(Belated Again) Chinese New Year Meal #4: Spicy Warm Silken Tofu with Celery and Cilantro Salad

 
I love traveling but sometimes, when I get back, all I want is salad.  I was in Miami for work last week and when I got back yesterday all I wanted was a salad.  So we made some brook trout with this Make-Ahead Radish Fattoush Salad.  And then I also had a salad for lunch.  Tonight for dinner I wanted something relatively light, but flavorful.  I also wanted something that didn't remind me of all of the buffet meals (some of them were pretty decent, but most were pretty blah) I had all last week.  This dish was basically the antithesis of the random meats, pastas, sandwiches and salads I had last week.  The best part of each meal was the desserts so I had more than my share.  Strangely enough, one of the best meals I had last week was the shrimp po' boy that I had at the Fort Lauderdale airport.  How random is that?  Granted, it had coconut shrimp in it - and who doesn't love coconut shrimp?  Given the number of desserts I ate and the shrimp po' boy, it's no wonder I feel like I gained 5 lbs while in Florida.

This post has been weeks in coming.  I keep planning to make more Chinese meals for my very very belated Chinese New Year meals.  I'm 3 months late at this point, so I guess another few weeks won't make much of a difference.  I really am going to try to finish all of the posts up by the end of May.  I actually had another tofu recipe picked out for Chinese New Year but I decided in the end to make this dish because it looked easier (and healthier).  Everything in the dish worked together in a really interesting way.  I loved how soaking the celery, cilantro and scallions in an ice bath made them crisp and refreshing.  The sauce was really savory - nutty, spicy and funky.  It wasn't my favorite sauce, but it was one of the more interesting Chinese sauces we have made recently.  One thing I might recommend is another cooking/heating method for the tofu itself.  Microwaving it made it release tofu water which diluted the sauce.  So I would either microwave it in another bowl and then transfer it (minus the water) into the serving bowl.  Or I would try steaming it.  Steamed soft tofu ends up with a better silkier and more custard-like texture to it.

Recipe after the jump!

Pressed Tofu and Peanuts in Spicy Bean Sauce (Hua Ren Dou Fu Gan)

Happy Belated Thanksgiving!  I don't know about y'all, but as much as I enjoy Thanksgiving, it wrecks me for weeks to come.  Too much starch, too much dairy, too much dessert, too much...well everything really.  Alex and I got back to NYC last night after spending Thanksgiving with his family and all I wanted for dinner was either straight up veggies or seafood.  We settled on sushi - low carb, no dairy and simple.  Well, I assume it's not that simple for the people preparing it, but it doesn't get much simpler for us than picking up the phone and ordering delivery.  Today we are having a very simple kabocha squash soup for lunch and some swordfish for dinner.  I can't even think about another plate of turkey, stuffing or corn pudding for at least another month.  

This tofu dish would have made a good weekend after Thanksgiving meal too - it is satisfyingly spicy and tasty, while still being pretty simple to prepare.  We actually made it the weekend before Thanksgiving, but I didn't have time to post it before the holiday.  If I have my way I will be digging into the leftovers shortly.  My favorite thing about this recipe was how the flavors of the smoked tofu and the 5-spice seasoned tofu combined with the sauce.  We used a combination of the two because we had both in the fridge and it just seemed like a good idea.  We also didn't have quite enough of either to make the full recipe - either we made a half recipe with one type, or we combined both and made the full recipe.  And as much as I love smoked tofu it can get a little overwhelming.  The sauce is assertive enough that you would probably be ok using just smoked tofu, but we figured why not combine the two?  I love the texture of pressed tofu, which is firmer and has more of a springy/chewy texture than even extra-firm tofu does.  We typically use smoked or seasoned pressed tofu in simple salads with celery and peanuts, like this Smoked Tofu with Celery and Peanuts.  Mark Bittman also has what looks like an interesting take on the classic Celery and Tofu Salad that I want to make the next time we hit Chinatown for groceries.  We served the tofu with some sauteed bok choy with garlic and it was a perfect, light and easy meal.  And it was about as un-Thanksgivingy as it gets.  Yum.

Recipe after the jump!

