Vegan Salad Nicoise

I work in a land where splitting hairs is darn near a job title. In academia, people make their living with sometimes vary narrow expertise. Dissertations hinge on factors as small as that guy believed such and such war was a total failure and I believe it is sort of a failure. In saying this, I am not above it. There are plenty of meetings where I am right there in the verbal melee of splitting hairs. Don’t get me started on the history of cotton…

Food culture has its own level of splitting hairs. Anyone ever said I would only ever eat ____. Most of us have something that is seriously anathema (conventional strawberries, jackfruit only if I am in Asia). One of the really fancy splitting hairs contingent are the cultural purists—those who maintain that certain traditional recipes are only right if they follow ancient prescribed formulas. And here I am torn. Professionally I am totally pro-splitting hairs. And personally, I am con-following food rules. Heck, I eat mango with feta and make ramp kimchi.

Last night we had a vegan salad that is clearly a close friend of salade nicoise. Perhaps her hippie cousin? We dressed the whole thing with olive oil, vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard and chopped 'fines herbes' ( parsley, chives, chervil, thyme and tarragon); which is all very kosher in the land of Nice. We avoided lettuce as many a purist suggests (demands?). But, we also avoided anything from the sea and eggs for that matter. For protein sources we went with broiled tofu and tomato braised chickpeas. And, it was delicious.



Recipe
Vegan Salad Nicoise
First, marinate firm tofu sliced in ½ inch thick pieces:
2 T pomegranate molasses
1t agave nectar
A splash braggs liquid aminos
Olive oil
Chopped chervil
Chopped thyme
Chopped tarragon
¼ cup water
2 T red wine vinegar
2 cloves garlic minced

Then, boil small red potatoes, steam asparagus and green beans. When still warm, dress each with olive oil, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard, minced garlic, and chopped 'fines herbes' ( parsley, chives, chervil, thyme and tarragon). Chill each separately.

When the veggies are chilling, broil the tofu under a high broiler for 12 minutes basting periodically.

At the same time, simmer chickpeas with red onions, 2 T tomato paste, thyme and cayenne.

Quarter some cherry tomatoes. (I didn’t dress them but just because.) Rinse some radishes.

Scour your fridge for some olives. We only had kalamata.

Arrange and then eat.

This was also my One Local Summer dish for the week.  Sadly our CSA has had some major problems with their crop but we are still shopping at the local farmers market for our food.  The tofu is from Cleveland Tofu Company, the veggies and the garlic in the dressing were bought at North Union market at Chagrin Falls with the exclusion of the tomatoes, olives and the chickpeas.  My favorite of the veggies were the radishes from Salash Farm.  (This farm has the best spinach too which we bought and used for pizza a few weeks ago.)  The herbs for the salad were from our yard.  The dinner was paired with bread from On The Rise.  

Corn Salad--Come on everyone's doing it.

There are grilled corn salads popping up everywhere so I thought I might not post this, but it was so good I decided I might as well meditate up the deliciousness. The process was simple, microwave three ears of corn with the leaves intact. When cooked, I placed the husked corn on a grill pan and then pressed the corn with another cast iron skillet. After a little snap crackle and pop in the skillet, I freed those sweet kernals from their cobs, added thinly sliced onion, quarter super 100 tomatoes, rice wine vinegar and grapeseed oil. Check out the picture--easy, breezy covergirl. Bring on the CSA basket, I am ready for more.

Tomato Salad

A little while ago, I was reading a post at Gild the (Voodoo)lily about how time gets away from you. That was forty minutes ago. What have I done in this time? I can't exactly say. She had some link about a girl in lucite heels, that lead me to something else (what, I can't remember), then I linked around to some food blogs, and now I am finally here. Point being? Time just disappears. It is not even like sands through an hourglass. The older I get, the less tangible time becomes. I don't even have a minute to feel those grains between my fingers. 1/2 hour seems like nothing when as a child it was an eternity.


Anyway, my point is that tonight. I needed a dinner that took no time. The baby had gone to bed, Maybelle's dad was working and it was just me. We had one "so ugly its a stunner" heirloom tomato from our CSA. So, I sliced it thick, added olive oil, shards of hungarian pepper and purple onions. And, after reading about Dog Hill Kitchen's tomato and mint salsa, I decided to add mint to the lot. Mint really worked with this. Seems like not enough for dinner? Well, I also had some bread to sop up the juices.

Pasta Salad, I mean Salad with Pasta

The other day, I was eating egg noodles, and I had this revelation that a cool salad could be very nice with addition of pasta. I was sort of thinking about the different courses that you get at an Italian restaurant--iceberg lettuce salad, an entree (like eggplant parmigiana) and a side of pasta.

What if all those elements are combined? Typing this now, I know it sounds like some sort of stoner fantasy. But I mean instead, what if you tipped all those proportions into a more healthy proportion?


For the first incarnation, I made a salad of watercress, arugula, parley and oregano leaves topped with tomatoes and oregano flowers. Having dressed it with lime and grapeseed oil, I topped it with warm tortellini, using High on the Hog's egg noodle recipe, stuffed with Greek feta and Greek mizithra cheese. Finally, this got a deserving kiss of parmesan, and voila pasta salad.

Arugula and Mango Salad with White Chocolate and Sriracha Vinaigrette with Habenero Pecorino

You know that old game telephone where you whisper jack sprat ate no fat in your friend's ear and she says bacon fat is not bad to her friend and then when it comes back to you the phrase is turkey bacon is evil.

Well, that is how blog recipes are. You read one recipe and tweak it. Recently, I read a crazy recipe that involved white chocolate in salad dressing at cook eat FRET that she got from The Culinary Sherpas (love that name). The promised butteriness of the dressing was there.

However, unlike ceF, i was not pairing this with luscious duck, so I wanted to make a meal of this salad. I added adzuki sauteed with coriander, diced onion, diced carrot, chili shrimp, and habenero pecorino. This crazy salad was delcious paired with a beer. I hope both parties don't mind my bastardization.

Mango Feta Salad (When will I leave the Poor Fruit Alone?)

I love pushing fruit to the limit. Cooking a strawberry, kimchi-ing rhubarb, grilling an apricot--I am guilty of all these things. And, I am an unrepentent practioner of the savory fruit arts. Of course, the misses can be terrible; so much of the commercial raspberry vinaigrettes are criminally cloying. But, of the sucesses, there is a certain elegance born of the counterpoints that are possible in savory fruit dishes. I am trying to pack and prepare for a business trip, but I wanted to post my new power snack--Mango Feta Salad (sliced mango, basil, feta, olive oil, black pepper and sea salt.) Making it took less time than typing up this post.

And, while I am away, we will be in the final days of the Italy Food Lovers event. I am in a close race with another very nice recipe. If you are interested in my Ramp Gnocchi, vote for me.

(To do so, http://www.italymag.co.uk/italy/food-drink/recipe-competition/spring-pasta-2008 click on the Ramp Gnocchi, at the bottom of the entry there are pictures of flames, click on the one that is furthest right.)