ohmygod, she's cooking!

I had the best sandwich at Le Pain Quotidien, chain of faux French bistros, several months ago, it was tofu, curried and it tasted like egg salad.

I swear!

I longed to have it again, so when once again I lunched at a Le Pain Quotidien I scanned the menu to no avail.

Mentioning this to a friend shortly after got me a receipe from 'our' own Epicurious.com

So easy to make even someone who detests cooking can do it.

Actually I have now made it twice.

First time I didnt have any Turmeric but I did have Curry ... trust me one does not replace the other.

Stopping to buy some nice Turmeric at Zabar's along with some organic tofu I headed home to cook and blog it for you!

I could have spent a lot of time captioning each photo I took while I 'cooked' but honestly I had no idea it was so time consuming and disruptive to actually making the fixings for a sandwich.

So you are going to have to look at the collage I made instead.

But I will regale with how I made it.

So to that end, here's the actual recipe.

1(14-oz) package firm tofu -- now I am very fussy about the consistency of tofu I will eat, so I got extra firm

1/2 cup mayonnaise -- I am not a mayonnaise lover but I also detest faux mayo so I used full strength but I didnt measure precisely, I scooped out what I thought would be enough. It was.

1 teasooon fresh lemon juice - - I had ReaLemon in a squeeze thingie, it worked just great

1 teaspoon turmeric -- spring for it, its worth it

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard -- amazingly I still had some from my real cooking days and it hadnt dried up to dust

2 celery ribs, finely chopped

1/4 cup chopped fresh chives --I substituted scallions, tastes great

Salt/Black Pepper to taste

Got all that?

Good.

Now let's make it.

First step is to rinse, mash and then drain the tofu, you'll need a strainer, a colander will not work, I know because I didnt have a strainer the first time I made it, I was sure we had one but I bet it got tossed after being ruined cleaning seeds outta herb. So I bought a new one.

Let the mashed tofu drain approx. 15 minutes

While we wait for it to drain you can chop up the celery and scallions (or, if you insist, the chives).

Next whisk (amazingly I had a whisk!) together mayonnaise, lemon juice, turmeric and mustard in a bowl (save clean up time use the bowl you are going to serve out of), then stir in the drained mashed tofu, celery, scallions (or chives), salt and pepper.

Voila! I promise you its delish.

I put it on some fresh Pepperidge Farm Farmhouse Bread, added a couple slices of NJ Beefsteak tomato ... I didnt have lettuce but if you want, feel free to garnish your sandwich with lettuce .. a nice red leaf ... and I had some crisp red grapes and an Original Sin Hard Cider to wash it down.

L'Chaim!