An Almost Authentic Egg Salad

In August I moved into my first apartment after transferring to a new university, after spending two previous years living in a dorm at my old school. Dorm-living isn’t very vegan friendly, especially when you don’t have a kitchen in the building and your campus isn’t particularly concerned with providing nutritious vegan meals. I ended up eating a lot of tofu “mock” salads, styled after the chicken, egg, and tuna salads of my pre-veggie days. I rarely used a recipe, since I had grown up watching my mother whip all three salads together. When I make them I simply add vegan equivalents of her ingredients.

You can certainly argue that vegan mock chicken and egg salads are pretty much the same thing. However, I recently bought some black salt from Cosmo’s, and I was dying to use it. I’d heard that black salt provided an “eggy” flavor to tofu scrambles, but I’d never tasted it before. As soon as I pulled it out of the box, I opened the little bag and was amazed at the egg smell I encountered. After I tried a little on my finger, I was stunned. It tasted and smelled like real egg!

Here is my recipe for egg salad. The trick to a good mock egg (or chicken) salad is to measure everything to taste – I adore dill pickles, so I always add twice as much as normal people would. Use this recipe more as a guideline, and measure ingredients as you see fit. Just be careful not to add too much black salt – I have a feeling that too much would overpower any other tastes.

Not easy to get a good picture...

Almost-Authentic Egg Salad (serves 1-2)
1/2 package extra-firm tofu, crumbled
1/4 cup vegan mayonnaise (I used fat-free Nayonaise)
2 tsp Dijon or spicy brown mustard
1 celery stalk, chopped
1 dill pickle, chopped, or pickle relish to taste
2 Tbs yellow onion, minced
1/2 tsp turmeric
Dash black salt (about 1/8 tsp)
1/8 tsp paprika
Black pepper, to taste

Mix all ingredients together – season to taste. Great on a sandwich or in a pita, over a bed of greens, or just by itself! I had mine between two slices of really good whole-wheat bread, with baby spinach and a thin slice of Follow Your Heart Mozzarella cheese.

Tofu Scramble Hodgepodge

Tofu scrambles are my favorite easy breakfast – filling, easy, fast, and there is simply no end to ingredients you can add. Today I woke up late (thanks hangover!) and just waited until lunch time to eat. I really wanted a tofu scramble, but I didn’t want something so… breakfasty. So I added a random combination of spices and vegetables, and the result was amazing.

Sarah Kramer’s method of making a tofu scramble, from her cookbook La Dolce Vegan, is to saute the veggies in olive oil while mixing the crumbled tofu, spices, mustard, etc., in a bowl, then adding to the frying pan. I like this a lot better than my previous method of just tossing everything together in the pan. By mixing the ingredients together prior to cooking, you can make sure the tofu is coated with the flavors.

Tofu Scramble Hodgepodge (serves 1)

1/2 block firm tofu
1 TBS extra-virgin olive oil
Small handful shredded carrot
1/4 small red onion, diced
1/2 red or green bell pepper, or both, diced
Handful baby spinach, torn into small pieces
A chunk of Gimme Lean vegan sausage, rolled into small crumbles
1/2 TBS Bragg’s liquid aminos
1 TBS nutritional yeast
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp curry powder
1/4 tsp cumin
Sprinkle chili powder (or cayenne powder)
3 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
1 clove minced garlic
1 1/2 TBS stone-ground mustard (you can also use Dijon)
Your favorite chunky salsa

Heat the oil in a frying pan on medium heat, and add the shredded carrots. Do this before you prepare the other vegetables, since they take longer to cook. They’re not suppose to be soft, but you want to make sure they cook.

Add the chopped red onion, bell peppers, spinach, sausage, garlic, and sun-dried tomatoes and saute for a few minutes, until onions start to turn translucent.

While the vegetables are cooking, crumble the tofu into a bowl. Add the Bragg’s, mustard, turmeric, nutritional yeast, curry, cumin, and chili powder. Mix together until tofu is coated, and then add to the frying pan.

Cook until tofu browns, which will probably only take a few minutes. Remove from heat, top with a dallop of chunky salsa, and serve.

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I was really pleased with the outcome. First, curry and sausage is my new love. The flavors go so well together! I can’t believe I never thought to add the two until now. I also liked the additional of a few sun-dried tomatoes, although it’s important not to add too many so they don’t become over-powering.

Onto other stuff – apparently I can bake now! I always tell people I’m horrible at baking unless I have someone helping me, but last week I baked the jelly donut cupcakes from Veganomicon, and they turned out great! And a tip for all you bakers – if you find yourself without muffin cups or veg shortening, all you’ve got to do is grease the pan with a mixture of flour and oil. Only a few of the muffins stuck to the pan and it wasn’t so bad we couldn’t eat them.