This one is for my beloved Hadar, who asked last week for more meatless recipes.

You know, I can be just as blinkered and blind as everyone else. Here I am priding myself on my culinary creativity and it turns out that until yesterday, I never really thought about cooking radishes.

Why not?

I dunno.

I guess because I just don’t think much about radishes. They were never my favorite vegetable growing up, even if I was taught as a little kid how to carve them into roses. Lots of people in my family loathed them–they were “too spicy” and while I liked them a little bit even when they were “hot” when I was little–I much preferred raw turnips, to radishes any day. Turnips were sweeter and crunchier, though not crisper. Radishes have such a wonderful icy, crisp texture.

And, I think that texture, which was always my favorite part of radishes, was why I never thought to cook them before. If you cook them, you mess up that texture, so, why go and do THAT?

But, you see, I am the only one in my house who likes radishes a lot, especially in salads. Kat won’t touch them and Zak is skeptical, though in recent months, he has been acquiescing that some radishes in a salad with a honey-mustard vinaigrette was alright, and maybe even pretty good.

So, I was planning a stir-fry with tofu for Hadar’s recipe, and I looked in the fridge at my bounty from the farmer’s market on Saturday. There was a beautiful bok choi from Shade River Farm, as well as some orange, yellow and purple carrots from the same lovely plot of ground. I could do bok choi and three colors of carrots, but I decided to save the purple ones for Kat to eat raw because she loves them so much.

So, I kept digging in the crisper and came up with these lovely plum-colored big radishes. I think they are the variety, “Plum Purple”, which I just planted a whole packet of seeds from Seeds of Change myself. They are pretty, and crispy and crunchy, but they are a bit spicy. And I said, “Why not?” So, I sliced them into rounds, and then into half moons after giving them as scrub and a trim. I wanted that pretty rim of purple to show.

And you know what?

Radishes are AWESOME cooked! Yes, AWESOME! (It has to be all-caps. No, really, it has to be because of my utter amazement at how tasty the wee purple buggers were once they were cooked! They lose that icy crispness that they have raw, but what they gain is sweetness. They retain their earthy sharpness, but the “heat” is ameliorated by an accentuation of the natural sugars inherent to the vegetable.

You just have to be careful and put them in near the end of stir-frying so they don’t get too mushy.

So, Hadar, this one’s for you, and thanks for giving me the impetus to think about cooking radishes. You, and the rest of my readers, will be seeing more cooked radish dishes in the future. I promise. (Because I’m gonna have to figure out what to do with all the radishes I interplanted in with the tomatoes, onions, potatoes and peppers……)

Hadar’s Stir-Fried Tofu, Bok Choy, Carrots and Radishes
Ingredients:

1 package spiced dry tofu
1 teaspoon dark soy sauce
1 teaspoon Shao Hsing wine or dry sherry
1/8 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2-3 tablespoons canola or peanut oil
1 1/2 teaspoon raw sugar
3 stalks green garlic, white parts minced, reserve green parts
1 1/2″ cube fresh young ginger, peeled and minced
1-2 teaspoons light or thin soy sauce
1 tablespoon Shao Hsing or dry sherry
2 large carrots, peeled and cut into diagonal oval-shaped slices 1/4″ thick
2 large radishes, washed, trimmed, and cut in half longitudinally, then cut into 1/4″ thick slices
1 medium head of very green bok choy, washed, trimmed and cut into 1″ chunks
3 green tops of green garlic, cut into thin diagonal slices 1/4″ thick
1/4-1/3 cup vegetable broth or stock
pinch salt
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Method:

Slice the tofu slightly on the diagonal into thin, narrow slices. Toss with the soy sauce, wine and 5-spice powder, then sprinkle on the cornstarch and toss until well coated. Allow to marinate for at least 20 minutes while you prep your vegetables.

When you are ready to cook, heat your wok on high heat until a thin ribbon of pale smoke rises from it and wafts straight up into the air. Add oil and allow it to heat undisturbed for at least thirty seconds, at which point it should ripple and shimmer in the bottom of the wok. Tilt the wok back and forth to distribute the oil along the sides of the wok.

Add the tofu, and spread into a thin single-layer on the bottom of the wok. Add the white minced garlic and ginger to the wok, sprinkling it over the tofu evenly. Sprinkle the sugar over it as well, and let the tofu brown undisturbed on the bottom of the wok for at least one minute. Then, begin stir-frying.

