Blackened Tofu and Wilted Swiss Chard with Lemon-Tahini Sauce

Saturday, May 10

Blackened Tofu and Wilted Swiss Chard with Lemon-Tahini Sauce

Rating: 4.5

So I’ve been pretty off-line for a few weeks now - things haven’t been great over here at Veganesp HQ. My beloved boy kitty, Chaplin, aka The Monkey aka Little Man aka Handsome Pants, came to the end of his journey at the age of 18 ½. He had a lot of health issues, but had been doing really well, until around the middle of April, when he started to decline. We got him stabilized and he was doing a lot better for a few weeks, but crashed very quickly and we had to say good-bye on May 7. Not a day has gone by without tears since then. I miss him so much. So, I’ve been cooking kind of on and off and really haven’t felt much like blogging lately.

Seth had been out of town this week and so he really wanted a home-cooked meal. While I didn’t feel much like cooking, I had a big bunch of chard in the fridge from our weekly Vegetable Husband basket and it was so pretty I decided to go with a recipe in Vegan Soul Kitchen, which yes, I just recently bought. I’d looked at the book a few years ago and it seemed kind of heavy on sweet potato recipes, so I didn’t get it. Neither of us likes those much. Well, Seth won’t touch them and I can only eat about 2 per year. Anyway, I recently came across the book again and decided to give it a shot. I’m really glad I did. (It turned out to have a lot fewer sweet potato recipes than I thought in it.) Both the chard and tofu recipes are from this book and both were really fast to make. I’ll start with the chard, because I kind of built the meal around it to begin with. The recipe actually uses a mix of chard and spinach, but because I had a lot of chard, and not a lot of spinach, I used just chard. Since I wasn’t looking for leftovers and was using half the amount of greens, I also halved the dressing. It’s really easy to make and I threw it together while the chard cooked. It is VERY flavorful, so while we both really liked it and I will make it again, I may either thin it out a bit or use slightly less of it on the chard next time. The tofu recipe calls for bigger slabs than we normally like, and it also calls for two packages, so of course, I halved this one as well. I have a few blackened tofu recipes and this one was probably my favorite so far. It calls for one or two spices not in the other recipes I have, and I really liked the difference. I cooked it in a cast-iron skillet with a little olive oil and it was perfect. The book also has a succotash salsa recipe to go along with the tofu, but it’s mostly lima beans, and I can’t stand lima beans. When I was a kid, my sister loved them and my mom would make them all the time with dinner – so gross. I don’t think I’ve eaten them since I was about 11. Blech. Anyway, we skipped the salsa, and made some ranch dressing (Cookin’ Crunk recipe)for dipping instead. We love ranch on blackened tofu, and since leftover tofu is really good in salads, I usually make a batch each time and have the leftovers for lunches. We rounded out the meal with some early-season corn and sliced tomato. Summer in the South has unofficially officially begun.

P.S. I linked to Bryant Terry's Facebook instead of his website because I got a malware warning when I went to his site. My guess is he's been hacked.