Spring Laksa Salad
Welcome to To Vegetables, With Love, a celebration of a vegetable life, less ordinary. Find archived recipes on my new recipe index.
My book Tenderheart is available from Books are Magic, Kitchen, Arts and Letters, Book Larder, Bold Fork Books and also here or here.
Last week, the New York Times’s The Veggie newsletter written Tanya Sichynsky’s had the headline ‘chickpea anxiety’. It struck a nerve. I felt stripped bare.
My anxiety is more aggressive and extends far beyond chickpeas. It encompasses a wide and ever-growing range of items that I feel compelled to add to my shopping trolley, even when I know I don’t need it.
I believe my pantry anxiety is inherited. In feast or famine, one would find a suitable safe place in my mother’s kitchen. Like money-conscious immigrants, my mother lived for discounts and would wait for the weekly Coles Supermarket (a supermarket chain in Australia) catalog to be delivered so she could circle the items she would purchase that week. On Monday, she would head to the supermarket, her marked up catalog in hand as her shopping list, to snaffle up the bargains. Tins and tins of Spam, corned beef, creamed corn and carnation milk, packets of Arnott’s biscuits, multiple bags of frozen peas and vegetables. I have written before about her three fridges, packed to the brim with frozen meat, seafood, and items like wontons, gow gee (potstickers) and spring rolls which she had made for the future.
As adults, we tend to mimic what we saw as children. As a food shopper, I have firmly become my mother. But there is a key difference - I grew up in a renovated suburban house where the extendable 10-seater dining table was surrounded by built in cupboards jammed with dry goods and one of the three fridges. My mother had the room to accommodate her excess. It’s just that my habit is difficult because I have a small kitchen and I do not have the square footage to house my excess pantry items.
My list of pantry items that I feel anxiety about is long:
Chickpeas
Coconut milk
Tofu
Thai Curry paste and Japanese curry bricks
Brooklyn Dehli Indian simmer sauce
Frozen vegetables- spinach, peas, corn, mixed
Canned tomatoes
Condensed milk
Sesame seeds
Rice flour and glutinous rice flour
Rice noodles
Just to list a few.
Last week, I asked readers to share their pantry anxieties. This made for the most fun and hilarious comments section ever. Thanks to everyone who shared. Here are a few fun ones:
said: “My chickpea anxiety story is the year that — through a combination of my own shopping amnesia and some remarkable delivery stuff ups — we wound up with 7 tubs of strawberry oatly ice cream in the freezer. It became our go to snack for a while: friend comes round? Strawberry oatly; Need to take something with you to a dinner party? Strawberry oatly. 🍓” shared: “tinned tomatoes are my chickpea anxiety item, but also rice wine vinegar. I ended up with three bottles of that staring at me shamefully from the pantry shelf”’s comment really resonated with me: “Mine was always tinned tomatoes – though I also had a period of time when I could never remember if I was running low on cumin or coriander and always bought the wrong one! So. Much. Coriander.” made me laugh: “My food-related anxiety is "do I have enough garlic?" I put garlic in everything; and I don't like the jarred stuff. So I always have at least 10 or more garlic heads in the box and I plant at least 16 pots (huge pots!) of garlic every year. And I always run out anyway!!”I understand
’s stock anxiety. This is why I have 2 bags of Vegeta stock powder (read about my Vegeta love here) and a jar of Better Than Bouillon in my fridge: “I have vegetable broth anxiety! I usually go grocery shopping on my way home from work, and I can never remember if I have broth at home. I should probably make my own, but I can never think that far ahead! I'm on my way to the store now, and I'll probably end up buying a carton”I love the precision of
’s anxiety: “I simply *must* have at least 3 tins of chopped tomatoes and 3 boxes of passata *minimum* in my kitchen cupboard at all times!”This is me, shopping my anxieties for this week’s recipe.
🥦 My cookbook, Tenderheart is for cooking vegetables, all year round. Pick up your copy here. It is also mostly vegan (or vegan-izable) and gluten-free adaptable.
COOK / EAT / SHARE
There are two new recipes over at NYT Cooking. This Charred Bok Choy and Cannellini Bean Salad has a peppy ginger-maple dressing; the Bok Choy (or substitute with other Asian greens such as gai lan) is charred on the stovetop but if you are outdoors and grilling, you could easily char it on a barbecue.
This Lemongrass Tofu and Broccoli is also new. It is definitely a new favourite recipe of mine. It’s aromatic and so flavorful. Eat this with rice or do as I do, and toss it through glass noodles.
This piece about How To Be Vegetarian was such fun to write. I love sharing ‘guides’ like this because it gives non-vegetarians a peak into what vegetarianism looks like from the inside. I co-wrote this piece with Alice Callahan from NYT Health and Wellness desk so it’s a very balanced piece which takes into account cooking, eating and health tips. I hope you will take a look and also, if you are looking for one of my many vegetarian and vegan recipes on NYT Cooking database, click here.
THIS WEEK’S RECIPE
Spring Laksa Salad
© Hetty Lui McKinnon for To Vegetables, With Love
All store bought Thai curry pastes will vary in spice and salt – I recommend tasting it first and add the amount that you’re comfortable with. If you would like to make your own paste, here is my universal curry paste.