Egg-less Egg Salad Sandwiches

I adore egg salad sandwiches. If it weren't so bad for me, I would eat them every single day. I would even happily eat them twice a day, although I'm sure too much of a good thing might not be as appealing as it is in my mind.


Nonetheless, a long time ago I started experimenting with mock egg salad and was excited to find so many different recipes and tips online. After gathering advice from all over and trying out a few dozen recipes (and with some serious tweaking) I settled on a recipe that I can't really credit to any one source.


If you're like me and really enjoy a good egg salad but are concerned for nutrition, give this recipe a shot. Silken firm tofu perfectly replicates the texture of hard boiled egg whites, and to be honest, I don't even miss real eggs anymore. Another plus is that when made with Veganaise, the sandwich is a nice filling vegan snack.



Egg-less Egg Salad

1 package silken firm tofu, carefully diced
1 1/2 tsp. mustard powder or 2 tsp. whole grain mustard
1/2 tsp. turmeric
2 tbl. pickle relish
4 tbl. Veganaise or Extra Virgin Olive Oil mayo
1 tsp. minced fresh dill
1 tsp. lemon juice

Directions
1. Combine all ingredients carefully in a medium size bowl, gently folding with a spatula so as not to break tofu pieces.
2. Cover with plastic wrap or move to container storage, and refrigerate for at least one hour before eating.

Road Trip Detox Part Two: Miso-Ginger Soup with Shitake Mushrooms, Tofu and Baby Bok Choi

After such a long drive in a cramped space, my entire body was screaming for nourishing food and a little TLC. Whenever I get sick I make miso soup, but I also had a serious craving for mushrooms, so I ended up making a pretty hefty (but nonetheless delicious) batch.

Ian and I have been buying a protein-rich tofu lately that has a very pleasant texture to it. Not all tofus are created equal, so I think I might stock up on quite a few of these blocks from Wildwood.




Using the same basic miso recipe as always, I simply added the shitakes to the soup right before the miso, along with sliced baby bok choi, a handful of julienned carrots, and sliced scallions.

Detox complete!!




***I completely forgot to mention this when I wrote up this post earlier, but I also shredded about two tablespoons of ginger and steamed it with six cups of water before adding all the ingredients. After straining the ginger out, it made a wonderful ginger broth to which I added the miso paste.

At Long Last: Ma Po Tofu

I've been in love with Ma Po Tofu for years, ever since I first tasted it at a friend's house. Her mother was a fantastic cook, and as much as I loved my own mom's cooking, I happily spoiled my dinner many times anyway. Unfortunately I never once tasted a comparable version of this dish. Nothing could replicate the slightly sweet taste of the pork and its fat juices mingled with the texture of the tofu and the delightfully potent chili garlic sauce. For years I only ever thought of tofu in relation to Ma Po Tofu.

Until now.


A serious tip of the hat goes to Foodmayhem for posting this recipe, as I had almost completely given up on ever tasting Ma Po Tofu again without almost instantaneous disappointment. Ian was over the moon for it as well, and I've already made it three times in a month.


The only alteration I made was to increase the water from 1/2 cup to a full cup considering I actually used more pork than was called for. I also happened to look up the history of the dish. Food history is one of my hobbies, and some of the tastiest dishes have interesting origins. According to legend, Ma Po Tofu (from what I gathered, originally "mapo doufu" but there seems to be a dispute over the transliteration) originated in the Chinese city of Chengdu, concocted by an old woman disfigured by pockmarks. Unfortunately for her she had years before been banished to the outer skirts of Chengdu yet her cooking was discovered by a man and his son. The old woman lived in relative obscurity for much of her life, but luckily her dish lives on in a multitude of variations, although the first dish of legend only specifies tofu, pork and Sichuan peppercorns.


Of course, I have no idea if this story is true. I enlisted a friend fluent in Chinese to help me with a Chinese online encyclopedia entry that claims Ma Po Tofu was created by a woman whose husband was a restaurant chef sometime during the Qing Dynasty. The word "Ma" seems also to be in contention, and since I'm not an expert, I defer to my ignorance. Frankly, I'm not sure I mind not knowing the truth of a food history. It seems to me that often the popular legend came to be through a sequence of composition that is way sexier than the accidental/mundane food stories (see Chicken Tikka Masala or "stone soup").

If you'd like to see a picture of Mapo Doufu from a restaurant in Chengdu (reportedly straight from the legendary source), see here.