New Year, New Insanity

On the off chance that my prior Wednesday night baklava, candy making adventures, or Sunday layer cake baking haven’t convinced you that I’m a wee bit off my rocker, this really ought to do the trick. How many people go on impromptu solo tamales-making binges, I ask you? Tamales are the sort of thing that generally involve tons of planning and the rallying of an army of assistants, but I decided at lunchtime on New Year’s Eve eve not just to make tamales, but to start by making mole as the sauce first, which is normally considered a whole-day, once-a-year, multi-abuela job all on its own.

But the thing is, even rationally accepting how insane the idea was, I still had to do it, because while on a shopping excursion on Friday, I finally stumbled on a place in this generally foodie-positive but sadly Mexican-ingredient unfriendly city that sold fresh masa. I hadn’t had really good tamales since my last California trip, this time last year, so finally having the proper ingredients on hand, I was going to do it up right, damn it. Since it was also nearly New Year’s, I was also going to incorporate lentils somehow, as has been my habit for the past decade or so.

Tamales really are a ton of work and time, so I don’t expect anyone to try this particular recipe any time soon, but if you don’t have a ready source of really fantastic tamales, I seriously think these are worth the trouble once a year. They’re sweet and spicy and scrumptious, not to mention colorful, comforting, and festive, and unless you’re actually having them in the context of a tamales-making party, you should have at least a dozen tamales and at least a cup of mole to stash in your freezer for a few lovely effortless meals later on.

Roasted Sweet Potato, Beluga Lentil and Mole Tamales
(Adapted from Nancy Zaslavsky, Meatless Mexican Home Cooking, 1997)
Makes approximately two dozen tamales

For mole:
4 ancho chiles
4 guajillo chiles
1 chipotle chile
¼ cup golden raisins
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 small yellow onion, peeled and quartered
¼ cup toasted sliced almonds
1 ½ cup vegetable stock
½ can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
½ teaspoon kosher salt
3-4 grinds black pepper
1 ½ tablespoons peanut or olive oil
1 ounce bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
1 2-ounce disk palm sugar, grated or shaved, or 2-3 tablespoons light brown sugar

For filling:
2 large orange-fleshed sweet potatoes
Peanut or olive oil for roasting
½ cup beluga, black, or French green lentils

For masa:
1 kilo (2.2 lbs) fresh masa
1 ½ cups softened unsalted butter, vegetarian non-hydrogenated shortening, or a mixture of the two
1 cup frozen corn
2-3 tablespoons cream or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper

For assembly:
2 1-lb packages frozen banana leaves, defrosted

Stem and seed the chiles, then toast them in a dry pan over medium heat until pliable, flipping often to prevent any browning. Put the toasted chiles in a large bowl or measuring cup with the raisins, cover with boiling water, and soak for 20 minutes.

Toast the onion and garlic in the same dry pan until beginning to darken slightly on each side. Place the onion and garlic in the carafe of a blender with the drained chiles and raisins and a few tablespoons of the vegetable broth. Blend until smooth, adding more broth as needed to keep the blender running. Add the tomatoes, salt and pepper and blend again.

Heat the oil in a medium pot with a heavy bottom and high sides, and fry the sauce for five minutes, stirring regularly. Add the chocolate, spices, sugar, and remaining broth, lower the heat, and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to avoid scorching along the bottom and sides. Set aside to cool while preparing the rest of the tamale components..

While the chiles for the mole are soaking, preheat the oven to 425 F and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Peel the sweet potatoes, then halve them and cut into 1-inch slices. Toss them on the baking sheet with just enough oil to lightly coat them, and bake until cooked through and starting to caramelize on the bottom, around 30-45 minutes. Let cool slightly, then cut into chunks of about half an inch. At the same time, boil the lentils with ample water to cover until they are tender but not falling apart. Drain the lentils and set aside while making the masa.

In the bowl of a standing mixer, cream the butter and/or shortening until light. Scrape down the sides and, with the mixer running, slowly add the masa by the spoonful and continue beating until fluffy, about another 10 minutes. With a food processor or immersion blender, puree the corn and cream or stock, then whip into the masa with the salt and pepper. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap to prevent the masa from drying out.

