I love summer food. Tomatoes, peaches, corn, zucchini etc. are some of my favorite foods and they are fresh during the summer. Admittedly Florida is a little challenging vegetable wise in the dog days of summer, but there are still plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables to be found.

When I saw the dark cherry tomatoes at the farmer’s market, I knew I had to make a sale out of them. The ripe peach cried out to be paired with them, so I made an herbed vinaigrette using the chives, oregano and parsley from my garden. I roasted a little corn, chopped up some manchego and tossed it all together. It was lovely.

About once a quarter a group of us at work have a Friday in lunch together. We order something, pick it up and try to have a rallying lunch. One of our go-to places was Chipotle and I was pretty excited when then added a vegetarian protein. It ticked all the boxes for me – spicy, touch sweet and really filling. The lunch in tradition changed a bit this past year and we did more eat what we brought as we had lunch together, which is great for a variety of reasons, but I did somewhat miss the salad. Yes, I know Bob and I could go and get lunch or dinner one night, but I scoured the internet for for a way to make it at home and found a recipe that looked possible. I also found a copycat recipe for the chipotle-honey vinaigrette that I love on the salad. So … I decided to try it since I had a little time one weekend.

I didn’t use as much tofu as the original recipe called for, although I did make all of the sauce to cook it in. I didn’t want to have a lot left over if this didn’t work, so I just used about 7 oz. of tofu and that was enough for Bob, myself and one leftover portion. When I make this again, I will probably use one whole package of tofu so we have more leftovers.

For the meal, I recreated most of the salad the way I order it. I used red leaf lettuce, rice, diced tomato, cheese, the sofritas and dressing. I was going to fry up some onion and orange pepper, but decided against it, and the corn salsa I made wasn’t good – I think the corn had a bad case of freezer burn. But the overall effect was good. Very good. Better than Bob expected good.

I will say this – going out for this is way easier than making it. It isn’t hard, but there are so many pieces to it – blistering the pepper, making the dressing, making the sofritas, making all the parts that go on to the salad … and I cheated and used pre-shredded cheese! I’ll make it again, but it will not be in the quick weeknight dinner rotation.

Appetizers for a meal make me happy. Appetizers that I can make at home and make a meal are even better. I was trying to find something a little different and came across this recipe for pot stickers that looked really interesting. I’m not a fan of mushrooms, so I knew there would be some manipulating of the recipe, but the basic idea sounded great.

I could not find red cabbage at the grocery when I went this week so I decided to go with the bagged mixed coleslaw as it is mostly green cabbage with a little red cabbage and carrot thrown in. Yes, I was lazy and didn’t feel like shredding or chopping lots of cabbage, so this worked. And now I have leftover for salad. Woot!

Making the filling was pretty darn easy. It didn’t take long to cook everything in a hot pan and it looked really pretty. I like pretty food. Now the making the individual dumpling – that was a pain. I managed to make about half of them before giving up – I’ll finish today so I have lunch the next couple of days – but I just could not stand there trying to fill them correctly for much longer. And I was getting hungry. 

So my recipe:

• wonton wrappers
• vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 1/2 cup red onion, diced
• 1 small/medium zucchini grated (about 1 cup)
• 1 cup grated carrot
• 1 cup shredded cabbage
• 7 oz tofu, pressed and diced (I’m going to crumble this next time for easier filling)
• 1/2 cup scallions, sliced thin
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

I heated a little oil in a pan and added the ginger, cooked for 30 seconds then added the onion. I cooked that for about two minutes then added the carrot, zucchini and cabbage. I let that cook, stirring sometimes, for about two minutes then added the tofu, tossed it together and cooked for three minutes. Off heat, I added in the scallions, pepper, sesame oil and soy sauce and mixed it together. I let this cool for about five minutes while getting the wontons ready for filling.

I lined a plate with a damp paper towel and kept a small bowl of water near by. In each wonton, I added about 1 tablespoon of filling and ran a wet finger over the edges of the wonton before trying to close. I tried a few different ways to seal these, and found keeping the bottom just a little longer than the top and folding it over the edge worked best. This is one of the reasons I needed to mash up the tofu – I needed to shrink the height of the filling.

To cook, I heated oil in a pan and when hot, added the pot stickers, cooking over medium high heat for two minutes. Then add 1/4 cup water, cover and reduce heat to medium for two to three minutes. Take the lid off and cook for two more minutes until the water has evaporated and the bottoms of the pot stickers are crispy. Remove to paper towel lined plate while you cook the next few batches the same way.

These are a lot of work, but oh they were so good.  If they freeze well (this will be an experiment) then I have a quick dinner for those days when I just can’t get it together. If they don’t freeze well, these will become a special weekend dish. Maybe I can get Bob to do the actual filling and sealing.