Wednesday: A Vegetarian Fest

I was already planning to make Bittman's tofu with caramel and onions, then I saw yesterday's Minimalist column, which includes four different, Japanese-influenced, vegetarian things. Somehow things got totally out of control.

I did make the tofu, as well as roasted chickpeas (from How to Cook Everything), and then the sesame-soy custard and green beans with walnut-miso sauce from yesterday's column.

Notes:

1. The tofu was, as always, dreamy.
   
2. I sprinkled the chickpeas with some "B. and v.G. Spice Rub" (the meat rub from FStoS) after pulling them from the oven. The flavor combination there is really good.
3. The green beans were, as Bittman promised, fantastic. And we've got loads of the sauce leftover for other stuff. After making these, I need to do a hand blender++: the little chopper bowl thing was perfect for this sauce.
4. The custard was... interesting. It's intriguing enough that I'd like to try again, but I need to resolve a couple of problems with it:
1. We could only find agar agar flakes at WF and the recipe calls for powder. I think that a lot of the agar agar ended up getting strained out. Next time I'll try pulverizing it a spice grinder first.
2. My 8" square glass baking dish was way too big for the quantity the recipe makes. The pieces pictured in the article are maybe an inch thick and I ended up with maybe 1/4" thick pieces. This helped contribute to the screwy texture (too much surface skin). This is easily resolved next time.
3. Next time I'm think I'm going to toast sesame seeds myself and grind them instead of using tahini. There was something out of balance in the flavor combination of tahini and wasabi.