Vegan Organic Skillet Corn Bread

Place an oiled 10 inch iron skillet in a oven heated to 400 degrees.  Mix together:

• 1 1/2 cups cornmeal
• 1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
• 3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 Tablespoon honey or sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt

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In Parts I and II, we talked about the making of tofu, the freezing of tofu, and everything in between, Now, let’s talk about a few things you can do with extra firm tofu – a few quick dishes you can make for lunch or dinner. I’ve already mentioned the fact that the silken is pretty much just for pudding or pie filling, so I’m talking about using extra firm or Wildwood’s super firm tofu for this purpose.

Tofu in Stir Fries

Using tofu in a stir-fry is the most obvious use for this delicious food. And there are a couple things you can do. First of all, tofu has a fair amount of its own fat, so when you cook it, you really don’t need to use any oil. It will get golden brown and crispy on its own without oil. So you cut the tofu up into cubes or slices or patties or whatever size/shape you want, and you place them in a nonstick sauté pan.* Now you just let them get golden brown and crispy on one sided before turning it over. Don’t fuss with it and push it around; just let it get crispy, then flip it. No oil – about 10 minutes each side. While the tofu is cooking like this in its own pan, you can start cooking up your veggies – peppers, onions, squash, mushrooms, whatever you want to add to your stir-fry — in a separate sauté pan. When the veggies are nearly cooked, add your crispy tofu, and your stir-fry marinade, and just stir-fry until the tofu is hot and mixed with the sauce. Serve over quinoa or brown rice. If you don’t know what quinoa is, then check out my blog post called Five Favorite Foods.

However, if you don’t own any nonstick pans, feel free to add a little olive oil to your pan and fry up the tofu that way. You want it nice and crispy.

Tofu in Curries

Another way to use extra firm tofu in a meal is to make Thai curry. Again, there are recipe packets on my website, but essentially you’d add curry paste and coconut milk and whatever veggies you want to add, and throw in extra firm or super firm tofu into your curry. Frankly, I think curry – particularly the tofu in the curry – is even better the day after you make it. Yum!

Tofu as "Eggless Egg" Salad

I’ve mentioned eggless egg salad, which you can prepare by mashing up extra firm tofu, and mixing it with an eggless mayonnaise, such as Nayonnaise, Vegenaise, or Wildwood’s Garlic Aioli – along with some chopped raw veggies, such as carrots, celery, and peppers – and adding some salt, cumin and turmeric.

Grilled and BBQ Tofu

You can make BBQ tofu by just sautéing some tofu like I mentioned before – perhaps just cut the tofu into strips – putting the browned tofu strips in an 8 or 9-inch casserole dish, pouring BBQ sauce over it, and heating it in the oven for 20-30 minutes. Serve as a main dish or make a sandwich. Grill tofu and add to a grilled veggie sandwich on Focaccia bread with avocado and balsamic vinegar.

Tofu Bacon, Ricotta Cheese, Scramble, and On and On

Make tofu bacon by marinating tofu in a combination of water, tamari soy sauce, maple syrup, and liquid smoke. Make a tofu ricotta cheese (blend firm tofu with lemon juice, fresh basil, fresh garlic, and soy milk) to use in lasagna or stuffed shells. Scramble tofu together with your favorite vegetables and the spice turmeric to give it a beautiful yellow color. This delicious dish can be served as is, or can be used as the basis for "tofu rancheros" by wrapping it in a tortilla, and serving with black beans and salsa. Add cubes of firm tofu to miso soup.

Thoughts About Bulk Tofu

Just a few other thoughts about tofu. You sometimes see it in your grocery store, particularly in Asian shops, in bulk – sitting in tubs of water. I’m a little wary of this, only because it’s often not organic, I don’t know how long it’s been sitting there uncovered, exposed to possible bacteria, and I just prefer to get tofu that I know is organic. Some farmer’s markets are now selling fresh tofu in bulk in this way, but that’s a little different, because often the batch was just made that morning, and it’s usually organic, and you can speak directly with the people making the tofu. You can’t beat organic, locally made tofu. Incidentally, one of the great things about Wildwood’s tofu is that the soy beans are American-grown, mostly in Iowa, Illinois, and Minnesota, and Wildwood has a direct relationship with their farmers.

