Posts Tagged “tofu”

When the weather gets into the 90s I try to stay inside during daylight hours, as much for the shade as the humidity-cutting air conditioning.  So it’s important to have lunch material on hand to avoid having to go out.  What I thought was scraping the bottom of the barrel today turned out to be an excellent combination.

Toasted corn nuts from Whole Foods.  Salty and crunchy.  How can you go wrong?

Tomatoes from J’s garden.  Cosmetically imperfect but tasty beyond measure or need for any seasoning or accompaniment.

Cold leftover Chinese food.  Truly the breakfast of champions, but somehow this batch of buckwheat noodles with housemade tofu and vegetables from East Asia in Powderhouse Square made it through till noon despite a passing resemblance to Japanese summer breakfast fave Zaru Soba.

Two minor digressions here (this time I’m warning you in advance!)

The tofu from East Asia is amazing.  It’s made of sheets like the stuff we had a Mu Lan a while back, but this tofu has a toothsome texture and the sheets hold together in chunks and hold sauce admirably.  The restaurant looks like nothing special, but service was extra friendly.  Let’s have a closer look at this marvelous tofu.

Lunch is what’s on TV. Well, the Lunch video podcast is what’s on RSS at any rate. Check it out.  They’re lunching all over town, and sponsorships are available.

After hearing several students at Grub Street read their work (tip: check out the essay class) I went off with A for some grub of the other kind.  We ended up at Chinatown’s Pho Pasteur.

We started off with the classic fresh rolls, mostly lettuce and tofu in a rice noodle skin, but served with that chunky peanut sauce that makes everything better.

For mains, A ordered Phở, or at least a vegetarian version thereof, and I picked item 103 – sauteed tofu, pineapple, tomatoes, and rice – off the menu more or less at random because for some reason I didn’t want soup.  As Kenny Bania has noted, soup’s not a meal.

Newsflash folks, the place isn’t called “Tofu Pasteur” and that’s for a reason.  The tofu was ok, but in large not quite silken chunks with not that much flavor.  The tomatoes were stewed within an inch of their lives, and the onions were sweet and still a little crunchy.  The pineapple chunks were probably canned.  I’m not sure why I expected them not to be.  (Whole Foods has whole pineapple on sale for a few bucks each!)  The whole thing was tossed with a sweet sauce that I think was a colloidal mixture of corn syrup and indifference.  The rice, dry and packed into a low cylinder.

If you go to Pho Pasteur, here’s what you should get.  Phở, Phở, or if you really want to branch out, Phở.  Phởcus.  Does’ that look good?  It is.

To be fair, I’ve also had good pad thai there, and the vietnamese coffee with chicory is not to be missed, especially iced on a hot summer day when you want to stay awake all night.

On Thursday I was lucky enough to meet up with La Doctorante, buddy of LKB, art-historical dissertatrix and author of an excellent secret blog, for lunch and some museum-going. I could tell you more about the blog, but you know what would have to happen next. What I can tell you is that we were lucky enough to get seats at the bar at The Slanted Door in SF’s refurbished Ferry Building.

We started off with some cocktails, including the Indian Summer – Tanqueray #10, ingredient of the moment Nikolaihof biodynamic elderflower syrup (which also made an appearance later that day at Chez Panisse), and grapefruit juice – and Ginger Limeade – Hangar One Kaffir Lime vodka, ginger, lime. Both drinks were declared ducky.

Next up, spring rolls. You have to have them, and they delivered admirably. Tofu, mushrooms, glass noodles, mint and chunky peanut sauce. The fact that I had two chopsticks of very different thickness and length didn’t slow me down at all.

Continuing the thread begun at Salt House, I ordered the Dwelley Fram sweet white corn with green onions and chanterelles. Fancy succotash, perhaps, but the quality of ingredients made it all worth it. For some reason, I ate it with the odd chopsticks. The Slanted Door does a great job of recognizing the local farms that provide their produce. They all have great names, too: Allstar Organics, Catalan Farm, Dirty Girl Farm, Heirloom Organics, and Star Route Farm to name just the vegetable providers.

La Doctorante ordered the Hodo Soy Beanery organic lemongrass tofu – another great name – which was no less impressive. Slabs of shitake mushroom stood up in the middle, and the whole thing was tossed with a nice onion and chili sauce, but not too spicy.

After lunch, we ambled over to SFMoMA, a place that like Boston’s ICA is sometimes accused of having architecture greater than any of the work inside. I’ve always liked the building, and vistas inside like this one always make me happy.

We took in two great exhibitions, on Lee Miller and Frida Kahlo, about which I will blog separately, but I will leave you with this sculpture that was part of a show on contemporary Chinese art, well-timed to the auspicious day and Olympic opening.