Summer’s Coming – Veggie Quinoa Salad

Good stuff this – lots of protein, veggies, flavor – easy to make and easier to eat. Good to keep in the fridge for munching, a quick meal, or to a cookout or potluck. You can add nuts (cashews, almonds, macadamia), beans (kidney, white), strips of spinach or kale, chopped fresh parsley…you can grate the carrot instead of cubing it. Wonderfully adaptive salad.  There are lots of these salads around.  This has an Asian flair to it.  A friend served it last week and I stole the recipe.

Recipe
1 cup quinoa, rinsed
2 cups water
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups shelled frozen edamame
3 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1/2 yellow pepper, diced
1/2 red pepper, diced
1/4 chopped scallion (green onion)
1 cup red cabbage, chopped
1/2 tsp. low sodium soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
3 teaspoons fresh ginger, finely minced
1 tablespoon sesame seeds (optional)

Directions
Place the quinoa, water, and salt in a covered pot. Heat on high until it boils, lower the heat to low, and cook for about 15 minutes or until the quinoa is soft and the water absorbed. Pour the quinoa into a medium-sized bowl, and mix in the frozen edamame, carrots, peppers, and cabbage. In a small bowl, make the dressing by mixing the sesame oil, rice vinegar, soy sauce, minced ginger, and sesame seeds. Pour the dressing over the quinoa and veggies, and mix thoroughly. Enjoy immediately, or store in a covered container for later.

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照り焼き Teriyaki

Teriyaki is a way of Japanese cooking. Teriyaki is a combination of two Japanese words: “teri” and “yaki”; teri means luster, and yaki means grill or broil. This recipe is for oven baked teriyaki wings. You can of course use chicken thighs, legs, chunks, pork, beef, tofu…..cook on an inside grill or yakitori grill, or outside on a gas or charcoal grill. That is up to you. Be careful as the sugar and mirin content can easily cause food to burn.

To make a teriyaki dish, ingredients are broiled, roasted, or grilled after being marinated in or basted by teriyaki sauce. It’s sauce that brings the shiny look (teri) to the ingredients. You can buy teriyaki sauce in a bottle at the grocery store, but authentic teriyaki sauce is very easy to make. To make teriyaki sauce, basically soy sauce, mirin, and sugar are used. Other ingredients can be added. It is possible to substitute mirin with sake and sugar BUT the key ingredient in teriyaki sauce is mirin. Mirin adds luster to ingredients. Teriyaki sauce can be used for glazing and marinating meats and vegetables.

The recipes for the wings and the sauce were given to me by my “authentic Japanese” partner of years back. We enjoyed entertaining and feeding our friends. These wings, chunks of nice fatty beef, deep fried tofu (see post), umeboshi and other quick pickles along with some of my Southern American specialties made us extremely popular. This is good party appetizer/sports watching/entrée food.

Between good food, good conversation and good music, it truly was the best of South meets East!!! どうぞめしあがれ (douzo meshiagare – eat well) or, as my granddaddy used to say, Eat ‘til your little belly drags, Y’all!

desired amount of wings (I usually allow 6 full wings per person)
teriyaki sauce
sesame seeds
scallion, thinly sliced

Wash the chicken and cut at joints into two pieces. Frugal Hint: I save the tips in the freezer to make broth. Wash again and pat dry with a paper towel. Put into a non-reactive bowl and marinate the wings in the refrigerator with a generous amount of the teriyaki sauce for at least 2 hours and up to 8 hours. Mix well making sure wings are covered. Cover with plastic wrap.

This is oven method: Preheat oven to 375. Either use a broiling pan with racks or, lay cooling racks over baking pan. Spread the wings in a single layer and evenly spoon sauce over the wings. Cover with aluminum foil and bake about 30 minutes.

Take the pan out of the oven, remove the foil and place back into oven for about 10 – 20 minutes until skin becomes crispy. Move the wings to a serving dish and sprinkle with sesame seeds and very thinly sliced scallion.

Homemade Teriyaki Sauce

2/3 c. mirin (Japanese sweet rice wine)
1 c. good soy sauce (I use low sodium soy sauce)
4 ½ tsp. rice vinegar
1 tsp. sesame oil
1/3 c. white granulated sugar
4 – 7 cloves garlic, finely minced
1 tbs. grated fresh ginger
Dash of black pepper

Mix ingredients well and slowly heat until bubbly, stirring. Allow to cook for a couple of minutes until thickened and flavors are blended. This will keep in covered container in refrigerator for several weeks. Makes about 1 1/2 c. sauce.

Fried Tofu – For Beni

I really love fried tofu.  Sometimes, I dust with my special fried chicken seasoning and fry.  Mostly, I fix this simply.  I serve it with several dipping sauces, such as a sweet garlic chili sauce or soy flavored with slivers of ginger, sesame oil, and sliced scallion.  I personally just like it plain – hot and crispy on the outside, hot and almost custardy on the inside.  A member of the 11/16 Society shared this with me years ago.  It was one of our favorite appetizers to serve to visitors to our home.  Some may say this isn’t authentic Japanese, but since he is authentic Japanese, I beg to differ.

This is not the Japanese agedashi dofu, which is usually served with a dashi broth or a soya dipping sauce.  I suppose you could use these cubes in agedashi dofu.  My friend enjoys this but like me, he just liked the fried tofu – neat!

Servings: 4 appetizer portions

1 block extra firm or firm tofu

cornstarch for dusting

peanut or other high temperature oil for frying.

Press the tofu down, leaving something heavy (such as a cutting board stacked with your heaviest cookbooks) on top to squeeze out as much moisture as you can. Cut the tofu into 1-inch cubes and dust lightly with cornstarch before frying.

Pan-fry the cubes of tofu in a wok or medium, deep, heavy-bottom saucepan: Add enough oil to coat the bottom of the wok or pan or, come halfway up the side of a tofu cube and heat over medium-high heat until hot – about 375 degrees. Test the oil with one cube of tofu, adjusting the heat as necessary so the cube fries quickly but does not burn. Fry the cubes in a single layer, making sure the pieces do not touch, until crisp on all sides, 5 to 7 minutes total. Repeat until all of the tofu pieces are cooked; this may need to be done in 2 batches. I use chopsticks to turn and remove cubes.  Drain the pieces on a paper towel lined plate.