Pancit Salad [GF]

In day-to-day Hawai'ian culinary life, the noodle salad is a staple.  If not in itself, as may deem it, the backbone of any plate lunch worth its salt (and that's usually a lot of salt), it's at least a vertebra on a par with the gravy, the meat, and the two scoops of rice.  While your typical plate-lunch noodle salad is macaroni-based, the gluten-intolerant among us will be glad to see a viable alternative (in the form of a pancit salad — pancit bihon being a type of ultra-thin rice noodle used in Filipino cuisine) that is wheat free and equally respectable as local food.  And as for the creamy sauce, the morsels of chicken, fish, or seafood, and the minced tomatoes — never fear: they're here in full force.

The recipe provided below yields a single serving of the salad.  I originally made a bowl of this salad a week or so ago, but have maintained a strong hankering for it ever since, and have created three variants so far: one featuring chicken breast, one featuring tuna, and one featuring mussels (the rest of the ingredients, and their proportions, have been held constant as the protein source has been varied).  The mussels have so far been my favorite, but all have been outstanding.  Also, I should point out that the reason I elected to use pancit, rather than any other form of rice noodle, is that I just happened to have some lying around.  I suspect that rice macaroni might even be a better vehicle for the mayonnaise-based sauce, and would, at any rate, add to the mac-salad authenticity and caché of the dish.

Curly cress, incidentally, which is called for in this recipe, and which occasionally also goes by the aliases "garden cress" and "pepper grass," is a piquant, peppery micro-green.  It shows up not infrequently at farmers' markets on O'ahu (credit for the bunch I used in constructing this recipe, in all three of its incarnations, goes to the folks at 'Nalo Farms, who also, I should add, raise a damned fine corn sprout), but, as with many of Hawai'i's agricultural delights, I'm not sure about its wider availability.  If you can't find it, don't worry too much: it's not an essential ingredient in the salad, but it does complement the other flavors quite nicely, and provides a bit of textural variety to an otherwise overwhelmingly creamy dish.  Other sorts of cress might serve as reasonable substitutes as well, for what it's worth. 

• 1 oz. dry pancit noodles
• 1-1½ oz. diced grilled chicken breast, cooked mussels, or canned tuna
• 1 tsp. mayonnaise
• ½ tsp. Tabasco sauce
• 1½ Tbsp. dijon mustard
• 1 Tbsp. rice vinegar
• ½ Tbsp. fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1 tsp. curly cress, chopped
• 1 Tbsp. tomato, chopped
• ¼ tsp. dry dill weed
• ⅛ tsp. dry basil
• ¼ tsp. sweet paprika
• 1 generous pinch ground cayenne pepper
• ⅛ tsp. black pepper, coarsely ground
• ⅛ tsp. salt, or to taste

Bring a small pot of water to a boil in order to cook the pancit.  While the water is boiling, combine the rest of the ingredients in a small bowl and mix them together thoroughly.  Once the water is boiling, place the dry pancit noodles in the water and cook thoroughly.  Once the noodles are cooked, strain them and allow them to cool for a few minutes, then add them to the bowl and stir them into the sauce thoroughly.  Serve either with other components of plate lunch, or else with a simple side salad, as shown in the photo above. 

Ginger Carrot Soup [V] [GF]

This soup recipe sort of came to me out of the blue as a preliminary course to be served prior to a main course of vegan stroganoff.  It has a hearty, autumnal flavor and could also go well with poultry or other traditional fall meals.  Like the stroganoff with which I paired it, it's completely vegan and, if it's appropriate for me to offer my extremely biased opinion, quite tasty.  It's also reasonably easy to make, although the cooking of the lentils, which form the backbone of the soup base, takes a little bit of time.