Unfold the banana leaves and rinse the powdery residue off. If they’re not already cut in half, remove the center vein from the leaves and cut into two long strips with a pair of kitchen shears, then cut each leaf strip into 10-inch rectangles. Steam the leaves in a large steamer until they’re pliable. Tear a few of the less nice leaves, or any that have torn while processing, into ribbons for tying up the tamales.

Lay down a steamed banana leaf square on a work surface. Using an ice cream scoop, portion out a ball-sized scoop of masa, and press it into a 6-inch circle in the middle of the leaf. Over the center of the masa, pile 2-3 pieces of roasted sweet potato, a small spoonful of lentils, and a spoonful of mole. Using the bottom edge of the leaf, flip over about a third of the masa over the filling, then lay the leaf flat again. Starting at the top edge, flip over the other edge of the masa to seal in the filling, then keep rolling to enclose the tamal completely. Fold under the two open sides until they meet underneath the tamal, and use a strip to tie it securely shut. Lay the finished tamal on a cookie sheet and continue forming tamales until the masa runs out.

Lay a few of the leftover banana leaves on the bottom of a large steamer over simmering water, and fill with the finished tamales. Cover with a few more leaves, and steam for about 1 hour, adding water to the bottom as necessary. Tamales are done when the leaf pulls cleanly away from the masa. Let rest for a few minutes before serving with the remaining mole on the side.

Leftover cooked tamales will keep in the fridge for a few days and reheat well in the microwave, or they can be frozen immediately after folding and steamed later.

Notes:

If you can’t find a source of fresh masa, you can substitute the equivalent amount of reconstituted masa harina, which should be available in most supermarkets. It won’t taste quite as sweet and lovely as fresh masa, but it should still be good, especially when livened up with the pureed sweet corn.

I used banana leaves rather than corn husks as the wrapper because I could easily get the leaves at the Asian market a block away from the tortilleria that sells the masa. Tamales are traditionally made with either of those wrappers in the various parts of Mexico and Central America, so use whichever you prefer. They will each impart a slightly different flavor to the tamales but will work equally well.

Palm sugar, like the banana leaves, is commonly found in Asian markets. It’s less sweet than cane or beet sugar and has a wonderful rich caramel flavor, similar to maple sugar, which you could also use. If you don’t have either one, light brown sugar is more than fine, but start with the smaller amount and taste before adding more, because it’s significantly sweeter.

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I’m Still Here

I know it’s been forever, and I will detail some of the reasons why at the end of this post.  Those reasons having come to a satisfactory conclusion about a month ago, I’d basically been dithering about for a few weeks, looking for the right theme and recipe for finally breaking the silence, and then the East Coast experienced an epically ridiculous confluence of events (an earthquake AND a hurricane in the same week?  Seriously, Universe? Seriously?) that presented me with the perfect solution.

I mean, once all the flashlight batteries have been replaced, the patio furniture has been brought inside, and the hatches have been battened as far down as they’re going to go, there’s really only one thing you can do, right?

Make jam.

Now, stay with me here: Jam is shelf-stable, so it doesn’t matter if the power goes out.  It uses up fruit that would just speed up its sitting-around-getting-squishy process without refrigeration. It goes excellently with all the classic natural disaster foods: ice cream that needs to be consumed immediately, peanut butter sandwiches eaten by candlelight, and, of course, French toast the next morning.  Not to mention, it keeps your mind off the impending doom, and gives you the sense that at least one thing is under your control despite the increasingly hysterical news coverage.

See?  It makes total sense.

Since plums were the fruit preparing to give up the ghost in my crisper, that’s the kind of jam I made.  Plums are an excellent jam candidate, since the skins are often too acidic and leathery while the interior flesh can be squishy in texture and unexciting in flavor.  Cook them down with a few spices, though, and they make really stunning amethyst-colored jam the likes of which you can’t find in a store for less than $8 a jar, so you shouldn’t actually need meteorological insanity to nudge you to try this recipe.

I also made a huge pot of black bean soup to pass the time waiting for the basement to flood, and I will write that up next. As for what’s been occupying me for the past six months and kept me off the blogosphere until Irene gave me the kick in the pants….

Well, just after the holidays I taught my first seminar, which was an amazingly rewarding experience but also one of the most intellectually and physically tiring things I’ve ever done.  NaNoWriMo is a walk in the park compared to that, let me tell you.  I don’t think I enjoyed a full night’s sleep until Easter, and I needed about a month to get my energy back afterward.

