Tofu gets some respek!

Last night, I embarked on a culinary frontier -- buying and cooking with tofu! Truthfully, I didn't really think much of tofu until recently, when I ate a lovely dish with it in a Thai restaurant. Tom is careful not to call his dishes in this portion of the Stir-Fries chapter 'Tofu' dishes.. He instead calls them 'Bean Curd'. He says that Tofu brings on images of a veggie-nation where everyone wears Converse sneakers, people are hugging trees, and sitting in the sun eating granola... Ok, he doesn't exactly say it like that, but he acknowledges that Tofu is not necessarily the most appetizing thing to fellow foodies. Well I didn't care about preconceived notions or whatnot, I was just plain hungry!!! So I started on my lovely dinner!

15. Bean Curd with Peanut Sauce and Cucumber - *Stir-Fries*
16. The Perfect Rice - *Stir-Fries*


The ingredients: Peanut butter, light olive oil, cucumber, soy sauce, garlic, regular Tofu, honey, sesame oil, cabbage, lime, chilli flakes

I got the Tofu on my Magical Culinary Tour earlier that day, but I wasn't able to source natural and unsweetened peanut butter there. However, luckily, a few doors down was a health store and I was able to find the crunchy peanut butter! To give you an inkling of the crazy ethnic make-up of my neighborhood, the health store is run and owned by Hasidic Jews. Talk about a melting pot, ey?!

Anyhoo, I started on dinner as soon as I started to feel the pangs of hunger. Watching cooking shows on WLIW was by the way not helping! I got started on the rice first because for a good stir-fry all the ingredients need to ready at hand, a la TV chef, and I am the slowest chopper in creation, so I figured the rice would be kept warm and waiting by the time the stir-fry was done.

Tom's idea of perfect rice is quite similar to the way I usually make rice, with slight variations. I took about 2/3 cup of basmati rice and added it to a pot. I then added double this amount in water, 1 1/3 cups, put it on a high heat, and let it come to a boil. Once it did, I reduced the flame as much as I could, and then covered it and let it simmer. Tom indicated 12 minutes would be enough, but as I found out later, 15 minutes was a better time for full-cooked rice. Once it was cooked, I took it off the heat and let it sit with the lid on.

While all this was going on I was doing my incredibly slow chopping. The dish consists mostly of tofu and cabbage, with a peanut sauce on top, mmmm! So, I got started on the peanut sauce first. In a small bowl, I added a tablespoon of peanut butter. To this, I poured on some hot water and let it dissolve for a minute or two. Then, I added lime juice, soy sauce, honey, and sesame oil, and mixed it very well. That was the peanut sauce done! Gosh, I LOVE asian cooking!

Then the chopping started: I chopped up some cabbage as finely as I could muster, and also cut in half lengthways and seeded a small cucumber, which I then cut into fancy-schmancy crescents on the angle. Then I chopped up some garlic, and finally the tofu into nice little cubes.


For a stir-fry, Tom recommends a wok. I don't have a wok; and truthfully don't have room for one either. It is one of the many things on my when-I-have-a-house-I-will-purchase-it list. So I decided to use my 24 cm frying pan into a wok for this exercise. First, I heated up a couple tablespoons of light olive oil. Then when it was nice and smoky, I added the tofu to fry until golden.
It was getting a bit messy with oil spluttering at this point, so I put on an apron, and covered the unused pan right behind my frying pan-cum-wok with aluminum foil. When I was happy with the color of the tofu, hmmn hmmn I mean bean curd, I removed it with a slotted spoon on to a plate.

Then I got on with the other chopped ingredients. To the hot oil, I added garlic, cabbage, bean curd, and finally the cucumber. Each of these items were allowed a minute to stir-fry, and once all the ingredients were in I removed them to a plate. The final portion was just to heat up the sauce, which did not take very long at all. It thickened a bit, and I poured it over the vegetables, and served everything together with The Perfect Rice.

Bean curd and cabbage with rice. Yum!

Delicious!!!

This was fantastic!! I am always quite chuffed when I can reproduce restaurant-style food at home. The best part is I have a little bit left for my lunch at work today, so I can put that takeaway menu back in my filing cabinet!!