I had forgotten how much I like Cool Whip.
Leave it to a friend’s spiral-bound Louisiana cookbook printed in 1984 to remind me. We set our sights and appetites on a recipe for “chocolate yummy,” a chocolate cream pie that calls for confectioners’ sugar, cream cheese, both chocolate and vanilla instant pudding, milk and a quart of Cool Whip. “Serves 10,” the recipe reads. “A dessert men love!”
There were five of us, two men.
As my friends prepared the chocolate yummy, I tried a glob of frozen Cool Whip, spooned straight from the tub — still delicious, all these years later — and read the ingredients label. You really can whip anything, I thought.
So let’s whip out the food processor and whip some tofu to add a little protein oomph to your favorite vegetables. It’s that enterprising spirit that yields a creamy base for the end-of-season market spoils in Pierce Abernathy’s cucumber-tomato salad with sesame whipped tofu. He aerates jiggly silken tofu in a blender until smooth, a technique you might already be familiar with. But it’s not just the silken stuff, which has a high moisture content, that will whip to your delight.
Nisha Vora whips low-moisture, extra-firm tofu for her whipped tofu ricotta, which mimics the texture of dairy, with flavor-boosters like nutritional yeast to mimic that subtle cheesiness. The recipe is amenable to what you have; firm tofu will work just fine, producing a slightly looser consistency. Nisha uses the vegan spread in her heirloom tomato salad with ricotta and chile oil, but you can also use it in recipes for stuffed shells or lasagna.
Heirloom Tomato Salad With Ricotta and Chile Oil
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