Deconstructed guacamole quesa-jitas

I have been threatening to make deconstructed guacamole for a while, and on Saturday I finally followed through. I used it as the key ingredient in dinner, which was something between a quesadilla and fajita. I used up some leftover tofu in it too.

For fellow southsiders, Hyde Park Produce tends to have good avocados at a reasonable (maybe even cheap) price.

Deconstructed guacamole

2 firm avocados, chopped

1/2 tomato, chopped

Corn, optional

Cilantro, optional

Juice of 1/2 lime

1 healthy shake arizona dreaming or other chili powder

1 shake chipotle powder

1 shake cajun seasoning or seasoned salt

2 pinches cumin

1 pinch coriander

1 shake tabasco

Combine ingredients.

I served this on tortillas with sautéed onions, dry fried tofu, tomato slices, cheese, sour cream and jalapenos. 

Japanese spa salad

This recipe is from the September issue of Vegetarian Times. They call it Tofu and Cucumber Salad with Sesame-Ginger Dressing, but I call it Japanese spa salad because it seems like the kind of thing someone would give you at a spa where you went to get "detoxifying" treatments and maybe do some yoga and meditation. It's a great summer salad because it requires absolutely no cooking and makes you feel refreshed. It's definitely not summer here, but I ate it for lunch today because it is so quick to make, especially if you don't bother with the recipe's dressing. (Just drizzle some soy sauce and sesame oil on it instead.)

The brand of soft tofu I have is Phoenix Bean, and it's made here in Chicago. I highly recommend it. It seems beanier than most tofu I've had. According to Yelp, one can go buy their tofu directly from the factory. I'm excited to go there sometime and try their other tofus.

This salad is satisfying without being filling, and it makes me feel light and energized.

Japanese spa salad

Makes 1 salad; multiply recipe as necessary

4 oz. soft tofu, sliced

1/2 avocado, sliced

2 inches cucumber, sliced

1/2 sheet nori, crumbled

1 tsp sesame seeds

Dressing (makes enough dressing for several salads):

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup rice vinegar

3 tbsp minced fresh ginger

1 tsp sugar

Mix dressing ingredients together. Arrange tofu, avocado, and cucumber on a plate. Sprinkle nori and sesame seeds on top. Drizzle with dressing.

Jungle Sundaes

I've never disliked avocados, but the past few months I've been especially fond of them. Mostly, we add them to salads and sandwiches, but I decided to get a little crazy with them last week. The night before, I had made us a really simple banana split. Banana is unusual in that it is a creamy fruit. The next day as I was cutting into the salad avocado, I remembered that avocado was also a creamy fruit, and a delightfully wacky idea took form: avocado sundae! So we tried it that night: half an avocado, roughly chopped up, covered in cookies and cream ice cream, chocolate sauce, and chopped brazil nuts and cashews. Filled with trepidation, we dug into it, only to barely be able to taste the avocado. It tasted as good as any bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce and nuts, which is to say, good.

Emboldened by the fact that it didn't suck, we decided to decrease the ice cream to get more of the avocado flavor. I scooped half an avocado into a bowl, put two small scoops of ice cream on it, and drizzled, instead of drenched, it with chocolate sauce and brazil nuts. I wasn't hungry that night, but Jon wolfed it down and enjoyed it.

The next time, we decided to combine the creamy fruits and made what we have dubbed the Jungle Sundae:

1/2 banana, 1/2 avocado, 2 scoops vanilla ice cream, chopped brazil nuts and cashews, chocolate sauce.

It's a little big for one person, but so is a banana split. I don't actually know if avocados grow in the jungle. I think of them as coming from California and Mexico. But the other ingredients (bananas, vanilla, nuts, cacao) could come from the jungle, right?

