Apple Tofu Sauté – Two techniques converged, and the results? A bright, flavorful meal.

Less is definitely more when preparing a dish for potluck. Two weeks ago my friend Morgan made an unseasoned tofu with whole garlic cloves for a dinner party. The shiny white “pudding” poised in the company of a brilliant garnet yam casserole, polenta salad and an array of other colorful bowls, looked anemic by comparison, but was possibly the most talked about dish at the party. 

I tend to overcompensate for tofu’s neutrality by over seasoning. So I did eye her dish with suspicion, which quickly evaporated after the first bite drove me back for seconds.

She told me she cooks it over a very low heat for a long time. Her method differed from how I usually prep tofu for a stir fry or soup; I brown the cubes in sizzling oil, then flavor with Braggs Liquid Aminos, maple syrup and lemon juice. Morgan added no flavoring beyond these fat poached garlic cloves. I loved the simplicity of the flavor for many reasons, foremost, that too often my tummy rejects all the weird food combining that can happen at a potluck dinner.

Then the following week my friend Meg, who swears she’s not adept in the kitchen, (liar) had a stroke of genius when she added diced apple to a vegetable soup. Apple. Who knew?

Last night I employed the two new strategies and the results were excellent. One caveat, I chose firm tofu in place of Morgan’s silken since I was adding vegetables. 

The only catch is that the one essential ingredient is a fine balsamic vinegar. I used Olives Wild raspberry-ginger, white Balsamic vinegar. For this dish I didn’t want to discolor the tofu with a black vinegar. Olives Wild is in Flagstaff, Arizona. My best gal pal Kelly turned me on to it, and fortunately keeps a regular supply flowing my way. Thanks Kel-Kel.

This is a quick meal I made in under 30 minutes. There are few side dishes quicker or as delicious as polenta. Here is an herbaceous polenta that compliments the subtlety of the sauté. 

Herbed Polenta

2 ¼ cups vegetable stock

½ cup polenta

1 tsp. Thyme

1 tsp. Dry French Tarragon

1 tsp. Fresh minced rosemary

2-3 green onions, green part only

1/3 cup grated Parmesan

butter to taste

Boil stock, stir in polenta. Simmer, stirring often until the polenta thickens. This will be barely 5 minutes. Stir in the butter, herbs and Parmesan. Cover until ready to serve. If you use it immediately it will be a soft mash and once covered for a few minutes, it will solidify into more of a cake. I like both ways. If you use fresh thyme or tarragon just double the amount. And go wild with different herbs. Sometimes I don’t have one or the other and replace with parsley, oregano or even cilantro. 

*Notes:

Penzeys Spices: This is where you can procure quality spices and dry herbs. Penzey’s publishes a great catalogue. They include customer recipes and stories. Fun stuff!

Olives Wild: This is where you can order killer vinegars and oils. The site is not operational yet, but there is an email for requesting a list of products. Trust me and just order the raspberry-ginger white balsamic. You can’t go wrong.

Apple Tofu Sauté

2 Tbl. Olive oil

One tub firm tofu cut into 1-inch squares

1 full head of roasted garlic

2 bundles of bok choy or any green leafy thing you like

1 large carrot cut into matchsticks

2 celery stalks cut fine

1 Ambrosia apple, Fuji, Pink Lady or Gala would be fine too

A generous drizzle of Olives Wild raspberry-ginger white balsamic

A sprinkle of sumac, this is a lemony spice. I think lemon pepper would be a suitable substitute.

Heat oil. Sauté tofu squares 5 minutes covered on the lowest heat on your smallest burner. Flip tofu when it is very lightly golden and add roasted garlic and sumac. Simmer uncovered not for another 5 minutes. Drizzle with Balsamic, simmering maybe one more minute. Remove from pan to a bowl, now toss in carrot and celery. Sauté till tender, add bok choy and diced apple. Toss and sauté until the bok choy is bright green but not wilting, maybe 2 minutes. Return tofu with all its yummy juices to the pan and warm for another minute.

