What Interns eat--Quick Vegan Meal: Tofu pancakes with rice noodles

My regular readers will already know of my love of Mark Bittman aka the Minimalist aka why did he leave the New York Times?  My most heavily used cookbook is Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  I bought it in 2011, the year I started medical school. In 2010, the UN released a report stating what we eat, specifically the amount of animal products, significantly impacts our environment and is accelerating man made climate change. From the report: "Agricultural production accounts for a staggering 70% of the global freshwater consumption, 38% of the total land use, and 14% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions."  When I started medical school, I had this grand idea that I would start my crusade to help the environment by becoming vegetarian.

As you can tell from my blog, which documents my cooking and eating around the world, I am not vegetarian. However over the past few years, I have cut out a significant amount of meat from my diet--not in small part due to having vegetarian friends like Jess in medical school. Now when I cook for myself, it is primarily vegetarian, and in this mix I also try out interesting vegan recipes. I have not yet given up animal products. I haven't kicked my yogurt habit. It is difficult to control my lust for fancy cheeses, especially queso Manchego or drinking red wine and eating brie and french bread with my mother. I do my tiny part for the environment by abstaining from meat 5-6 days out of the week. It will only make a difference if more of us can at least be as good as American elementary schools and have a meatless Monday or several meatless days a week.

So that's my soap box--now on with the cooking. I was excited to try this tofu pancake recipe because I am such a fan of the greasy orange Kimchi pancake that is served at most Korean restaurants. The kimchi pancake is spicy, crispy, orange, greasy and served with a tangy dipping sauce. I always want to know--how do they get it so orange and crispy?? (the answer is kimchi, chili garlic sauce, and tons of oil)  Why do  I like something so orange and crispy? These tofu pancakes are like miniature kimchi pancakes. Tonight I made them without kimchi, but this tofu pancake recipe can be dressed up many ways to keep it interesting.

This recipe is truly quick and can be made easily from things that I always keep on hand like tofu, chili garlic sauce, kimchi, and rice noodles.

Asian Tofu Pancakes adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian

Ingredients

For the pancakes:
1 box of tofu-firm
1/2 cup of water
3 tbs of chili garlic sauce
4  green onions, washed and thinly sliced including the green part
2-3 small cloves of garlic, finely minced
** (you can also substitute 1/2 cup of chopped kimchi for the green onions and garlic)
soy sauce
1/2 cup of flour
sesame oil-optional to add to the frying oil for taste
vegetable oil for frying
rice noodles--I usually use the MaiFun Rice sticks

For the sauce:
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup rice vinegar
2 tsp sugar
1 tsp sesame oil
3-4 green onions, thinly sliced including the green part
optional-ginger, more garlic, lime


1) In a large mixing bowl or a food processor, crumble the tofu. To the crumbled tofu add 2-3 tablespoons of chili garlic sauce (depending on your desire for spice) and the water. Option one, run the mixture in the food processor until smooth. OR if you're like me and do not have a food processor, you can use an immersion blender and grind the tofu until it is nice and smooth.

2)  If you used a food processor, transfer the processed tofu into a mixing bowl. To the pureed tofu mixture, add the sliced green onions, garlic,  3 tablespoons of soy sauce and the flour. Stir until incorporated. This makes a thick batter. If you want crispier, thinner pancakes (but harder to flip), you can add water little by little until it becomes the consistency closer to breakfast pancake batter. I like to keep the batter thick because it is easier to manipulate and flip.

thick batter 

3) In a large frying pan, add enough oil to coat the bottom. Heat the oil over medium heat. When the oil sizzles with a drop of water, you are ready to fry.

4) Using a tablespoon, drop about 2 tablespoons worth of batter into the oil to make small pancakes. Fry each side of about 4 minutes or until golden brown. Really--just let them sit for 4 minutes. I get very impatient and try to flip my pancakes early. But this tofu dough falls apart easily and the pancakes will break and get everywhere if you don't wait 4 minutes per side. Don't flip them until they are golden along the edges.

just starting to get golden on the edges 

5) Flip and cook the other side at least 4 minutes. Once done, set aside and let drain on a paper towel

Dipping sauce and Noodles

Noodles: While the pancakes are frying--or as you were making the dough, bring a pot of water to boil for the noodles. When you have 10 minutes left of cooking, drop the packet of rice sticks into the pot of water. Turn off the burner and let the noodles sit for 10 minutes. At the end of 10 minutes, try a noodle to make sure it is soft. Then drain into a sieve or colander and rinse with cool water to stop the cooking.

Dipping sauce: In a small bowl, whisk together the soy sauce, rice vinegar, sugar and sesame oil. Feel free to add a dash of Sriracha or some diced ginger or more garlic. Season the dipping sauce to your palette. Add the sliced green onions to the sauce. Now you are ready to serve the tofu pancakes.

If I want more vegetables, I will also quickly steam a bag of frozen broccoli to serve with the noodles and pancakes.

Broccoli encouraged  

Cooking with friends on a weeknight: Special feature--Mexican Food with Dr. Ortiz--Enchiladas Montadas

This time around in DC, I have spent much more time cooking in other people's kitchens.  Don't get me wrong, I love my closet sized kitchen, with its dinky burners and oven that reminds me of the easy bake oven I never had. However, in an effort cultivate friendships, I invite myself over to people's homes on a regular basis. That's how my psychiatrist recommended I make friends...just kidding. Sort of.


