Day 12: Tofu Florentine from Veganomicon
Today I woke up and realized I ran out of bagels. Something you should know about me is that I highly prefer savory breakfast options. My everyday breakfast is an everything bagel with hummus with nutritional yeast sprinkled on top, and when I run out of bagels I get sad, because the next easiest thing is oatmeal, and most of the time I don’t want that for breakfast (though I would gladly eat it for lunch).
Anyway, I was out of bagels, so I figured I would try cooking a savory breakfast recipe from one of my many books. Let me tell you - there are a LOT of pancake, waffle, french toast, baked oatmeal, overnight oats, etc. etc. recipes in some of these vegan cookbooks, but the variety of savory recipes is often lacking. I really liked that Veganomicon had so many savory options in the brunch section - they take up more than half of the section, and this Tofu Florentine did not seem too daunting to whip up at 7:30 in the morning. And they’re not kidding about this being the “Ultimate Vegan Cookbook.” Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero have packed this book with a ton of recipes, tips, and vegan cooking basics that are a joy to read through even if you aren’t planning on cooking any of them.
Tofu Florentine is a vegan take on eggs Florentine, which from what I’ve read is basically eggs Benedict but with spinach instead of ham. Florentine in this case apparently just means “with spinach.” Maybe you know all of this already, but I did not! I was a big fan of eggs Benedict back in the day, so a vegan variation seemed fun.
There’s a little bit of flipping back and forth while making this recipe as it involves 2 other recipes in the book - the Cheezy Sauce, which is a garlicky, lemony nutritional yeast cheese sauce, and Basic Broiled Tofu, which is a garlicky, lemony…broiled tofu. There was a lot of garlic and lemon going on here and to be honest it was a little much for me first thing in the morning; maybe that’s why it’s a brunch recipe. The Cheezy Sauce is so intense and flavorful that I could have happily skipped the broiled tofu recipe and just pan fried the tofu. I served everything on multigrain toast instead of an English muffin, and overall it was delightful. Though the recipe says the tomatoes are just for color, I added a bunch of tomatoes for both color and flavor reasons. The sauce was not trying to be Hollandaise sauce, and that was OK with me, though I would like to try a recipe for vegan eggs Benedict that has a vegan Hollandaise in the future. I believe Edgy Veg has one, but I have been too lazy to attempt it so far.
