Greetings Gastronauts! This is Keef Cooks, I'm Keef and today I'm going to show you how
to do another vegan recipe. Vegan ravioli with marinaded tofu and spinach.
And a tomato sauce.
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So I'm dedicating this to Dominic Richardson and his girlfriend who has recently become
vegetarian, possibly vegan and he'd asked me to do some tofu recipes. There will be
more. Be warned! And also for my friend in Madrid, Ana. Hola guapa! Who's trying a vegan
diet for health reasons. Yeah.
So, tofu is a sort of compressed thing made from soya beans and it tastes of absolutely nothing
but what it does do is soak up flavour like a sponge. So you do need to add something
to it, you can't just have it raw, unless you like really bland food. And I don't.
So for this recipe I'm doing a vegan version of your standard Italian ragu bolonese ravioli.
And it's dead simple and dead tasty actually. So let's do it!
So, tofu is notorious for having no flavour whatsoever, so what I'm going to do is marinade
it for a couple of hours before we use it. I've got a block of tofu, that's about 400
grams and I'll probably use about half of that. I've got 3 tablespoons of rapeseed oil
or olive oil, a tablespoon of white wine vinegar, a tablespoon of soy sauce, the juice of half
a lemon, 2 cloves of garlic and a teaspoon of salt. And, a sprig of oregano. If you haven't
got fresh, obviously you can use dried, probably about a teaspoon. So what we need to do is
mince the garlic, get the juice out of half of that lemon and chop up the oregano.
So, whisk all the ingredients together. Set that on one side and let's chop up the tofu.
Now some recipes say that you should press the tofu to remove liquid from it, but actually
this is pretty firm, and I think that will do as it is. Tofu comes in a range of textures
or firmnesses, from, it's called 'silken', which is pretty sloppy, right up to 'construction
grade' that you can build houses out of.
So, I'm going to put that in a plastic bag, pour on the marinade, and leave it to soak
up the flavour for a couple of hours.
Now we're going to make the pasta and it's exactly the same recipe that you would use
for normal pasta, but to veganise it you leave out the eggs. That's it. Amazing!
I've got 300 grams of pasta flour, 180 mils of water, a tablespoon of rapeseed oil or
olive oil, a quarter of a teaspoon of turmeric and half a teaspoon of salt. The reason for
the turmeric is just colouring, really, to make it a little bit yellowy like proper egg
pasta. So, first thing to do, just mix all that together.
And it's going to be pretty stiff, which is why Italian mammas all have forearms like
Popeye. Now I'm going to tip this out onto the worktop, and you've got to knead it for
at least 10 minutes, till it's become silky and smooth. And at this point you might think
that will never happen. But it will, if you persevere.
So I'm just doing the same kind of kneading that I would do for bread dough - which is
to stretch it, fold it into 3, twist it through 90 degrees and repeat the process. That's
about what we need - it does actually feel quite silky. So I'm going to wrap that in
plastic film and let it rest for half an hour.
Right, we're ready to start assembling the ravioli, so I'm going to begin with half of
the dough, and we want a bit of flour on the worktop. And, unless you've got a pasta machine
- you lucky thing! That would make this really easy, but I haven't got a pasta machine at
the moment, so I'm going to roll it by hand, and...yeah. Basically you want to get it as
thin as you can - 1 or 2 millimetres really. That's, what, an eighth of an inch? Not very much.
That's nice and thin, so now I'm just going to cut some circles, discs using a pastry
cutter. You can make your ravioli any shape you want really. So I'm going to start building
my ravioli, and I'm just going to place a spinach leaf on each one. No we just pop a
cube of the lovely tofu on each one, moisten the edge with water, take another disc and
just press it down all around to make a good seal. And lift up the edges. And then just
put that on some kitchen paper to dry out. They need to dry out, not totally dry out,
but just dry for about an hour.
So I'm going to make a nice simple tomato sauce to go with the ravioli. So I've got
a carton of passata, that's 500 grams. Actually it's not full, there's about 300 grams in
there. A medium onion, 3 cloves of garlic, half a teaspoon of ground black pepper, and
a teaspoon of dried basil, also a bit of fresh basil. This is all we've got left, boo. If
you've got lots of fresh basil, you'd probably want about a handful.
Usual drill, top and tail the onion, and peel it. Then slice it and chop the slices into
bits. Now we want to peel the garlic and mince it. Just whack it in the crusher.
Now I've got a good glug of rapeseed oil, or you could use olive oil, heating on medium
heat and I'm just going to soften the onion and garlic. Now I'll add the passata. If you
don't have any of this, you can use a can of tomatoes just as well, 'cos they're going
to get pureed in the end anyway.
And the pepper and basil, and stir that altogether and let it simmer for a few minutes.
Let's have a little taste. Yep, that is actually quite bitter, as tomatoes sometimes can be.
So what we need to do is just add about a quarter of a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.
And that should hopefully neutralize the acidity. Yep, that's better. And now it needs a pinch
of salt, and actually, half a teaspoon of sugar.
So, it's all about balancing your flavours with this sauce. So what I'll do is whack
that in the blender and turn it into a nice smooth sauce. So here's the blended sauce,
and I'm going to pass it through a fine sieve. You'll need to use the back of a big spoon
to force it through. And you'll be left with a kind of pulp inside, which is no good to
anybody, so throw that away. And don't forget to scrape the good stuff off the back side of the sieve.
OK, time to put it all together. So I'm heating up the tomato sauce. I've got my ravioli - 7
of them. I actually had enough to make about 16, and I was aiming to make 8 today, but I broke
one. Anyway, a big pan of water with some oil added and some salt, and we're waiting
for that to come to a nice rolling boil.
OK, the water's boiling, so let's pop in the ravis. And these need to cook for 3 minutes.
Right, 4 ravioli and a dribble of tomato sauce. OK, let's give it a try.
Well, do you know what? That's actually pretty good. If you didn't know that was tofu, you might actually
enjoy it. It's lovely! Teehee.
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