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.

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.

Miso soup

I made miso soup for the first time on Friday. It was raining cats and dogs, so soup seemed appropriate. Plus, I had bought miso a while ago and hadn't gotten around to using it yet. I threw in some extras to make it a little more substantial than your standard Japanese restaurant miso soup. Beyond the dashi and miso, everything else is optional, and you can add any other fun extras you want. I don't know very much about miso, and I forgot to write down the kind I used. It was a light brown color. I know each kind has its own flavor but are to some degree interchangeable. Dashi is Japanese kelp stock. It traditionally has bonito fish flakes in it, but I didn't add them. This was my first time making or using it, and I also added some other seaweed to the soup itself. I had only had seaweed in the form of Japanese restaurant seaweed salad, but I bought a bunch of dried seaweed in Chinatown a few months ago and have decided to explore a little bit. So far, so good.

Miso soup (adapted from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman):
1 quart dashi (see next recipe)
1/3 cup miso
8 oz firm silken tofu, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup frozen edamame
1 carrot, cut into small rounds
1/4 cup dry hijiki seaweed, rehydrated in about 1/3 cup warm water for a few minutes

Heat the dashi in a saucepan over medium heat until it's almost boiling. Then scoop out about 1/2 a cup and mix it with the miso. Then add the miso mixture back to the dashi. Toss in the rest of the ingredients, including the water used to rehydrate the hijiki. Let it cook without boiling until the edamame is cooked to your taste.

Dashi (also from Bittman):
2 quarts of water
1 piece of kombu (kelp), about 4-6 inches (I'm a seaweed newbie, and the whole piece looked awfully big to me (about 4x10 inches or so), so I cut it in half, and it seemed to work fine.)

Put the water and dashi in a saucepan over medium heat until almost boiling. Bittman says it takes about 15 minutes. I wasn't paying attention to the time when I made it, so I don't know. I used one quart immediately in the miso soup and froze the other quart for the next batch of soup.

The next day for lunch I had leftover miso soup with spring rolls. I made a dipping sauce for the spring rolls this time: peanut butter, orange juice, rice wine vinegar, toasted sesame oil, and srirachi (Thai chili sauce), all to taste. I also tossed a couple leftover leaves of lacinato kale (aka dinosaur kale) into the soup. Both were good choices.

Spring rolls

Since the blog is just beginning, I think I should have a post about something that went right: spring rolls! These were for a special dinner for Jon when he got back into town after being gone for a whole week.

First, I dry-fried some firm silken tofu. I just used a nonstick pan and cooked it until it was brown on each side. I had never tried that technique before, but I was really pleased with the texture.

Next, I laid out the other fillings: apples, carrots, kohlrabi, cucumber, lettuce, asparagus, herbs, and (self-sprouted) bean sprouts. To make each roll, we soaked a wrapper in warm water until it was pliable. Then we filled it the way we wanted to and rolled it up like a burrito. It was fun because each one was different. Jon made a little dipping sauce with Hoisin sauce, Sriracha, and some other stuff. I might try a peanut-based sauce next time.

To round out the meal, I served hot and sour soup, seaweed salad, and leftover mung beans in coconut milk with jasmine rice. It was a good way to welcome him home.