Great, more Gravy!

It's been a bit but I'm back; I've got three or four new meals stored up, but I only seem to get to half of my hopes, so I'll plan for a fresh pair of posts. Here's the first: following breakfast gravy, I've got some for dinner. And following a summary of a Dick book, I have a summary of a Dick book:




Ubik is the best book by Dick I've read yet. It's a metaphysical thriller, full of suspense and confusion. It involves death, layers of reality, time travel, Berkeleyan idealism, and transhumanism (the last are two of Dick's fave themes--both are also around in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said). The year is 1992. The main characters work for a company that protects normal folks from telepaths. They get a contract to work on the moon, but it's a set-up: a bomb goes off. At this point, everything gets weird. Time regresses. Graffiti messages from their apparently dead friends appear on the walls. People turn into mummies. The suspense turns on their finding the cause of their predicament, and the plot twists every couple chapters. It's exciting, confusing, and in the end not entirely explained. Hopefully I'll talk about it more in a future post on time travel and entropy.

Now for food: Country fried tofu steaks and shroom gravy.

For the tofu, gather:
Two cuts (each about a third of a standard package) firm tofu (I used Twin Oaks Herbed Tofu).
1 (fake) egg
1/4 cup Texas Pete
2T water
2T soymilk
1 tsp vegan Worcester sauce (Wizard! brand, or a store brand without anchovies).
1/2 tsp liquid smoke
1/4 cup bread crumbs
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp seasoned salt
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp MSG

For the gravy:
2T and another 2T extra virgin olive oil
2T flour
1.5 cups veggie broth
1T nutritional yeast
1tsp seasoned salt (or less, if you so feel)
4 cloves garlic, diced
1 shallot, diced
4-5 mushrooms, chopped
2 T tamari soy sauce

OK, that's a lot of stuff! Have it all (or suitable substitutes)? Chill, it's easy from here, provided you can do a lot at once.

TOFU STEAKS:
Combine the wet stuff with the (f)egg in a bowl and the dry stuff on a plate. Cut the tofu into thin square; dip it first in the wet stuff and then in the dry stuff.
Make sure it's thoroughly floured, and then deep fry it (in canola or such an oil) at 350 for 5-7 minutes, until golden brown.

BONUS: if you have time, refrigerate the tofu after you bread it but before you fry it. Remember, this is what we did with the hot wings, although the recipe was a little different.
After you pull that bizness out, chop it in half lengthwise, so as to have a killer presentation.

GRAVY:
Heat 2 T of olive oil in a medium saucepan (or skillet) on a medium-low heat. SIMULTANEOUSLY saute the mushrooms, garlic, and shallot in another skillet or saucepan with the rest of the olive oil and the tamari. CONTEMPORANEOUSLY combine the seasoned salt, veggie broth, and nutritional yeast in a small saucepan (hey, you can just use veggie broth if you don't feel like adding this mess).


Slowly whisk the flour into the solo oil skillet, beating the crap out of it with a fork or whisk until it's all combined and browned. Then, drizzle in the veggie broth mix, stirring over heat until you get a thick, smooth consistency, not unlike Schwarzenegger's face in Total Recall. Finally, flip in the mushroom, garlic, and shallot.

FULL STOVE

Okay, now you have tofu steaks, and now you've got gravy.

GRAVY

Pour the more liquidy one over the more solidy one, and you've made a meal. As you can see, I added on the side some short-grained brown rice, cooked in veggie broth with seasoned salt and olive oil, and steamed spinach with walnuts and a drizzle of honey. MMMMM. MMM MMM MMM.

DUN.