Asian fusion?

Ate some juicy STEAK!

Steak sandwich!

JAY KAY!

That is TOFU!

My little sister visited her friend Jamie, and Jamie’s mom made food. So Malindi ate it. When Jamie’s mom is cooking, you eat it. Just ate a three course dinner? “Oh, there’s brisket…” BAM in my belly. She is unreal.

So Malindi tried these tofu “burgers” once and knew she wanted to make them again.

They’re great! You freeze the tofu and then thaw it, which makes for a totally different texture than typical tofu. Then you marinate it in a soy sauce mixture. Then you fry it! (She used the cast iron skillet).

They were SO delicious. It actually didn’t come across as super Asian tasting, despite the soy-product-heavy ingredients. As it looks, it tastes: STEAK! JUICY STEAK!

So we had a juicy steak summer meal:

   

Toasted garlic bread topped with steak tofu and a nice fresh local tomater, corn on the cob (the absolute best we’ve had all summer. There’s this farm stand on the way home from church and theirs is ALWAYS the best, especially in August. The bi-colored stuff, baby!), a green salad with fresh local cukes.

This beautiful beautiful thing when the steak juices soaked into the garlicky bread underneath… mmm mm mm. Thanks for dinner, sis!

Another night, another vegetable concoction.

I wanted to make green curry. Cause we’d gone on a work happy hour thing and Steve’d gotten curry (I hadn’t been hungry enough to order anything myself) and it was good and it got it in my mind. Plus we had some eggplants, green beans, tons o’ farmer’s market basil, etc.

But then we had less eggplant than I thought… no green beans… and I couldn’t find any green curry paste or my Thai cookbook that describes how to make green curry paste.

FINE FORGET IT.

So I assembled what vegetables I did have that seemed to sort of go together…

At one end of the board, my baby eggplants (sliced), some tomater, green onion, and basil.

    

At the other end, corn and more basil (I am so obsessed with corn and basil together. Beautiful things happen.)

The eggplant end I threw everything in a cooking spray’d pot, got ‘em hot, and covered them with the lid on the presupposition that the eggplant would cook and tenderize and the liquid from the tomatoes would keep it from drying out.

Meanwhile, apparently when I think “corn” I then think “cornmeal”, because I love me some corn products. Polenta was the name of the game.

But not just ANY polenta. That white mixture I was pouring my polenta into? 2 cups water, 1 cup COCONUT MILK!

 

Ended up adding more water because (as always happens when I make polenta) it inexplicably thickened up despite using very moderate heat for much less time than recipes tell me to. Whatever.

The finished thing was lovely, moist, tender, and rich and slightly sweet from the coconut.

Then I stirred in the corn and basil, seasoning scantly with just salt and pepper.

 

And spread it out in a baking dish.

 

At which point I got out my now-tender veggies (to which I ended up throwing in some green peas for volume, protein, and most of all beautiful color)

 

Stuck ‘em on top, and broiled them!

Coconut Corn Polenta with Vegetable Saute. Ooh la la!

  

For protein’s sake, I rounded out the meal with more salad (I seriously just may’ve been dehydrated and/or eating poorly at work that day, since apparently all I wanted vegetables. Actually, since I never have time to drink enough water and Patricia and I are considering starting a show called “Addicted to Food: Americorps Edition” about our ridiculous binge eating junk food episodes at work, likely I was both dehydrated and coming off a crappy food bonanza.)

Tangent.

Tuna, cuc, basil, vinaigrette. Nice!

Not a traditional summer meal, but it sure tasted like one!