Thai-Style Radish and Watermelon Salad with Sizzling Ginger-Lemongrass Tofu

Clearly I am fickle because I just found my new favorite watermelon salad.  And I think I declared my previous favorite (Hugh Acheson's Watermelon-Feta-Arugula Salad with Serrano Chili Vinaigrette) about two weeks ago.  So it had a short but well-deserved reign.  Both watermelon salads have a wonderful balance of sweet, spicy and savory, but this one won by a nose.  I think it was the addition of the Thai basil and radishes.  I really liked the crunch and the slight peppery flavor of the radishes, as well as the peppery fragrance of the Thai basil.  And the fish sauce.  I don't know.  It just works so well.  I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the radishes with the watermelon, but it worked.  It's light and refreshing, but full of punch Asian flavors.  And Asian flavors beat feta cheese for me 9 times out of 10.  I really enjoy feta cheese but I love fish sauce.  After eating a fairly heavy meal at The Marrow last night (duck schnitzel, crispy kale with scallops and bone marrow with uni anyone?) and greasy Chinese at my desk for lunch, I really needed something light for dinner.  This salad couldn't have been more delicious.  Note to those who don't love spice - you're going to want to cut back on the amount of sambal oelek and chili or seed your chili prior to throwing it in.  Just like Hugh Acheson's recipe, there is some fairly serious kick to this dish.  Another note, if you're a Top Chef nerd like I am, it's kind of funny to compare recipes between Tom Colicchio and Hugh Acheson since they are both judges on the show and Hugh was a contestant on Top Chef Masters a few seasons ago.

We served the watermelon salad with sizzling ginger-lemongrass tofu.  We had a block of handmade firm tofu from The Bridge that I picked up at Fairway that I wanted to use and I wanted something different.  So we went with another recipe from Food & Wine that sounded like it would be a good pairing with the watermelon salad.  If you can find tofu from The Bridge in your local Whole Foods I would highly recommend it.  It had a really nice firm, but still creamy texture and it had more flavor than your average block of supermarket tofu.  It was really good.  I can't wait to try it in other dishes.  As for this dish, it was good.  I'm always surprised how much flavor a dish can pick up by just sizzling some aromatics.  And it did go very well with the watermelon salad.  I would totally make them together again in the future.

Recipes after the jump!

Spicy Soba Noodles with Smoked Tofu, Shiitakes and Cabbage

I'm not sure when I first stumbled across this recipe (or why), but it has been sitting in my draft post folder for some time.  My best guess is that I was looking for recipes using soba noodles and decided to bookmark this one for future use.  Who knows?  But I'm a sucker for shiitake mushrooms, edamame and soba noodles, so it totally makes sense that this recipe sounded good to me.  I decided to use more edamame than the recipe called for (it originally wanted a cup of edamame, but I figured why not use the entire 12 oz bag of frozen edamame) and to add some smoked tofu.  I figured that the tofu would add some smoky flavor, and both ingredients would up the amount of protein in the dish to make the dish more filling.  I also cut back on the amount of noodles in the original recipe after reading through some of the reviews posted on Epicurious.  I love soba noodles, but why not make the healthy choice and go a little heavier on the veggies and a little lighter on the carbs?

When I was explaining the recipe to Alex, he called it "Korean vegetable spaghetti."  And he kept referring to it as "Korean spaghetti" all evening.  Spaghetti wasn't the first thing that came to mind for me when I saw or tasted the dish, but to each their own.  I see what he was saying.  It's a noodle dish with lots of veggies - in theory it's like a pasta primavera, only not so much.  First of all, I have never had a spicy pasta primavera before.  Second, none of these ingredients (except for the garlic) would go anywhere near a pasta primavera recipe.  Some of the reviews complained that the sauce here was bland, but I totally disagree.  I know we went light on the noodles (and noodles typically soak up and therefore require a lot more sauce than veggies) and added smoked tofu (which is pretty flavorful on its own), but I actually liked how the addition of the soba noodles mellowed the sauce a little and offset the spicyness of the gochujang.  I was worried that the recipe didn't call for the addition of any salt prior to the addition of the sauce (with the exception of the salt in the boiling water for the noodles and edamame), but after adding the sauce I'm glad we didn't salt it initially.  If we had salted the vegetables I think the dish would have been too salty overall.  If I were to make the dish again I would probably keep the ratio of sauce to noodles the same, but I could vary the vegetables according to what I happened to have on hand.  I think you could play with those proportions to your heart's content without detracting from the dish at all.