Flavored, Ready-to-Eat Tofu

Whereas Wildwood does have some flavored baked tofu, my favorite brand for ready-to-eat tofu is Sunergia. They specialize in flavored tofu, and each one of the flavors is fantastic: Italian Herb, Savory Portabella, Peanut & Ginger, Indian Masala, Spicy Thai, Garlic Shitake, Porcini Herb, Spinach Jalapeno, Spicy Indian, and Pesto. Some are great for adding to pasta, some to stir-fries, some to salads. Just scrumptious - also organic, kosher, GMO-free, and wheat-free.

Tofu is such a versatile food; you can do soooo much with it, so definitely give it a chance. It’s really satisfying, really filling, a great source of protein (if that’s something you’re looking for), it’s high in Omega 3 fatty acids and monounsaturated fats, and is a great source of iron and other minerals such as calcium (if you get the tofu that uses a calcium base as its coagulant – it will say "calcium enriched" on the package, and is so versatile.) Just don’t be afraid of it. Experiment with it, trust it, trust me, and perhaps someday you’ll get to the same place as me – where it becomes difficult to cook with it, because you want to gobble up the entire block before you even get to use it in whatever dish you’re preparing. (I do have some amount of self control, though!)

*Just a quick note about nonstick pans, because this question (which usually comes up in my classes) may be on some of your minds. Some people are concerned about the link between cancer and a chemical used in the manufacturing of Teflon. First of all, Dupont is phasing out this chemical by the year 2010, so this whole point will be moot. But the reason I feel okay using nonstick pans is a) I use nonstick in a rotation with other pans, so it’s not only nonstick I use. I also use anodized steel, and of course, you can also use stainless steel or copper. b) I really take care of my nonstick pans: I don’t use metal on them, and I make sure not to scratch them. The risk researchers are seeing between cancer and this chemical – unfortunately – has more to do with people who live around the manufacturing plant, not the use in people’s kitchens.

Also, you’d have to heat your pan to over 600 degrees with no food in it to see any kind of risk, and we don’t heat our pots and pans to that high a temperature. Finally, for me, there are so many real risks associated with cancer and meat, cancer and dairy products, and cancer and high-fat diets that I would rather see people make much more substantial changes if they want to reduce their risk of getting cancer than worrying about Teflon. If you’re still eating meat and dairy but are concerned about Teflon pans, I don’t think you’re doing much to reduce your risk. I’d rather see people get these cancer culprits out of your diet, and not worry about using nonstick pans.

History

Tofu originated in China about 2000 years ago, and while the details of its discovery are uncertain, legend has it that it was discovered by accident when a Chinese cook added the seaweed nigari to a pot of soybean milk, causing it to curdle, and the result was tofu.

Tofu was introduced into Japan in the 8th century, where it was originally known as "okabe," but was not called "tofu" until the 15th century, though tofu did not gain its great widespread popularity in Japan until the 17th century.

Tofu’s popularity in the West has mirrored the increasing interest in healthier foods. First gaining more widespread attention during the 1960s, tofu has been skyrocketing in popularity ever since research has begun to reveal the many significant benefits of this food.

So, what is tofu? What is this white block of what is also called "bean curd?"

Little Miss Muffet

Tofu or Dofu (based on the Chinese spelling) is a food that is made in much the same way that people make dairy-based cheese. First, you coagulate soy milk.

Well, let’s back up. As with cheese, when you make tofu, the first thing you need is milk.

In the case of dairy-based cheese, in our crazy world, we use the milk of animals. To make tofu, we use soy milk. Now, most commercial tofu makers make their own soy milk, which anyone can do by soaking, grinding, boiling, and straining dried (or, less commonly, fresh) soybeans.

When you have your soy milk, you then need to add a coagulant. When you coagulate something, you cause it to curdle. In other words, you transform it from a liquid into a soft semisolid or solid mass. Most of us have seen curdling when cow’s milk starts to go bad and you see little semi-solid white lumps floating around. Those are curds. That’s a process of curdling to indicate that it’s spoiling, that it’s going sour.

