Another Saturday Salad with Tofu

Saturday lunches are really great this time of year. I go to the farmer's market in the morning and we have wonderful veggies and fruit and fresh Pekara bread. How much better does it get?

This week we had mixed greens with snap peas, red onion, red bell pepper and grated raw beets (and of course, our choice of salad dressings prepared earlier in the week). I think it was either Mark Bittman or Martha Rose Schulman who first introduced me to grating raw beets into a salad and I have been doing it ever since. Beautiful and tasty!

We also had crispy tofu cubes in this salad. Easy to make and I love having them on hand, though we like them so much they are hard to keep around. I buy extra firm tofu (not silken), cut it into chunks and freeze the pieces on a cookie sheet. When they are thoroughly frozen, I pop them into a freezer container and they are ready to pull out whenever I need them.

Don't be alarmed when your frozen tofu cubes look yellow -- it's not harmful, and the color returns to normal when the tofu thaws. I thaw the cubes in the microwave on high. It takes a couple minutes or so, depending on how big the pieces are and how many you have. Then squeeze (gently) the water out. Freezing releases the water and makes the tofu chewy and absorbent. It will quickly absorb whatever marinade you put it into. There's no need to let it sit in the marinade for a long time, I cook it immediately.

The marinade is your choice. My default is 1/4 cup reduced sodium soy sauce per pound of tofu, with a little Chinese sesame oil added for good measure. If you use more soy sauce than that, it will be ultra salty. You can always add a little water (remember that you lost a lot of water when you squeezed the tofu) to make the marinade go further. I add the tofu to the marinade all at once and toss quickly so it absorbs evenly. Spread on a foil lined cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray and bake, turning once part way through. You can use most any temp from 350 to 425 degrees, and the time varies accordingly. I cooked mine at 425 for 20 minutes, turning at 10 minutes. So good!

You can also cut the tofu into slabs (I do about 10 per pound) and cook those the same way. Great for sandwiches.

Saturday Salad with Muhammara Dressing

Green salads are a Saturday staple. My husband doesn't like the way greens hold up when he packs them for lunch, so it's tossed salads on the weekend. And tossed is an apt word, because whatever is in the fridge can end up tossed into the bowl with the greens -- veggies, fruits, pasta, leftover anything.

Today our salad was inspired by an early morning trip to the farmer's market. Look at this lovely kohlrabi!

I've never seen the bulbs with greens attached in the grocery store, but the the farmers were selling them still sporting their lovely curls. I'll have the leaves in an omelet for lunch later this week, but I peeled and grated the bulb for the salad. Kohlrabi is crisp and peppery, and when it's in a salad, you know it's there. That got me to wondering what kind of dressing would be up to the job. Something mustardy would work, but I'm not a big mustard fan. Luckily we had some muhammara -- thinned with water, it makes a terrific salad dressing.



What is muhammara? It's a middle eastern condiment served with rice and lentil dishes, and we also spread it on sandwiches or put a dollop on cooked veggies or roasted potatoes. It's soooo good! You probably don't have any on hand, so make some and use it with everything, including your salads.

Saturday Salad with Muhammara Dressing

Salad ingredients
mixed salad greens
shredded kohlrabi
shredded carrots
leftover Buttery Beet Salad (from two days ago)
chopped sugar snap peas
a few mixed nuts

Muhammara (roasted red pepper sauce)
I use the recipe at Epicurious -- find it here. To make a salad dressing, put a spoonful of muhammara in a cup and whisk in a little water until you get a good drizzling consistency.

Buttery Beet Salad (with no butter!)

Love, love, love the color of beets, but their taste never did much for me until the first time I tasted roasted beets -- sweet, chewy, caramelized. It was flavor worthy of the color. This salad was the first time I discovered that cooked beets can also have a silken, buttery texture when shredded and lightly cooked. Beware -- beets cooked this way are addictive!

This recipe is adapted from the Grated Beets with Shallots recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian cookbook. My version is less spicy and uses less oil, and I've made a substitution for the shallots, but the beet flavor sings. It's delicious chilled or at room temperature. When I have this salad in the fridge, I find I scoop out a bit for a snack, so make plenty. You can also toss the extra into a green salad or put it on top of hummus. I bet it would be good in a sandwich, too.

Buttery Beet Salad

1Tbs olive oil
1/2 tsp whole brown or yellow mustard seeds (omit if you don't have this)
1/8 to 1/4 red onion, thinly sliced into slivers
1 to 1.5 lbs. beets, peeled and grated (a food processor is great here)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup water
1 Tbs lemon or lime juice

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. When hot, put in the mustard seeds. When the seeds begin to pop, put in the red onion slivers and fry for a minute, until they begin to soften and color. Add the shredded beets and stir everything together. Put in the salt and water. Bring to a boil. Cover, turn the heat to low, and simmer very gently for 10 min. Uncover, turn the heat up to medium,
mix in the lemon juice, and cook just long enough to be sure there's not a lot of extra liquid.