Recipe after the jump!

(Belated) Chinese New Year Meal#6: Char Siu Noodle Soup and Smoked Tofu with Celery and Peanuts (Liang Ban Dou Fu Gan)

It turns out that it's a good thing that I made those two homemade stocks while Alex was sick.  Guess who caught the head cold now?  I guess it was hubris to assume that I would be immune to Alex's most recent cold.  In my defense, I only get sick about 50% of the time when Alex brings something home.  It just happened that my body decided now seemed like a good time to catch a cold.  When I have a cold the only thing I want is wonton noodle soup.  It is my absolute favorite cold remedy.  If I can't have wonton noodle soup (or I am too lazy to make the wontons) I will settle for a bowl of homemade Vietnamese chicken noodle soup.  Since I didn't have any homemade wontons and we had just made homemade dumplings the day before, I decided to mix things up and make some sort of Chinese noodle soup.  I didn't want to do a chicken noodle soup because we had just made matzo ball soup with chicken and we had homemade pork-chicken stock in the fridge, so I decided to go with a pork noodle soup.  Once I settled on pork I knew that I would make homemade char siu and make a char siu noodle soup.  For the char siu I used a combination of two char siu recipes that we have made in the past.  I know that I said that I would never make char siu another way after I made Char Siu Take 2, but I didn't want an entire pork shoulder worth of char siu for my soup.  I just wanted a few slices for each bowl.  Plus, the grocery store nearest our apartment only had pork tenderloin.  So I used the marinade from Char Siu Take 2 and the cooking instructions from Char Siu Pork (Chinese Roast Pork) which used pork tenderloin.  I threw the marinade together and put it in the fridge, went to the gym, took the dog for a walk, etc.  And later that night we made soup.  Once you had all of the components prepared, it really didn't take that long to make your soup but preparing each component takes awhile - the broth takes about 3 hours, the char siu marinates for at least 2 hours (although you could easily do it overnight as we have done in the past) and then cooks for 30 minutes... 

The thing I liked most about this meal was how homey it tasted.  Variations on both of these dishes are available in restaurants, but everything tasted comforting and homemade.  The flavors were there, the textures were there (particularly with the tofu with celery and peanuts), but it was all very simple and homey.  The char siu wasn't the best that I have ever tasted (or made) and I wanted a little more depth of flavor and richness to the broth, but it just made me (and my head cold) happy.  It reminded me of something my grandmother would have made for me.  Granted, she probably would have picked up some char siu from the local Chinese grocery instead of making it at home, but the point still stands.  It wasn't a perfect dish by any means, but it was very satisfying.  And sometimes that is exactly what you want/need.  It has been a long time since I have had any smoked tofu and I almost forgot how great it can be.  I love the meaty, smokey flavor and the extra firm texture.  It works really well with the crisp, grassy celery and the sweet and spicy sauce.  I brought in the leftover smoked tofu for lunch this week and I thought it made for great leftovers.

Recipes after the jump!

(Belated) Chinese New Year Meal #5: Xi'an Potsticker Dumplings (Xi'an Guo Tie), Tofu Shreds with Baby Bok Choy and Tiger Salad (Lao Hu Cai)

When I first saw this recipe for Xi'an Potsticker Dumplings I got really excited because they look like the pan-fried pork dumplings from A&J Restaurant in Rockville, Maryland (pictured below).  A&J is one of my all-time favorite Chinese restaurants and I try to visit every time I find myself in Maryland.  The filling is different - I'm not sure that I have ever had Chinese dumplings with a beef filling, but I can't swear to it.  I know that I have never made beef dumplings at home.  I will be the first to admit that my dumplings don't exactly look like the ones at A&J (and their bottoms are a little bit more cooked than I had intended for them to be), but I did my best.  And I was really happy with the way they turned out.  I thought these wrappers were easier to make and less doughy than the wrappers from the Pork and Napa Cabbage Water Dumplings (Shuijiao) that we made last year for Chinese New Year.  There were errors in execution both times.  I am not a proficient dumpling maker and I am happy to admit that.  But I thought that all things considered, these wrappers turned out better and the dumplings themselves were easier to wrap.  And they they fried up really nicely.  While I really liked the wrappers, I was less enamored of the filling.  It was good, but when I want a dumpling I really want a nice juicy pork filling.  I think I would like to make the dumplings again (with pork) because the skins were awesome and they were easy to throw together. 

