Happiness is Cooking Tofu

Cooking and baking is both physical and mental therapy. ~ Mary Berry

It’s a holiday weekend, so I thought tonight I’d write something a little light for my Sunday night post.

My little brother turned vegan at 14 and stayed one for decades, he and his family are still vegetarian, but in a nod to being my brother, eating pizza finally ended his veganism.  I’ve never been opposed to vegetarianism for anyone else, but I am very much a meat eater.  However, I love food and love to cook and so I’m into good food whether or not it contains meat.  My brother for a time tried to turn me on to eating tofu, it took a while but about 20 years ago I finally decided to give it a try.  Luckily for me the Chinese restaurant where I first tried it, in a dish called bean curd country style, made a really tasty dish.  On top of that, one of my concerns with tofu, the  consistency and texture was not an issue in this dish.  The tofu had an chewy consistency that was very different from the tofu I’d eaten before and quite good.

Over the years, I’ve come to enjoy tofu made in a variety of ways and of various consistencies.  In what has become my favorite Chinese dish, mapo tofu I actually prefer the soft cubes of tofu, it works really well with the spicy nature of the dish.  mapo tofu is tofu, with ground pork and seasonings in a spicy Sichuan sauce.

A few weeks ago I was looking for ways to use riced cauliflower and was going through some stir fry recipes substituting the riced cauliflower for actual rice when I chanced upon a tofu dish that looked quite good.  Particularly when to my surprise the recipe started discussing how to texture the tofu the same way I first ate it.  The process is quite simple, you drain the tofu by wrapping the block in paper towels putting the block of tofu between a cutting board and another board or books and let it drain for ten minutes.  You then cube the tofu and put it on a baking sheet, I laid down aluminum foil and sprayed it with olive oil.  You then bake it at 400 for about 20 minutes.  You can sprinkle it with oil, garlic and ginger or whatever you’d like.   You then use it in a stir fry or bake of your choosing that calls for tofu.  I made it tonight in a stir fry with vegetables and a peanut sauce, it was fantastic. The sauce was quite easy as well:

1 tsp of oil
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1/4 cup of honey
1/2 tsp of garlic
2 1/2 tsp of peanut butter

All in all it was a great dinner and a happy day. ~ Rev Kane