Cooking

I'm stalling on the last little bit of work required to meet a mid-week deadline (I'm totally on track to get it done in time, but have becomes profoundly bored with the content), so here are a few points about vegetarian cooking, which is completely irrelevant to my work, or the implied purpose of this blog, or anything else:

• Pretty much any sauce (from tomato to onion gravy) can be improved with a dollop of red pepper flakes 
• The best all-purpose "Chinese" vegetable sauce consists of one garlic clove (diced), one bunch green onions (chopped), one scant teaspoon sugar, two tablespoons sesame oil, and four tablespoons soy sauce. (I eyeball but don't really measure the last two ingredients.)
• You can make a passable veggie burger patty out of white cannellini beans mashed with diced cooked celery (2 stalks), onion (1), and mushrooms (4), plus a few tablespoons of cooked brown rice, all seasoned with a bit of sage and marjorum.
• In my experience, some grated carrots and red lentils cooked with onions provides a much nicer base for a vegetable "shepherd's pie" than a meat substitute or a weird tofu base.
• As for tofu, I liked it cubed and tossed in a touch of sesame oil and soy sauce, then baked, or cut into triangles, smeared with a bit of sri racha and soy sauce, and then baked. I've never been able to make frozen tofu work very well, but I'm not convinced I've ever thoroughly thawed it.