Still house sitting, which as you can imagine is pretty rough, laying by the pool and all, making sure it doesn’t get lonely. This menu has all the elements of an Ina Garten Barefoot Contessa episode, sans her fabulous cadre of pastel-sweatered, flower-loving homosexuals (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Oh well, a girl can dream.
After making egg salad last week for my little friend Emel, its been on my mind. Crumbled tofu with some turmeric does a good job masquerading as scrambled eggs so why not egg salad. Alicia Silverstone has a recipe in The Kind Life so we followed that one, right down the the crustless tea sandwich presentation (just in case the Queen pops over).
Tofu Egg Salad Sandwiches a la the Kind Life:
2 packs firm tofu, 2 small onions, 2 celery, 2T soy, 1T oil, 1t turmeric, 1/2t salt, 1t+Vegenaise, wheat bread
Mash the tofu in a bowl (leaving it chunky), add diced onions, celery, soy, salt, turmeric and mix. Stir in Vegenaise and refrigerate.
We cut the crusts off for a refined presentation.
The egg salad was a perfectly reasonable facsimile. The turmeric gave it perfect color while the onion and celery gave it texture and flavor. The more you drain the tofu the more Vegenaise you can appropriately add without getting to "moist" of a final product. No doubt about it, these were a hit, and very, very easy to make.
The next recipe sounded perfect for a hot, sunny day by the pool. Fresh mango summer rolls from VWAV (pg.84), w/Thai Dipping Sauce (pg.85) is the kind of dish that really doesn’t require a recipe, but that sort of thing usually doesn’t get in our way. That way if it ain’t tasty it surely wouldn’t be our fault—blame the book! Its all in the prep work here, very labor intensive. In fact it aggravated a certain someone’s achy back. We truly suffer for art. Anyway start with:
2 mango, peeled and slice into matchsticks
1c. seedless cucumber, matchsticks
½ c cilantro leaves
1 package thin rice noodles
¼ c peanuts, finely chopped
Rice paper wrappers
Thai Dipping Sauce
Boil water, add noodles, remove from heat and let soak about 10 minutes. Drain and rinse under cold water and transfer to a bowl.
Fill a bowl with hot tap water and lay out your ingredients.
Then in assembly line fashion, soak a wrapper or two until soft, add some noodles in lower two-thirds of the roll, top with some peanuts, lay out a few mango and cucumber strips, and top with a few cilantro leaves.
Fold in the sides, roll the bottom of the wrapper over the filling.
Repeat until you don’t feel like doing anymore!
Thai Dipping Sauce
¼ c. rice wine vinegar
¼ c. water
1t chili oil
1 garlic, minced
3T roasted peanuts, chopped
1 ½ t sugar
Mix all ingredients together and chill.
The summer rolls were fresh and tasty. We were a bit worried about the dipping sauce due to its appearance (it looked like dirty dishwater with grease floating on the top). It worked with the neutral roll fillings though, providing a pretty tart (and a little heat and sweet). We added a bit of natural peanut butter to try to mimic the creamy consistency of the photo provided in the book. It was not to be, this was no peanut sauce. In any case it tasted good and just for some variety we set out some Sweet Chili Sauce and our VERY SPICY homemade Mango Habanero Hot Sauce for a trifecta of dipping pleasure. Soy sauce probably would have worked well too.
Finally in honor of strawberry season it seemed like the perfect time for a Strawberry-Spinach salad. Nothing too crazy here, just a few ingredients, tossed lightly at the last minute and voila’, Ina eat your heart out.
For the strawberry-spinach salad, we used a carton of baby spinach, a bunch of sliced strawberries, some slivered almonds and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.
The dressing was a teaspoon or two of: Dijon mustard, Strawberry-Rhubarb jam and agave nectar whisked with about ¼ c lemon juice, a splash each of sherry vinegar, white wine vinegar and raspberry vinegar, then slowly whisked with about 1c olive oil. Finish with salt and pepper.
Good salad, perhaps greater than the sum of their simple parts. The strawberries were so ripe and juicy (and cheap at the Asian market!) that it only took a little dressing to moisten the salad. The strawberries were sweet, the dressing was tart and the nuts and seeds were crunchy. Too easy. Probably would even just whisk lemon juice, raspberry vinegar and oil next time. The other stuff was good in there but probably not even necessary.
So to wrap up a day at the pool, egg salad is a keeper perhaps with the addition of some fresh herbs. Mango summer rolls are a great idea, no recipe necessary. And Strawberry-Spinach salad is all about the fresh strawberries and, next time, an even simpler dressing.
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