But there are other ways to sour milk intentionally. You do this by adding an agent that will produce that souring effect. Acidic liquid substances are the most obvious, such as vinegar or lemon juice. For instance (and I talk about this in my new baking cookbook), to make "buttermilk," all you need to do is add some lemon juice or vinegar to your non-dairy milk, and you’ve got sour milk, i.e. buttermilk.

So that you better understand the process of creating tofu, let me first talk a little about curdling cow’s milk before I continue with soy milk. For animal-based cheese, what is most often used as a curdling agent is rennet. Rennet is essentially a bunch of enzymes produced in the stomach of mammals to help the offspring digest the mother’s milk. One of the enzymes causes the milk to coagulate, to curdle or separate into solids (curds) and liquid (whey). Now you understand what Little Miss Muffet was eating. Couldn’t tell ya why she’d wanna eat it, but now at least you know what it is: curds and whey are the solid and liquid results of curdled milk.

For cow’s milk cheese, the rennet is extracted from the fourth stomach of young calves. And where would you find an abundance of young calf stomachs? The veal industry, of course. The stomachs used to get rennet are a by-product of veal production. Each ruminant animal produces the special kind of rennet needed to digest that species’ mother’s milk, so there is kid-goat rennet especially for goat’s milk cheese and lamb-rennet for sheep’s-milk cheese.

Carcinogenic Casein

Let’s pause for a moment to examine a few health considerations. I mentioned that increased acidity in cow’s milk causes curdling. Let’s go a little deeper. What’s actually happening is that the milk proteins (the casein) is tangling up into solid masses or "curds." The rest, which contains only whey proteins, is the whey. In cow’s milk, 80%-87% of the proteins are caseins.

If you haven’t yet read T. Colin Campbell’s The China Study, I can’t recommend it highly enough. I urge you to read it. Campbell is a highly respected researcher and policy advisor in the field of diet and cancer. He is Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, and has had a long career in research, teaching and development of national/international studies on diet, nutrition and health.

Casein, he says, is the "#1 carcinogen (i.e. cancer-causing substance) that people come in contact with on a daily basis." We’re consuming, drinking, swallowing, digesting this stuff every time we drink animal milk or eat animal-based cheese. And in cheese its even worse, because the casein is super concentrated.

Vegetarian Rennet

So back to rennet: there is vegetarian rennet, and sometimes it’s used in the production of kosher cheeses. Just keep in mind that though rennet can be produced by plants that have coagulating properties, such as nettles, thistles, or mallow – as in marshmallow. You probably know that marshmallows that are made with gelatin (the boiled hooves, bones, and other leftover body parts of the slaughter industry), but they used to be made with the marshmallow plant!

Though plant-based rennet is technically possible to create, nearly all "vegetarian" kosher cheeses are produced with either microbial rennet or genetically modified rennet. Microbial rennet is produced by using certain molds that are fermented. Apparently, using microbial rennet produces a slightly bitter tasting cheese, so with the development of genetic engineering, scientists starting using calf genes to modify some bacteria, fungus or yeast to make them produce Chymosin, one of the enzymes found in rennet. Chymosin produced by genetically modified organisms was the first artificially produced enzyme to be registered and allowed by the FDA in the USA. In 1999, about 60% of U.S. hard cheese was made with genetically engineered Chymosin.

So that’s rennet – used to curdle animal milk to make animal-based cheese. Now we can return to tofu.

As I said, you have to add a coagulant to your soy milk to curdle it, and for commercial tofu, the two coagulant types most commonly added are acid-based and salt-based.

Salt Coagulants

• An example of a salt-based coagulant is calcium sulfate, which is essentially tasteless. Tofu that’s made with calcium sulfate is obviously rich in calcium, and such tofu is pretty common. Tofu made with calcium sulfate tends to be Chinese-style tofu, which is tender but slightly brittle in texture.
• Other salt coagulants used are Chloride-type Nigari salts - Magnesium chloride and calcium chloride. These are the coagulants used to make Japanese-style tofu with a smooth and tender texture. Calcium chloride is a common coagulant for tofu in North America. You’ll recognize this coagulant on the list of ingredients, because it will most likely say Nigari, which consists primarily of magnesium chloride. It’s produced from seawater after the sodium chloride is removed and the water evaporated.