I didn’t get it, though, because — and this is of more pressing relevance to you all — at the same time, His Lordship and I were in the process of shopping for a house.  It was a confusing, stressful, nerve-wracking time, but we did finally end our long reign of renting at the beginning of the summer, and now have a proper Chez Disdain.  The new manse needs a fair amount of work, so I may well be grumbling about contractors and repair people for some time to come, but the one thing I can’t really complain about is the kitchen, which is fab.  I’ll provide more details and some pictures along with the black bean soup recipe, but for now, here’s just a wee bit of a tease:

Know what that is, my little chickadees?  Need a close-up (kindly overlooking the obvious need to clean, if you would)?

That’s right, a Viking range.  SCORE!

Oh, and in case it wasn’t self-evident from my reappearance, His Lordship, the Monster and I made it through the eye of the hurricane with minimal trauma; just a bit of basement flooding that was dispatched with a few rounds of wet/dry vacuuming and mopping. Now, on to the jam!

Hurricane Preparedness Plum Jam
Makes 3 cups

1 1/2 pounds plums, halved and pitted
Zest and juice of 2 clementines or 1 orange
2/3 cup water
1 vanilla bean, split
2 large slices candied ginger
1/2 small cinnamon stick
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
Juice of half a lemon

Place the plums in a heavy medium pan with the clementine zest and juice, water, vanilla, ginger and cinnamon stick and bring to a boil over medium heat.  Cover, lower the heat to a simmer, and cook until the plums are very soft and starting to break up, about 20 minutes.  Cool to room temperature.

While the plums are cooling, clean and sterilize about half a dozen 4-ounce jam jars with their rings and lids, along with any other equipment you feel you need for the preserving process (e.g. a ladle, a wide-mouthed funnel and long-handled tongs).

Remove the cinnamon stick, vanilla bean and ginger slices from the fruit.  Run the plums through a food mill or push it through a sieve into a large measuring cup.

Return the pureed plums to the pot, along with the sugar and lemon juice. Stir over medium-low heat until the sugar dissolves, then increase the heat to medium to bring the jam to a boil.  Continue cooking at a low boil, stirring frequently, until it’s thickened and holds its shape when spooned onto a chilled plate, 20-25 minutes.

Transfer the jam into the prepared jars, then seal using the boiling water method.  Refrigerate any jars that don’t seal properly.

Notes:

I used about half a dozen varieties of plums from the farmers market in this batch: yellow-fleshed ones with mottled skins, giant plain red ones, purple ovoid Italian ones, and little unassuming ones with hearts the color of blood. Mixing your plums will give you a more complex and interesting jam, but any variety should be delicious.

This jam is tart and rich enough for savory applications too.  It made a lovely post-hurricane lunch with Manchego on whole wheat for me, and slow-cooked pork loin for His Lordship. I strongly suspect it’d also be smashing with turkey instead of or mixed into cranberry sauce in a couple of months, if you want to get a jump on your holiday prep.

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My Preciousss

We loves Meyerses. Yes, we do. We loves them so much that we sacrifice valuable checked-luggage space just so we can smuggle several pounds of them back from California, probably violating numerous state and federal agricultural regulations in the process. We piles the preciouses up on our kitchen island and stares at them for days, until they start showing signs of wrinkling, and then we panics and makes everything we can think of to save them from being wasted.

Ahem. OK, enough first-person Gollum plural. I believe I’ve made my point, which is that one of the best parts of spending the holidays in California is bringing as many lemons as possible back.

This year, thanks to the combined generosity of my brother, his fiance, and His Lordship’s parents, who made sure I was supplied with lemons despite having no opportunity to shop for them myself, I had enough to require last-minute rearranging of our luggage to avoid paying overweight baggage fees. And unlike my attitude toward persimmons, it physically pains me to let Meyer lemons go to waste, so pretty soon after our return to the East Coast, I had to make efforts to preserve them.

About a half-dozen of them were salted and are currently in the back of my fridge, turning into Moroccan-style preserved lemons. The remainder were used in two variations on jam: one a proper marmalade, and the other a fast and loose almost-instant jam. Both recipes make full use out of the whole fruit, wasting absolutely no part of my sunny beauties.