The tofu noodles were something of a challenge.  The problem with buying ingredients at an Asian grocery store is that sometimes you end up with ingredients with no instructions on how to cook them.  And that's what happened to us here.  Ours were labeled "tofu rolls."  When I got home and tried to search for "tofu noodles" all I ended up with were tofu skin noodles or yuba noodles that are much thinner.  So I had to wing it.  And it didn't occur to me until after we had already made dinner that I should have searched "tofu shreds."  Oops.  Luckily, our dish came out just fine.  I tasted a few of the tofu shreds prior to blanching them and decided that 2-3 minutes in a pot of boiling water should warm them through and make them tender enough to eat.  I originally wanted to make a variation on the liang pi cold noodles from Xi'an Famous Foods since we were making Xi'an dumplings, but it has been so long since I had them that I wasn't sure I could replicate them.  Instead we tossed them simply with the ingredients we had in the fridge - baby bok choy, garlic, ginger and dried chilis.  They were yummy.  I love how just a few ingredients - garlic, ginger and dried chilis tossed in the wok can really give a dish great flavor.  I know that some people might be put off by the texture of the tofu noodles, but I happen to enjoy how springy they are. 

The tiger salad was a last second addition to lunch after I realized that we only ended up with 12 dumplings.  I think we were supposed to have 16 (although the recipe never specified), but I ran out of filling after we made 12 dumplings.  I really liked the freshness of the dish and the bright flavor, but if I were to make it again I would cut down on the amount of Chinkiang vinegar because the dish was a little too acidic for me.   

Recipes after the jump!

Tofu Thai Larb

I went a wee bit crazy with the grocery shopping last week and we have been working all week to try and use up all of the produce and proteins in the fridge.    Somehow we ended up with a ton of tofu in the fridge - smoked tofu, spiced pressed tofu, tofu skin noodles, sprouted tofu, fried tofu...  I have used some of the smoked tofu for a tofu and celery salad (which I will post later), but we had yet to use the rest of the tofu.  I originally planned to make lettuce wraps with the remaining smoked tofu, but I started thinking about larb and that led me to a number of different recipes for tofu larb using firm or extra firm tofu, including this one from The Mistress of Spices.  I figured extra firm sprouted tofu would work for Thai larb.  Once I realized we had everything we needed for the recipe, we were on.  

When I was thinking through what we should add to the larb, I knew I wanted some texture for the dish and some additional flavor, so I added thinly sliced cucumber (you want it to be thin enough to be tender, but thick enough to retain some crispness) and fried shallots.  Tofu tends to be a little mushier and less toothsome than ground meat and the fried shallots and cucumbers provided a really nice textural contrast to the softness of the tofu crumbles.  I briefly considered adding peanuts in lieu of the fried shallots, but I'm glad we went with the fried shallots instead because I thought the flavor of the fried shallots really added nice depth and savory flavor to the dish.  You could use a variety of different lettuces or cabbages as the wrapper, but we went with Bibb lettuce because we had it in the fridge.  I bought it to use as part of a (Belated) Chinese New Year meal because lettuce is a traditional component of Chinese New Year cuisine, but I never came up with a recipe I was excited about.  So I ended up repurposing the lettuce for this larb.  The larb managed to be both light and flavorful.  And I didn't miss the meat at all.  Sometimes when I eat tofu I wish I was eating meat instead, but there wasn't a single instant this evening that I wished I had made a chicken or pork larb, rather than a tofu larb. All of the ingredients added something to the dish - depth of flavor, contrasting texture, a degree of freshness...  It was light and it was delicious.  Sometimes I heart tofu.

P.S.  I know I keep using the word "light" to describe this dish, but I cannot think of a single adjective that would be more (or equally) appropriate. 

Recipe after the jump!

