UnRecipe: Thank God It's Tofuday

Sometimes you can't beat a really simple meal after a rough week, especially on the tail-end of a record heat wave. After all, why ruin the stove's week-long break of not being turned on? Let it sleep in for just another day or two. Instead of a complicated Friday dinner, it was more effort to put together the setup for these photos than it was to prepare the grand meal of cold tofu with chili sauce, lime juice, and shoyu (you know, soy sauce).

Oh boy, it's soy! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

As a wee one, my mother would regularly prepare meals with tofu -- heck, she still does, and it's remains a rare treat to watch her cook. She would drain and press the watery slab of soy to remove the excess water, and then cut it down into pristine little white cubes. I would sneak a few pieces before they were introduced into the dish and I always loved the cold, plain, slightly milky flavor of plain tofu. I didn't think much of it then, but when I cook with tofu now, I can't resist doing the same thing and it still resonates that memory of the senses that evoke a less complicated time. Or at least, that's what I like to remember it as. I'm sure at the time, I was probably overwrought with a math test or something.

Now, many years later, the comforting snack has become a full but simple meal. Mixing a bit of fresh lime juice and a squeeze of hot chili sauce into the shoyu, a savory dipping liquid becomes the perfect contrasting flavor. I can't control the weather, or how busy my week will be, but it's a comfort in and of itself to know I can return to something that tastes like home.

Aw, Mom.. it's so cute... can we keep it? - Photos by Wasabi Prime

* Post Script -A joy-for-soy THANK YOU to Tastespotting for posting the Kokeshi doll with tofu photo on their site!! Domo arigato!

** Post-Post Script -Another hearty THANK YOU to the folks at Foodbuzz for putting the same photo on their Top 9 today! Domo arigato, the sequel!

***Post-Post-Post Script - Three times a charm THANKS to Food Photo Blog for putting the spicy tofu pic on their site!

**** Post to the Fourth Power-Script - THANK YOU to Serious Eats' Photograzing for also putting the spicy tofu on their site!

***** Penta-Post-Script - Thanks to Foodie View for posting several pics of the spicy tofu post!

UnRecipe: I Hope Hell Has a Salad Bar

The house is almost ninety degrees and it's 10pm at night. Earlier in the afternoon, I looked outside and the tall evergreens looked like they were wilting from the oppressive heat. It's official: the Pacific Northwest is in Hell. I'm not entirely sure what mortal sin the Puget Sound Area committed, but it must have been pretty serious to cast us into the flaming pit of Hades without easy access to air conditioning. All that being said, a girl still needs to eat, so I had another dinner, sans heating element.

It's gettin' hot in herrre... so have a salad - Photo by Wasabi Prime

By the Power of DJ Spinderella, I remixed the Gettin' Figgy With It meal ingredients and made a couple of salads. One featured a roma tomato sliced thinly, sprinkled with goat cheese crumbles, drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and some slices of proscuitto on the side. Not quite a caprese salad, but a similar idea. I had already shorn our basil plants down, and figured they needed some time to recover their foliage for another meal.

The other salad was a rerun of what we did on the weekend -- heirloom cherry tomatoes, kalamata olives, snowpeas, and feta instead of goat cheese. It was nice to take a moment and enjoy the two cool, fresh salads, and dream of better days ahead. Hello, Autumn? Are you coming anytime soon...?

The salad days of summer - Photos by Wasabi Prime

* Post Script - Thanks to Food Photo Blog for posting the almost-caprese salad photo on their site! Grazie!

* Post-Post Script - Thanks to Foodie View for posting pics of the heirloom to-mah-toes and the split snowpea pic!

UnRecipe: Gettin' Figgy With It

The summer heat caused a serious case of Couch Potato-itis in the Wasabi household this weekend. I tend to develop a mild addiction to the Turner Classic Movie channel in the summers, and recently recorded King Solomon's Mines (1950) starring Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger on our DVR. It's a gorgeous Technicolor-riffic movie and both the leading actors are rather gorgeous themselves. I think given the hot weather, I wanted to see people suffering in the heat along with me, and searching for the fabled diamond mines in the deepest, darkest heart of Africa seemed a lot worse than languishing on the sofa.

