Grilled Thai Cabbage Salad with Almond Chile Sauce

I do my best to make good choices about the food I buy. I don’t eat a lot of meat, and I don’t eat any red meat. But, I can always try to do better. The new book Living the Farm Sanctuary Life is full of inspiration for eating better, taking better care of the planet, and paying more attention to how animals are raised. I received a review copy. It’s doesn’t beat you up about how you choose to eat. It just tells the story of Farm Sanctuary and how they’ve rescued animals and inspired a lot of people to stop eating animal products. There are charming anecdotes about the animals that have been saved, nursed back to health, and gone on to delight everyone who gets to know them. There are reminders about the horrible conditions at factory farms and suggestions for making small changes that will add up. I started thinking about how my consumption of espresso drinks with milk has increased over recent years. In the past, I drank tea more often. I decided it’s time to switch back to more tea and less dairy and to make sure I’m visiting coffee bars that use milk from good sources when I do need a cappuccino fix. I’m also thinking that fewer turkey sandwiches and more sandwiches filled with vegetables would be a good change. Following the stories about the animals and the farm and tips for healthy eating, there are recipes for Breakfast, Salad, Handheld Meals, Soups, Appetizers and Sides, Entrees, and Desserts. And, they’re all free of animal products. Some dishes I want to try include: the Tacos with Salted Grilled Plantains, Salsa Verde, and Pepitas on homemade tortillas; the Spring Vegetable Cioppino; and the Savory Wild Mushroom Crepes with Roasted Fingerling Breakfast Potatoes made with chickpea flour in the crepes. I jumped right into the Grilled Thai Cabbage Salad before our local cabbage disappears for the summer. 

The salad itself is an easy mix of a few vegetables and lots of herbs, and the grilled cabbage adds a lot of flavor. But, the real star here is the sauce. I want to keep a bowl of it handy for dipping all kinds of vegetables or grilled tofu. It’s made in a blender by combining almond butter, lemon juice, rice wine vinegar, chopped fresh ginger and garlic, a chopped serrano chile, some tamari, and a little water and pureeing until smooth. You can add more water as it purees to get the consistency you’d like. Meanwhile, the cabbage was cut into big wedges and drizzled with oil. I grilled the wedges inside on a grill pan, but the flavor of grill smoke would have been even better for it. The wedges were only grilled for a few minutes per side to get some marks and to allow the cabbage to just begin to take on some tenderness. After removing the cabbage from the grill pan and letting it cool, it was chopped into chunks. The cabbage was tossed with chopped mint, basil, cilantro, and bean sprouts and green onions. It was served with the sauce drizzled over top. 

I always love a peanut sauce, so I suspected I was going to enjoy this almond sauce on the salad. In fact, I might have liked it more than any variation on peanut sauce I’ve made before. The lemon juice was the magic ingredient, and the serrano gave it just enough heat. The salad was fresh and full of flavor from the herbs, and the charred cabbage added an earthy note. With dishes like this, eating all plant-based food is easy. 

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Bibimbap

When it comes to preparing any kind of Asian cuisine, my success rate is about 50%. It’s getting better considering that in the past it was about 10%. Still, I need more practice and probably more books. For months, I had wanted to try making bibimbap. When I saw this New York Times article, I decided the time was now. I followed the recipe linked in the article exactly with only one change. I added some yellow summer squash just because I had it. This was my very first attempt at cooking Korean food, so I followed the instructions carefully and was thrilled with the result. I used zucchini, daikon, carrots, and yellow squash from Hands of the Earth Farm and only needed to purchase a few other ingredients. I didn’t find the Korean chili sauce, gochujang, at my regular grocery store and wondered about using a substitute. A quick online search led me to believe there isn’t a good substitute, so I stopped by our nearby Korean market to get it.

There was a considerable bit of prep work involved. The zucchini, shitake caps, daikon, carrots, and yellow squash were all julienned. Then, the zucchini, squash, and shitakes were each sauteed separately with sesame oil and garlic. Also, bean sprouts and spinach were blanched separately and then tossed with sesame oil and sesame seeds. The daikon was tossed with chili flakes, sesame oil, a pinch of sugar, and salt, and the carrot was left plain and raw. The rice cooked while all of these items were being prepped. I’m sure this process could be vastly simplified, but given my track record I stuck to the recipe. When the rice was cooked, a non-stick skillet was heated with vegetable oil. Half of the rice was flattened into the skillet and pressed into a large pancake. This was left to brown for a few minutes, and then it was turned to brown on the other side. My turning skills were lacking, but it didn’t matter in the end because the crusty rice was broken into pieces and topped with the remaining cooked rice. The prepped vegetables were arranged in wedges on top of the rice, and all was adorned with gochujang. To serve, the skillet’s contents were gently mixed and transferred to plates.

Crispy rice bits, well-seasoned sauteed squash and mushrooms, crunchy carrots, and sesame seeds were just some of the varied textures. And, the garlic and sesame with the chili sauce was a delicious blend of flavors. The gochujang was a little spicy but also somewhat sweet and vinegary, and I see now that it was worth the trip to the Korean market. It really is different from other chili sauces. Bibimbap is often served with a fried egg on top, but we had indulged in a large frittata for brunch earlier in the day so I skipped the egg. It may also be served with beef or chicken, but I stayed with the vegetarian approach of the recipe. I’m kind of proud to have successfully created a bibimbap and I’ll definitely be making it again.

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Salted Szechwan Pepper Shrimp with Stir Fried Bean Sprouts

What’s a summery, light, lovely meal with exciting, surprising flavor? Look no further. This is it. This is a gold medal summer meal. The first taste of this brought on the (eye-popping, smiling while chewing, can’t talk yet, but when I can I’ll start waxing poetic about this) look that I get when I know some food thing has worked out really well. It’s the simple things that always really impress. Perhaps that’s because they catch me off-guard.

This comes from the salt and pepper chapter of Donna Hay’s Flavors. I used some really fresh and perfect, wild caught, gulf, white shrimp at a U10-15 size. Szechwan peppercorns, cyprus flake sea salt, and rice flour were pulverized together in a spice grinder. The cleaned shrimp were then dusted with the mixture. They spent a scant couple of minutes in hot oil and came out just beautiful with a very thin, crisp coating. The stir fried bean sprouts went just as quickly in and out of a sauté pan along with sesame oil, savoy cabbage, chiles, lime juice, and soy sauce.

I’m still thinking about the flavors as they came together. The sweetness of the shrimp played off that of the cabbage. The mild piquancy of the Szechwan pepper didn’t overwhelm, and the chiles in the stir fry were a nice additional touch of heat. And, somewhere in the shrimp, there was a very subtle note of lemon. I’ve read that some sea salts offer hints of citrus, but I didn’t notice that when I tasted the cyprus sea salt by itself. It came forward though when combined with the pepper and the shrimp. A lot of the credit does belong to the shrimp because it was so fresh and plump and exactly like it should be. Well, there I go with the musings. Try this meal, and you’ll be musing too.

If you’re wondering: what beverage would you pair with a meal like this? You’re in luck, because we conducted another wheat beer tasting and found one to be a very good match for this. This time, we tasted Ommegang Witte Ale which was crisp and refreshing with a touch of acidity. I happen to enjoy crisp beers with shrimp, and this one was extremely quaffable. It scored very high marks, and we may have to ponder a change to our top three favorites. This could appear as a tie for number two after further consideration.

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