Recipe Malfunctions -- When ingredient substitutions fail

Didn't this dish photograph beautifully. I wish it tasted as scrumptious as it looks.

Every curious cook does it: improvisation. We take liberties with someone else's recipe for our own creative appetite. In this case, I didn't have all of the listed ingredients for the Royal Potato Salad in Yotam Ottolenghi's book, Plenty, one of my favorite cookbooks. I've included the recipe link above rather than print it here.

The impulse to make it arose when my husband returned home from work with a container of pickled quail eggs and a dozen fresh. A customer at work raises quail and shared them with him. Apparently these folks sell their eggs out of a parking lot across from Kapaa's Wednesday farmer's market.

I found Ottolenghi's recipe which included quail eggs, but didn't have plain basil for the pesto. What I did have was lemon basil and since the recipe called for sorrel, and sorrel has a lemony flavor, I thought lemon basil would substitute. It didn't. Both my husband and I agree the potatoes taste perfumed.

As if that wasn't enough to change, I also used walnuts in place of pinenuts and roasted garlic in place of raw. Stop shaking your head. I was running amuck in the kitchen. Sometimes three lefts lead to one "right" or so that's my justification for wrong turns.

Then there was the egg boiling debacle.

Ottolenghi suggests boiling them 30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on how raw you like the yolk. I went with 2 minutes and it was too long. A softer yolk would have been much prettier, even if it wouldn't have rescued the dish.

I hadn't intended to post kitchen failures, but then realized I don't know how to use lemon basil. I could Google it, but it'd be more fun if you shared your use of this herb. Thanks for considering.

Cheers Big Ears: Soursop Margaritas with Salty Li Hing Mui Rim

An ugly, delicious fruit deserving of a sexier name, soursop is a slightly sweet, custardy flesh with a hint of grapefruit; my absolute favorite tropical fruit.
My mom and I discovered it first as a juice while cruising the Kapaa Market last spring. One vendor sold little bottles at $3 a pop, so my husband and I planted a tree and this spring have a dozen of the ungainly alien orbs.
They peel easy, take a few minutes to seed and make refreshing smoothies and margaritas. Some of the fruit we freeze in gallon bags, flattening it out so that when needed, we just chisel off a few chunks. We also juice it in our Çhampion so we have a half gallon in the fridge for smoothies.
As for li hing mui powder, try to find it without aspartame and weird red dyes. Sadly, that is all I can find on Kauai at the moment. Mix it with Real Salt, kosher style, available at Hoku Market.
Enjoy!

The California Sunrise Sandwich

Seated at a sun bleached wooden picnic table, we shared our first meal of blue corn chips and Trader Joe’s salsa. Three horses lazed in the shade of a Buckeye tree near a deep steel water trough. Wes was likely the only vegan cattle ranch hand for 200 miles in that cowboy dominated region outside of Porterville, California in the early 90s.

We’d met just weeks before at California Hot Springs. I was there staying in a cabin with girlfriends. He was with an L.A. buddy visiting for the weekend. Wes had fled Southern California four years before in pursuit of a quieter life. Eighteen years later, we live on Kauai, even further from the buzz of all things metropolitan. 

Over the years his contribution to our menu hasn’t grown much. In the 90’s he lived on chips and salsa, interrupted only by a sandwich recipe he developed himself.

California Sunrise Sandwich

Serve open-faced on toast, drizzled with flax oil and a sprinkle of sea salt, then smeared with chunks of avocado, topped with sprouted sunflower seeds and drizzled again, heavily, with the flax oil and more sea salt. 

Most people know the sprout in her later stages of growth, with tender white stems tipped with two bright leaves. The Sunrise Sandwich uses the sprout earlier in germination, well before chlorophyll has softened the texture and greened the flavor. The beige winged youngster has a dominant nutty flavor and more crunch.

Raw sprouted sunflower seeds are hailed for being 25% protein and lavish in zinc and vitamins B, C and E.

Sprouted Sunflower Seeds

Sprout in small batches of ½ to 1 cup. 

The flavor changes dramatically once chlorophyll forms.