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As Promised

Since I somehow seem to have stumbled into a tradition of posting a lentil recipe early in every new year, here is another of my favorites.

Although it’s called lentil hummus, all it really has in common with the chickpea-based original is that it’s a chunky puree of spiced and herbed legumes. Where conventional hummus can often be bland and pasty, this is deeply dark, meaty, and savory, more like a pate. While it’s perfectly good as a dip with pita wedges or chips, I like to use it as a spread on crackers and in sandwiches, and it also works very nicely as a filling for stuffed pastas like ravioli.

The recipe originally came from Todd English’s The Olives Table, but as this is one of the books I left in storage when we were on the other coast last year, I had to recreate it as best I could from memory. When I unpacked the book and looked at the original again, I noticed that I had changed the procedure quite a bit, although I had remembered most of the ingredients wth acceptable accuracy. On reflection, I think my procedure is a little bit more forgiving of wandering away from the stove, and the results are just as good.

The idea of seasoning lentils with this mixture of theoretically clashing spices and herbs may seem weird, but I assure you that they actually all play exceptionally well together. The cinnamon, rosemary, hot pepper and allspice all wrap around each other and lift up the low notes of the lentils, giving the whole the kind of intensity you’d never expect from such a humble base of plain brown legumes and vegetables.

The fact that lentils can metamorphose into something this scrumptiously good for you is one of the reasons I’m their biggest fan, and why, if I ever rebrand this blog, it would probably have to be called something like “Cookies and Lentils”. Incidentally, this is officially my hundredth post, so it’s a particularly auspicious lentil recipe!

Lentil Hummus
(Approximated from Lentil Hummus in Todd English’s The Olives Table)
Makes 2 cups

1 cup lentils, preferably brown
3 cups water
Half of a cinnamon stick
1 whole sprig fresh rosemary or 5-6 sprigs fresh thyme
1 bay leaf
3 cloves garlic, peeled
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, diced
1 cup minced carrots
1 teaspoon Aleppo pepper, or 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/4 teaspoon allspice
1/2 cup white wine
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary or 4 tablespoons minced fresh parsley or cilantro
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, plus extra for garnishing
Salt and pepper

Combine lentils, cinnamon, rosemary or thyme, bay and garlic in a medium saucepan and cover with the water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer the until water has nearly evaporated and lentils are very soft, approximately 30 minutes. Remove the cinnamon, rosemary sprig and bay leaf. (If you used thyme instead, it will have fallen apart and can stay with the lentils.)

Heat the olive oil in a large saute pan and add the onions and a generous pinch of salt. Cook until the onions have softened, then the add carrots, hot pepper and allspice and continue cooking until the vegetables have just begun to brown. Add the wine, cover the pan and lower the heat. When the vegetables are soft, remove the cover and cook until the remaining wine has evaporated.

In a food processor or in a bowl with an immersion blender, combine the lentils and the vegetables and process until mostly smooth. Add the fresh herbs, olive oil, and additional salt and pepper and pulse again to combine. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed.

Serve warm or at room temperature, garnished with additional olive oil. Leftovers will keep for about a week in the refrigerator, or can be frozen for later use as a pasta filling.

Notes:

This is one of those times when brown lentils are preferable to my usual-favorite green or Puy, because you actually want them to break down. I haven’t tried it yet, but red lentils should also work beautifully in this for the same reason. In that case, I’d shift the spices in a more Indian or perhaps Ethiopian direction.

The herbs and spices can be swapped around fairly liberally. For example, if you don’t have fresh rosemary, you can substitute half a teaspoon of dried rosemary in the lentil-boiling step. Similarly, if you don’t have cinnamon sticks, you can use 4 or 5 whole allspice berries in the lentil-boiling step, and add 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon to the vegetables later in place of the ground allspice. I have also thrown in lemongrass stalks or strips of lemon peel for a citrusy note in past iterations. As long as you maintain the basic idea of contrasting a sweet spice against an assertive herb, you’ll be fine.

Half a batch of this hummus can be used to turn approximately half a package of wonton wrappers into four dozen ravioli. Of course, if you have access to or can make your own fresh pasta, so much the better.

