BipolarLawyerCook

Okay– I admit that my fridge and pantry con­tain ingre­di­ents that are not “aver­age.”  But I still have to clean the sucker out and use food up before it goes bad.  Times are tough, starv­ing chil­dren in Africa, it’s a sin to waste food, or you’re just a cheap Yan­kee like me– any way you slice it, there’s always some­thing that needs using up.  This time it was some teriyaki baked tofu (don’t knock it, it’s great cold for break­fast) and some cilantro.  I always have limes and lemons, and gin­ger, gar­lic and onions are also sta­ples.  So … I put on 1 cup of sushi rice to cook (noth­ing fancy, I just fol­lowed the pack­age direc­tions) and set to doing some­thing with the rest of it.

Here’s how it went.

I piled all my “got to get rid of this” stuff on the counter with the other pos­si­ble ingre­di­ents.  The French call it mise en place.  I call it “put it where you can’t for­get to add it.”  Or “ducks in a row.”  Or “set the shit out in front of you.”  Whatever.

Please to for­give the bad light­ing and fuzzy expo­sure.  It was 8:30 at night and we have crappy light in the kitchen.  Any­way– soy sauce, Sriracha hot sauce, rice wine vine­gar, cilantro, tofu, gar­lic, onion and gin­ger.  And limes.  You might think this is not very veggie-heavy except for the onion and gar­lic, and that it’s a prob­lem in the depths of win­ter in May, but I will have you know that any­thing col­ored green counts as a veg­etable.  Lime jello?  A vegetable.

Next, there was chop­page of red onion, approx­i­mately 1/3 cup.  I also decided how much gin­ger and gar­lic I wanted– one peeled chunk about 1 inch around and two cloves of garlic.

Next, I sauteed the onion in some neu­tral oil (I used cold-pressed grape­seed) over medium high heat until it was soft.  At that point, I added the gin­ger and garlic.

Soft red onions, chopped gar­lic and gin­ger?  Mmmm.  Lay­ers of fla­vor.  Repi­tan se: Lay­ers of fla­vor.  Toss the gin­ger and gar­lic (aka “aro­mat­ics”) over medium low heat with the onion until they are fragrant.

Before you add the gin­ger and gar­lic, but while the onion’s still cook­ing, chop your baked tofu into small­ish cubes.  I really can’t extol the virtues of baked tofu enough.  It’s firm and has a totally dif­fer­ent tex­ture from reg­u­lar tofu.  It usu­ally comes in fla­vors like lemon pep­per or teriyaki.  Me?  I love the teriyaki fla­vor, and not just because the BH says my favorite food group is salt.  So– cubed tofu.  Mmm.  Really.

Again.  I need to get brighter lights in the kitchen, or get more seri­ous about light­ing the kitchen for night­time food blog­ging action shots.

Add the tofu to the fry­ing pan, stir­ring it gen­tly over low heat with the other ingre­di­ents to make sure the lay­ers of fla­vor amalgamate.

Mmm.  Brown food.  Well, brown and purple.

Your sushi rice has been cook­ing while you’ve been play­ing with all your brown food.  When the rice is done, you can turn it off and let it sit with the lid on while you pre­pare color for the meal.

Chop a good hand­ful of cilantro and quar­ter a lime.  It’s up to you if you want to be a food design dork and put them in a glass bowl on your table with all the condi­ments art­fully dis­played behind them.

That fancy shmancy cam­era angle is thanks to a highly spe­cial­ized tech­nique called tilt­ing your cam­era.  Oooh.  I know!  Gourmet mag­a­zine, here I come.

Notice the lit­tle can­dles?  Those are Oxo Can­de­las– I bought them for the BH last year for his birth­day.  He’s a design geek.

For the pur­poses of food porn shots, put your rice and your tofu saute side by side in a large glass bowl.

Nom.

Now here’s the very, very, very bestest part of all.  Remem­ber how your mother used to say “Don’t play with your food?”  Ptooey.  Play with your food all you want.  Sprin­kle cilantro.  Driz­zle soy sauce and rice wine vine­gar.  Dot with Sriracha.  Squeeze as much lime as you want all over.  You know why?  It’s your food and you can sea­son it how­ever you want.  (And … erm … lay­ers of fla­vor?  Yeah.  That.)

Call it mud­pies, call it the pret­ti­est edi­ble con­fetti you’ve ever seen in your life, call it Hort­ense.  Just don’t for­get to call it dinner.

Total time: 30 min­utes.  2 serv­ings for one hun­gry food blog­ger who missed lunch.  3 for peo­ple who take human bites.

Next up in our ongo­ing adven­tures in Lay­ers of Fla­vor: cook­ing from the incred­i­bly excel­lent cook­book  Clau­dia Roden’s The Food of Italy– I cook a recipe, take pic­tures and blog about it, you com­ment, and I send the book to a randomly-drawn win­ner.  You cook, you pho­to­graph, you post, you con­tinue the trend.  (Yes, Jenn, Hen, I’m actu­ally, finally, finally going to do it!  I actu­ally did it twice and lost the pho­tos both times.)

Bon Appetit, y’all.