We made this Crunchy Spring Iceberg Salad Recipe from Hetty McKinnon in the NYT Cooking. The asparagus and frozen peas were perfect when cooked this way, blanched in boiling water for about a minute. The recipe calls for feta, so we gave this vegan version a try. It’s marinated tofu, and one of the secrets to marinating tofu is to press the water out first. We have a made-in-Seattle beautiful bamboo tofu press made by New Union and available on Etsy.
But the big a-ha was slicing the tofu BEFORE putting it in the press. The results were much better than previous attempts! The result was delicious. I can’t say it was precisely like feta, but I’ll make it again. It’s not a complicated recipe, but it does take time: time to press the tofu and time for the marinade to work its magic.
We used almond milk yogurt for the dressing, and it worked great. So you can make this vegan or non-dairy with some easy substitutions.
We liked the marinated tofu so much that we moved on to this recipe by Samin Nosrat for NYT Cooking: Mara’s Tofu With Mixed Grains Recipe. We didn’t have coconut oil, so we went in a different direction, using crunchy garlic oil instead and letting it marinate longer. The most exciting part of this recipe is mixing quinoa and rice! We cooked it together in the rice cooker, and it’s more interesting than either grain by itself. I have to say I never thought of mixing the two. Try it!
