Food Network Friday!

...on Saturday...
I was so excited to participate in Food Network Friday, which is done over on Vegan Appetite. I'm so happy I got to join in! This was really a fun experience. What is done is a recipe is chosen from the Food Network Website, and we veganize/take our own spin on it! This recipe was Pretzel-Fried Steak with Mango-onion Gravy by Aarti Sequeria. You can see everyone else's version here!


My version was transformed to a Sourdough pretzel baked Tofu with Sweet Potato Onion Gravy.
I chose tofu because, well, I love tofu! I looked up cube steak (I had no idea what it was) and it was just a weird, rectangular looking piece of meat. I think seitan would have been really good, but I decided to go the tofu way! Also, the gravy called for mango.. I love mango, but I'm not one to love fruit/anything really sweet in my food so I opted for sweet potatoes, which are about as much sweet as I could handle in a dish. Also, I decided to bake my version.. I don't often fry because I just don't feel it's necessary! I sometimes do want a specific dish that is fried, but I thought this would be really good baked, and it was! I also changed up some of the flavors. Other than that, I basically followed her method, here's what I did:


Ingredients:
For the "steak":
1 block tofu
1.25 cups sourdough pretzels
1/2 cup unsweetened soy milk
1 T flax meal
1/2 cup tapioca flour
2 T Nutritional yeast
1 T dried parsley
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp smoked paprika


Gravy:
1 small onion, diced
2 T seasoned flour
1.5 cups vegan chicken broth


First of all, press the tofu for as long as possible. Mine pressed for about 4 hours, I just started pressing it that morning. I sliced it into six pieces and let it press on a clean kitchen towel. You can see here how firm it got.

First, you make your three dipping bowls. 1) I ground up the pretzels in a food processor, not to powder, but small enough to be able to coat the tofu.
2) Make the seasoned flour by mixing the flour with the remaining spice ingredients. You will reserve about 3 T of this to make the gravy afterwards.
3) I made the "egg" by combining the soymilk and flax meal and letting it congeal a little.
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Ok, so you take the tofu pieces and dip them in the flour, coating completely, then quickly dip into the flax "egg" wash, and then into the pretzel pieces. I then baked this at 350° for 15 minutes on each side.


While this was cooking, I made the gravy. I sliced one one small onion, put it in a sauce pan with some water and let it sweat until tender.  I then added in the 3 T of the reserved seasoned flour and let that toast a little and then I added in the vegan chicken broth. I used the Celifibr brand.  I then whisked the gravy until it thickened.


I served mine with some sugar snap peas.