Fawaffles

The age old question - How to Grill Falafel - has been answered.

I sound kind of stuck up saying it like that, I know. Forgive. I am excited.

Cookout season is upon us and you guys know I like to stick everything ever on ze grill. Luckily, a pal and my's craving for falafel coincided with her monthly weekend grillfest and I had to get creative - and fawaffles were born.

Now, that doesn't mean you HAVE to grill them - they're super-awesome straight out of the waffle press, drizzle with tahini + hotsauce, pickles a-sprinkled - but if you want a little char on 'em, form the patties, wafflize them, and throw them over some hot coals. I do love a char on my falafel and that's the perfect way to accomplish it.

Plus, no frying! Healthy! Yay!

Fawaffles
makes 9-10 burgers

2 cups falafel mix (OR get industrious and go at this from scratch)
2 eggs or 2 eggs worth of egg replacer
1/3 cup olive oil
1 1/2 cup water
2 tablespoons freshly minced parsley
Super finely minced red onion - I used about 1/2 of 1
2 tablespoons freshly crushed garlic
Dash cumin
1 tablespoon minced sundried tomatoes
Salt and pepper to taste

Canola spray for the press

Tahini sauce, hot sauce, minced pickles and turnips for serving

Vegan Note - if using egg replacer, make your batter a little dryer - try 1 1/4 cup water, let the batter sit, and check consistency.


General Note - You want a slightly thinner batter than if you were frying the falafel - not crumbly, pretty mushy and wet. If using a mix, remember to let the batter sit for 10-20 minutes after combining everything to allow for rehydration.


Beat your eggs (or mix egg replacer) with water and oil in a separate bowl. Mix all other ingredients in a large bowl, add water, and stir thoroughly. Let sit 10 minutes and stir again - again, you're looking for mushy, not crumbly.


Heat up your iron and spray liberally with canola. Put a ball the size of a large lemon in the middle of your grill and close. Let the waffle cook for about 5 minutes, until it browns just a teeny bit. Remove to a plate to cool. Using a smaller amount of batter makes for a circular patty - if you'd prefer square, use a tad more batter.


Finish off your batter.


We made these ahead of time and once they were grilled, stuck them in (grilled, of course) pita with all the fixings. Lordy lordy, this might be my new party trick this summer -they were LOVELY.

For the sake of preserving Falafel as an awesome vegan protein source, I'm planning on reworking the eggless recipe over the next couple of weeks (not a huge Ener-G fan over here, sad to say). Stay tuned, my vegan darlings!

Stupid Cheese.

Oh cheese... you are the reason.

I have thunderthighs.

I'm not vegan.

I look enviously upon those that can attempt this monstrously unhealthy, incredibly delicious feat.

It is only right that during this sacred month, I pay homage. But not all of us have panini grills.

For all the thrifting I've done, you'd think I'd have picked one up, but no. I do however have an AWESOME old waffle maker. And it makes killer GC's.

This one, as I'm sure you could guess, had kimchi in it, which is so not original. But I first slathered the sourdough with hot mustard:

Made for a nasal, aromatic experience. Straight up the nostrils, the cheddar/pickle/mustard bouquet went. Lovely. Maybe, just maybe, I'd cut the mustard (HA) down to one tablespoon next time, scraped thinly across both slices.

Kimchi Grilled Cheese

two slices sourdough bread
1-2 tablespoons prepared oriental mustard
1/4 pound sharp cheddar cheese, sli ced thin
1/2 cup homemade kimchi, chopped
cilantro, minced (optional)

oil spray
waffle iron

Easiest recipe ever to appear on NFP, this one: spray your iron and let it warm (mine has a little light that shines "ready!" when it's hot to trot). Spread mustard over both slices of bread. Layer cheese on one slice, scatter kimchi over the top, scatter cilantro over kimchi, place the other slice of mustarded bread atop. Press down to seal the fillings in place, then put carefully in the middle of the waffle iron. Close it as far as it will go, and use something heavy and non-flammable to keep the pressure on.