After the tofu has become fragrant and the ginger and garlic has begun to stick to the sides of the wok with the tofu marinade and brown, add the soy sauce and wine, and deglaze the wok. Add the carrots and stir fry for a minute or two, then the radishes. Immediately add the bok choy and the garlic greens, then the broth or stock and cook, stirring and scraping the sides of the wok until the liquid thickens and the bok choy leaves lightly wilt and the color of the stems darkens.

Sprinkle with the toasted sesame oil and sprinkle the pinch of salt over. Give it all one more toss, sprinkle with the salt, toss again, and scrape into a heated serving plate.

Serve with steamed brown rice for a light, but still richly flavored and hearty meal.

Note: I made this with all local vegetables and aromatics except for the ginger. You can substitute one clove of garlic and three scallions for the green garlic if you cannot find it at a farmer’s market near you.

My favorite way to prepare garlic scapes is to stir fry them.

And, as far as I am concerned, their perfect partner in the wok is spiced dry tofu.

Here’s why: the scapes have the same wonderful crisp but tender texture that very young green beans have, and are blessed with a similar verdant grassy flavor scented strongly with the divine aroma of garlic. This texture contrasts with the smooth and chewy texture of the tofu, with the added benefit that both foodstuffs easily pick up the flavors of whatever aromatics and condiments the cook adds to the hot wok.

It is just too delicious–and–the dark green of the scapes deepens and brightens in the wok to a brilliant emerald which looks lovely with the pale tan and dark brown tofu.

This time around, I added to the wok an early head of broccoli, small and very sweet, as well as two frozen red jalapeno chilies, which added further texture and flavor contrast. (Not to mention extra vitamins and minerals!) I also had a small piece of pork loin left over in the fridge which I added, but the truth is, I prefer this recipe vegan, and that is how I am writing it.

This is an easy, simple supper for about three adults and one baby.

You could add fresh or dried, rehydrated shiitake mushrooms, or carrots, or sweet bell peppers to this recipe as well, but I think I would have been happy just adding more garlic scapes. (I didn’t have any more, or they would have gone into the wok–I promise!)

This recipe could also be simplified by leaving out the cilantro, the broccoli, and adding more garlic scapes. You could also use green beans instead of garlic scapes, but if you do that, add more minced or sliced garlic to the recipe to make up for the loss in garlic fragrance.

Stir Fried Garlic Scapes and Spiced Dry Tofu
Ingredients:

Serve with steamed jasmine rice.

On a cold winter night, when the weather is blustery and damp, there is nothing that warms myself and my family up more than a bowl of za jiang mein–Chinese wheat noodles tossed with a hearty, spicy-sweet meat and tofu sauce and topped with crisp raw or blanched vegetables.

And since last night, our weather changed from springlike back to winter, I promised everyone that I would make a big batch of what some folks call “Chinese Spaghetti,” and had my proposal greeted with much applause and acclaim.

There was only one problem.

I wasn’t in the mood for meat.

I wanted mushrooms.

So, I thought to myself, “Is there any reason I couldn’t make a thick, somewhat chunky sauce like the za jiang meat sauce, but instead of meat, use mushrooms?”

I decided that there was absolutely no reason in the world I couldn’t or shouldn’t do that, so I did, although I also still made a batch of the meaty version for everyone else. I -had- promised, and besides, not everyone in this house loves mushrooms as much as I do.

Now, I have to admit that while this sauce was inspired by the soybean-paste based za jiang sauce, I detoured considerably from the usual recipe while I was in the process of creation. I wanted something spicier than the usual, so I added both fresh and Hunan salted chilies, and there was some kale and collards in the fridge that looked ever so tasty, so I chopped them finely and added them. And then, after those additions, I found that at the end of cooking, I needed to add a slosh of Chianking black vinegar (you can use balsamic if you don’t have the Chianking); the sour note balanced the spicy-hot chilies and slightly bitter greens to perfection.

The original sauce often includes tiny cubes of pressed tofu which are probably there to add a textural interest as well as to stretch the meat and make it go farther without lightening up the recipe considerably. (It is supposed to be warming, stick-to-your-ribs fare–after all, it is a dish common around Beijing which is not in the least bit balmy in the wintertime.) I kept these little cubes because I love them, but I also added about three ounces of crumbled, unpressed extra firm tofu that I marinated in dark soy sauce. This served two purposes: it boosted the protein level of the dish, and it helped mimic the texture of the meat sauce, without being as heavy.