Acid Coagulants

Another coagulant that’s used – mostly for silken tofu or soft – is Glucono delta-lactone (GDL), a naturally occurring organic acid, which produces a very fine textured tofu that is almost jelly-like. Think silken tofu.

Tofu producers may choose to use one or more of these coagulants, as they each play a role in producing a desired texture in the finished tofu. So when you notice a different taste or texture in tofu depending on the brand, this is why. A lot of it depends on the coagulant used. The coagulant mixture is dissolved into water, and the solution is then stirred into boiled soy milk until the mixture curdles.

So, now you’ve got your curds, which, like in the process of making cheese, you press these curds. The curds are processed differently depending on the form of tofu that is being made. For soft silken tofu, the soy milk is curdled directly in the tofu’s selling package. For standard firm Asian tofu, the soy curd is cut and strained of excess liquid using cheese cloth or muslin and then lightly pressed to produce a soft cake. Firmer tofus are further pressed to remove even more liquid.

In Part II, we talk about the various texture varieties of tofu. That’s it. Science lesson over.

(Visit CompassionateCooks.com for tofu recipes or for our DVD, in which we demonstrate various uses with tofu, such as our Veggie Stir-Fry with Peanut Sauce and Eggless Egg Salad.)

Image credit: Andrew Lih and Wikimedia Commons

However, I don’t like the use of these terms when referring to non-animal-based foods for a number of reasons. By all calculations, meat, dairy, and eggs are superior in no way – not in terms of health, not in terms of taste, and certainly not in terms of ethics. And if we step back for a moment, we’d see that animal foods are actually the alternatives to plant foods, and we’d remember that cow’s milk is actually a substitute for human milk.

ANIMAL PRODUCTS REPLACE PLANT FOODS

When animals were first herded and domesticated for human consumption, about 9,000-10,000 years ago, they essentially became the alternatives to plant foods. Plant foods were the foundation of the human diet for a long, long time - long before people started domesticating non-human animals. (READ: Plant foods were the foundation. I’m not saying humans didn’t eat "meat" at all.) Fast forward thousands of years to our own "modern" culture. With millions of dollars, the animal exploitation industries convinced people they need to consume the flesh and secretions of animals, and fruits, vegetables, beans, mushrooms, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices were pushed off to the sidelines and sold as garnish, and meat, dairy, and eggs, with their powerful lobbies on Capitol Hill, enjoyed government support, subsidies, and protection.

Thanks to the dairy industry, whose government-sponsored advertisements pose as public service announcements, humans are continually sold the idea that we need cows’ milk to be healthy. This stuff is sold as if it contains some magical formula designed just for human bodies. The truth is it is a perfect formula, designed just for growing babies — bovine babies, that is.

HERDING ANIMALS - DUPING HUMANS

Cattle are herd animals, which means they are easy to control because they move together and stay together. In other words, "cattle" meet certain requirements that make it easy for humans to contain them. Let’s not kid ourselves into believing that humans struck nutritional gold when they started drinking cows’ milk. Cows’ milk — just like soda — is a commercial product that is sold to the public by the dairy industry that has billions of dollars behind it in advertising and enjoys government protection from false advertising laws.* Whether it’s cow’s milk, goat’s milk, sheep’s milk, buffalo’s milk, rat’s milk, or dog’s milk, it is totally unnecessary for human survival and health.

Not only are we the only animal that drinks another animal’s milk, we are the only animal that drinks it into adulthood. All female mammals produce milk for the same reason: to feed and nourish their offspring. At a certain age, depending on the mammal, the infant is able to move onto solid food and is weaned off of the mother’s milk — every mammal, that is, except humans.

