Tofu Banh Mi Salad

I've had this salad stuck in my head for a while.  It's sweet and spicy and crisp and fresh and it mimics my all-time favorite sandwich.  I've proclaimed my love for the tofu banh mi pretty loudly on this blog. Nearly a year and a half ago, I wrote up the recipe for the sandwich.  One of my first posts was just about how much I like these sandwiches, without a recipe or anything, just "Hey, you know what's a good sandwich? Tofu banh mi."  

A banh mi is pickled carrots and daikon, cucumber, jalepeno, cilantro, a wee bit of mayo or vegenaise, maybe some sriracha and some kind of protein* which in my case is always tofu.  Sweet fried tofu.  

The good rolls from the real Vietnamese bakeries are made with rice flour and are crisp on the outside and soft inside and perfect for balancing the complex flavors of this salad.  

But something about it was calling for salad-ization.  Rolls are great, but lettuce works. And a soft, crisp-edged roll might interfere with the magic act that is sweet tofu with pickled veg and spicy peppers and cilantro.  That's a lot to work with and you want to taste it all. So it was time to make it into a salad. 

Let's call this Same Dinner, Different Day, even though the other day was in April of 2011.  Please don't hold on to leftover tofu that long. 

Same Dinner Different Day: Pineapple Fried Rice

Pineapple salsa is good, but it can be a lot of flavor and maybe you don't want it tearing up the inside of your mouth for two consecutive days.  Cooking the pineapple takes out a lot of the sting, and turns yesterday's taco topper into today's one-wok dinner. 

B.L.P. Bacon Lettuce and Pepper Sandwich

 

It's not a recipe so much as it's a sandwich.  I had that harissa mayo, and I wanted a vehicle to apply it to my face.  

Really, what it is is Same Dinner Different Day.

Ginger Peanut Tofu Stir Fry

 

It's spring, and there's no denying it.  It's been spring pretty much since autumn, but now, for sure, it's spring.  It's not just the short sleeves and outdoor dining that tells me, either, it's the new veggies and the flowering trees.  So it celebrate this unexpected yet totally happening seasonal shift, I bought pea shoots. 

Pea shoots are like sprouts, plus greens.  Here's a bit more information on them, if you're up for that sort of thing. 

I didn't go out looking for pea shoots, I actually went looking for flowers to plant. Because, you know, it's spring.  We took our first trip out to this year's CSA, Greensgrow (three CSAs in three years!), and they had some veg for sale.  They had some of the wintry veg I've become accustomed to in the past few months, but they also had scallions and pea shoots.  I should have bought the scallions, they'd have gone great in this recipe, but at least I grabbed the pea shoots.

At lunch they were used in a salad and for the next night's dinner, they were the star of this stir fry.  Also, yesterday's salad dressing became today's marinade.  You know what we call that?

Same Dinner Different Day: Ricotta Quiche Muffins

Ricotta quiche muffins?  Seriously, I had a hard time figuring out a name for this that made even that much sense.  It's muffin shaped, and has a lot of ricotta, and it's sort of the texture of quiche.   You're welcome to call it whatever you want. 


A few days ago I made the eggplant rollatini for an event.  Only I misjudged in the doubling/tripling, and ended up with way more ricotta and swiss chard than I needed.  Nearly two cups more.   It's about a cup of ricotta, a quarter cup of mozzarella, a half cup of swiss chard and a bit of black pepper. 

Same Dinner Different Day: Bok Choy and Tofu Stir Fry

So the other day we had those bok choy and tofu wontons, and I made too much filling.   Today it's same dinner, different day. 

See, it's a thing.  It even has it's own logo.   


I've mentioned before that I'm pretty much not going to heat up yesterday's dinner for tonight's.  I'm going to make something else.  I'm not anti-leftover; I cook more than we can eat most meals so that we have lunches and freezer food.  But freezer food is for later.  Later, I can eat the enchiladasagna in the freezer.   Not the same week that I make it.  

But while I don't want to have leftovers for dinner, I'm perfectly happy to have same dinner different day.  That's different.  

Bok Choy and Tofu Dumplings

I just signed up for Winter Harvest, because I want the stress of CSA veg year-round.  It's a buying club, it's not like I'll end up with veg I didn't choose.  I like that it starts right when this farmshare ends, and goes through most of the boring frozen vegetable season.  Last year, because I had so much extra farmshare veg, I had a freezer full of fresh-frozen veg to get me through winter, and it lasted until about March.  This year, not so much.  So I'll have Winter Harvest, and then I'll probably end up farm-marketing for a few weeks until my next CSA starts.   Looking forward to not having much of a gap.  I'd like to go to the grocery store just once every month or two for olive oil and quinoa and junk food. 

On my list of things to do with farmshare veg at the end of the week:

Pizza

Quesadillas

Pasta

Salad

Frittata

Egg Rolls

Dumplings

Dumplings, wontons, pot stickers, whatever, this isn't an authentic version of any one of them, it's just that I had too much baby bok choy and it was losing it's crispness, and then these carrots weren't all that firm, and it was time to stuff it inside of something.

I had frozen some tofu a while back, because that helps the texture get more "meaty."  If you've been served tofu in a restaurant and asked yourself why your at-home tofu doesn't have the same firmness and substance, it's likely that the restaurant froze it.   Tofu masquerading as chicken tends to be frozen.  So, a while back (months), I threw half a block in the freezer.

When I unwrapped it, it looked like this:

Ginger Peanut Salad Dressing

Look, there's not a lot about the salad-dressing-making-process that looks good in pictures.

"Ooh, look how emulsified it is!"

And I could go through every bowl in the house dividing up my ingredients to photograph them, but then I'd have dishes to do. And that's one thing I never photograph and share with ya'll: the piles of dishes that accumulate. You see, back in the day we had a fairly easy "you cook you don't clean" rule, so I cooked and Sous Chef Brian did the dishes. Now it's not so easy. Usually, when he's around, he's cooking with me. And there's no one else to do the dishes. My cat Sabrina is polydactyl, and we've tried to get her involved, but just having thumbs doesn't mean you're going to be on top of the housework. I know, because I have thumbs too.

So instead of pretty little bowls with impossibly measured-out ingredients, you get a bunch of stuff crammed in a jar. Seriously. Scroll down if you don't believe me.

All of this is to let you know, I know that the pictures I'm about to show you aren't appetizing. Here's the problem. You NEED to make this dressing. I could tell you in text, but that's what recipe cards are for. What am I, a recipe card? No. The reality is, I have no clue how much of whatever goes into a dish until it's done. Setting up "in advance" is a lie. Bear with me here, and make this dressing.

Same Dinner Different Day: Chicken Avocado Tequila Salad

Tonight I faced a tired avocado and already wilted cilantro, leftover from Sunday's dinner.  So I made the same salad, but with chicken.  It's a chicken breast, coated in the same stuff I'd use for fajitas (cayenne, paprika, onion, garlic, salt, pepper) and grilled.

Same dinner, different day.  My avocado was softer, making it more a part of the dressing than the salad, which we both appreciated.

Seitan Tacos and Tequila Avocado Salad

mmmmm wheat meat.

Also, I finally get to use tequila as a food.