Miso-basil salad dressing

I had the same package of miso in my fridge for well over a year, and I still hadn’t gotten around to making a salad dressing out of it. I really like miso salad dressings, so on Monday while I was waiting for my split peas to soften, I used the last of the miso to make a salad dressing for my salad at dinner. I love my lemon-sesame dressing, and I think it’s great when I’m in the mood for some Asian flavor on my salad, but I wanted a change of pace.

I figured Mark Bittman would have a miso salad dressing in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, and I was right. I made his recipe with a few variations. First, I added some Thai and regular basil because I have a ton of it and it’s really bright, a nice foil for the richness of miso. I also added some soy sauce. Bittman says to use sake or water to thin the miso. 3/4 cup of sake seemed like too much. I didn’t want to be able to make a cocktail out of my salad dressing, so I used 1/4 cup sake and 1/2 cup water. The sake flavor adds complexity without giving it any alcoholic taste. Bittman uses no oil in the dressing, which means it’s low in fat, but it’s also very thin. In this form, I think it would be a great marinade or sauce for cooked vegetables, but I had higher-viscosity dreams for my salad. I added some sesame oil directly to the dressing and combined about 1/4 cup dressing with 1 tbsp vegetable oil for my salad that night. I recommend that you add some oil when you make it or as you go along if you want a typical salad dressing consistency.

Miso is delicious. Every time I eat it, I promise myself I will use it more often because it’s so rich and has a great slightly sweet, fermented, salty taste. Looking through my mountains of cookbooks and recipes, I see quite a few with miso, and I hope to be trying more of them soon.

Miso-basil salad dressing

makes about 1 cup before adding oil

6 tbsp miso

1/4 cup sake or water

1/2 cup water

1 tbsp sweetener (I used agave nectar; sugar or honey would be fine)

1/2 cup Thai or regular basil, finely minced

1 tsp soy sauce

1 tbsp rice wine vinegar, or more to taste

Juice of 1/2 lime

1 tsp toasted sesame oil

Vegetable oil, optional

Combine miso, sake, and water and whisk with a fork until smooth. Add the rest of the ingredients except for vegetable oil. Season to taste with rice wine vinegar. Add vegetable oil until your desired consistency is reached.

Vegan mofo and plumcot spring rolls with basil dipping sauce

I decided to "officially" join veganmofo 2009, which I mentioned yesterday. I've never participated in a blog community thing like this before, so I make no promises. Considering I haven't yet made 20 posts in a month, I probably won't hit the 20-post goal. But I do have a nice list of vegan recipes I've made recently and not posted or want to try this month. I'm not limiting myself to vegan food posts this month either. I've got some other recipes to share as well. A few goals for myself this month: try some common vegan substitutes I haven't tried before, like nutritional yeast, flax meal for eggs, and tofu scramble. It should be fun.

First up, some spring rolls I made this past weekend, along with a simple but delicious dipping sauce. Of course, my award-winning* watermelon rind spring rolls are still the reigning champs of my spring roll world, but variety is the spice of life. This past weekend I had some plumcots and a bunch of alfalfa sprouts to use, so I decided to try a fruit and sprout spring roll. I rounded it out with yellow bell peppers and cucumber. I thought basil would pair well with it, so I made a basil dipping sauce. It was all really nice. I really like a bit of fruit in a spring roll. Mango, peach, or apple would be good in place of the plumcot. Or, of course, plum or apricot.

Plumcot spring rolls
No amounts here. Just cut up a little of everything, roll it up, and make some more if you're still hungry.

Plumcot
Yellow bell pepper
Cucumber
Alfalfa sprouts
Spring roll wrappers

Thinly slice desired amount of plumcot, yellow bell pepper, and cucumber. Soften one spring roll wrapper in water that is hot to the touch but doesn't actually burn you. Place small amounts of plumcot, pepper, cucumber, and sprouts on the wrapper and roll it up. Repeat as desired.

Basil dipping sauce (based on a recipe from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman)

2 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
2 tbsp water
1 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup basil (I used a mixture of Thai and regular), thinly sliced
dash of Srirachi sauce, or more to taste

Combine all ingredients. Bonus points if you make it an hour ahead of time so the basil can infuse the rest of the sauce.