O bring us a figgy dinner... and bring it RIGHT NOW - photo by Wasabi Prime

Given that state of inactivity, there was no way in hell I was going to turn on the stove or even BBQ. Thankfully, a bounty of summer goodies were at the ready, from both the store and our garden, so an uncooked summer dinner was on the menu for the warm evening.

Embrace of proscuitto and cheese? Yes, please - photo by Wasabi Prime

The star of this meal was undoubtedly a pile of fresh figs from Whole Foods, courtesy of Michelle, a fellow foodie-in-arms. I do love figs. They have a light, nuanced flavor that plays nice with both sweet and savory pairings, and the texture of soft and crunchy is just fun. Along with the figgy bunch, we had multicolored heirloom grape tomatoes, goat cheese crumbles, Sopressata salami, and proscuitto, procured from Trader Joe's. Our garden was able to provide more fresh snowpeas, basil, and romaine lettuce. A slice here, a chop there, and a caprese-inspired salad with the tomatoes, cheese, and basil was paired with goat cheese-stuffed figs, wrapped in proscuitto, and finished off with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar. Chunks of the Sopressata were nestled alongside some garlic-stuffed olives for snacking. I like my bubbly, so I always keep a bottle of the very affordable Domaine Ste Michelle Blanc de Blanc in the fridge. It helped cool our jets while we sat in the backyard with our faithful dog, Indy. She sure looked cute, but not cute enough for proscuitto-wrapped figs stuffed with goat cheese. Sorry, pup.

A dinner of fig-gasmic proportions - photos by Wasabi Prime

To further add to the evening's atmosphere, Brock had music from Hey Marseilles playing. They're a local group with a delightful Parisian sound that is reminiscent of the movie Amelie. They were playing at the Capitol Hill Block Party this weekend, but our summer laziness prevented us from attending. If anyone went and heard them perform, drop the WP a line!

* Post Script - Thanks to Food Photo Blog for posting my pic of heirloom grape tomatoes that almost made it into this post, as well as the pic of the wrapped figs. Cheers FPB!

UnRecipe: Pad Thai Stir Fry

I discovered two things today: our laundry room makes for a halfway decent photo studio, and Pad Thai is just as delicious without the rice noodles!

From wasabiprime-july photos

The Puget Soundians were given a day of respite from the summer heat, so efforts were quickly mobilized to use the stove and play around with the digital camera to actually take some halfway decent photos of ingredients and the plated food. I notice when it's hot, I tend not to feel the Epic Hunger that I normally do, so maybe that's what allowed me the virtue of patience to make a better effort towards food photography. At the risk of sounding like the star of the I'm Awesome Show, I'm quite pleased with the efforts, and it's encouraged me to put forth more effort in future posts!

The motivation behind this dish was a major jonesin' for pad thai. I have the exact opposite effect with food -- I had Thai food recently and instead of feeling satisfied, I felt like the Audrey II, hungry for seconds. Feed me, Seymour! Sadly, as I write this entry, I just realized I totally forgot to add peanuts into the dish. Crap. And I made the extra trip to the store to make sure I had them! The little Homer Simpson that lives in my head is yelling DOH! right now. What... no one else has a little Homer Simpson living in their head...? No...? Well, moving on...

In lieu of the traditional rice noodles, I was able to use half of the bountiful harvest of snowpeas that are taking over our garden. We went from a small handful of peas to a green pod invasion within the last month. Thankfully the bugs and backyard wildlife have not seen fit to feast upon them, so with any luck, we will be blessed with an abundance of green pea-ness. *giggle*

Along with the snowpeas, I snipped some garlic chives and some of the heartier scallion greens from our veggie garden. A few defrosted chicken breasts sliced thin, stir-fried in a wok with diced tofu, scrambled eggs, and then a healthy dose of the premade Por Kwan pad thai sauce from Uwajimaya, and it was a picture-perfect dinner made for the om-nomming.

From wasabiprime-july photos

* Post Script - Big thanks to Tastespotting for posting the pad thai photo on their site today. Merci Buttercups!!!

** Post-Post Script - Delicious thanks to Photograzing at Serious Eats for posting one of the pad thai photos on their site!

*** Post-Post-Post Script - Third Thanks to Food Photo Blog for posting a closeup shot of the pad thai. Cheers!!

*** Quadruple Post Script - Thanks to the fourth power to Foodie View for the pad thai post!