Rinse one cup raw organic sunflower seeds. 

Soak overnight on the counter. Rinse, strain, then place colander over a bowl on the counter.

Cover with a kitchen clothe to inhibit sunlight. 

Eat immediately. No waiting or mollycoddling required. 

Tips: 

• Keep them in the colander for daily rinsing, set over a deep bowl for air circulation. If they turn green, toss into the garden.

• Our favorite bread for toasting is the Alvarado Street Bakery Sprouted Rye. A tangy sour dough is also delicious. On Kauai tart sour dough is hard to come by. Trader Joe’s carried our favorite back in the day. 

• Flax oil of choice is Spectrum, but it has a pour spout not easy to control for drizzling. Barlene’s has an easy squeeze style spout but a stronger flavor than Spectrum. That’s why I go to the effort of refilling the Barlene’s bottle with Spectrum flax seed oil. 

Homework

Word problem: How long does it take to move 125 pounds of 83 year-old, moving at approximately .0018 miles per hour, with an opposing wind speed of 10 knots, across a polished wood surface?

If you’re in your mid-to-late 40s, or (ahem) 50, this is a question to ponder.

Mom and I spend a lot of time staring into each others’ eyes: She clenches my shoulders in a vice-grip, concentrating on lifting a foot. I say, “shift your weight.” Her brow creases as she comes up on tiptoe. I sway her back to regain center, then tilt side-to-side, mimicking a walking gait, and she moves toward me. I’ve learned that for the best support, I place her hands on my shoulders and rest my own along her bra line.

When it comes to sitting though, her grip often shifts upward. 

“Mom, you’re hurting me,” I tell her as her hands slip up to my neck. 

The trick is not to rush, which is the challenge. Mom and I move through the world at a different speed now.  The past four years have taught me that much.

Two years ago we graduated from walker to wheelchair. It was not graceful or painless. Mom's spine twists a bit more every year and walking unassisted is no longer possible for her.

We make many clumsy public appearances. Before I expose my ignorance, you must understand the steep learning curve daughters and mothers endure at this juncture in life. Learning to navigate the unfamiliar climate changes of an aging parent is, metaphorically speaking, the Himalaya of life lessons: wrought with crevasses, frostbite and an oxygen-depleted atmosphere caused not by altitude, but from holding one’s breath in frustration. 

On this day four years ago, my sister Sue, mom and I were in front of Bread and Deli in Kukui Grove Shopping Center, with mom at her walker. Sue was behind, (cattle prodding) and I was in front saying, “here girl!” For a moment Sue and I both were distracted and mom slid forward with the walker but without moving her feet. Suddenly she was a plank at 30 degrees, white knuckling the handles with her toes nailed to the concrete. I panicked and pushed the walker toward her to catch the fall. Her eyes were wide, her mouth a tight seam of irritation.

Sue and I stared at each other a moment, then broke into fits of laughter at how close we came to face-planting our mother on cement. 

“You two are idiots,” Mom growled. And rightly so.

Of course this scene could not go unwitnessed. In the window seat of the deli sat a young couple and their baby looking wide-eyed with horror.

Sue and I couldn’t stop laughing. It was the hysteria of those who’ve dealt with a lot of stress and finally a pressure valve had blown.

For those who’ve not lived with an aging parent this may sound like elder abuse. Until you’ve looked under your mother’s hood (and by hood I mean Depends) to change the oil (and by oil I mean, well, you know what I mean), then please suspend judgment.

My dad flew off the planet fast; one week he was peddling his bike to church, the next he was dying in a hospital with a brain tumor. Mom on the other hand, is taking her time. It’s hard and funny; traumatic and utterly intimate. She is falling to pieces with her mind in tact and we are all doing our best to bring compassion to the fore. 

With compassion comes the rigorous care required when dealing with a body shutting down.

In March mom moved in with my husband and I. She’ll be here for four months, then cycle back to the Mainland to live with another daughter. Sitting at the foot of her bed one morning in April as she slowly woke, she looked down the length of the bed at me and said, “I wonder how I could have done this differently.”