I used two types of mushrooms in the sauce as well–if I had more varieties, I would have used them. For the bulk of the sauce, I used regular fresh button mushrooms, which I minced up finely, as if I was making duxelles, and fresh shiitake mushrooms, which I diced into 1/4″ pieces, to add textural variety. I could also have used rehydrated dried shiitake, but I had fresh ones on hand, so that is what went into the pot. These mushrooms were cooked together after I had thoroughly browned an onion with the chilies and some fermented black beans. With the mushrooms went finely minced garlic, ginger and scallion, and as the liquid cooked down and the mushrooms began to brown and stick to the pan, I deglazed with a good splash of Shao Hsing wine, although dry sherry would have worked just as well. After that, in went the two types of tofu to cook for a minute or two before the chopped greens went in.

As soon as the collards and kale turned from dull pine green to emerald, I tossed some soy sauce, a dab of ground bean sauce and hoisin sauce, and a sprinkle of sugar into the pan with a scant 1/4 cup of vegetable broth. A bare teaspoon of cornstarch and water slurry thickened the sauce after it cooked for a minute or so, and at the very end, two big handfuls of cilantro were stirred in along with a few drops of sesame oil and the tablespoon of vinegar.

How did it taste?

It ended up rich, redolent with the dark mystery of mushrooms, and sparkling with chile heat and the bittersweet kiss of winter greens. The vinegar gave it just the last fillip of tang it needed to enter the realm of deliciousness, while the cilantro added a fresh liveliness that is hard to resist.

It was just as good as the usual za jiang mein with meat, although, after I was done with it, it tasted considerably different, being as I used less soybean pastes and sugar and more chilies. It was lovely, though, and satisfied that mushroom longing I had, without being heavy and overly filling.

It was good stuff. I will be making it again–although since I was the only one eating this batch, I can either freeze the leftovers or use them in a Chinese rice noodle stir fry for lunch, or toss them with ramen or rice. We’ll see. Any of those options would taste wonderful.

One more thing–if I had thought of it, I would have used mushroom soy sauce for this dish–it has the essence of dried shiitake mushrooms in it. That would have ruled!

There is always the next time, though….

Chinese Wheat Noodles With Mushroom-Tofu Sauce
Ingredients:

Toss immediately with freshly boiled, well drained, steaming hot Chinese wheat noodles (I used dried–fresh would be great, too), and add any jullienned raw or blanched vegetable garnish you would like–I used carrots, but you could use sweet red, green or any color you like bell pepper, seeded cucumber, radish, daikon, kohlrabi. It is all good.

I admit it.

I used to be a hater.

I used to hate brussels sprouts, and could never understand why in the world anyone in possession of their senses would ever want to eat one, much less more than one of these mutant, alien miniature cabbage heads. They were mushy, watery, bitter, and smelled like–well, like a dirty toilet, as far as I could tell.

They were the devil.

And I have to tell you, that the salad at a meal I ate last night at the best fine dining restaurant here in Athens, Zoe, converted me from a hater of all things brussels sprouts, to a lover of that bonny wee brassica.

It turns out that everyone in my childhood days just overcooked brussels sprouts. And apparently, the longer you cook them, especially if you are boiling them, the more bitter they become–probably because the sugar is leached out into the cooking water, leaving only the smelly and nasty sulphur compounds behind.

But about that salad, pictured above.

The chef/owner of Zoe, Scott Bradley, is a genius. His salads are always delicious, but the above combination of steamed brussels sprouts, prosciutto, dates and thinly sliced red onions tossed with a traditional, garlicky Caesar salad dressing was amazing. The textures were perfect counterpoints with the tender-crisp sprouts, the crunchy onions, the slightly chewy prosciutto and the sticky dates–and the flavors were just perfect. From salt to honey sweet to sharp–this salad had it all, and I gobbled down a good half of it before I remembered I had a camera with me and snapped a quick picture of what remained on my plate.

I ordered the salad, because I was out with my in-laws, and my father-in-law, Karl, has been telling me for years that there was absolutely no reason in the world why I should dislike brussels sprouts. So, I was determined to try them in his presence–not to prove him wrong, but to prove him right. I wanted him to be there to see me lose my last culinary prejudice against an innocent vegetable. (My other childhood vegetable foes have long become my pals: peas and I made our peace when I learned how to cook them with Indian spices, and beets became my buddies when I was pregnant with Morganna, and out of the blue, I started craving them.)