2 minutes, my darlings, that's all it takes. Pull it out, slice it, and go to town.

This kind of screams for syrup of some sort, but I had none at hand. What would you use atop this wafflewhich? Maple? A combination of Maple and something else for kicks? Hmm....

Weekly Eat - Chicken-Fried Tofu

This recipe is so flexible, you can make it a ton of different ways:

Vegan, replacing egg with egg replacer (redundancy dept. of redundancy)
Gluten free, by dredging in GF all-purpose flour first, using GF breadcrumbs second (I make it this way most often because the crust holds up superbly, even between slices of tomato and lettuce!)
Healthy, by drizzling with olive oil and baking rather than frying (directions below)
Parmesan, by mixing some cheese into the breading mix and stuffing with a little more, plus herbs
Sesame, by adding seeds to the breading mix and drizzling with sesame oil when baking

Last night, I made it just veg - the recipe's below. Check out that golden, crispy crust:

This either ends up next to a pile of roasted garlic mashed potatoes and collards, or in a big ol' club sammich, like so:

Pretty killer. And, honestly, best right out of the pan. I've been known to go through a third of a block of tofu just standing at the fry station! With fakon, onions, tomato, lettuce, plus mustard and mayo, you've got something between a BLT and a Club Sandwich - yeah, you might pull a muscle opening wide enough to get that whole thing in your mouth BUT it'll be well worth it.

Classic Chicken Fried Tofu
serves 3-4

1 block extra firm tofu
1 cup hot water mixed with dash garlic powder, 1/2 tsp salt, dash sesame oil, dash Bragg's
2/3 cup flour
1 tsp salt
Fresh black pepper
1/2 cup nutritional yeast
1/2 cup panko
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
2 eggs mixed with 1 tablespoon water, beaten

Corn or Vegetable oil, for frying

Slice your tofu shortways into 8 pieces and marinate in the water+garlic+salt+Bragg's for 30 mins.

On a plate, mix your flour, salt and pepper. On another, mix your yeast, panko, onion and garlic powders.

Scramble your eggs in a bowl big enough to fit a piece of tofu.

Straight from the marinade (let a tad drip off) dredge the tofu first in flour, then egg, then breadcrumbs, being careful not to rub the coating off as you go (wash your fingertips between tofu slices - accumulated egg/flour will mess with your coating). Set aside on a dry plate or cutting board. Repeat until all slices have been dredged.

Heat your oil to medium-high and put out a plate lined with paper toweling. Three at a time is what fits best in my 10 inch skillet, but break up your batches as you see fit! They'll need less than a minute a side, then carefully flip, another minute, remove to toweling to drain.

The only bummer about frying these babies is that the oil collects a fair amount of refuse, which you then have to skim off/strain out. Baking them in the oven is cleaner, but makes for a drier slice (if you decide to go this route, bake them in a preheated 375f oven for 20 minutes each side, until the crust nicely golden and firm to the touch).

Try this on your "I don't like Tofu" pals and convert them. Or make it for your inaugural spring picnic this weekend, perhaps?

7 spice roasted Tofu, for more Banh Mi

Still on this obsessive little Banh Mi kick (doesn't run as deeply as my torta obsession, but hey) so when I needed some party food for a little bonfire get-together this weekend, I figured I'd give the tofu treatment another go.

This time, I sliced the tofu thinly, to make the mess a tad easier to eat. People were going to be standing and noshing and fire-gazing, so ease of consumption was key - and as delicious as the last banhs were, they were a chore to get through.

Long marinating and baking times added a deepness of flavor that I found very attractive. Quick frying them gives the tofu some crunch, a crust - also a step in the right direction. This is bacon-tofu, kind of. Nom.

