vegan gumbo (quite possibly.) 2 green bell peppers 1 celery heart 4 good sized carrots 2 medium sized parsnips 6-8 spring onions 1 cup sueyu, firm tofu, or other meat alternative if desired, 1 swede or turnip vegetable stock you'll also need flour, vegetable oil, black pepper, garlic, garlic powder, thyme, paprika, and crushed chili peppers. to begin with, mix flour with some black pepper, garlic powder, paprika, and a pinch of thyme. you'll have to guestimate the quantities for yourself, but i'd suggest using diminishing quantities based on the order given (if you're using hot paprika, cut down on the black pepper a bit). either pour that mixture into a bag and add the tofu, or dredge the tofu through the flour mix while its still in the bowl. up to you. using a plastic bag (one without those 'child safety' holes in the bottom, of course) can be a bit quicker. once the tofu's covered, you're going to fry it up in vegetable oil. you don't need much oil for this, and if you don't like the idea of using pure vegetable oil, you could get some interesting flavor results if you combine a bit of peanut and vegetable oil, or maybe vegetable and olive. once the tofu's browned up on all sides, bung it all into a good sized soup pot. now, if the oil in the pan is still fairly clear looking and hasn't burnt while you were frying the tofu, so much the better. if it's looking burnt, dispose of it and start with a fresh pan and a half cup of oil. you're going to add to the hot oil some flour. a half cup, or amount equal to the oil you use. if you're feeling adventurous, i'd suggest you use predominately whole meal flour, with a bit of corn starch or corn flour and maybe some oat meal flour if you can get it fine enough in that food processor of yours. you're going to add the flour to teh oil and stir while it cooks for about 5-6 minutes. the stuff should turn a nice reddish brown, but if you see black specks and flecks appear, then you've burnt it and should start again (in a fresh pan if at all possible). medium-high heat should be your max there, but different grains will burn at different temperatures. if you use a good deal of corn meal, you'll want medium to medium-low heat, and just cook it for longer. once you've got a nice thick roux, you're going to want to add the chopped bell peppers, celery, carrots, and parsnips. i'd suggest leaving the celery and carrots chopped fairly thick, and the parsnips chopped fairly fine, but that's just me. cook this stuff into the roux until it stops bubbling, and add it to the soup pot with the tofu in it. stir in your vegetable stock. depending on how thick your roux was, you might need a good deal of vegetable stock. basicly, you want a nice thick stew from this, not a soup, and not building mortar. add about two or three chopped cloves of garlic and a teaspoon of crushed chili peppers (or to taste) and maybe some salt if you feel it needs it (some stocks can be quite salty, but i'd imagine vegetable stocks aren't as bad about that as, say, beef stock tends to be). stir the stuff while it simmers for say a half hour to 45 minutes. serve as a soup, or over white rice. optional addition: don't include this if you used any peanut oil, and its definately not a required ingredient at all, but it could give you a slightly sweeter flavor over all. roast, on low heat, about a half cup of crushed peanuts in your pan *Before* frying the tofu. set em aside and add them back to the whole mix when you put in the chopped garlic and chili peppers. if the whole thing turns out utterly inedible, then my guestimates to the proportions are off. or its all ba's fault. yeah, blame ba.
This sounds delicious. This will definitely have to be made before Adele leaves. Will report back on the results. Thanks, Clay.
I still fail to see how one could blame Ba if it goes wrong, there are no human body parts in it and it's not a pie...
Adele left this morning. We made this for our last dinner together. The photos we took: A description that goes into more detail will follow later.
This is the promised more detailed post. I wasn't all that collected when I posted the photos and I only just noticed I didn't even mention that it was very tasty. Thank you again, Clay. I reheated it today and had it for lunch and dinner. Anyway, the cooking. We replaced black pepper with cayenne flakes because we don't particularly like the taste of black pepper. We also didn't have garlic powder. I don't think it really mattered because it smelled very nice. Especially the thyme in it. We just stirred through the tofu and fried it in olive and sunflower oil. Added some oil and then fried wholemeal flour, oat flour and a bit of cornflour. It turned brown fairly quickly, almost instantly really (though I think that was partly to do with the spices that had been in the pan). We weren't too sure about when to call it done. It was a sort of clumpy texture. It started bubbling and the clumps sort of expanded when you stirred them, so we figured it was probably done. Stirred in bell pepper, carrots, parsnip and also some zucchini to replace celery that Adele doesn't like. Added garlic, but not chili peppers, since we already had cayenne flakes in there. We had it simmering for 20 minutes when all the vegetables were done (and the bell pepper was even a bit too soft), so we served it. We then ate it. It was very tasty, though I think it was better on the reheat. Some of the vegetables were very soft from cooking when we'd just made it and it is a bit thicker now (I think we used too much stock initially).
the cayanne pepper is a fine substitution, and in fact a proper gumbo should have some of that in there as well as black pepper. you can't skip the celery, though. that's part of the classic flavor. celery, carrot, pepper, and maybe a bit of okra. but, still, the goal of good cooking is to make food that you enjoy eating. so yay for helping friends make food they liked! i rock.