Christmas Eve dinner

We decided to make the Persian layered pilafs from Vegetable Heaven by Mollie Katzen for dinner yesterday. The idea is that you make three different rice pilafs, one with beets, one with carrots, and one with onions (to which we added some cooked beluga lentils), and layer them. Your adoring husband, mother, or other guests ooh and aah as they take slices of this spectacular tower of rice. You can eat the layers separately or mix them together. The problem is the layering (and my hubris). Our first idea was to press each layer into a small ramekin and then turn them out onto a plate, one on top of the other. Jon tried to do this. Much to my surprise, the second layer was perfect. I snapped a picture, just in case.

And it was a good thing, because the third layer ended up like this.

Then I, in my hubris, decided that it would be better to layer them all in a large ramekin and turn them out onto a plate all at once. I pressed the rice into the ramekin really tightly, found a big plate, and turned it over. As I slid the ramekin off, I told Jon to get the camera quick. He snapped the first picture mere seconds before the second one.

I tried in vain to scoop up the pink layer as it fell, but it was useless. Then the other side started crumbling. I whisked away the precarious tower of rice and took it back to the stove where it wouldn't continue to get the table dirty. Then I went back and gathered as much rice from the table as possible. My plate ended up looking kind of like Rainbow Brite vomited on it.

(Sorry so blurry. It looked clear on the camera screen.)

After eating, I did my best to separate the rice back into three pilafs. They stacked much better like this.

I think next time I do this, we will put the pilafs into ramekins to shape but have them sitting next to each other on the plate rather than trying to stack them. We think it might make a nice base to some cooked bok choy, or a simple piece of chicken or fish (if we ate that). I have hope for this, but I don't think it's ready for prime time yet.

Tonight we're having friends over for dinner. Jon is making his delicious mac and cheese and kale, our friends are bringing a salad, and for dessert we're having leftover cranberry upside-down cake my mom made for us when we were in Dallas earlier this week.

I leave you with a Christmas miracle.

We had been having a dickens of a time finding a good avocado. The ones that felt right tended to be black and hard inside. Then Jon found this. With hummus, sprouts, and veggies, it made an epic sandwich. Merry Christmas!

Jus Alpokat

As I mentioned in my post about Singapore, one of the great things I got to try there was jus alpokat, a delicious avocado-based beverage. It was described as Indonesian avocado juice, but it is basically an avocado milkshake. It was a great treat, although it's very rich, and usually the whole glass was too much. My birthday was on Monday, and I decided I wanted a yummy meal reminiscent of my time in Singapore: jus alpokat and curry laksa. (I'll post about the curry laksa later. It was great.)

I looked online for jus alpokat recipes and decided to use a kind of consensus. Some use milk and sugar, some use milk and simple syrup, and some use sweetened condensed milk. The one below uses milk and sugar because it seemed easiest. I loved it. Jon liked it at first, but it was too much for him as he kept drinking it, so I ended up getting to have some the next day as well. The amount below was advertised as making two servings, but it's so rich that it's probably better to split it four ways. Avocado is great in sweet things, and I definitely recommend trying this. I am eventually going to try a vegan version with coconut milk. I think it could be good.

I couldn't find my camera when I was making these, so I used my laptop instead. The pictures kind of freak me out because of the mirror image thing. My kitchen doesn't look like that! My left front tooth is behind my right one, not the other way around! (Yeah, I know I always see myself in the mirror like this, but I'm not used to pictures of me looking like this.)

Jus alpokat

1 1/2 large avocados

1 cup milk

Sugar to taste (about 2 tbsp)

Chocolate syrup

Ice

Scoop avocado flesh into blender. Add milk. Blend until smooth. I used the "blend" setting at first and moved up to "liquefy," the fastest setting, after it had gotten pretty blended. Add sugar to taste and blend again. To serve, pour chocolate syrup onto the sides of 2-4 glasses. Spoon the avocado mixture into the glasses. Without washing blender, place ice cubes into blender and pulse a few times to crush. Top each glass with crushed ice. Eat a little of it immediately because it has a great texture and it's avocado flavored, and then mix the rest into the beverage.