STICKY RICE WITH CRISPY TOFU AND BRUSSELS HASH

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My love affair with tofu started somewhere around age 10. My favorite Thai restaurant (which was the only Thai restaurant within a several town radius of my own) served the most perfect fried tofu triangles with peanut sauce. The tofu was crunchy on the outside and moist and simply flavored within. Smothered in rich peanut sauce and quickly dipped in the restaurant’s bright nuoc cham, each bite was an adventure for my inexperienced palate.

This flawless little appetizer is the reason I’ve stuck with making endless rounds of mediocre tofu for decades, ever in the search of some cooking method that would replicate that early food memory. I’ve shallow-fried, deep-fried and roasted infinite sheet trays. I’ve drained and pressed tofu overnight in the refrigerator, frozen and thawed it, and worked with every texture from silken to extra firm. I’ve quick-marinated and left tofu to sit with seasoning for several days before cooking. While much of these efforts came with some reward, the texture has always been…meh.

It wasn’t until I came upon a recipe from Cookies and Kate that I discovered the merits of cornstarch.

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SLOW ROASTED VEGETABLES AND HOW TO USE THEM

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Now that the weather is a bit cooler, slow roasting vegetables is my ideal type of weekend prep – a couple of sheet trays loaded with barely prepped produce, an oven set to a low temperature and a long cooking time that leaves little room for error or need for attention. Slow roasted vegetables are luxurious in texture and intense in flavor. Almost all vegetables can be cooked this way (though maybe not the potato family) and can be used in a multitude of dishes. I’m sharing how I used four of them below.
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A Guide to Squash: How to Choose and Cook Gourds

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If you’ve walked around your local store you can’t help but notice a few things: pumpkin spice everything, halloween candy, and squash! I’d love to do a guide to the best halloween candy but that’s for another day. I’ve compiled a guide to help you determine which squash is best for your recipe and exactly how it should be cooked. The cool thing about these fall and winter gourds is they last a really long time, like six weeks to even a few months. And guess what? They’re technically fruit because they have seeds! Let’s get started.

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How To Make Homemade Sushi

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One of my favorite things about cooking is playing with my food. Composing a salad, the perfect toast or (in this case) sushi, allows me to have fun each step of the way!  For some, making your own sushi can sound daunting, but it’s actually simple. You don’t even need a sushi mat to make it (although it helps).

In this recipe, I made a vegan sweet potato and avocado sushi roll. Sushi is versatile, so play up your favorite flavor combinations! For the gals at What We Eat, we constantly make many variations of a carrot and avocado salad. So, in light of that inspiration, here is what we came up with! 

What you’ll need:

A clean dish towel

Plastic wrap

A bowl of cold water (to help the rice not stick to your hands)

Sushi mat 

Ingredients

Nori sheets

2 cups sushi rice, cooked and cooled with a splash of seasoned rice vinegar 

Julienned Vegetables of choice (I did sweet potato, cucumber, daikon, avocado, cilantro)

Method:

  1. Place a big square of plastic wrap on top of a sushi mat and place on top of a dish towel. (The towel is there to help with the mess). Place a single piece of nori on top of the plastic.

2. With wet hands, place a decent size scoop of the rice onto the nori and press down until even thickness throughout. The water will help the sushi rice to not stick to your hands. Life hack!

3. Add vegetables of choice in a straight line about ⅓ of the way in. Sprinkle with a bit of salt and top with cilantro.

4. Now the fun part! Using the sushi mat and plastic as a guide, tightly roll the sushi. Make sure the pressure is even when you roll to help prevent lumps. (Note: Chef hands in dire need of a paraffin treatment!!)

