The Salads of My People
Passover Greetings! In observance of this Jewish holiday commemorating the biblical event of Hebrews’ escape from enslavement in Egypt, I am most honored to bring you a post – and a recipe, of course – from my friend, Robin Abrahams. Robin writes the Miss Conduct column in the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine and it is the first thing I read every Sunday. I am a huge fan of her witty advice in this complicated social world that we live in today. Robin has two blogs, Miss Conduct and Robin Abrahams.com, and is the author of Mind Over Manners. While our relationship began as me-fan/she-celebrity, we have become friends over the years and she recently offered to me a guest post of her Passover post from her Miss Conduct blog in April 2008. I hope you enjoy Robin as much as I do!
So, without further ado, I bring you Miss Conduct!
The Salads of My People (originally posted April 22, 2008 on the Miss Conduct Blog)
During Passover, observant (or even kinda-observant) Jews do not eat leavened bread. This means no subs, no doughnuts, no pizza–and no croutons in your salad.
Until now! For I have invented the breadless crouton to spare my people and the righteous and health-conscious gentiles from boring salads! Let me show you it.
Take a block of extra-firm tofu and drain it. I realize I have been putting up a lot of tofu recipes where I say to drain the tofu, and I haven’t explained how to do that. Not very empowering of me! You can drain tofu in a lot of different ways, but here’s what I do: put a flat cheese grater over a bowl, put the tofu on the grater, put a flat-bottomed bowl or plate on the tofu, and put a can of beans or something in the bowl. Let sit for 30 minutes or longer. The idea is to press some of the liquid out of the tofu, and give it somewhere to drain into–them’s the technical specs, work it out as you will.
Heat the oven to 400. Cut the drained tofu into cubes about 1/2″ all around. Spread them out on a nonstick baking sheet. You can spray them with olive oil Pam, but you don’t have to. Sprinkle heavily with onion powder, garlic powder, and anything else you like–Cavendar’s would be good, and I like cumin because it nicely complexifies tastes. (If you feel that cumin body-odorifies tastes, then don’t use cumin.) Bake for about 25 minutes, turning once, until croutons are nice and chewy.
A spinach salad with tofu croutons? Hello, can you say nutrition? Have one of these for lunch and you’ll realize what Popeye’s been on about all that time.
Note from Melissa: While NuVal has not yet scored tofu, we have scored matzoh. My Jewish friends can feel good over the next few days as they crunch their unleavened crackers. Manischewitz Matzoh crackers score an 82 on the NuVal scale! Robin also mentioned to me that some Jews do not eat tofu on Passover. It depends on their level of observance. For those of you who are interested in learning more about Kosher foods, this cartoon gives you a sense of what they’re all about!
Posted by: Melissa 3 comments
Posted in: Guest Bloggers, tofu
