Yin and Yang Salad with Cabbage and Peanut Dressing
My friend Jenny and I were talking about 101 cookbooks, and she strongly recommended the Yin and Yang Salad recipe. She said she liked the combination of the raw cabbages and the rich peanut dressing–it seems more balanced than starchy noodles and peanut sauce. I got all the ingredients to make the recipe, but then when I went to prep dinner I realized that the tofu was supposed to marinate overnight, so I made McDermott’s peanut-style sesame noodles instead. The next day I marinated the tofu and made the yin and yang salad for dinner.
California-style vegetarian tortilla soup
Visitors from Austin brought us 90 perfect corn tortillas from El Milagro in Austin. Despite languishing in lost baggage for two days, they arrived in Saarbruecken in perfect shape. They were so fresh and corny tasting, I think our visitors must have purchased them right from the factory. Derek and I ate most of the first 30 ourselves, just plain or with refries or scrambled tofu. I froze the second and third batches. Before the last few tortillas in the first package were gone, I decided I wanted to try to make tortilla soup with homemade baked corn “chips”. I love Peter Berley’s miso-based tortilla soup, but I wanted to try something a little different today. I decided to try the california-style vegetarian tortilla soup from 101 cookbooks.
Home fries
I love diner-style home fries in the abstract, but I rarely like the implementation. Often the potatoes are under-seasoned, or over-salty. They’re either too dry or extremely greasy. My mom makes good fried potatoes, but I’ve never been too happy with my own attempts. I wanted to have some potatoes for my Austin-style breakfast taco brunch, which is taking place here tomorrow morning. I found a recipe for homefries on the Smitten Kitchen blog, which suggested cooking the potatoes first before frying them up. The recipe calls for Yukon Gold potatoes, which are medium-starch. I tried making home fries a few weeks ago using medium starch potatoes (the red label in Germany). I thought the home fries turned out way too rubbery, and so this time I bought mehlig potatoes (Russett-style, the blue label) instead. I modified the Smitten Kitchen recipe a bit, but mostly followed her recommended technique.
The captious vegetarian 