I asked, “What?”

“This,” she said. “So I’m not such a burden to you kids.”

I reminded her of all the healing that had occurred in her relationship with one of my sisters.

“And it’s because of taking care of you mom,” I said. “Healing is not all “Kumbaya” and let’s hug it out. Sometimes it’s messy. We wouldn’t be where we are today if you’d done it differently. Thank you."

My sisters and I are enrolled in life’s oldest assignment; one with no course description or syllabus and no instructors. This homework is unique to every individual. We all arrive on Earth through the same channel, but in death there are many exit strategies. I only hope to meet it with a measure of courage and grace.

Meanwhile, there is work to be done.

Sailor's Daughter

Military brat is a term I grew up with, having a father who served as a commissioned officer in the United States Navy for 30 years. My four siblings and I used to visit Dad on “his” Destroyer, where we’d devour platefuls of Oreo cookies in the officer’s mess, then race wild on the ship playing hide-n-seek. This was the 60s – long before homeland security.

I grew up in a Navy town, with parents who sang us sea shanties at bedtime. Outside of military functions, where we had to eat with one hand in the lap and ask politely to pass the butter or risk a knife across the knuckles, we ran like a band of outlaws barefoot and tangled hair with unleashed dogs. Family vacations were out of a camper parked in the mountains where the only rule was to return by 5 for dinner. 

Scrappy is a common adjective used to describe my sisters and me, even today.  

After college I wound up working as a waitress in a pub owned by a Vietnam veteran in a community bleached in military presence. From 1987 to 1996 I worked for Greg McPartlin, owner of McP’s Irish Pub in Coronado, California. To some, Greg’s style of management appeared non-existent. 

The McP’s bar ran the full length of one wall. Above the bar, a hundred glass beer mugs hung by sturdy handles that jingled with key chains that identified the regular who drank from them. Greg sat at the corner most afternoons, chatting up customers, with a cigarette in one hand and a Bud Lite in the other. Behind him on the wall hung a framed 30-inch black and white photo taken in Vietnam, of he and a buddy in camouflage gripping massive automatic weapons.

He served multiple tours in Vietnam as a Navy medic and Frogman (predecessors of the SEAL team), where he survived two helicopter crashes and was a member of the Team that assisted in the sea recovery of NASA’s Apollo 11. He was a decorated veteran.

After his military service he moved to Coronado where he made enough money in Real Estate to afford beachfront property. He didn’t exactly fit into the khaki clad population with his baggy shorts, sockless topsiders and big belly peeking through the buttons of an untucked shirt, but trust me, his haphazard demeanor was merely a cloaking device. 

In nearly 10 years of studying Greg, I assure you, he didn’t miss a beat. He was sharp, knew how to manage people, and was generous to his staff. Not only did he offer medical insurance to employees at a time when it was unheard of, he rewarded hard work by carting the staff off to the horse races at Del Mar and Padre games every summer. At Christmas, he threw us a huge party in the pub. His generosity was unparalleled, but it was his read on people that impressed me most. 

McP’s Irish Pub sits at the southwestern end of Coronado Island, just a mile east of the Navy SEAL training base and three miles west of the Naval Air Station. A testosterone saturated community, the bar scene on Coronado could get pretty intense.

Greg’s man-at-the-bar style of management worked for two reasons: One was his accessibility to guests and employees; the other, his hands-off style of management. He saw everything that was going on and I only recall one time in nine years when he actually rose from his bar stool to tell me what to do.

During a busy lunch rush, three Navy SEALs sat down to order. When I said I’d be with them in a moment, one responded, “Take my order now b****.”

Before sassing a busy waitress, a wise man would have made sure her hands were empty. The five-inch stack of plastic menus flew from my hand across the table to catch him square in the chest. Using the vocabulary of a sailor’s daughter, I told him he should consider eating elsewhere, and stormed into the kitchen. 

A few minutes passed before Greg sauntered through the swinging door. Never one to rush or raise his voice, he said, “Hey Pam, will you come into the dining room? There’s someone who’d like to make an apology.”