• 3 medium carrots, coarsely chopped
• 1 medium seedless orange, peeled
• ¼ cup frozen sweet corn
• ⅛ cup dry yellow lentils (toor dal)
• 1 Tbsp. peanut oil
• 1½ tsp. dry ginger
• 2 tsp. salt, or to taste
• ½ tsp. dry basil
• ⅛ tsp. poultry seasoning
• ¼ tsp. dry rosemary leaves
• ¼ tsp. turmeric
• 1 pinch nutmeg
• 1 pinch cloves
• 1 pinch allspice

Place the oil in the bottom of a medium saucepan and fry the ginger, allspice, nutmeg, cloves, and poultry seasoning in the oil for 2-3 minutes on medium head. Add 3 cups water and the lentils and bring them to a boil for approximately an hour, or until the lentils are cooked, adding water as necessary in order to maintain a constant volume of stock. Twenty minutes into this cooking process, add the rosemary, pepper, and salt. While the lentils are cooking, process the carrots and the orange together in a food processor until the mixture is essentially homogeneous. When the lentils have finished cooking, turn the heat down to medium and add the carrot-orange mixture and the corn to the saucepan. Continue cooking for 5-10 minutes until the corn and carrots are cooked. Serve hot.

Vegan Stroganoff [V] [GF]

Holiday gatherings can be a time of fruitful culinary experimentation, especially if you're planning on serving a meal to a group of people with a wide variety of dietary habits.  Traditional dishes that one might have a yen to serve at such gatherings (especially European ones) often require a bit of tweaking in order to be acceptable to all parties, while they must faithfully mimic the traditional textures and flavors the purists amongst your dinner guests have come to expect.  Thus, this evening, necessity became the mother of vegan stroganoff.  The recipe provided below is an attempt to reconstruct a passable replica of beef stroganoff without the beef, without true sour cream, and without animal products of any sort.  In it, mushrooms create the savory flavor, silken tofu takes the place of sour cream, and soy sauce provides the critical brown-gravy coloration.

In the recipe below, Earth Balance was the vegan butter substitute I used, while the poultry seasoning mix was a Schilling-brand mixture whose primary two ingredients were thyme and sage.  This sauce can be served over noodles (made either of wheat or, if one is of the gluten-free persuasion, rice), as beef stroganoff typically is, or over rice.  Really, just about any complex carbohydrate could serve as a vehicle for this stuff in a pinch — even tortilla chips, if you're desparate.  As you can see from the photo, I served it with baked asparagus spears (graced by a touch of pepper, lemon juice, and olive oil) and the unused riesling.  No one complained.  

• 22 oz. silken tofu, extra firm
• 2 lemons
• 1½ Tbsp. vegan butter substitute
• 16 oz. mushrooms, coarsely chopped
• ½ cup dry riesling
• ¼ cup frozen peas
• ¼ cup diced celery
• 1 tsp corn starch
• 2 tsp. gluten-free soy sauce
• 1 Tbsp. black pepper
• 1 Tbsp. dry basil
• ¼ tsp. dry rosemary leaves
• ¼ tsp. poultry seasoning
• 3 tsp. salt, or to taste

Begin by melting the butter substitute in a large frying pan and sautéeing the mushrooms until they're brown and moderately soft.  While the mushrooms are browning, combine the silken tofu, the juice of the lemons, and 1 tsp. of the salt in a food processor and process until the mixture is well-blended.  Set this mixture aside.  Add the salt, pepper, herbs, and celery to the frying mushrooms and cook for 2-3 minutes or until the celery is soft.  Add the wine and simmer on medium heat until much of the liquid has evaporated.  Stir in the corn starch so that it doesn't clump and continue to simmer until the liquid in the pan has a gravy-like consistency, then add the peas and continue to simmer for a few more minutes.  Reduce to low heat and add the tofu mixture from the food processor to the frying pan, stirring it thoroughly into the mushrooms, etc. already present in the pan.  After roughly 5 minutes, when the mixture is hot, stir the soy sauce into the mixture in the frying pan.  Salt to taste and serve over rice noodles.