Broccoli Rising and What’s for Breakfast?
What’s your favorite breakfast?
I am not a breakfast person. This mystifies and annoys the people in my life. I appreciate breakfast, I just can’t eat it in the morning.
I especially appreciate Turkey’s idea of breakfast, Any morning might feature fresh apricots, plump dried dates and figs, sweet and hot peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes, walnuts, olives, pickled vegetables, jams, crunchy, chewy sesame-studded simit, and other breads, cheese, yogurt and menemen, soft scrambled eggs in a spicy tomato sauce.
Even skipping the non-vegan bits, a Turkish breakfast is in no ways meager. It fueled the great group on our Oldways tour of Istanbul and the Black Sea before a day of touring and tasting. It fueled my imagination too, especially the menemen. I wanted to make it. I wanted to make it eggless.
You know I love a tofu scramble— I share a vegetable-intense one in Miami Vegan. But I’ve long been firmly in the firm — or even extra-firm — tofu camp. Soft or silken just seemed flaccid and pointless. But darlings, I have seen the point. Silken tofu is the secret to:
my creamy, tart vegan Key Lime pie recipe in Miami Vegan, damn good if I say so myself.
Andrea Nguyen’s creamy, cooling shira ae
And it’s the soul and secret to my vegan menemen.
The recipe starts, as many fine things do, with sautéing an onion. Don’t believe me? Believe our tour’s fabulous culinary guide, James Beard Award-winning Chef Ana Sortun.
Working in a tight restaurant kitchen in Kastamonu on the Black Sea, Chef Sortun announced to our group, “Sautéed onion is bacon.” Bold statement, but true. Raw onions have sharpness, bite. It’s tamed by heat, turning onions soft in texture and flavor, releasing their natural sweetness and umami, imparting a tremendous depth of flavor to dishes through the goodness of plants, not pigs.
She also explained how extra virgin olive oil itself builds flavor. She uses olive oil for everything. So do I. It gilds summer’s rich, ripe tomatoes and peppers in this dish. Add some silken tofu and you’re well on your way to menemen. It’s easy to make but with a luxurious flavor and texture. It’s my kind of breakfast. Just don’t give it to me in the morning.
Vegan Menemen
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 smallish onion, chopped (about 2/3 cup)
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 good-sized ripe tomato, peeled and chopped or 1/2 15-ounce can chopped tomatoes
1 red pepper, chopped (about 1 cup)
1-1/2 teaspoons Marash or Urfa or pinch of red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
1 1-lb package soft silken tofu, drained
sea salt
a handful of parsley, chopped
Heat olive oil In a large skillet, over medium-high heat. Add the chopped onion and sauté for a few minutes, stirring, until onion softens and turns a pale golden.
Stir in the minced garlic, and continue cooking for a minute or so. Then add the chopped tomato and red pepper. Cook and stir until the vegetables soften and start to come together in a saucy manner. Then add the blob of tomato paste and nutritional yeast.
Now tip in the silken tofu, folding it in gently so it forms soft curds, but doesn’t disintegrate.
Mixture may appear quite watery at first. While many a menemen (fun to say) are served this way, on the wet side, I prefer mine to be drier, letting the tofu absorb a nice dose of the tomatoes and peppers. Let the tomato-onion-pepper sauce cook down for about 10 minutes, or until mixture thickens and becomes jammy. Reducing heat to medium if you’re getting splatters.
When heated through and of a consistency that pleases you, season with sea salt to taste and finish with fresh chopped parsley.
Serve menemen as part of a Turkish breakfast or as a fine addition to a Father’s Day brunch. And for those like me who don’t eat breakfast (an impressive bunch, by the way, including former New York Times food critic Pete Wells and badass food policy pro Marion Nestle it’s good any time at all.
May this recipe and these images give you a taste of Turkey’s countless riches.
And now for a taste of Miami in June–In the week I was away, Miami tipped squarely into summer, with mangoes ripening and fat on the trees, royal poincianas exploding in regal tomato-red bloom, and oh, yes, the heat and humidity dialed up for summer sweat.
June 3 Run-off election for Miami’s District 4 city commissioner — local elections impact our daily lives. Show up at the polls, Miami. Voting is where we can affect change.
June 12 I’ll be offering a Miami Vegan tasting and book signing Thursday evening at Urban Oasis Project’s Vizcaya Night Market.
June 15 Father’s Day
June 19 Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day
June 21 Summer Fruit Fest at Fruit and Spice Park. There’ll be 200 varieties of mangoes for sampling, and I’ll be using one or two for a Miami Vegan demo and tasting.
