Debbie Does Drivel

A Culinary Curiousity

I cook all the time.
I am not a good -- or even adequate -- cook much of the time.
I can never get the spices right and my dishes are not flavorful.
Given that I mainly prepare vegetarian dishes, you can see where this would be a problem. Not much built-in salt or fat to provide the extra tasty zing.

(Sometimes I make stuff up and when Kev asks what I'm cooking, I'll either sigh resignedly "I don't know..." or concoct imaginary names. Creative stuff like "smyrnana" (which was inspired by Julia Roberts' hometown).)

However, tonight I surprised myself. Tonight I celebrate my one culinary success.

These are the details:

I quickly sauteed some garlic and tofu (extra firm) in a skillet. I added chili garlic paste.

Then, I dipped spring roll wrappers in hot water to make them pliable and hard to handle. I laid these wrappers flat. Most of them split and ripped.

At this point, I chopped cucumber, carrots and green onions and let them sit in lime juice for several minutes. I took big clumps of cilantro and added them to the lime juice mixture. Then, I added a few dollops of Hoison sauce. I mixed well.

At this point, the tofu was burning, nice and crispy. Much of it stuck to the pan. Feel free to not mimic that part of the recipe.

I gently spooned the steaming and smoking tofu onto the ripped rice paper wraps and added the vegetables that had been soaking in lime. Bean sprouts followed.

I rolled the spring roll wrappers over the mixture and proudly served it all to Kev, with a fork and knife so he could handle the culinary chiaroscuro. This time I got the spices right, so the presentation had to suffer. Of course.