This is a fabulous dish that no one would recognise as vegan if you didn’t tell them. For me, this is a dish that is the celebration of the start of spring.
There’s plenty to play with, both in the actual ingredients, and how you go about it. However, I never play with the dressing because it is so delicious. Also, note accoutrements are recommended you need a spoon to get some of the dressing with each mouthful.
entrée for 4 …vegetarian and vegan
600g Japanese silken Tofu cut into 16 pieces
50g sesame seeds, roasted until they are golden and fragrant
500g broad beans, podded, blanched,
refreshed under cold running water and podded
200g snow peas, topped and tailed
20 asparagus spears, snapped and scraped
few small leaves…we use variegated sorrel
big steamer
4 bowls that will fit in your steamer
40g p/w young ginger
40g caster sugar
80g peanut oil
100g Leonardi white balsamic
80g Japanese seasoning soy
5g Beerenberg Hahndorf Hot Mustard…optional
1g freshly and finely ground white or green pepper
Weigh everything for the dressing into a bowl and whisk together.
Take the tofu out of the fridge an hour before you want to serve and using a crank handled palette knife carefully divide it between your bowls and divide the raw asparagus on top.
to this point can be done in advance.
so this is basically to serve
Get the steamer on a good rolling boil, put the bowls into the steam, and set a six-minute timer. At the four-minute mark add the snow peas to each bowl and recover. Add the two-minute make divide the broad beans between the bowls and cover again. When the timer goes add the leaves to each bowl…turn the heat off and leave them covered for a minute.
You can serve this as an individual serves or a platter, however, cooking them in separate bowls makes it easy to serve.
Very carefully drain the water from the bowls and slide them onto your plates/platter using tongs to pull out bits and pieces of the components to arrange them attractively. Not completely covering anything and keeping most to the edges, scatter sesame seeds on the ingredients. Give the dressing a whisk and spoon half of it over and around and out the remaining half in a jug with a small ladle and put it on the table.
Serve in a bowl with a fork and spoon…fab warm or at room temperature.
editor’s note
This dish would also be wonderful with fresh homemade goats’ cheese [but of course no longer vegan]………..click here just substitute the cows’ milk for goats’ milk. Goats’ milk can now be purchased in mst Foodland supermarkets.
We have tried dozens of different brands of silken tofu and this is the only one that really delivers unless you make your own using House Brand Instant Tofu is the one pictured. It does have a very long shelf life, but we like to buy with at least 30 days remaining. Once opened it needs to be used straight away.
When you grow your own snow peas, as we often do, they are so sweet and tender..if they look old and tough skip them and use more broad beans and asparagus.
When the new ginger comes into season I do quite a bit of this and put it in the freezer…it’s easy equal p/w ginger and sugar and blitzed….500g each works a treat in the Thermo. Because of the ratio of the sugar it never quite sets and is really easy to use straight from the freezer.
This recipe is on our old website; if the link no longer works it will mean we have transferred the recipe to cuisine-extreme and use the search to locate it again
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