Noodles with Tofu, Broccoli and Mushrooms

I love highly flavored, exotic dishes but sometimes I need "boring" food.  When planning tonight's dinner all I could think of was broccoli and tofu.  A large part of that was provably due to the fact that we didn't have much in the fridge other than broccoli and tofu, but that's beside the point.  This isn't the first time that I have had a broccoli and tofu craving.  Back in January I demanded a broccoli-tofu stir-fry in homemade black bean sauce over brown rice.  The recipe never made it onto the blog because (1) the dish sounded far too healthy to be good (although I thought it was quite good) and (2) it was one of those dishes where I just kept throwing a little bit of this, a little bit of that into the wok until it tasted good.  So I had no real idea what quantities of each ingredient I had used or any way to backtrack and figure it out.  Oops.  Oh well.  But it seems that broccoli and tofu have become my go-to healthy food craving in 2013.  We will see how long it lasts, but I'm thinking right now that it is going to last until spring rolls around and I start craving asparagus and salad.  I didn't feel 100% virtuous while eating these noodles, but I felt a lot more virtuous than I would have if we had made dan dan mian or another spicy, meaty noodle dish.  I briefly considered abandoning my noodle idea and making something else with the broccoli and tofu, but since we had fresh Chinese noodles in the fridge I decided to stick with it.  Once again we threw a little bit of this, a little bit of that into the wok but I tried to keep up with it this time.  And if we're being 100% honest, I was too hungry and lazy to fuss around trying to make dinner perfect so I didn't really even taste it before we plated it to see if it needed more seasoning.  The dish could have used a little something more to make it pop, but such is life.

Recipe after the jump!

Hot and Sour Soup (Suan La Tang)

This soup doesn't look like much - in fact, it kind of looks like gruel (or something equally gross).  But it was actually one of my favorite soups we have made all year.  It had a ton of flavor and a wonderful rich texture.  I'm not really sure how to describe the texture, except to describe it as slightly unctuous.  I know that unctuous can be an unappealing adjective to describe food, but I can't think of a better way to describe the soup.  And hot and sour soup is supposed to be a little unctuous.  The cornstarch slurry did its job in thickening the soup a little, but I think a lot of the texture also had to do with the richness of the homemade broth we used from our Chicken Pho (Pho Ga).  When we took the broth out of the fridge to use it, it already had some body to it.  Actually, it almost appeared to be verging on gelatinous in its chilled form.  It actually jiggled.  And even once we heated the broth up, it retained a lot of that richness, as well as the complexity of flavor that I babbled on about in my post about the pho.  And after we added in all of the additional ingredients, the soup was beautifully complex, yet balanced.  The dried mushrooms added a touch of earthiness and umami, the vinegar added the sourness and bite that you want in a hot and sour soup, the white pepper added a hint of heat, the eggs added creamyness to the already rich broth and the scallions/cilantro on top added a little brightness.  It was awesome.  I heart this soup. 

Recipe after the jump!

Rice Noodles with Chinese Chives and Egg

Two weekends ago Alex and I trekked down to Chinatown for lunch and groceries.  I love grocery shopping in Chinatown - everytime we go down there I come back with such an interesting assortment of goodies (like my favorite Ching Kee Cookies, which are both delicious and amusing).  During our last visit I came back with a package of fresh wide rice noodles, flowering chives, fried tofu, Thai chilis and a bunch of other fun things.  I started trying to come up with dishes to cook using those ingredients and ended up deciding to throw them all together in one noodle dish.  The biggest hurdle was trying to loosen the fresh rice noodles because mine were stubbornly stuck together.  I used a combination of the two methods noted below - soaking them in hot water and then microwaving them.  I had never heard of throwing fresh rice noodles in the microwave to loosen them, but I found a post on About.com saying that it worked and I tried it.  It really did work.  Brilliant.  Beyond learning how to nuke fresh rice noodles, I realized a few things while cooking this meal.  The first is that I really like fried tofu.  I need to buy the packages of dried tofu more often because they are brilliant.  You totally don't need meat of any sort when you have some dried tofu in the dish.  The second is that noodles are always better with a little egg mixed in.  The third is that you really need to cut flovering chives up into slightly smaller pieces (especially if you are barely cooking them at all).  Ours were roughly 2 1/2-inches in length and that was just too long.  I'm thinking 1 to 2-inch lengths in the future.  The last thing I realized is that it takes a really long time to prep a meal like this, particularly when you decide to serve the noodles with a side of yu choy, which requires chopping.  There is a lot of chopping involved.  And when there is a lot of chopping involved, there is a lot of mess (and a lot of dishes) involved.  When Alex got home he asked me if I used every single dish in the kitchen.  The answer was close, but not quite.  But it was totally worth it because the noodles were tasty.  And in my opinion, the end (a delicious lunch) totally justifies the means.