*They got a "most creative" prize at a recent potluck.

Eggplant with four basils

At the farmers' market a couple weeks ago, I found these beautiful tiny eggplants:
You can tell they are tiny because that's only two pounds. I should have included some sort of reference item in the picture. They were reasonably priced, a rarity at Houston farmers' markets, and I couldn't resist them. I knew I wanted to do something special with them. They couldn't be relegated to a pizza topping or baba ganoush, as delightful as it is, or a stir-fry bursting with other flavors. I had never made eggplant basil before, but I knew it was just what I wanted. When we go to a Chinese restaurant, Jon and I almost always get an order of it, but I had never tried making it at home. I looked at a couple recipes online, but they seemed too involved, so I just followed my instincts and made this up.
I used one pound just in case it was awful. It wasn't, so I made it again, with some variations, with the second pound a few days later. This week, I bought another basket of beautiful tiny eggplants and plan on making this dish again tonight. I used dark soy sauce the first time, which is why it's almost black in the picture, and light soy sauce the second time. Both are good. Dark soy sauce is a little thicker and sweeter. I also added tofu skins the second time. They were fantastic, but I also like the simplicity of the dish without it. I call this eggplant with four basils because I have four kinds of basil growing on my balcony garden. Thai basil, with its anisey kick, is the best, but unfortunately my Thai basil plant is petering out, so I supplemented it with my normal sweet basil, purple globe basil, and mystery basil that just started growing in one of my pots about a month ago. It doesn't look like any of the other ones. I think maybe it's a hybrid of Thai and sweet basil that somehow got started by being near my other basil plants, but I don't know. I love mysteries.

Eggplant with four basils
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp toasted sesame oil
1 lb eggplant, preferably tiny succulent ones, halved or quartered lengthwise and cut into 2-inch chunks (if you're using regular supermarket eggplant, go for 2x1x1-inch pieces)
4 oz tofu skin, cut into 1-inch cubes, optional
1/2 cup basil or a mix of four basils, divided, roughly chopped if leaves are large
3 tbsp soy sauce, either dark or light

Heat oils in a wok or large saute pan over medium-high heat. Add eggplant pieces and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 4 minutes. Add tofu skins, 2 tbsp basil, soy sauce, and 2 tbsp water. Cover and steam until eggplant is tender, about 5 minutes more. Add more water if the pan dries out too much. Remove from heat and stir in most of the remaining basil. Serve over rice with a little extra fresh basil on top.

Asian-inspired watermelon rind slaw

I am kind of obsessed with the three R's: reduce, reuse, recycle. I make wallets out of plastic bags I've fused together using an iron. I recycle as much as I can. I use old coffee cans for pencil holders and wear my clothes for as long as possible before replacing them. In the kitchen, I work vigilantly to keep produce from going bad in the fridge, I eat the cores of apples, I candy citrus peels to make a delicious snack, and I compost anything I can't use. At the office, I have also become the composter. People sometimes bring me their compost, and at office barbecues, I collect the compostable waste and take it to a neighborhood garden near me. This story begins with a math department barbecue. Someone brought a huge, delicious watermelon. By the end, I had over five pounds of watermelon rind. I took it home, but instead of composting it, I decided I might try to make something of it. I love the idea of making something good from what is essentially trash. That's where most people would have put it, at least.

Of course, I have heard of watermelon rind pickles, although I've never had one. I looked at a bunch of recipes online and decided they weren't really up my alley. They all seemed excessively sweet and soft, when I was looking for something crunchy and sour. Watermelon rind has a lot of melony-ness, but it isn't sweet at all, so there's no reason it should be made into a really sweet pickle. My first attempt was not very successful. I just cut the raw rind into 1-inch cubes, salted and then rinsed it, and put it in vinegar with some dill and mustard seeds. (We use a similar method for making refrigerator cucumber pickles.) They were way too hard and aggressively sour. I also tried a modified version of a recipe I had found online where the rind is cooked in vinegar and sugar with some spices for about 45 minutes. It worked better, although now I'd like it crunchier. I am still working on a good watermelon rind pickle recipe. Stay tuned.

