Tofu and Vegetables in Peanut-Miso Velvet

I’m rescuing this recipe from the archives. A few nights ago I looked it up and cooked it for dinner, and I was surprised and dismayed to see that I had made some big errors. The kind of errors that make readers really annoyed with you. Most notably, I had failed to explain where to use the nutritional yeast listed in the ingredients.

I’ve also gotten a lot more comfortable with the writing and pictures for this blog in the two years since this recipe first went up. I was surprised and pleased to see how much I’ve progressed in both areas – but on the other hand, I wished I’d given this recipe, a long-time favorite, a better platform. So I retook the photos and retooled the write-up. I hope now more people will find this comforting, delicious vegan recipe from Crescent Dragonwagon.

Dragonwagon was one of the first cookbook writers to really inspire me. I’ve never met her – though possibly the most exhilarating result of this blog was an e-mail from her thanking me for posting her recipe for a Kenyan bean stew called Maharagwe – but I consider her a mentor. Her cookbook Soup & Bread was a bible for me when I started cooking experimentally, reaching outside the food vocabulary I learned from my mother. This homey yet slightly exotic dish is from her tome The Passionate Vegetarian, a thousand-page labor of love.

You can always tell my most beloved recipes by the bedraggled and marked-up condition of their cookbook pages. This one has miraculously avoided any major stains, but it’s wrinkled as if once very wet, and covered with suggestions and enthusiastic comments (“Yum! Really homey and tasty – and simple to make” and “Luscious. The best vegan comfort food imaginable”).

Nutritional yeast is a deactivated flake yeast developed for flavor and nutrition, with vegetarian food in mind. It provides B vitamins and protein, which can be deficient in some vegetarian diets. More important from my perspective, it has a savory flavor often described as tasting like Parmesan cheese. Some people love it sprinkled on popcorn! It really does lift the flavors here, though if you don’t have any around the dish will still be delicious. Find it at natural food stores.

The changes I have made are small – I added sweet potato, omitted tomato, and added a sprinkling of crushed red pepper. Feel free to substitute in any vegetables you have on hand.

1 teaspoon vegetable oil

1 large onion, diced

2 cups vegetable stock

2 to 3 tablespoons white miso

2 tablespoons smooth natural nonhydrogenated peanut butter

3 tablespoons nutritional yeast
1 tablespoon mirin or sherry

3 tablespoons arrowroot or cornstarch

Ground black pepper

Hot cooked rice, spelt, or other grain (egg noodles might be nice too)

Place a large nonstick skillet (or a regular one sprayed with cooking spray) over medium heat. Add oil; when hot, add onion and saute until softened, about 5 minutes.

Reserve 1/4 cup of stock; pour the rest in the pan. Bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer. Whisk in miso, peanut butter, and nutritional yeast.

Combine the reserved stock and the mirin or sherry, then whisk in the cornstarch or arrowroot. Pour the resulting slurry into the simmering miso mixture, whisking all the while to prevent the formation of lumps. Cook, stirring, until the sauce is thick and smooth, which may happen almost immediately but could take a minute or two. This sauce is meant to be quite thick (thus the name “Velvet”), but it may come out a little too gloppy. If it does, whisk in water two tablespoons at a time until it seems right – you want it to coat the vegetables luxuriously, but you don’t want paste. Taste for salt; you probably won’t need any, as miso is very salty. Grind in plenty of pepper.

Add the vegetables and tofu to the hot sauce and warm through, stirring occasionally. Serve in large shallow bowls over a grain or egg noodles. (Dragonwagon also suggests serving over toast.) Leftovers can be tossed with macaroni, topped with breadcrumbs, and baked into a casserole.