Despite the fact that humans don’t continue drinking human milk after being weaned, we’re told we have to drink cows’ milk. And despite the fact that calves naturally stop drinking cows’ milk after they’re weaned, humans have been duped into believing that they must drink it as adults. Our own physiology supports the cessation of milk-drinking in that - at about time time when we should be weaned off of breast milk - our bodies stop producing lactase, the enzyme that enables us to digest lactose, the sugar that’s in mammalian milk. One of the reasons the majority of the world population suffers from lactose intolerance is because we’re not able to digest it. Drinking milk - human or otherwise - into adulthood makes absolutely no sense, but it makes really good business and very good money.

TAKING BACK THE WORD

The dairy industry has made attempts to own the word "milk" and stop non-dairy milk companies from using the word; they loathe the use of the word "milk" in any other context outside of that which refers to the stuff they take from cows and sell to humans. (Perhaps they would prefer human women to say "breast beverage" instead of "breast milk.") Besides referring to the fluid that a female produces when she is lactating, the word "milk" also refers to the liquid extracted from various plants, whether they are nuts, grains, seeds, or fruits. Many of these milks have been around for thousands of years in different parts of the world. The milk from these plants are hardly "alternatives." Rather, they stand on their own as delicious and much healthier choices for human consumption.

SOY
Soy milk originated in China, a region where the soybean was native and used as food long before the existence of written records. Later on, the soybean and soybean foods were transplanted to Japan. Soy milk is reputed to have been discovered and developed in the Han Dynasty in China about 164 B.C. Cow’s milk is definitely the "alternative" to soy milk, particularly in the East. Sadly and ironically, however, the consuption of cow’s milk now exceeds that of soy milk in Japan. The advertising arms of the North American dairy industry reach far and wide.

RICE
If you’ve ever been to a traditional Mexican restaurant, you’ve had the pleasure of imbibing Horchata, a delicious sweet beverage made primarily of rice, sugar, and cinnamon – and often almonds. The Mexican Horchata is based on the Spanish Horchata de Chufa, which was traditionally made from a grassy plant called the Chufa or tiger nut and has its origin in ancient Egypt and Sudan.

NUT
Almond milk – by far my favorite! – was used widely in the Middle Ages in regions stretching from the Iberian Peninsula to East Asia. It was prized for its high protein content and its ability to keep better than milk from animals, which soured if it wasn’t used right away. Milk derived from other nuts also has a long history, including that of walnut, cashews, peanuts, macadamia, and hazelnuts.

COCONUT
The milk of the young coconut is referred to as coconut water or coconut juice and is absolutely delicious and drunk as a beverage. It’s been a popular drink in the tropics since the discovery of the coconut palm tree! (Early Sanskrit writings reveal that the people of India were using coconuts as a staple for food.) It’s naturally fat-free and low in calories with high nutrition content. (Coconut milk is the thick sweet, milky white substance derived from the meat of a mature coconut and is often used for cooking and not for drinking.)

FOLLOWING THE COWS’ LEAD

The bottom line is we have no nutritional requirement for the milk of another animal. Though we have nutritional requirements for nutrients such as calcium, we can do what the cows do and get our minerals from the green leafy stuff that grows in the ground. That news, however, hasn’t quite made its way to our living rooms and classrooms. The kale growers don’t seem to have the money for multi-million-dollar ad campaigns (got kale?); the chard lobby has yet to be formed; and the broccoli farmers just haven’t gotten around to producing glossy marketing materials (I mean - "educational" materials) for young children in school to compete with those that the dairy industry have been supplying to teachers for decades. Get them while they’re young, and you’ve got them for life.

Though humans have been drinking the milk of animals for thousands of years, there is enough evidence now to support the detrimental effects it has on our bodies. Just because we’re in the habit of doing something doesn’t mean we should continue. Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.

(*The California Milk Advisory Board was sued by animal advocates and organizations for falsely representing the condition and treatment of dairy cows in the state. Because the California Milk Advistory Board is the marketing arm of the California Department of Agriculture and thus a government agency, it is exempt from false-advertising laws. The case was thrown out, but not before the judge acknowledged that California cows "probably aren’t happy and that if the ads implying that they were happy had been made by a private individual, false-advertising laws might apply.")

*Listen to my podcast episode on my favorite non-dairy milks