Apr

Stacey: Thoughts on Week Six

Dan

calgary, cooking, Kick The KD, learning, Stacey, thoughts

This week we learned how to prepare vegan meals with meat-substitute ingredients such as tofu and tempeh, as well as using things like nutritional yeast and coconut milk. Additionally, we had the privilege of learning how to make gnocchi from scratch from the one and only Chef Geoff Rogers from Home Tasting Room here in Calgary. Chef Rogers was able to answer all our left-field questions ranging from how to butcher cleanly (on vegan night no less!) so that meat can be served ‘blue’, to ‘What is the real difference between gnocchi and perogies?’ You’ll have to ask Chef Rogers for the answer to the first question, but the differences between gnocchi and perogies are the way they are served!

His confidence in the kitchen was admirable and made it very easy to retain the information he was providing us. A big THANK YOU to Chef Rogers for taking the time to come to our KTKD class and to Dan for organizing it!

For our homework, we were assigned the task to replace meat in a recipe with a vegan alternative. I decided to once again prepare ‘Chicken’ Stir Fry by replacing the chicken with tofu. I am unsure if my meal was 100% vegan because of the sauces (oyster [mushroom] sauce and soy sauce), but I tried to keep it meat/dairy-free (Dan: Success! It was definitely vegan!).

For the preparation I opted to cut the tofu into small pieces as my greatest complaint about tofu is its texture. Since tofu doesn’t have a very strong taste I decided to focus on the texture; I hypothesized that a smaller piece would present a reduced texture effect.

I coated the pieces in cornstarch and fried them as Dan instructed in class,but I was curious if the extra cornstarch needed for more individual pieces raised the calorie count significantly and if this would be a ‘con’ to using these smaller (more) pieces. According to the nutrition label there are 30 calories per tablespoon and I used 2 tablespoons, however not all of the corn starch made it’s way into the pan.

I also made the tomato appetizer that Dan provided for us in class to test if we could tell what we were eating was tofu (since it looked like a common cheese, bocconcini). I highly recommend this hor d’oeuvre because it is healthy, easy to prepare and looks like it was made by Chef Rogers himself! Your dinner guests will be very impressed!

In the end, the stir fry wound up being over cooked because it was my first time cooking with noodles. Next time I would put them in earlier, before the vegetables are fully cooked. The small tofu cubes seemed to alleviate the texture issues as hypothesized however I still think I like the taste of chicken better!

–Stacey

Click here to check out Stacey’s recipes for the dishes she cooked up at home!