Asian Food for Christmas Eve

While most people are gathering around the tree with their families and destressing from a crazy month of shopping, cooking, and baking, I'm sitting at home with a week of break and not too much to do. It's a really good feeling. This has given me a little more time for cooking. While most of the Jews I know go out for Chinese food on Christmas Eve, I opted to stay home today. My parents, however, stopped off at the Asian food center today and picked up the following:

(soy puffs, vermicelli, and wonton wrappers, if you can't tell)

One package was mysteriously labeled, "Soy Puffs" and I decided to use it today. As far as I could tell it was some sort of deep fried tofu. Each puff was about 1-1/2" square. I cooked them in a non-stick pan without any additional oil and they browned a little and released a lot of oil. In the meantime I steamed broccoli and sliced carrots and made the sauce that goes with General Tao's Tofu from the ever-popular vegweb recipe. The result was just as good as any dish I've ever ordered at a Chinese restaurant. The soy puffs were chewy and airy and the sauce was perfect, as it had been every time I've used this recipe.

For dinner, my dad and I made the Scallion Flatbread from Veganomicon. It didn't vary much from other flatbreads I've made and basically tasted like a scallion paratha. I misread the recipe and only added 1/4 tsp of salt instead of 3/4 tsp (this is what I get for reading upside down) so it was a little bland. I didn't have the ingredients to make the dipping sauce, so we just had them plain, which was still pretty good.

Merry Christmas!