This year of blogging has been centered on surviving intern year. Amazingly, May 2016 is here--the first year of residency is almost over. In my co-interns, I've made great friends who love to cook just like me. Patricia is another wonderful GWU psychiatry co-intern and also a fellow Texan. By day, Patricia and I work side by side in a psychiatric unit in Virginia. The good news: I like my job most of the time. I enjoy the experience of becoming an "expert of the mind." At this point of the year, through my patients,  I've witnessed a large amount of the human experience.  I see  every thing: from a psychotic patient who is literally out of touch with reality and believes he is the Messiah to depressed folks who have decided that death is the only option. Yet, if that depressed person has the pleasure of seeing my smiling face, it means the suicide attempt either failed or was thwarted by fear of death, last minute self-preservation or thoughts of loved ones. It's quite an experience--some days more than others, I still feel like an amateur, like an adolescent pretending to be a doctor with my white coat and my developing demeanor of authority.

I visit the Ortiz kitchen on a regular basis and they are always game to cook and spend a week day evening hanging out. They just moved into a lovely home in Petworth with a great kitchen and a porch made for lounging.

By day Patricia and I are psychiatry interns, doing our best to learn and help our patients. In the evenings, we just need a glass of wine, delicious food and company to put the day behind us. Last Wednesday we spent our commute home reminiscing about the Mexican food we so dearly miss. Admittedly, being from central and south Texas, I am more informed about Tex-mex food; hence my love of nachos. Being from El Paso, Patricia and her husband, are well versed and well practiced in making authentic Mexican food. They have kindly allowed me to feature some of their recipes on the blog.  I see a new KitchenPulse feature in the works: Mexican Food with Dr. Ortiz.

On Wednesday, I skipped the gym for family dinner at the Ortiz household. When we arrived to the house, Stephen was already boiling the dried chiles, for homemade red chile sauce for enchiladas montadas.  Patricia doesn't have her recipes written down, so I photographed and will document the recipe as best as I can. Technically (according to internet searches) this recipe is for flat or stacked enchiladas aka Sonoran or New Mexican enchiladas. I like this concept because it takes out the extra step of rolling and baking the enchiladas as you would need for the more common Tex-Mex enchiladas.

The first part of the recipe is the basic steps of making any sauce from dried chiles--boil the chiles, grind them in a food processor, strain out the sauce and season. It's a good process to know and can be used with any type of dried chile.

Enchilidas Montadas aka Enchiladas with red sauce and an egg on top
This recipe requires a food processor or a blender

Ingredients for chile sauce:
One 8 ounce bag of New Mexico red chiles--though per Patricia, the type of dried chile doesn't matter so much. You can also use a mix of dried chiles

New Mexico dried chiles

1 can of plain tomato sauce
1 onion cut in quarters
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
salt, pepper and chicken bullion or Knorr granulated chicken bullion
chicken broth

Ingredients for the enchiladas:
corn tortillas, 3 per person
grated cheddar cheese
half an onion, diced
2 eggs per set of enchiladas
3 small (roma) tomatoes diced into small cubes

For the sauce:
1) In a large sauce pan or pot add the bag of chiles and the quarted onion, cover with water.  At a soft boil, cook the bag of chiles with the onion until they are soft. This was about 30 minutes. The color starts to lighten from the darker hue of the dried chile
The next few steps are done in batches:

2) Using a blender or food processor: Into the food processor, Add about half or a third of the chiles and include the onion. Also  add about half a cup of chicken broth to the food processor. You want to add just enough liquid to process the chiles into a paste
3) Once the chiles are ground to a paste, empty the food processor into a sieve that is placed over the pot where the sauce will be cooked.
4) Use a metal spoon and start stirring and pressing the chiles into the sieve. The goal is to get the liquid part through the sieve and what drips into the pot is the liquefied part of the mixture which is the sauce. Basically the skins and seeds of the chiles will remain. Patricia pressed each batch for about 5 minutes--it is hard work, her arm got tired

chile paste

pressing out the sauce

5) Repeat the above steps of processing the chiles with chicken broth and then pressing out the juices through the sieve until you've used up all the chiles.
6) To the pot of sauce, add in the can of tomato sauce, the 3 whole garlic cloves and season with salt, pepper and either 1 cube of chicken bullion or a few shakes of Knorr to taste.Over low-medium heat, simmer the sauce for about 20 minutes.  The sauce never gets to a boil

The result after all this processing and pressing is a thick chile sauce. According the Patricia if it is too thick it can be thinned out afterwards with chicken broth. Think of the consistency this way: the tortillas will be dipped into the sauce and you want the sauce thick enough to stick onto the front and back of the tortillas.

Assembling  the enchiladas:
1) In a small frying pan, over medium heat, warm up about 1/2 cup or enough to make a 1 inch layer of neutral oil, like vegetable oil

2) Once the oil is hot, fry each corn tortilla--they get fried enough to be light gold and still soft, but NOT browned and crispy. Lay the fried tortillas out on paper-towels
3) Using the oil from the tortillas, fry the eggs in the warm oil. This step was done masterfully by Patricia's husband. The goal is a soft fried egg with runny yolk.

During assembly and frying the eggs, keep the tortillas and cooked eggs warm in an oven at the lowest setting. Once all the tortillas and eggs are fried, it's time to start assembling.
4) Prepare the assembly line of tortillas, then sauce, then cheddar cheese, then diced onions, then diced tomatoes and the eggs last.

5) Using 3 tortillas per serving: Dip one of the tortillas into the pot of chile sauce, then use a spoon to cover the non-sauced part of the tortilla

6) Sprinkle the tortilla generously with cheddar cheese, diced onions to taste, then repeat this step for 3 enchiladas. Over all three enchiladas, sprinkle the diced tomatoes, and finally "mount" the enchiladas with 2 of the poached eggs. The enchiladas can be fanned out on a plate or stacked.

stacked vs fanned 

7) Serve with refried beans and/or Mexican rice.