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On not judging books by their covers

If you saw these lumpy, fuzzy, brown-splotched things in the bargain bin of your local market for $1.50 a bag, you’d think their next stop was the compost heap and you’d walk right past, wouldn’t you?

Oh, but you’d be wrong.  Sadly, sadly wrong, since these less-than-beauteous things are quinces, and pretty is utterly irrelevant when it comes to quinces.

What you would have walked past, my friend, is the bargain of the year, because fresh quinces are usually upwards of a buck apiece, assuming you can even find them.  When I saw these, I squealed like a schoolgirl presented with a new pony, took advantage of the produce staff’s ignorance, and snapped up five pounds for the laughable total of three dollars.  I haven’t been able to find them this cheap in years, which is why I haven’t, until now, been able to make preserves to ease my often-unrequited longing for this headily-perfumed rosy fruit.

Why would you want to go to the trouble of making preserves in the dead of winter, when you’re all burned out from the holiday baking push?  For one thing, quinces are so high in natural pectin that you can get a wonderfully thick, versatile jam for barely more work than making applesauce.  Besides being a lovely spread redolent of sultry nights at the Alhambra, it can be added by the spoonful to lend its hint of mystery to your apple, pear or berry desserts for the rest of the year.

Even better, turning the jam into the toothsome paste traditionally served with Manchego is simply a matter of letting it dry out in a flat vessel, and it keeps for ages in the fridge. Make your own, and the next time you want to put together a schmancy cheese plate, you can tell Whole Paycheck to shove the insane prices they charge for imported dulce de membrillo.

Let us, then, take a delicious lesson from the humble quince, and remember that is not the surface that matters, but the true beauty that is found within.

Quince Preserves

Makes 4 cups jam and one quarter-sheet pan of dulce de membrillo

10 quinces (around 5 pounds)
4 cups granulated sugar (approximately; see instructions below)
Half of a large vanilla bean, split
1 lemon

Wash, peel and core the quinces, chopping roughly. Remove the zest of the lemon in long strips with a peeler, and place with the quinces and vanilla bean in a large pot. Pour over enough water to just cover the fruit, and bring to a boil.  Cover the pot, lower the heat to a simmer, and cook until the fruit is tender, around 45 minutes.  Remove the vanilla bean, but don’t worry about the lemon strips.

Drain the quinces and puree in a food processor or with an immersion blender until smooth, or run them through a food mill if you have one. Measure into a large pan, adding 1 cup sugar for every 1 1/4 cups puree.

Heat on low, stirring, until sugar dissolves, then add the juice of the lemon.  Increase the heat just enough to barely sustain a simmer (more of a blorp, really) and cook for 60-90 minutes, stirring frequently, until very thick and salmon-colored.  If you find that you’re getting a lot of splatter, you can lay two chopsticks or wooden spoons across the top of the pot and setting a lid loosely over it, which should help minimize the mess while leaving room for evaporation.

Spoon the finished jam into clean, sterilized jars.  At this point, you can heat-seal the jars for shelf stability, or simply refrigerate them.

To set as dulce de membrillo, pour into a small, shallow, parchment-lined pan and leave in an oven at the lowest setting for 1-2 hours, or as long as it takes to solidify all the way through. Cut into squares, dust with granulated sugar and store in an covered container in the refrigerator.

Notes:

Should you not be so fortunate as to find quite this many cheap quinces, the recipe can be scaled according to however many you do have.

If you’re not in a rush and want to cut back on the stirring, you can cook down the puree in your slow cooker over several hours, or even overnight.  If His Lordship hadn’t already been using the slow cooker for a pork roast, I would have done so, in order to free up the big stock pot for dinner prep.

Don’t throw away the vanilla bean after you’ve fished it out; dry it and bury it in a container of sugar to scent the sugar, or if you’re feeling really ambitious, make your own vanilla extract by covering it in vodka — or better yet, bourbon — in a small glass bottle.

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A Few of My Favorite Things

I am, as you might have guessed, not much of a moderate person. What I love, I love with consuming passion, and what I hate, I loathe.

In the latter category is New Year’s Eve, concerning which I’ve made my views amply clear.  And no, I haven’t changed my mind.  There’s not enough sparkly alcoholic beverage in the universe to quiet my inner grinch on this or any other December 31st.

