Hello and welcome to The People's Food Blog.
We're here to bring you awesome, tasty, sort-of gourmet recipes and cookery that you can make everyday and at home. Poverty and lack of skill should not prevent you from eating great food--hopefully we'll be able to help you out on your way.
We do all the cooking you'll see on here with ingredients we find in our community--nothing crazy or super-rare. When we can't find something a recipe calls for, we improvise or provide the closest possible thing.
This blog is first and foremost an exercise in equal opportunity cooking. The People's Food Blog and its writers are works in progress. We're not trained chefs; we're regular people with jobs and families and other hobbies. Every meal we cook teaches us something new. Please leave us a comment if you figure out some new or interesting way to do a recipe!
Again, welcome, and we look forward to sharing some great food with you.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Vegetarian Pozole
In every endeavor, there must be a beginning. This is it.
First I must fess up: I am not a vegetarian and never really have been (not that I consider it a bad thing at all). I am pretty much the definition of an omnivore, I will eat damn near anything. Be it fish, fowl, fauna, or fungi I will probably find some form of it that I enjoy eating. You know that one show Bizarre Foods? I would love to be on that show. That being said, my girlfriend the lovely Ms. Green Bean is a vegetarian and I like to cook for the both of us. Over the past few years I have been taking more traditional foods and putting a vegetarian twist on them so we can both enjoy the flavors. I learned to cook for the most part by watching my father, a fantastic cook My "training" in vegetarian cooking is a product of learning from The Green Bean, reading books by Deborah Madison, Mark Bittman, and experimentation. I tell you these things just so you don't mistake my recipes for some vegetarian expertise.
OK enough background and onto the first entry.
Pozole is traditionally a spicy Mexican soup made from pork and hominy. Obviously for a vegetarian the pork is a problem. In order to vegetarianize this soup I wanted to make as few changes as possible, basically I strived for as straight a substitution for pork as I could. Now I have heard it said certain mushrooms can used, but in my experience the mushroomy taste and texture just doesn't cut it in this soup. I needed something to accomplish two things: provide the needed fats to spread the flavor and a source of protein hearty enough to last in the soup. Toward this end I chose to use fried tempeh.
If you are anything like I was three years ago you have to ask yourself, "What the hell is tempeh? Some kind of fish?" Indeed it is not. It kind of like tofu, but it's made from whole fermented soybeans. It has a much denser base than tofu and has a toughness that holds up in soups very well. The fats were taken of by using vegetable oil to fry the tempeh in, and I added some soy sauce and (vegetarian) Worcestershire sauce to give the tempeh a smokier flavor.
This recipe will make a good pot full of soup as an added bonus takes only about 30 minutes to make.
Here are the ingredients I used:
Heat your vegetable oil in a large 2 -3 quart pot (or dutch oven) over medium heat. (I used 4 on the knob).
While the oil is heating roughly chop up half of the small onion and dice the 3 cloves of garlic.
Sauté the tempeh until it is golden brown (about five minutes).
Add the soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce and stir through to coat all the pieces of tempeh.
Now add the onions and garlic and let cook through for about two or three minutes.
Pour in the four cups of broth, boost the heat up to high, and just bring it to a low boil.
Once a boil has just been reached, add the chile powder and hominy.
Taste the broth for spiciness and salinity. If it needs more of either feel free to add it. Now cover and reduce the heat to low. Let simmer for 15 minutes or so. The longer the better, but if you're hungry you're hungry!
While it is cooking, go ahead and finely dice the rest of the onion and cut some lime wedges. I also like to eat my pozole with tortillas (corn or flour, I use corn), so heat up a few tortillas as well.
When the soup is done, the tempeh should have soaked in the rich tasty goodness of the chile broth and the soup will be a nice dark reddish brown color:
To serve, garnish the soup with some onion, a dash of oregano and a slice of lime. Before eating squeeze the lime juice into the soup.
Let me know if it turns out well for you, or if you found a few new twists that you enjoyed.
First I must fess up: I am not a vegetarian and never really have been (not that I consider it a bad thing at all). I am pretty much the definition of an omnivore, I will eat damn near anything. Be it fish, fowl, fauna, or fungi I will probably find some form of it that I enjoy eating. You know that one show Bizarre Foods? I would love to be on that show. That being said, my girlfriend the lovely Ms. Green Bean is a vegetarian and I like to cook for the both of us. Over the past few years I have been taking more traditional foods and putting a vegetarian twist on them so we can both enjoy the flavors. I learned to cook for the most part by watching my father, a fantastic cook My "training" in vegetarian cooking is a product of learning from The Green Bean, reading books by Deborah Madison, Mark Bittman, and experimentation. I tell you these things just so you don't mistake my recipes for some vegetarian expertise.
OK enough background and onto the first entry.
Pozole is traditionally a spicy Mexican soup made from pork and hominy. Obviously for a vegetarian the pork is a problem. In order to vegetarianize this soup I wanted to make as few changes as possible, basically I strived for as straight a substitution for pork as I could. Now I have heard it said certain mushrooms can used, but in my experience the mushroomy taste and texture just doesn't cut it in this soup. I needed something to accomplish two things: provide the needed fats to spread the flavor and a source of protein hearty enough to last in the soup. Toward this end I chose to use fried tempeh.
If you are anything like I was three years ago you have to ask yourself, "What the hell is tempeh? Some kind of fish?" Indeed it is not. It kind of like tofu, but it's made from whole fermented soybeans. It has a much denser base than tofu and has a toughness that holds up in soups very well. The fats were taken of by using vegetable oil to fry the tempeh in, and I added some soy sauce and (vegetarian) Worcestershire sauce to give the tempeh a smokier flavor.
This recipe will make a good pot full of soup as an added bonus takes only about 30 minutes to make.
Here are the ingredients I used:
- 1 lbs of tempeh (any kind will really do)
- 1/2 tbs of dark soy sauce
- 1 tbs of Worcestershire sauce
- 1 small onion (red, yellow, or white but not sweet!)
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 tbs of vegetable oil
- 4 cups of vegetable stock
- 2 lbs of cooked hominy (white or yellow)
- 1/2 cup of dark chile powder (you can use more or less depending how spicy you want it)
- limes
- dried oregano (mexican preferably)
Heat your vegetable oil in a large 2 -3 quart pot (or dutch oven) over medium heat. (I used 4 on the knob).
While the oil is heating roughly chop up half of the small onion and dice the 3 cloves of garlic.
Sauté the tempeh until it is golden brown (about five minutes).
Add the soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce and stir through to coat all the pieces of tempeh.
Now add the onions and garlic and let cook through for about two or three minutes.
Pour in the four cups of broth, boost the heat up to high, and just bring it to a low boil.
Once a boil has just been reached, add the chile powder and hominy.
Taste the broth for spiciness and salinity. If it needs more of either feel free to add it. Now cover and reduce the heat to low. Let simmer for 15 minutes or so. The longer the better, but if you're hungry you're hungry!While it is cooking, go ahead and finely dice the rest of the onion and cut some lime wedges. I also like to eat my pozole with tortillas (corn or flour, I use corn), so heat up a few tortillas as well.
When the soup is done, the tempeh should have soaked in the rich tasty goodness of the chile broth and the soup will be a nice dark reddish brown color:
To serve, garnish the soup with some onion, a dash of oregano and a slice of lime. Before eating squeeze the lime juice into the soup.
Let me know if it turns out well for you, or if you found a few new twists that you enjoyed.
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