Recipe blogging: Butter Chicken Tofu

OK, so I just made this and I think it’s pretty freaking great. So this started as a riff off of Budgetbytes’ butter chicken recipe, but the rest is mine:

  • To marinade:
  • 2 blocks tofu
  • ~2 cups milk
  • ~2 tbsp white vinegar
  • 1 head garlic
  • 2-3 inches of fresh ginger, peeled
  • Seasonings:
  • Add most: Curry powder (some Asian store)
  • Add some: Chili powder (Walmart)
  • Add scant: Cinnamon (Aldi)
  • Could add: Cumin, tumeric, paprika, etc.
  • To taste: Salt
  • To saute:
  • 1 onion
  • 2-3 shallots
  • Sweet peppers
  • To saute with:
  • 2-3 tbsp butter
  • Olive oil
  • Could add sesame oil as finisher
  • To add:
  • 1 can tomato paste concentrate + ~1/8-1/4 cup of tomato sauce
  • 1 can chickpeas
  • 1 package frozen spinach
  • Soy sauce (only add at end)
  1. Peel small head of garlic and chop ginger root to the same size as the garlic cloves. Add to blender with milk, vinegar, spices and salt. Blend smooth. Taste and adjust seasonings/salt/acid.
  2. Combine marinade and crumbled/chopped tofu in bowl. Set aside.
  3. Mise all vegetables en place while the minion you sent to urgently fetch back more tomato sauce tarries on the way to go shop for bluetooth speakers (you won’t actually need more tomato sauce).
  4. Saute vegetables with butter in large pot. Add onions first, cook slightly, and then add others. Add salt with each addition of vegetables and stir.
  5. When sauteed vegetables are softened and translucent, add or a bit more butter or cooking oil, and bloom the tomato paste. Mix tomato paste in with aromatics.
  6. Bloom the spices. Mix.
  7. Add tofu and marinade, drained chickpeas, drained spinach.
  8. Add soy sauce, additional tomato sauce, or other additions to taste.
  9. Would be really elevated with naan, but whole wheat bread is also good.
  10. No, don’t have work this afternoon, how did you guess?

overheard…or spoken: sPrInTs

“Is it racist to say all the Amish women look alike?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“Kinda hard to look different if your family tree doesn’t branch.”

“Okay everybody, line up with your backs to the wall….we’re gonna do sprints up and down the mat.”
“Not me!”

“So you jump…where does the twisting come in, again?”
“I’m not sure.”

Or spoken: wAtChWoRd

“Just as long as we’re safe about it.”
“Safety is our watchword!”
“….”
“Maybe I meant that safety is our motto. What is a watchword, anyway?”
“I have never heard that term in my life.”
“Oh.”

“Well, green tea and matcha have like theanine in it, it makes the caffeine be less jittery.”
“Matcha….hmmm….it tastes like straight grass.”
“It is an acquired taste…I mean it’s…”
“Grass.”
“Welllllll, you put enough things in it, like honey and vanilla….and peanut butter powder…”
“Heh, peanut butter grass!”
“Well…”

“So going forward make sure to keep the lids on your storage containers. Long-term, it’s gonna keep you from attracting pests…you know, ants, mice, inspectors…”

“You put up with a lot.”
“I absolutely do.”

“Spellcheck does not like ‘cattitude’…it’s trying to say ‘certitude.’ Which I’m also not sure is a word…”

Notes on The Odyssey (2026) per Emily Wilson

Professor Emily Wilson, whose “Tell me about a complicated man” translation of The Odyssey has been somewhat maligned by people who haven’t read it and probably don’t know how to read (I haven’t read it, either…or any of the other translations), opines on Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (2026) movie.

Her critiques very closely align with mine, but at much greater and in-depth length, but I’ll let one phrase boil down the gist of the overall problem: that the interpretation of classical-Greek notions are irrevocably filtered through contemporary American ideas, to their diminishment and utter disappearance. Yes, some things will need to be retranslated and reinterpreted because the world of three thousand years ago is much different from the world today…but human nature hasn’t. When you fundamentally disregard, ignore, and change main aspects of the humans who were depicted in a story about them once upon a time, you have changed the story and made it something different. And in this case, unworthily so.

Unlike Wilson, I will say that writing the dialogue in Contemporary-Americanese definitely was a negative factor, and not a neutral one. I’m sorry: the past belongs to RP English accents or Mid-Atlantic at best, and formally archaic turns of phrase, I don’t make the rules, it just does.

In favor of the movie: it looks great. Also, Odysseus twanging his bowstring is actually a very cool moment that is justifiably built up across the length of the movie and is a very cool scene. I won’t say it’s the only cool scene in the movie, but it is definitely the most memorable.

Music Monday and readlist

So I basically took all of last week off work for illness, only to get worse at the end of the week and then slightly better over the weekend. Yay. (The NP at the walk-in clinic took one look at Ghost and prescribed antibiotics.)

Watchlist: Assassination Classroom is pure propaganda, and it’s very good stuff. The final season is a little rushed, but overall it sticks the landing. Now attempting Frierien.

Readlist: The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison or somesuch, which is a cozy fantasy romance without–and this is important–the romance bit; How to be a Renaissance Woman by someone; Wee Free Men, The Truth (by Pratchett), and….probably something else I’m forgetting.

Assassination Classroom really is very, very good