Hot Weather Cookery: Marinated Tofu Salad with Lime, Pepper, and Purslane

One of the cookbooks my mother had on her shelves, but rarely seemed to consult, was a book called The Too Hot To Cook Book.  Uncle Google tells me it was published in 1966, and was by a woman named Miriam Ungerer.

To be sure, it was a period piece, written and published well before air conditioning became nigh-ubiquitous in middle-class America.  In the time and place I grew up, namely the Midwest in the early 1970s, even people who could afford to have air conditioning, a group which I must note did not include my family, had window units, maybe in the bedroom(s) or the living room.  Central air conditioning was something only department stores and movie theatres and office buildings had.  Naturally, no one with a lick of sense would even think about putting an air conditioner in a kitchen, what with the stove and oven and refrigerator/freezer compressor adding their heat to that already provided gratis by the months of July and August.

Now, I confess, I live in a house with central air conditioning, and frankly would hate to be without it at this time of year, when the weather here in the swampy mid-Atlantic frequently feels rather like I imagine it would feel to live in Satan’s jock strap.  I have the godlike power to render my kitchen a comfortable 77 degrees Farenheit even when it is twenty degrees hotter outdoors.  My kitchen even has a skylight in its vaulted ceiling which can be opened to vent hot air out if desired.  It’s high luxury, and believe you me I know it, even on the days when it’s not quite hot enough to justify turning the central air conditioning on.

Still, there are days when it’s too hot to cook.  Sometimes it’s not hot enough to turn on the air conditioning, but being near a hot stove would take it from not-quite-too-hot-to-tolerate to downright miserable.  And sometimes it’s hot enough that the air conditioning is not just on, but I am standing over one of the floor vents letting it blow blessed cold dry air straight up my dress because I just can’t bear feeling like I’m living in an armpit for one more second.  Or perhaps I just feel guilty about the idea of adding so much heat to the inside of the house when I’m running the air conditioner, thus making the air conditioner have to work harder and longer.  Although it could just be a psychological thing, one of those days when I have been out in the yard and walking the dog and running errands and it’s been hot and I’ve been sweaty and I’ve finally gotten home and taken a shower and am wearing nice clean un-sweaty clothes and the prospect of a hot dinner just makes me want to say the hell with it and just make myself some shaved ice with fruit juice poured over it instead.

But a girl’s gotta eat.  Or at least she has to eat something more nutritive than shaved ice with guava juice poured over it, because boy howdy do you not want to know what I’m like when my blood sugar has just bottomed out… and it’s hot. Bail money might be involved.

Which was, of course, the whole point of The Too Hot To Cook Book.  I remember it as being full of things like tabbouleh, which is indeed an excellent thing to prepare and to eat when it is too hot to really cook.   Things that didn’t take a lot of fussing, that used the kinds of ingredients that are generally abundant when it’s righteously hot out.  Things that tasted good and were filling enough without being heavy (so uncomfortable when you’re hot), things that were nutritious, things that could stand overnight in the fridge and be enjoyed cold whenever the spirit moved you and you decided you weren’t too hot to eat.

It was in that spirit that I developed tonight’s salad, a riff on a marinated tofu salad described to me by my friend K., who in turn explains that she got the original inspiration for what she calls “Crack Tofu Salad” from a recipe in The Moosewood Cookbook.  The principal players are the same: well-drained firm tofu cut into small cubes, some sweet raw vegetables, some leafy/herby raw vegetables, and a dressing or marinade whose backbone is composed of an acid of some sort, some soy sauce, some sesame oil, ginger, and garlic.  It’s a sturdy ground, over which I imagine any number of changes could happily and harmoniously be rung.

I decided to make mine a slightly Vietnamese-influenced version, using lime juice for my acid in the marinade, and making several other minor changes.  I used one pound of extra-firm tofu, cut into half-inch cubes, and a julienned red bell pepper.

For my leafy/herby vegetable, I chose purslane, an incredibly yummy and nutritious plant (it contains more omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable) which many Americans know, sadly, only as a weed.  I am a devotee of purslane, whose crisp, green, slightly citrusy flavor comes as much from its semi-succulent stalks as from its tender paddle-shaped leaves, and am lucky enough to have a farmer’s market vendor (Gardener’s Gourmet of Carroll County, MD) that sells their organically farmed purslane most weeks at the two farmers’ markets I frequent.  I washed several large handfuls and spun it dry in my salad spinner, then plucked off the leafy clusters into my salad, along with whatever bits of stem were tender enough to be pinched into pieces (the tougher bits of stem are less pleasant to eat raw).

For the marinade, I combined the juice of three very juicy limes, about one and a half tablespoons of black soy sauce (see my soy sauce primer if you want to know what this is and how it differs from regular soy sauce), about the same amount of dark Korean sesame oil, a heaping teaspoon of dark brown sugar, two fat cloves of garlic put through a garlic press, and a piece of peeled raw ginger about half the size of my thumb grated on a fine microplane grater.  Because I have a guest coming tomorrow who will be eating some of this and who is a vegetarian, I omitted nam pla (Vietnamese fish sauce) from the dish as a whole but did put a few drops into my own serving at dinner.  Under other circumstances I would’ve added a half-teaspoon or perhaps slightly more nam pla straight to the marinade.

I tossed everything together and let it stand at room temperature for about an hour, then covered it and put it in the refrigerator for another hour before serving. It turned out wonderfully.  The tofu had absorbed the salty/tangy flavors of the marinade, as well as the garlic and ginger flavors, the sesame oil clung to the vegetables, anchoring their bright freshness to the tofu and soy, and the fruitiness of the lime juice and ginger gave the dish some verve.

It occured to me as I was eating it that it could also make a phenomenal noodle salad with the addition of some rice noodles and perhaps a tablespoon of peanut or canola oil to keep the noodles from sticking, and probably a doubled (or nearly so) marinade since the noodles would soak some up.  Since rice noodles only need to be soaked in boiling water and then drained, rather than actually cooked, that version would be excellent hot weather cookery too.  With some slivered green onion to sprinkle on top, and perhaps some chopped peanuts (or, if you want to be decadent, macadamia nuts!) for the joy that’s in them, it would make a perfect hot-weather alternative to the ubiquitous (and often boring) pasta salad.

Definitely worth a try, the next time I (or you) feel like it’s too hot to cook.