And so, I tried it, and liked it. And I told our waitress about how good it was, and told her that Scott had made me a brussels sprouts convert. She admitted that she never much cared for them herself, but on my recommendation, she would try the salad. I sure hope she liked it as much as I did.

The sprouts didn’t taste bitter and awful. They were like a combination of collard greens and bok choy with a little bit of hazelnut thrown in for good measure. They were nutty and sweet and lightly crunchy and tender at the same time.

Amazed, I had Morganna try them, and she pronounced them delicious. And Zak–he liked them too.

Oh, frabjous day, calloo callay!

So, of course, tonight, I had to figure out how to cook my very own brussels sprouts. I decided to try a stir fry with onions, garlic, Hunan salted chilies, fermented black beans, tofu and carrots.

It turned out to be mighty tasty.

I did cook this recipe a bit topsy-turvy from the way I usually do a stir-fry: I put the brussels sprouts in the wok right after the aromatics were cooked, so that they would soak up plenty of of the onion, garlic, black bean and chile flavor, and could sear and brown against the hot surface of the wok without any other major ingredients in the way. After the sprouts where half-tender, I removed them, and added the tofu to the wok, and continued cooking as normal, adding the carrots next, and then returning the brussels sprouts to the wok, before deglazing, so that the quickly reducing wine would steam them to perfection, and they would get thoroughly coated in the glaze it produced.

As fine and tasty as this recipe is, I cannot wait to roast them in the oven and season them with ghee, panch phoron and lemon.

And of course, when I do make that, I will present it here and show you all how.

Stir Fried Tofu with Brussels Sprouts and Carrots
Ingredients:

Note: Sweet red peppers would be great added to this. Only, I didn’t have any. But you could have some, and try it out. I bet fresh or dried shiitake would be great with this, too.

I know that I haven’t posted much about Chinese food recently. Bad, wicked Barbara! Shame on me!

It is mostly because I had posted so many recipes for Chinese noodles (and yes, I will go back to those eventually, I promise, promise, promise), then got distracted by all of the canning and food preserving, that I lost my way.

Wednesday night, after I came home from work early in the afternoon, I decided enough was enough. I wanted good Chinese food. I wanted a nice, homey stir fry with lots of veggies and tofu, dammit. And I had a small bit of top round beef that could go in as well to please Zak and Morganna, the more carnivorous pair in the household.

So that is what I bloody well did. I hauled off and started digging through my fridge to see what vegetable goodies I had from the farmers’ market. I came up with a crisp bunch of spicy mustard greens, curly-edged and fragrant, some sweet Japanese turnips, their white skins so smooth, they felt like polished alabaster, some carrots, and a sweet red bell pepper, probably my last local one for the year. I had fresh local tofu, but was out of fermented black beans, so I pulled a jar of Chili black bean paste I had been meaning to try from my pantry, to see what it was like. And that bit of beef was perfect to go with everything else, because there wasn’t enough of it to stand on its own, but its grassfed flavor–nice and strong and beefy, for want of a better word, would stand up to the assertive vegetable flavors while the texture would contrast with the crispy crust of the tofu.

I deep fried the tofu first–just because I felt like it–and let it drain thoroughly on paper towels. For a discussion of how to deep fry tofu, look at my version of Peng’s Home Style Beancurd from Fuchsia Dunlop. You can pan fry it instead, or bake it, or just skip this step.

And, by the way–if you don’t want meat in this–don’t put it in there. The dish is just fine without it. In fact, I only tasted one small strip of the beef to make sure it tasted good. The fried tofu and vegetables was heavenly on its own, so I think that you vegans out there could make a really, really nice Tofu and Autumn Vegetable Stir Fry and ignore the beef I put in it.

What did it taste like? Oh, I have to tell you that the combination of vegetables was just right. The mustard greens were spicy and velvety, while the turnips were just soft, and so sweet it was like eating root vegetable candy. The carrots were sweet, too, but more crisp, and the red pepper, which was the sweetest of all, was tender-crisp and both brilliant in color and flavor. These vegetables went perfectly well with the tofu and beef.

It was a good dinner, with steamed rice, of course, and my beloved pu er tea.

Homestyle Tofu, Beef and Autumn Vegetable Stir Fry

Feeds about four adults and a hungry infant.