Recipe after the jump!

Black Pepper Tofu

This recipe is easily (and unequivocally) our favorite dish we have made from this cookbook.  Alex and I were unanimous on that point.  And I think both of us reached the decision independent of the other within minutes of taking our first bites of the tofu.  Everything in the cookbook has been very interesting and very unique.  I can honestly say that we don't have a single other cookbook that combines flavors and ingredients in the way that Plenty does.  But not everything has been something that I would make again.  I would make this recipe again and again.  It is delicious.  I would make a few modifications to the recipe.  For one, the original recipe calls for 11 tbsp of butter.  That is an insane amount of butter.  We used about one-third that amount (and substituted 2 tbsp of vegetable oil for 2 tbsp of butter).  We also cut down on the amount of black pepper that the recipe called for because it also sounded slightly excessive.  And then we made one last substitution/alteration - the recipe calls for mild red chilis but the only red chilis I could find at the grocery store were all fairly spicy - cayennes, fresno chilis and cherry peppers.  So we just lazily seeded them and went with it.  I mean, it's not like we used habaneros or anything, but none of those chilis are particularly mild.  One alteration that I wish we had made is to only use the scallion greens for the recipe, or to add the whites to the dish much earlier to cook them down a bit so that they lost a little of their harshness.  I guess another alternative would be to chop the scallions much finer and to potentially use fewer scallions overall (maybe thinly slicing the white and green parts and using say 10 scallions instead of 16 would be enough to tone it down).  Adding the such large hunks of raw scallion at the very end leads to some aggressive onion-y flavor that I wish had been toned down just a bit.  But the flavors of the sauteed shallots, chilis, garlic, etc was delicious.  And it went very nicely with the fried cubes of tofu.  I loved the texture of the tofu cubes - crisp exteriors with soft, pillowy interiors - and the flavor of the sauce, which was sweet, but savory and spicy.  It was absolutely wonderful.  You definitely want to serve this tofu with white rice to soak up the flavors of the sauce because it is delicious.

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese Braised Tofu and Eggplant with Ground Pork

It looks like we are making up for the lack of recent Chinese meals with a vengeance.  First there was the Fish-Fragrant Eggplant (Yu Xiang Qie Zi), then there was the Brussels Sprouts Fried Rice with Crispy Cauliflower (which isn't exactly traditional but I am including it since it is fried rice) and now this braised tofu dish.  I'm not even counting the Roast Corn with Spicy Miso Butter or the Asian-Marinated Flank Steak that we served it with, although those dishes were also Asian-inspired.  So I am thinking that I might move on from Chinese for a little while and try some other cuisines.  I am thinking about doing a few farmers' market-inspired meals at the beginning of the week (celery root and apple soup and warm mushroom salad anyone?) and then trying out a few recipes from the Indian subcontinent that I found in Mangoes and Curry Leaves: Culinary Travels Through the Great Subcontinent.  There is a green tomato curry that I am particularly intrigued by.  And I just so happened to pick up 2 pounds of green tomatoes at the farmers' market this morning and curry leaves at Kalustyans this afternoon.  So we are good to go.  Stay tuned for that recipe.  But I think we should shift our focus from China to other continents (or subcontinents).  And then maybe we will return to China the following week.

This recipe was homey, warm and comforting - the type of dish that warms you from the inside out.  My Chinese grandmother never made tofu for me, but this dish screams Chinese grandmother to me.  It was absolutely perfect for a brisk fall day.  The original recipe on Steamy Kitchen called for a pound of ground pork (and we used an entire pound although I wanted to use half of the package - Alex said using half was more complicated than it was worth and dumped the whole shebang in there), but I thought that was way too much pork.  I would definitely recommend cutting it down to half a pound (although if you are into meat, then go for the full pound).  The original recipe also didn't use eggplant, but I loved the Japanese eggplant in there.  I might even up the amount of eggplant next time.  The eggplant soaks up so much flavor and has such a wonderful soft texture (without being mushy).  Alex said that what he remembers best about the eggplant was "bursts of flavor."  I just thought it was delicious.  If you are not an eggplant fan, then you can omit it but you might actually surprise yourself if you try it...