Conversely, among the objects of an affection so unrestrained that any other day of the year they’ll put me in a near-narcotic state of bliss are rosemary, and Meyer lemons.  Rosemary I adore so shamelessly that I’ll fondle any rosemary shrub that crosses my path, running my fingers along the aromatic spikes to perfume my hands.  When they started marketing those tree-shaped topiaries, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.  If they made them big enough to use as actual Christmas trees, I would fork over however much money it would take to bring one home, and damn His Lordship’s anti-decorating bah humbuggery. As for Meyers, I still weep over the dwarf tree I had to leave behind with my father-in-law when we moved east, and my heart rejoiced at being briefly reunited with it on Christmas Day and receiving the two little fruits of this season.

Loving, as I do, not wisely but too well, I bought an unadvisable quantity of both this past weekend at one of my very favorite places on earth: the San Francisco Ferry Terminal farmer’s market.  I did manage to restrict myself to two very large bunches of fresh, organic rosemary, but you do not even want to know how much I blew on exotic citrus.  Let’s just say that if it were Schedule II drugs, I’d be in very big trouble with the feds.

So now I’m sitting on a stockpile of lemons and herbs and I’d better start doing something to use or preserve them before all that money and giddiness shrivel up and rot.  I’ve previously paired these two mood-lifting ingredients in an improbable but delectable cookie form, but frankly, I’m cookied out at this point, and I suspect you might be too.

Inspired by another market offering I found intriguing, I’ve decided to experiment with flavored salt instead.  The original product I tried was a lavender salt, and although I quite like lavender, it is nothing like my idolatry of its tiny-blue-flowered cousin.  I googled a few recipes for flavored salt, just to make sure I wasn’t going to risk botulism or anything, and then forged ahead with reckless abandon.  I am already enchanted with the sunny yellow and green glimmer of it in its jars.  I hope that, after a bit of a courtship period, the mature salt will capture and hold fast everything I love about the resinous, powerful punch of rosemary and the otherworldly fragrance of the lemons, and will remind me of home every time I sprinkle it on salad greens or simply-prepared vegetables or oil-drenched bread.

While I was feeling industrious, I also made Meyer-scented sugar, rosemary-scented sugar, and two little jars of preserved lemons.  If any or all of my other endeavors pan out, I’ll be sure to gloat report about it.

Meyer Lemon-Rosemary Salt
Makes slightly over 2 cups

2 cups kosher or coarse sea salt
6-8 large sprigs of rosemary, washed and dried
3 large Meyer lemons, preferably organic, washed and dried

Place the salt in the bowl of a food processor.  Pull the leaves off the rosemary and zest the lemons, and add both to the salt.  Pulse until the rosemary and zest have been minced finely but not pulverized.

Transfer to clean jars with tight-fitting lids.  Give jars away if you’re of a generous spirit, or hoard like a greedy dragon if you’re not.

Notes:

You could use regular lemons if you can’t find Meyers, but if you’d like to try the cheat I’ve used to try to evoke some of their magic, supplement the regular lemons with the zest of one or two mandarin oranges.

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Barbecue or Bust

Tofu with Ancho-Guajillo Barbecue Sauce and Provencal Slaw

It being summer, I’ve been nursing a barbecue craving.  Although we’re city-bound and can’t actually barbecue anything, I could do the next best thing: tofu glazed with a spicy, sweet, sticky, chile-filled barbecue sauce.  On the side, I felt like a non-creamy slaw of shredded cabbage and red peppers.

This cookbook-packing thing is really starting to cramp my style, but fortunately I had previously posted my favorite sauce on a forum, so it didn’t matter that the book it came from is already in storage.  Amazingly, I had actually run out of the chipotles the recipe called for before the pantry clearance started.  Out of luck, you say?  Ha! What did I tell you parenthetically earlier about clearing out the entire chile section of Penzeys on my deliberately infrequent trips to the nearest boutique?  I have seven other kinds of whole dried chiles in stock, and we won’t even get into the powders, either individual or blends.  I just mixed anchos, guajillos and sun-dried tomatoes instead.

For the slaw, I drew inspiration from a Greek cabbage salad with olives that my mother makes now and then.  Wandering a little further up the Mediterranean, I dressed the cabbage and peppers with a vinaigrette of olive oil, lemon juice, tapenade, and herbes de Provence.