5. Allow to sit for 10 minutes rolled in the plastic before cutting.

6. Slice sushi into 8 pieces and enjoy dipped in your favorite sauce.

With Love,

Rian

 

 

How to Prep Kale

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https://vimeo.com/212821936/settings

Someone once told me you have to soak kale for an hour and allow it to dry out on a kitchen towel for another hour before chopping it, which is why I spent many years avoiding it. Ordering kale in restaurants felt like such a luxury. Since then I’ve obviously done a little more research and that method has since been debunked, however there was definitely a time in my life when I thought prepping kale was a ridiculously arduous task. This got me thinking; what if other people had received similarly faulty and perplexing information about kale prep and perhaps this was why our clients often ask for extra prepped kale? So, today, we’re here to demystify the steps to perfectly prepped kale. And I promise it’s not as complicated as you’re making it out to be.

The things I’ve learned about prepping kale: buy a salad spinner, the stems are not really edible (unless you cook them or chop them finely), roll the leaves up like a sushi roll or burrito, slice it as thin as possible and massage it just a little with some oil and salt or extra vinaigrette.

It’s no surprise that kale is one of our favorite greens, not only for it’s health benefits but it’s heartiness as well. Prepped kale is a great option for people that like to keep things in their fridge all week. Our team preps it out and uses it as the last salad on our client’s weekly menus because it stays green and crunchy for a long time, sometimes as long as a week and a half. But if you’ve eaten a bad batch of kale you know that there’s nothing worse than getting a solid chunk of stem in your mouth. This is why kale prep is important.


To de-stem kale, hold the kale stem with one hand and strip the greens with the other. Next, lay the kale flat on your cutting board with with the tip facing you. Roll it up from front to back and hold it in place with one hand. With your knife slice the kale thinly in one fluid motion without sawing at the greens (in chef terms this is called a chiffonade).

Next it’s time to rinse. Kale is one of the dirtiest greens with lots of nooks and crannies so salad spinners are pretty much a necessity if you want a good clean and don’t feel like spending a good portion of your prep time straining and blotting your greens with paper towels (been there). We like to wash our kale after it’s been stripped and chopped because it’s easier to transport from board to spinner. Be sure not to over handle the kale because it will start to soften and wilt. This is only important if you wish to store your prepped kale in the fridge for as long as possible.

If you’re planning on serving it right away, you’ll probably want to massage it. If you don’t think you’re a fan of kale, it’s probably because you haven’t massaged it. This is a technique for softening kale to make it easier to eat and gives the dressing a better grip. You can do this with a little vinaigrette or a sprinkle of olive oil and a pinch of salt. Don’t get crazy with it, once you feel your kale start to break down stop.

If you’re like me and you hate throwing ingredients away, you’re probably wondering what to do with the leftover stems. These are great chopped up and sautéed in a stir-fry or frittata. Making a soup? Add it in with your onion, celery, etc. for a little extra crunch.

For this video we used lacinato kale (dinosaur kale or Tuscan kale) but you can use with technique for any variety of kale. You can also use this technique when you’re prepping chard or collards.

Once you’ve mastered your prep, here are a few of our favorite kale salads. Hope this how-to opens you up to a world of delicious-kale-salad-possibility!

With love, Charlotte

  • Kale Salad with Pecorino and Walnuts – https://smittenkitchen.com/2013/08/kale-salad-with-pecorino-and-walnuts/
  • Kale and Pecorino Salad with Ricotta Salata (we usually swap out crumbled goat cheese for the ricotta salata) – https://smittenkitchen.com/2014/03/kale-and-quinoa-salad-with-ricotta-salata/
  • Raw Tuscan Kale Salad (add avo) – http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/raw-tuscan-kale-salad-recipe.html
  • Kale Market Salad – http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/kale-market-salad-recipe.html
  • Northern Spy’s Kale Salad (a good “gateway” kale salad with all of that cheese!) – https://food52.com/recipes/15584-northern-spy-s-kale-salad
  • Lamon-Garlic Kale Salad (add avo) – https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1015707-lemon-garlic-kale-salad
  • Kale Salad with Dates, Parmesan and Almonds (make extra vinaigrette) – http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/kale-salad-with-dates-parmesan-and-almonds-51137020