7 spice Roasted Tofu, for Banh Mi


1 block extra firm tofu, sliced shortways into 8 pieces (enough for 2 sammiches)

2 garlic cloves, minced

orange peel from one orange, chopped

1 teaspoon ground Szechwan pepper

1 teaspoon ground star anise

1 teaspoon ground fennel seeds

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3 tablespoons soy sauce

Canola oil, for frying


Mix it all in a measuring cup except for the peel, lay your tofu flat in a baking pan or on a pizza pan, and pour the marinade over. Nestle the orange peel in between tofu pieces and bake for 30 minutes at 300f.

Heat oil in a deep-fryer or sturdy skillet for frying. Add tofu and fry until deep brown, about 5 minutes. You might need to do this in batches - never overload a fryer!

Drain on paper towels. Proceed to make sammiches. This time I subbed avocado for mayo, since we wanted vegan mi's. It was different, but delicious.

You can cut these into somewhat-tiny pieces if you use party toothpicks to hold things together. Yay mini-mi's!

Tryin' to get that moment back.

Annoying, isn't it, that whenever anyone you know goes to San Fran, they come back moaning about the food. OMG, the burritos are amazing. HOLY CRAP the vietnamese is SICK. DUDE there was vegan awesome stuff EVERYWHERE. The coffee RULED


And here I go being that exact annoying foodnerd.

I tell people CLT has awesome Vietnamese, because it does - there's tons of tiny mom+pops, good, cheap bowls of pho, Banh Xeo's, noodles, hotpots, all of it. There's even several that cater heavily to the Veg crowd, and we eat at them spots incessantly. The one thing I haven't found in the QC, however, is decent tofu Banh Mi. I've had one sad excuse for a sammich in SCLT, a few months back, and it was so sad, so forlorn... all gross, sticky, stale, damp, and covered in fish sauce, yikes. Nope.

But of course, my darlin' bud N had a spot in mind for a quick bite on our way back into town from hiking, and for 3.50, white-paper-present-toasty-bread-1/2-pound-tofu-fresh-veggie-perfect-pickle- it seriously took me 2 minutes to down this thing, and that was while trying to be polite since we were in the car and everyone was saving theirs.

So.

I must recreate.

Tofu Banh Mi - bánh mì chay

So, you probably know the drill. Fresh french bread, day-of-baking. Sliced: jalapenos and cuke. Homemade: pickles, mayo (optional - some people adamantly refuse to mayo their sammich, and to them I say, good luck to ya!), some cilantro, and...the tofu.

I really dig trying to recreate flavors from memory. It's hard.

The San Fran OMGbanhmi's tofu had some key characteristics going for it, according to my noggin:

The tofu was warm.
The tofu was fried, but soft.
The tofu was extremely juicy - so that in eating the sammich, you had to appreciate the bread's crust as a barrier between all that juice and your lap.
The tofu was subtle, and balanced the other ingredients well.
There was no fish sauce on the tofu. Yay!

I have a ton of bottles of awesome vegetarian sauces in my larder, thanks to the amazing selection of asian groceries in Charlotte. I chose Vegetarian Oyster-style sauce as my base, since it has a slightly smokey, sweet undertone to it. In fact, that's pretty much all it tastes like - sweet, molassessy. Into my pyrex bowl goes 2 tablespoons.

Meanwhile, I've cubed the 'fu, tossed it with 2 tablespoons rice flour, a little salt. Heated the oil, dropped the tofu in, it's sizzling away.

Add to the sauce 2 garlic cloves, minced, 2 scallions, minced, a dash salt, a dash sugar, 10-12 grinds fresh black pepper (I remember this from the SFBM - flecks of black pepper, cool!) 3 tablespoons water, to thin and coat. Mix well.

And that's it. As soon as your tofu is golden, using a slotted spoon, drain it well and toss it into the sauce. Mix and let sit 5 minutes, to soften your crust.

And make your sammich. The Times has an AMAZING diagram you should consult, back from the not-totally-obsessed with Banh Mi yet days - check it out.

Eat it NOW!