This was a really enjoyable day. I did a couple of minutes of yoga and meditated with Suzette in the morning. Then I ate a bowl of granola, tropical fruit salad, yogurt, and milk while I worked on a pleading . By noon I finished the pleading and filed it after several false starts.
For lunch I heated two pasta dishes, one was the PPI pasta and vegetables that had accompanied the BBQ shrimp once upon a time. The other was some of the PPI pasta from the Mother’s Day dinner of stir fried noodles with zucchini and green peas served with the grilled tuna. I enjoyed the mostly pasta and vegetable dish because it was quick and delicious and had lots of carbs to aid me in my planned bike ride later.
After lunch around 2:30 or 3:00 I took a nap until 4:00. I then rode the short circuit from 4:15 to 4:50 in a moderate breeze.
I rested until 5:50 and checked my portfolio, which was up thanks to a tweet from the President. As I was leaving to go meditate, Suzette arrived and we discussed dinner but came to no decision. I suggested making Mapo Dofu. When I returned home at 7:15 I brought in a bunch of the big beautiful asparagus.
Suzette was still resting but she had a menu plan. She would convert the PPI Tuna, Pasta, and green peas into tuna salad that we would eat with Vichyssoise. I suggested steaming some asparagus and she agreed and suggested that I could prep and cook the Mapo Dofu and we could eat it tomorrow evening . I started b snapping the ends of the big stalks of asparagus and steaming them for nine minutes while Suzette made the tuna salad by chopping up the PPI tuna, pasta, and peas and mixing that with mayo and lemon juice and arranged it in a nest of tomato wedges. Finally she filled bowls full of already made Vichyssoise. We agreed to drink Pinot Grigio so I chilled a bottle for a few minutes, but it was not chilled so Suzette added ice cubes to chill glasses of the wine.
I liked the light fruity wine with the meal. The wine was a nice and light and a pleasant contrast to the heavy soup and mayo in the tuna salad.
I have enjoyed Lin’s Chinese Buffet lately. It has several really good recipes, but the one that has really captured my attention is stir fried Tofu and sausage seasoned with chili oil. It is delicious and seems much simpler to make than the traditional recipe for Mapo Dofu which is stewed for up to an hour. I have been fascinated to discover if I could replicate Mapo Dofu using a stir fry method rather than a long period of stewing all the ingredients. I knew I could replicate Lin’s recipe because their recipe simply stir fried tofu, sausage, and red chili oil or paste.
I decided to try to create something closer to the Mapo Dofu I usually make by stir frying rather than stewing. I started by peeling a medium eggplant and cutting it into 1 ½ inch strips and putting the eggplant strips directly into the wok. I then chopped and added ¼ of a poblano chili, 2/3 of a medium onion, 2 tsp. of chili garlic paste, ½ lb. of pork sausage, and about 1 T. each of garlic and ginger. I then added 1 tsp. of sesame oil and three T. of peanut oil to the ingredients in the wok and cooked the ingredients covered for about fifteen minutes until the ingredients began to soften.
While the ingredients were cooking I sliced five mushrooms and diced a 14 oz. of medium tofu bought at Sprouts for $1.49 in a plastic carton.
I added the mushrooms and tofu and a couple of Tablespoons of Chinese cooking wine. I then made a seasoning sauce with the 1 ½ cup of residue liquid from the steamed asparagus and added to it 1 tsp. Of sesame oil, 1 T. of cornstarch, 2 T. of Chinese Cooking wine and 1 T. of soy sauce. When the ingredients in the wok had cooked and began releasing liquid I added the seasoning sauce to the wok. Soon the sauce thickened and mixed with the liquid in the wok to create a sauce amalgam and the dish was complete.
I had reduced the cooking time from over an hour to about twenty-five minutes and achieved a nearly identical result. I tasted the dish and it tasted great. It will taste even better upon re-heating tomorrow.
Suzette went to bed at 9:30 and I followed at 10:00. She slept. I blogged and read The Moonstone.
Bon Appetit
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