The Dinner Files

One good friend just started a full time job after freelancing for years. Another friend has twins who are old enough now to eat real food so they’ve been trying to have family dinners most nights. Still another friend’s husband had a change at work and is no longer home in time to make dinner, which has always been his gig. In short, three friends in quick succession have asked for fast dinner ideas.

I’m going to try and keep them in mind in the coming weeks. Faster, quicker, easier. The fact of the matter is that I often cook that way and, due to some work-life circumstances this spring I’ll be cooking like that more anyway. At our house getting dinner on the table in a hurry often manifests in the form of pasta. Pasta with a lot of vegetables in it. I’m working on expanding that mindset (it’s difficult, though, since such pasta dishes are always a hit with all three of us).

This mushroom soba noodle soup is sort of a departure, right? Sure, it’s pasta and vegetables, but they’re in a soup! Hey, I’m trying here.

It may not be revolutionary, but it is delicious. Fresh, light, and perfect for this time of year when heavy winter foods don’t sound so great anymore but when you still need something to warm you up come dinner time.

Mushroom soba noodle soup

This noodle-y soup-y creation was inspired by a recipe for a mushroom hot pot in Japanese Hot Pots by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat. It’s a great resource – especially if, like me, you like to make (and eat) big bowls of delicious.

4 cups broth (I used a mix of chicken and pork broth; one or the other or dashi would have been good, too)

1 cup sake

1/2 cup mirin

1/3 cup soy sauce

3 cups shredded Napa cabbage

1/2 pound shiitake mushrooms

1/2 pound oyster moshrooms

1/2 pound wild arugula (regular arugula or spinach would also work just fine, although with less bite)

1 pound tofu (firm, soft, silken – whatever you like) cut into three or four big pieces

1/2 pound soba noodles

some type of chile powder for garnish (we used ground ancho chile because it was in the cupboard)

Heat the broth in a medium pot. Add sake, mirin, and soy sauce. Bring to a simmer and cook, partially covered, for about 10 minutes. Taste and adjust seasoning – adding more mirin for sweetness or more soy for salt, if you like.

Add cabbage, cover, and cook until cabbage is wilted, about 3 minutes.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and trim mushrooms and cut into bite-size pieces if they are large.

Add mushrooms to the pot, cover, and cook until mushrooms and cabbage are tender, about 8 minutes. Add arugula, cover, and cook until the arugula leaves are wilted, about 3 minutes. Put large pieces of tofu on top of everything else, cover, and simmer until tofu is heated through, about 2 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook soba noodles in the boiling salted water until tender to the bite. Drain and divide between three or four large bowls.

Top noodles with the vegetables, one piece of tofu each, and broth. Garnish with chile powder, if you like. A few thinly sliced green onions would be tasty, too.

I’ve made this mistake before. In fact, I’ve made it three times now. We have people coming to dinner and I think, “I know, I’ll make those Vietnamese salad bowls we ran in Sunset last year. They’re simple and delicious and people can assemble them themselves and make them vegetarian if they want to.” And then I do the shopping and start the cooking and remember why so much time passes between my making of Vietnamese salad bowls: they are amazingly time consuming to prepare. I didn’t even make the beef this time, but it still took over two hours to get everything chopped and fried and ready. The guests were super-duper appreciative and endlessly entertaining, but I was quite happy to simplify the concoction the next night as my dashing husband, Ernest, and I each assembled our own:

Rice noodles, spring salad mix, spring onion (green onions would have been too), mint, shredded carrot, and a sliced chile.

We would have used leftover tofu from the night before, except Ernest bogarted the entire batch after it had been passed around the table but once. It was very bad form, and he was chided for his poor manners, but we all couldn’t help but find it somewhat hysterical that a 6-year-old would want to scarf down over 1/2 a pound of black pepper tofu. Since we had no leftovers, I made another batch to round out our salads. I highly recommend it – it took a grand total of 10 minutes to make.

Many of you avid readers can make these yourselves from the picture above. But if you’d like to include the black peppered and saucy tofu or want more instruction, I’ve posted this Vietnamese Spring Noodle Salad recipe over at Local Foods.

While there were no garnishes/toppings leftover, that whole new batch of tofu and new round of rice noodles meant there were plenty of both sitting in the fridge the next morning. Somewhere in there I also found a bit more mint and some escarole leaves that looked great even though I could not for the life of me remember when I bought them. Since I like to live on the edge and have failed – despite many bouts with the f***er – to develop a healthy fear of food poisoning over lo these many years of cooking, I chopped up the escarole, heated up the tofu and rice noodles, put it all in a bowl topped with mint and the drizzle of nuoc cham left, and called it lunch. Yum. It really was the meal that just kept giving.

My dashing husband dashed this off for dinner last night. Broccoli, red cabbage, tofu, plenty of ginger and soy sauce, and “chow mein” noodles. Was a bunch of green garlic included but indetectable due to all the stronger flavors? Sure. Would I have ever thought to put red cabbage in a stir-fry with tofu that might get dyed a bit, um, blue? No. Was there, perhaps, just a smidgen too much soy sauce included in the dish? Yes, yes there was. Was it  delightful to have a piping hot dinner placed in front of me without ever having stepped into the kitchen last night? Absolutely.