My kitchen in the middle of pickle and slaw making: two batches of differently-spiced pickles, some slaw in the making, and a bag of watermelon rinds

While I was lamenting the too-crunchiness of my original pickles and thought about how really hard vegetables, like carrots, are sometimes much easier to eat when shredded. Thus began the quest for a watermelon rind slaw. My first attempt was by no means a failure. It was very simple: watermelon rind, apple cider vinegar, just a touch of sugar, a little shredded carrot, and some mint. Not bad, not stunning. The shredded watermelon rind was very easy to eat, and it was pleasantly crunchy and mild. I can definitely see it standing in as a substitute for cabbage or even celery or cucumber. (When I experimented with adding celery seeds to the slaw, it tasted eerily like actual celery.) I was unsatisfied, however, with the slaw. It was kind of boring. It would have worked at a picnic as a side to barbecued things, but only because it was crunchy and cold.

The first slaw

This afternoon I was browsing through Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian looking for inventive slaw recipes that might be easily adapted to watermelon rind. I came across his Korean chive and lettuce salad. Basically, it's a bunch of chives with a soy sauce and sesame oil dressing mixed in with lettuce. In the variations, he suggests using shiso instead of the chives. I have never seen or tasted shiso, but apparently it's a Japanese herb that is a little basil-y, a little minty, and a little cinnamony. I decided to try the recipe with watermelon rind and assorted herbs from my garden.

Friends, I was not disappointed. I used some purple globe basil, which has very small leaves and has gone to flower already. I used the flowers as well as the leaves and stems. I also threw in some Thai basil, which has a pleasant anise flavor, and some chives. It was good. Really good. Jon, who has been very patient with me for keeping over six pounds (there was a second watermelon) of rind in the fridge even though it was already full, has been pretty skeptical of the whole project. He was underwhelmed by the original watermelon-carrot slaw, but he recognized the genius of this one immediately. It is crunchy, floral, and complex. While we were eating it and marveling at how awesome it was, I had the brilliant idea of making it into spring rolls. So we did. The sauce is quite strong, so it's like you have already put the dipping sauce in the spring roll. We loved it. We spent dozens of minutes talking about how great it was, and by extension how awesome I am.

Where amazing happens

I know that is a very long buildup to a recipe. And I feel a little bad because really, the watermelon rind is completely replaceable. Cabbage would be perfectly acceptable here. Probably carrots would too. Or celery or cucumber or any other crunchy vegetable. The herbs and dressing are what make this such a good dish, not the watermelon rind. The melony-ness is definitely overwhelmed by the other flavors, but darn it, it's free! Assuming you like watermelon (and I don't see how you couldn't), the rind is completely a bonus vegetable. I am still working on other good ways to use it, but I am very, very happy with this recipe. It's extremely likely that the dinner guests we are having tomorrow night will be eating it. Without further ado, here it is.

Slaw in a bowl

Asian-inspired watermelon rind slaw (based loosely on Bittman's recipe for Korean chive and lettuce salad):

About 1/2 pound watermelon rind, peel removed, grated with a food processor, about 2 cups
About 1/2 cup assorted fresh herbs, minced (I used purple globe basil and its flowers, Thai basil, and chives)
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
2 tsp soy sauce
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
juice of 1/4 lime
1 tsp sugar
A tiny, tiny bit of Srirachi sauce, or more if you have a higher tolerance for heat than I do (trust me, you do)
1 tsp fresh ginger, minced or grated
2 tsp toasted sesame seeds

Wring out the watermelon rind with your hands over the sink. It's wetter than it lets on. Put it in a bowl. Add the herbs and toss. Mix together the oil, soy sauce, vinegar, lime juice, sugar, Srirachi, ginger, and sesame seeds. Pour over the rind and herbs. Marvel at your (or my) inventiveness. If you want to make it into spring rolls, just get a spring roll wrapper ready and put some filling in. You don't need a dipping sauce or any other ingredients.