it's a great canvas since firm/medium tofu tends to absorb certain flavors around it. Fry firm/medium cubes up and you have yet another texture!
The only combo I've found to be awkward is a plain tomato sauce, as the tofu doesn't really absorb the tomato juice. They kinda just sit together. This can be addressed by incorporating other liquids and spices into the mix, such as coconut milk, to make a tofu coconut-tomato curry.
As for Indian, it's very regional and everyone's mum makes it differently so you'll get a lot of variations. So you generally want to become familiar with certain ingredients and spices so you can leverage them to personal taste. Take this Madras chicken recipe: http://allrecipes.co.uk/recipe/7100/myree-s-chicken-madras.aspx
The key ingredients are the ginger-garlic combo (not quite a trinity), cumin (#2 spice in the world), cloves, cardamom, coriander (cilantro seeds), turmeric. If you're not familiar with these spices, they're somewhat earthy but very fragrant. Cardamom and coriander are a bit piquant/spicy so you may want to go easy on it at first. A little bit of turmeric adds a lot of color, what many people perceive as the orange-brown "curry" color. Coriander seeds don't do that thing cilantro leaves do to people with the OR6A2 gene variant where they think it tastes like soap, so don't worry about it.
Also listed is Garam Masala, a semi-standard powder mix. I usually make this myself but you may want to obtain a pre-mixed one as a baseline reference (Madras powder is available as well). It's some of the same characters (The 4 c's: cumin, cardamom, coriander, cloves), as well as black peppercorns, fennel seed, cinnamon, star anise, and mace. Another spice you should get familiar with is called Asafoetida. It smells fetid but when it cooks down it adds a rich leek-like flavor.
Then there are the chilis. You can use fresh chilis, whatever you can find at your local market, like jalapenos, and dried chili like cayenne. Fresh will be a lot brighter, dried will tend to build up and linger.
All of these spices benefit by being toasted whole, then ground into powder. The toasting activates oils and other fragrant molecules. I grind them in a Thai granite mortar and pestle. You can dedicate a coffee grinder to it if that's not your style. Cumin, in particular, begs to be bloomed. Smell and taste the difference and you won't want to go back to pre-ground.
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