For some reason, I decided to try cooking something
pseudo-vegan the other day. This is totally
out of character for me; usually, when I dust off my
chef's hat, I almost always whip up some fattening
seafood dish, trying to get liberal amounts of
olive oil,
butter, and/or
white wine to cozy up to the flaking
meat. But I figured, why the hell not? Here's what I did.
I bought :
I already had the
seasonings I had read about somewhere on the
internet (
lemon juice and
lemon pepper), and I had some
cooking oil. So, without further ado, I proceeded to make a
mockery of things, a total
fiasco of cookery. Here's what I did.
First, I diced all the vegetables. Chopped up the spinach, diced the onion and the mushrooms, minced the garlic into relatively large chunks. This was messy as hell - the only chopping block I have is 8 inches by 8 inches, and I am by nature zealous with sharp implements, so food got everywhere. I cleaned up and tossed the mushrooms, onions, and garlic into a frying pan with olive oil and sauteed them for a while. Then I tossed in the spinach and sauteed that. Then I mashed and tossed in the tofu and added the lemon juice, lemon pepper, and some salt, and sauteed the whole damn thing.
The only thing I can say about how long to cook the ingredients is that onions should be transparent when they're done and the spinach should be dark green. Don't sweat too much over these exact times to cook; if it looks right, it probably is right, and it'll get baked in the oven later. Another thing - I was well aware of the liquids that seep out of onions and mushrooms when you cook 'em, but spinach and tofu are much, much worse. You'll be swimming in thin greenish liquid before you're done with the sauteeing part. Please, please drain the liquids from this mixture when you're done. (I didn't have a strainer, so I did what I could with an ill-fitting pot lid on the frying pan I used... total fiasco.)
Now all I did was put the unbaked crust (Pillsbury, I believe - like I said, I went pseudo-vegan, not vegan) in the pie plate, filled the pie, and covered the whole thing with crust, and baked it. Near as I can tell, just bake at 350 to 400 degrees until the top of the crust looks done. (The edges will get done long before the rest of the pie.) Bingo! Spinach tofu pie.
If I could do this again, I'd ditch the lemon seasonings... too 'light' for me. Maybe some Teriyaki sauce or something will work. I suggest experimenting, or just using whatever you've got lying around.