These are the stories my retired sailor of a father loved – of me busting chops on cocky sailors. He was a terrible influence that way. But what girl, young or old, doesn’t live to hear her father laugh? I knew he took great pride in raising daughters who could hold their ground, and I think Greg McPartlin was in the same camp.

Dad used to ride his bike 20 miles to visit me at the pub, where I’d serve him a Rueben and a Guinness, and if he was lucky, a tall tale where I always came out victor.

Pedaling Pets

“Oh God, it’s Pam. Hit “ignore.”
I am sure that is the internal dialogue of most my friends in the past year. Ever since joining the world of animal welfare with Kauai Humane Society, I’ve become the dealer of dogs, kittens, cats and the occasional rabbit.
“Shari, do you know anyone looking for a sweet 6 year-old Lab? What about an Airedale mix? She fetches, knows “sit,” “heel” and “huli.” She is a rock star when it comes to fetching and returning. What about two little red kittens? I’ve bottle fed them since they were a week old.” And on and on.
“Petaling,” is what my friend Kim calls it. I’m a “Petlar.” I can’t help it. It’s the hazard of working in a building filled with orphaned animals.
My friends are afraid to answer my calls. Even my family cringes from a distance. The other day my sister e-mailed me from Chicago concerned about our 82 year-old, wheel-chair bound, mother’s request for an ancient Chihuahua – my ancient Chihuahua.
I’d been laying on the couch talking to mom on the phone as I stroked the silky head of my 15 year-old rescue, Javali. We adopted her from the shelter in February 2010.
It wasn’t my idea.
Swear.
I was doing a stellar job of ignoring the purple sweater clad, grayish-brown quiverer. Pleading, moist Chihuahua eyes are not my weakness; well, weren’t my weakness. That said, my husband Wes dropped by the shelter on his way to the South Shore to do a plumbing job. I wasn’t around so he made the grave mistake of taking a tour of the small dog room near the lobby.
When I returned later, one of our veterinarian technicians greeted me.
“Hey Pam, I saw this big, handsome guy flirting with an older woman in the kennels.”
Ellen recounted the scene: Wes, in work boots, jeans and a predictable neon orange t-shirt was crouched and peering into a kennel.
“Hi there,” he cooed. “That sweater looks really nice on you. You sure are pretty.”
When we met 16 years ago, a deal maker for me was Wes's innate kindness towards the elderly and animals.
When Ellen caught him on bended knee with Javali he blushed, saying, “I’ll only adopt her if she comes with the sweater.”
When I returned home that night from work I told Wes he’d been spotted. He smiled for a moment, then his expression changed.
“What’s that dog’s story? She’s ancient. Did someone actually leave her there?”
“Yep. And it happens all the time,” I said. “Her intake card said the reason for surrender was because she was old.”
A few weeks passed and then Wes asked about her again. We were in our bedroom and he was sitting on the edge of the bed looking slightly vulnerable, so naturally I took full advantage; I am the Petlar after all.
“Poor thing. She’s still there.”
“Really?” He said. “Will anyone ever adopt a dog that old?”
Pausing, I let his question ripen, then I moved in for the kill.
“Want me to bring her home?”
He said nothing.
In our marriage, silence is acceptance.
That was 13 months ago. Even Wes admits adopting Java was one of the best animal rescue missions we’ve made. At nine pounds and now 16 years-old, this crooked. stick-figure of a dog barely makes a ripple in our pond. The four cats each out weigh her by at least 4 pounds and she barely dents the pillow where she sleeps between our two other dogs.
I grew up in a house where small dogs were never part of the animal population. When I talk to my mom about Java, she gets slightly befuddled.
“Why would you want a dog that small,” she asks.” Aren’t they yappers?”
I have my legs stretched out on the couch with a pillow under my head. Java is on her back on my chest making gravelly, muttering snores through her gray lips. I describe the scene to my mom.
“Mom, she’s a little old lady looking for a warm lap to retire into, just like you.”
That’s when mom said, “I want her.”