With no planning at all, this one dish expanded into a full-blown old-fashioned Saturday night barbecue dinner.  We had a little bit of leftover mac & cheese from mid-week and had bought corn at the market this morning, so we had the full complement of sides.  To beat the heat and use up our imperial-sized tea collection, I’ve been making daily batches of iced tea, and today’s beverage selection was an entirely appropriate English Breakfast with honey and key lime.  The only thing missing was peach cobbler or fruit salad, but I had leftovers from last night’s midnight snack, so who’s complaining?

In the pantry-clearing tally, I’m thrilled that the slaw used up the remainder of my bottle of Meyer lemon olive oil and left just enough tapenade for one batch of pasta with cherry tomatoes later this week, when I’ll need an instant dinner option.

Barbecue Tofu with Provencal Slaw
Serves 4-8

Slaw:
1 small or 1/2 large green cabbage, thinly sliced
2 red bell peppers, thinly sliced
3/4 cup lemon-infused olive oil or extra-virgin olive oil
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 tablespoons tapenade or finely diced olives (real ones, not the California canned ones, please)
1 teaspoon herbes de Provence, crushed well in your palm
Salt and pepper to taste

Tofu:
1 12-oz block of firm tofu
Oil for pan-frying
Salt
Barbecue sauce (see below)

Mix the cabbage and peppers in a large bowl until the peppers are evenly distributed.

Combine olive oil, lemon juice, tapenade or olives, herbs, salt and pepper in a smaller bowl and taste, correcting acidity, salt, pepper and herbs as needed.

Toss the cabbage and peppers with half the dressing, adding more if required to coat the vegetables well.  Let marinate for 1 hour before serving.

Drain the tofu from its liquid, and slice crosswise into 8 slices.  Pat each slice thoroughly dry with paper towels.  Heat a few tablespoons of oil in a skillet or frying pan over medium-high heat, and add the tofu slices, salting lightly.  When the tofu is dark golden and crisp on the bottom, flip, salt again, and cook until the other side is equally browned.

Drain the tofu briefly on paper towels, then brush generously on all sides with the barbecue sauce.

Serve 1-2 tofu slices per person, with the slaw on the side.

Notes:

If you do have a barbecue, or a range hood with decent suction (as I do not), the tofu would be all the better for grilling outdoors or on a grill pan first. I wouldn’t brush it with the sauce before grilling, since the high sugar content would cause all manner of ugly sticking and burning.

—-

Ancho-Guajillo Barbecue Sauce
Makes 1 cup

4 sun-dried tomatoes (the actual dry kind, not sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil)
1 guajillo chile, seeded
1 ancho chile, seeded
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons soy sauce

Using scissors, snip the chiles into strips and place in a heat-safe bowl with the tomatoes.  Cover with boiling water and let sit until rehydrated and soft, 15-30 minutes.

Drain the tomatoes and chiles, reserving the liquid.  With an immersion blender or in a regular blender, blend the tomatoes and chiles with enough soaking liquid to form a thick paste.  Add the remaining ingredients and blend until smooth.

Sauce will keep, well covered, for several weeks in the refrigerator.

Notes:

This amount is much more than you’ll need for one block of tofu, but it keeps really well and is great to have around for basting vegetables, tempeh, seitan, or, if your an omnivore, chicken or pork.  If you don’t think you’ll use it all, the recipe can be cut in half easily.  Conversely, it can be scaled up at will if you’re throwing a block party or familly reunion.

Two relatively mild chiles makes a gently spicy sauce.  If you like your sauce spicier, feel free to add more or hotter chiles, or don’t seed them.  I gave serious consideration to including one or two of the cascabels I also had in my chile bin, and I’ll probably do that next time.

You could use these basic ratios to go in an Asian direction instead, swapping the ketchup for hoisin sauce, the dried Mexican chiles for some Chinese chile paste with garlic (or, if you’re feeling recklessly self-destructive, a couple of rehydrated Tien Tsin peppers or some wasabi), and the olive oil for peanut or sesame.  A little fresh grated ginger would also be nice.

With apologies to whoever the author of the original recipe was, a credit will have to wait until I can dig the cookbook out of storage, which will be at least a year from now.

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