How’s this for an ingredient-driven meal?

• packaged non-GMO fried tofu
• Chinese Flowering Chives
• one green pepper
• baby Shiitake mushrooms from MycoTerra
• 2009 Damijan Ribolla Gialla

This quickly turned into a Chinese-Slovenian-Friulian dish for one hungry blogger.

Chinese-Slovenian lunch

Details are below.

This could easily be done in one wok, with multiple steps.  Or in my case with two sauté pans.

• top, seed, and cut green pepper into 1-inch wide strips
• in one pan sauté the baby mushrooms, chopped a bit smaller, over high heat
• when the mushrooms are cooked and a bit crispy, remove from pan and reserve
• top, seed, and cut green pepper into 1-inch wide strips
• in the other pan sauté the peppers in olive oil until they begin to be tender (about 10 minutes)
• peel one small onion, then cut vertically into 1-inch wedges
• add more olive oil to the pan the mushrooms were in, and sauté onion until golden
• remove the onions, place in pan with the peppers, and heat over medium-low, covered, until the onions and peppers are very tender
• sauté the tofu blocks until lightly browned, also about 10 minutes
• add a small capful of Nama Shoyu sauce or high quality soy sauce to tofu
• add about 1 tsp of toasted sesame oil to tofu as well, and sauté until it browns
• raise heat to high and add flowering chives, chopped into about 1-inch lengths
• cook the chives about 2-3 minutes until fragrant
• now add chopped scallions
• finally, combine all the tofu and vegetables, including the reserved mushrooms, into the larger pan, and heat until flavors are well combined and veggies still have texture

Serve the stir-fried tofu and vegetables in a large bowl.  This is a richly-flavored dish which pairs extremely well with an orange wine (a white wine macerated with the grape skins for an extended period).  In this case it was the 2009 Damijan Ribolla Gialla, which is actually made in Friuli, with strong influences from Goriška Brda in Slovenia, a few kilometers away.  The bright gold color of the wine sparkles with flavor and complements the meal.

young Shiitake from farmers market

tofu and vegetables in bowl

Damijan Ribolla Gialla

flowering chives

While all this was going on, Barbara was packaging up 8.5 quarts of vegetable stock she made early that morning.  When cooled and labeled, they went into the freezer for future uses.  Another vignette to share was the snapshot of our bowl of compost, with the spent vegetables strained out of the broth after simmering for a couple of hours.

composting pile from making veg stock