Asian Chik'n Salad with Scallion Pancake

Earlier this week, I made these delicious salads as part of my dad's birthday-father's day celebration. Having a nice big salad for dinner is pretty much his favorite thing, so I made these -- with some fabulous salad greens from the CSA, tangerine vinaigrette, and veggie chicken (Trader Joe's chicken-less strips -- my dad's favorite), garnished with sesame seeds. The chik'n was cooked up with some plum sauce, red pepper flakes, ginger, garlic, and a little peanut oil.

As you can see from the picture, we also had some scallion pancakes with our salad -- made from the last of the spring onions from our CSA and whole wheat pastry flour. Overall, a tasty, satisfying, light summer meal -- and, most importantly, my dad loved it!

Asian Seitan Salad and Scallion Pancakes

Today Zelda had a playdate with her friend who is three weeks older than her -- so we brought over some lunch to share with the other parents. The last vegetables from our share for the week were a head of lettuce and the green part of the spring onions. I decided to make a salad topped with seitan made with Asian spices and a similarly-themed dressing -- plus scallion pancakes on the side.

The scallion pancakes were mostly the same as last time, but with a bit of whole wheat flour used in place of some of the all-purpose flour. I also had more spring onions, so I doubled the recipe to make two big scallion pancakes instead of one.

For the seitan, I used the seitan o'greatness recipe with modified spices. Instead of the listed spices, I used ginger, garlic, Chinese five-spice, and red pepper flakes; in place of Worcestershire sauce I used an additional two tablespoons of tamari. In retrospect, the tomato paste should also have been replaced. The tomato-y flavor that came through in the finished product detracted from the seitan's Asian feel. Still, the seitan turned out deliciously.

The dressing was also sauce for dipping the scallion pancakes, and was made of peanut oil, red wine vinegar, tamari, garlic, ginger, salt, and tonkatsu sauce.

Although there is no sauce in the picture, I did drizzle dressing over the salad -- and deposited a spoonful or two on the plate for dipping my scallion pancakes in. My neglecting to take a picture with the sauce can be chalked up to the two tiny humans and the World Cup game that were serving as serious distractions.

Taco Salad

P is a big fan of Mexican food, so it makes a regular occurrence in our meals. One of our standard staple meals involves beans, veggie meat, and salsa; store-bought veggie meat isn't on the list of foods, but wasting food isn't very environmentally friendly either. We had one package of Lightlife's chik'n strips in our refrigerator to use up, and this meal accomplished that! In the future, I'll make seitan or some other homemade veggie protein -- or just use beans alone.

Tonight, we had the standard Mexican blend over arugula and a mixture of lettuces from our CSA -- forming delicious taco salads! (In the background, you can see the jar of delightful iced hibiscus tea that accompanied my dinner.)


We filled deep bowls with lettuce, then spooned the bean-n-chik'n mix over it, and topped with a bit of salsa. The mixture is so easy to make there's not even a need to write it out like a full recipe. Just drizzle a little olive oil in a pan and saute a few cloves of diced garlic, then add the veggie meat. Once the veggie meat has had a little time to get brown, add about two cups of black beans and cover with just enough salsa (we used green chile) to keep it all moist while cooking. If you add too much salsa, don't worry -- it'll get soaked up by the veggie meat and beans while it cooks.


There are infinite variations on this very simple meal; perhaps this is one of the reasons why we have it -- in one of its many instantiations! -- at least once a week.