And the red cabbage? Not a bad addition to a stir-fry. Not bad at all. As long, that is, that you don’t mind slightly blue tofu.

Did you know there are urban farms out there? No, I don’t mean people in cities with elaborate edible gardens. I don’t even mean people living in cities raising a few chickens. I mean people in seriously urban areas who keep goats in their backyard. And a beehive. And a few chickens. And a turkey or two. And bunny rabbits (for meat, not pets) on the front porch. And maybe at one point they had a couple of pigs they fed from what they could find in dumpsters. After all that the fact that they’ve turned the vacant lot next to their house into an Eden of edible delight rather pales by comparison.

Ernie and I toured Ghosttown Farm in Oakland and were awed. Ernie was especially happy to see the red chard “just like we had for dinner last night” growing right there in one of the raised beds sitting on top of an old concrete pad. Then we visited babies and were awed.

All that awe left us hungry, so we headed to our favorite soft tofu place and met up with Very Tall Cousin Sam. I bought him a soft tofu casserole. He gave me an abalone he picked off a rock deep under the cold Pacific with just a snorkle and a mask and a prying knife to help him. I’m thinking of what to do with that abalone as I write….

But I’ll tell you this. No matter what I do with it, even abalone will have a difficult time competing with the stellar banyan and crunchy rice one finds at the tofu house.

In our farm box last week it was clear that summer and fall are in a passionate embrace and we are the voyeuristic onlookers. Tomatoes, melons, and zucchini were all still there, but a butternut squash showed up too. And what says the cold and rains are a-comin’ like a winter squash? So last night I let Ernie choose the entry in Project Eat That Rice (a little short grain brown number from the Central Valley), made his favorite zucchini and tofu stir-fry, and cooked the lovely little butternut with garlic, ginger, and mustard seeds. The whole thing was sort of painfully good for us–so healthful and frugal and all–but we loved it just the same.

Zucchini & Tofu Stir-Fry

1 Tbsp. (or so) of vegetable or grapeseed oil

An amount of garlic you like (I like about 5 o 6 cloves for this), minced

Same with fresh ginger (for me it’s a nice 3-inch piece), peeled and finely grated or shredded or whatever you want to call it

Red Chile Flakes (to taste and optional, a chopped fresh chile works great if you have one)

4 green onions, chopped (optional)

1 Tbsp. fermented/salted/Chinese black beans

2 Tbsp. sherry or rice wine vinegar or white wine if the pantry is in that bad of shape

3 medium zucchini, chopped into large but manageable pieces

1/2 cup broth or water

8- to 12-oz. silken firm tofu (the shelf-stable kind), cut into small but still bite-size pieces

Soy sauce to taste

Heat the oil is a large and deep frying, saute, or braising pan. Add garlic, ginger, red chile flakes, and green onions. Cook, stirring, until all pasty-looking and fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add black beans and sherry. Stir to combine. Add zucchini, stir; add broth or water and stir and cook until zucchini is tender and liquid is mostly gone. Depending on how fresh and tender (or not) the zucchini is, I’ve been known to cover it to cook for a few minutes. Add tofu, combine and cook until hot. Season with soy sauce to taste.

Remember when blue and pink swirled cotton candy flavored ice cream would have sounded awesome? Yeah, me too.

I went for a classic chocolate chip cone instead. Ernie insisted I try his because, and I quote: “Mama, it is so delicious.” I couldn’t even fake it. I had to tell him it just wasn’t for me but I was happy he liked his ice cream choice so very much.

Later on, for actual dinner, we had an even simpler version of the zucchini-tofu stir-fry he flipped for last week (or whenever that was). No fermented black beans, no rice vinegar, not even any soy sauce. It was amazingly good, if I do say so myself. Just garlic, ginger, green onions, and a few red pepper flakes sautéed, add zucchini and a bit of broth and cook until the zucchini is the way you like it, add silken tofu and more broth and cook until hot. Scoop onto rice. If I’d had some I would have sprinkled it with soy sauce when I served it.

The best part? We ate dinner still wearing our swimsuits. That? That’s summer.

“Thanks for making this delicious dinner, Mama,” Ernie said. “It’s the best dinner ever.” And then he continued to use his chopsticks gamely* while declaring with freakish glee, “I love tofu!”

Hmmm…. What does the child want from me? You see what we had: summer squash and tofu sort of braised in a garlic-ginger-chile-rice vinegar-black bean sauce type thing. With some cilantro. And some “bamboo-infused rice” (yes, Project Eat That Rice continues). It was good, but it really wasn’t the best dinner ever. Not by a long shot. Maybe he’s just in a good mood. Yesterday was his last day of pre-school and we’re headed off on a three week vacation to the family cabin in Minnesota (I’ll be working on this “vacation”–I’m thinking of it as a “writing retreat” to give it a vacation-esque feel while acknowledging that pages must be produced!). He has reason to be happy. So do we all. He’ll be going to a day camp (with swimming and t-ball and big kids, oh my!) from which I expect him to come home utterly exhausted.

*Hold the tops together with a rubber band to make it easier for kids to master the art.