Fun with tofu: two eye-candy recipes. 21 February 2008 10:57 am
Posted by Tracy in : cooking,Morning Glory,vegan,vegetarian , trackbackA long time ago when the world was young, I once spent an entire week’s worth of lunches teaching myself how to make fried tofu. I used it barely drained, straight from the package; I used it pressed, I used it frozen and thawed. Also I used a lot of oil, and I can’t remember whether or not I used a nonstick pan. Somehow, amidst all those permutations, I never tried the method by which I usually cook tofu these days: cut into the desired final size, and drained on paper towels, more or less à la Jack Bishop’s suggestions in A Year In a Vegetarian Kitchen. I don’t marinate it beforehand: raw (by which I mean straight from the package) or cooked, tofu is basically a sponge for other flavors, so as long as it eventually spends time in a hot pan with a sauce of some kind, it’ll absorb some deliciousness besides the crunchy goodness that is its fried form. I generally don’t pre-marinate baked tofu, either; in my experience it turns out fine as long as it goes in the oven with some sauce (although I should experiment with baking marinated tofu on the theory that it would require less sauce and therefore result in easier pan cleanup).
All of which is to say: hey everybody, I found some good-looking tofu recipes for you to check out!
First there’s Caramelized Tofu over at 101 Cookbooks. As always, Heidi will rock you with beautiful pictures of whole foods goodness. You know you’re curious; go take a look.
If shiny pictures aren’t good enough for you, try the video approach from Cookus Interruptus:
Comedy gold. And hey, Liz, it looks like she’s cooking tofu on cast iron, so that’s another data point for that old experiment.
Mmm, tofu. I’ve mentioned before that there’s a big sign about it on a fridge in the back at Morning Glory — it says “WE MUST ROTATE THE TOFU” and it did wonders for setting me at ease on my first day, oh yes.
