Saturday 3/21: I Hear the Sound of Mandolins....

So tonight I wasn’t going to be completely alone in the kitchen. Kev was planning to come over and watch movies. Despite the fact that he in no way requires impressing (or even for me to put more than pj’s on), a guest is a guest so the menu had to be something fun.

Random ethnic food is fun.

A quick survey of my fridge revealed a few cucumbers on their last legs. Also hiding in the back behind the leftover frosting and jars of homemade salad dressing was a carton of soygurt. I did the math and in this case 2 + 2 = falafel with cuke-dill-gurt sauce.

I scooped the yogurt into a wire mesh colander lined with a half dozen coffee filters. If you can find vegan Greek-style yogurt (and please let me know if you do!) you can skip this step.

I then began to chop up the cucumber, but stopped mid-slice with an epicurean epiphany. Somewhere, somewhere in my kitchen, was a hand-held mandolin. Considering I only have about 4 drawers in my entire kitchen, I’m not sure how I could forget I had this little time-saver. But until that moment, I had. After digging it out from the back of the measuring spoon drawer, it made short, neat, evenly sliced work of those two cucumbers. I placed the cukes in a paper towel-lined colander and placed a bowl weighted with a large jar of spaghetti sauce on top of the cukes to press out more of the water.

I left my yogurt and cucumbers draining their respective juices and went on a 15-mile bike ride. I haven’t found a much better bike riding environment than Athens in early spring. I was gone probably an hour.

Back in the kitchen, I put together my Gone Biking Cukedillgurt Sauce:

In the blender, coarsely pulse-chop about half the cukes and set them aside in a separate bowl.

Then blend very well the rest of the cucumbers with:

1 heaping teaspoon of dried dill
1 tablespoon of shortcut garlic
the drained yogurt

Add this to the first bowl of coarsely chopped cukes and stir well. Refrigerate for an hour if you can so the flavors can meld but if you’re in a pinch, you can eat it right away.

I prepared the falafels (using the Fantastic Foods from-a-box kind. Cheap, easy, and broil-able. More about that in a bit) and left the mix to sit while I boiled noodles and chopped veggies for Not-Peanut Soba Salad:

6 green onions, green parts only, chopped (but save those white bottoms for soup!!)
4 bunches of baby bok choy, leafy parts only, chopped thin (but save the tough white bottoms for soup!!)
1 ½ handfuls of cheater (read: store bought) matchstick carrots
1 red bell pepper, cut in fifths, and mandolined

Prepare the above veg and put into a large, large bowl while the water is boiling and the soba noodles are a-cooking. I love noodles. Even the word is awesome. Noodle. Noo-oo-oo-dle. Noodley, noodley, noodley. I love words that look like they taste.

I used Eden Foods soba noodles. They were very hearty. Prepare according to the package but do not rinse with cold water. Just drain and toss the hot noodles onto the chopped veggies. This heat will wilt the bok choy and carrots a bit and bring together the flavors. Top this mixture with a cup (or more to taste) of Not-Peanut Sauce.


1 cup almond butter
2 tablespoons of wet (or 1 tbs of dry) ginger
½ cup water
4 tablespoons lemon juice
¼ cup maple syrup
3 tablespoons tamari
4 teaspoons sesame oil (you can replace up to two of these teaspoons with spicy chili sesame oil, depending on how much kick you like. I put in about ¼ tsp because I’m a wuss. I’d put in a whole tsp next time)
1 tablespoon shortcut garlic

Put everything in the blender and whip on high until smooth. I had this made ahead of time so it was cold when I put it on my noodles. Mixing it in at room/blender temperature would make it less salad-like and more main-dishy.

While the soba salad was sitting, I put together the falafels. I like using the Fantastic Food mix because they hold together very well without having to deep fry. My kitchen is just too small, my stove top burners not large enough to fry up something like falafels properly. Broiling falafels made from scratch (at least for me) leaves them crumbly and dry. So I use a mix. Note that falafels also taste better when you pluralize them.

Kev arrived in between the salad mixing the the falafels broiling, bearing two delicious bottles of wine. The first, an Argentinian Chardonnay "Clara Benegas" we drank while cooking. I like to cook with whites and eat with reds. The Benegas was really quite good for a Chard, many of which I find too one-dimensional. The red for dinner was the 2007 Layer Cake Malbec. This is one of my go-to reds. Argentinian malbecs were all the rage last year and the 2007's are pretty solid. It paired well with the slightly spicy falafels and cool soygurt sauce.

Random ethnic-type foods with 18 dollar bottles of wine taste best when accompanied by random David Bowie movies. Tonight was no exception. I’m sure my noodles and falafels would be delicious in any context, but there’s something about D.B. in a cod piece dancing around with Muppets that works up a gal’s appetite. I’m not sure if he had the same effect on Kev.