Saturday, December 27, 2008

Festivus Bird.

Or: FUCK YOU MOTHER FUCKAZ I GOT 2xTOFURKEY WITHIN 3 DAYS OF EACHOTHER AND Y'ALL IS JUST JEALOUSES.
Or: I shouldn't write food-blog posts whilst thinking about listening to Wu-Tang Clan because the echo-effect of being hip hop isn't actually as reflective of bringing the mother-fucking ruckus (ain't nuttin to fuck with, etcetera).

Tofurkey of the Festive Season #1:
Prepared quite hastily (well, considering that it is a recipe that requires resting over night, i did it pretty chaotically) for Fjorn's birthday pot luck (other contributions to the luck included: olive loaf and coffee scrolls - from Ruth, a curry yum from Sam, salad by Tim and Fjorn herself provided some delicious chickpea stuffed mushrooms from the grill!) - to the stuffing I added cranberries for festive charm or some shit. Mostly because I had intened to probide a cranberry sauce but napping happened instead.
Fjorn's birthday is the 24th of December which makes her Jesus' totally cooler and more-legit twin. The pot luck was on the traditionally (like, according precisely to the episode of Seinfeld that it comes from - information I collected from WIKIPEDIA, TELLER OF TRUTHS) celebrated date of Festivus. For the rest of us.


Tofurkey of the festive season #2:
At Mgtvle, the warehouse my partner and friends live in - in Sydney. Alex had bared witness and ploayed an integral part to the creating of the tofurkey we celebrated winter in Anglesea with in July and had prepared the 'tofu mold' for this bird before I got to Sydney to help finish it off with stuffing, basting, etcetera.
I have little doubt that we're going to make this roast a off the cuff thing tradtion very soon considering I only checked the recipe for cooking times and how to make the cornbread (which I pretty much disregarded in both cases) for stuffing.
Despite being a quite involved, messy and slow cooking recipe, it has become really easy for this to be made based purely on instinct and taste. I realise whilst writing thist post that this was roasted 1 year exactly from the day I first roasted this kind of tofurkey. December 26th, the day of boxes.
We charred it a little on the skin - this bird has a crispy beancurd 'skin' that was marinated and thrown over the top of the roasting tofu halfway through it's time in the oven- because we got a little distracted and excited about the deep frying machine that has recently surfaced at Mgtvle. I have no shame in this fact: I HAVE WANTED TO HAVE A DEEP FRYING MACHINE SINCE I WAS 15 YEARS OLD. Now, I am pretty young, so this is only 5 years ago but still. I am so excited and bouncy.
It's a bit tricky to decide how to slice and transfer the bird from dish to plate elegantly. Here served with sweet potato chips (deep fried). The alterations to the stuffing were carrots in place of celery, and the addition of flat beer with the stock.
Another difference between these two birds were the variables of herbs and stock put into the tofu mould, the kind firm tofu used in either (I can't tell you what Alex used because I wasn't there. I know he didn't have "chicken" stock and that his tofu felt different to the stuff I used on the 23rd) also that Alex left the bird in the mold in the refrigerater for at least 48 hours longer than I did (I only had mine in over one night) which I think spoke for much in terms of what kind of texture we got from the bird.

It took me forever to re-surface the link from which I first decided to make this kind of tofurkey over a year ago, but I found it originally from, and adapted it from here: at What Do I Know? by Kathy - who adapted her recipe from a popular one at VegWeb. I made the bean curd skin from inspiration taken from Bryanna Clark Grogan and what I did was basically just get a sheet of dry bean curd skin, soak it in a watered-down warm version of the marinade we gave to the rest of the bird and wrapped the top of the tofu-lump with it after it had been in the oven for a little over half it's roasting time.

I really wish I'd taken photos of the FUCKING LOVELY Apple & Strawberry custard crumble Alex made for me (with a short crust base that blows my gluten-freed mind) as well as the Veganomicon feast that Louise made for a bunch of us on Christmas Day as well.

Louise made for desert following the bird, a cake based on the Brooklyn/Boston cream pie cupcakes from VCTOW using wheat flour that I should not have partaken of. hehe.

3 comments:

x said...

Happy Xmas/NY!

I thought you'd somehow managed to get Tofurkeys from America but you made your own, props!

That crumble sounds good, I want to try making gf pie crust sometime soon.

Amey said...

Hi Lena!
I'd love to send you one of my little cookbooklets, but I need your mailing address! If you still want one, send me an email with your address:
ameyfm at yahoo dot com

:) Amey

Luke said...

i still want to see this deep fryer. fuck, if i remembered it, i would have been doing that all night last night.