Recipe after the jump!

Stir-Fried Lettuce with Seared Tofu and Red Pepper

This recipe is one that I found a few weeks ago when looking for new tofu recipes.  It sounded a little weird, but intriguing.  I have never used lettuce in a stir-fry before.  And we don't use a ton of red bell peppers in our cooking because I often don't think they add much of anything to a dish.  But this dish was the exception - I thought the red pepper peppers were totally crucial here.  They add a nice sweetness and a crunch that would otherwise be lacking.  I really liked them.  As for the lettuce, Alex said that he would have preferred cabbage to lettuce in the stir-fry, but I liked the lettuce.  Napa cabbage would have been a little sweeter, but similarly crunchy.  So I guess it's a matter of preference.  I really liked this dish.  I think I liked it more than Alex did, but I generally like tofu dishes more than Alex (at least I think I do, although he might like ma po tofu more than I do).  But I thought this dish was light and healthy, but very flavorful.  Given the small amount of jalapeno in there I didn't know if you would get any heat, but the heat was definitely there.  I wouldn't call it a spicy dish, but you could taste the heat of the chili in every bite.  You could also taste the garlic and the ginger in every bite.  I really liked it.  And I felt very... virtuous and healthy eating it, which was a plus.

Recipe after the jump!

Pan-fried Noodles with Senposai and Tofu

It was pretty exciting to be able to eat dinner at home tonight and last (that post is going to have to wait until later).  Work has been crazy enough that I ate at my desk Monday and Tuesday and made Alex meet me for dinner on Wednesday.  So I refused to go out to dinner tonight, even though we didn't seem to have enough ingredients to make a meal.  Every dish I thought of required a trip to the grocery.  And then it occurred to me that I had some Hong Kong style noodles in the fridge so we could make pan-fried noodles.  The only problem with that plan was that we didn't have any proteins defrosted (aside from a skirt steak that I am saving for our attempt at rhubarb ketchup tomorrow), nor did we have our usual cache of canned vegetables for stir-fry.  And then I thought of the tofu, senposai and green garlic (both from the farmers' market) we had in the fridge.  So I decided that we could make a vegetarian pan-fried noodles - fry the tofu to get it nice and crispy and golden brown, stir-fry the senposai with the green garlic and voila!  For a dish that we essentially made up as we went along, it turned out really really well.  I thought the oyster sauce and sugar gave the dish a nice sweet, but savory and rich flavor.  There were a lot of different textures and tastes here that worked really well together.  I was worried that the dish would need a little something extra to give it flavor so I brought out some chili oil and Chinese chili paste, but it really didn't need it.  

Recipe after the jump!

Chinese New Year Meal #4: Peng's Home-Style Bean Curd

I will lead off by saying this, it really is difficult for tofu to be delicious.  Or at least it is difficult for it to compete against dumplings, noodles and Xinjiang lamb kebobs.  But I have to say (and I think Alex would agree) that this dish was my least favorite of our Chinese New Year meals thus far.  It was good, we both just expected the tofu to soak up more flavor.  There were a bunch of potent ingredients used in the dish - fermented black beans, chicken stock, soy, chili oil and sesame oil.  But the tofu turned out a little bland.  We were both expecting a lot more flavor.  I also felt like the sauce was a little oily/greasy.  To be perfectly honest, it was a decent amount of work frying the tofu and then braising it in the sauce for only a moderate payoff.  The pork slivers were tasty.  But the rest of it was just kind of ehhh for me.  Or at least it was ehhh in comparison to the other Chinese dishes we have made as part of Chinese New Year.  I'm glad we finally made it because I have been interested in making the dish for awhile, but there are definitely better tofu recipes out there (including some of the recipes on the blog).

Recipe after the jump!

Tofu Dengaku (Broiled Tofu with Miso)

What do you do when it's 8:00 pm and you realize that your dinner that you were in the midst of making is going to take another 2 hours?  Well if it's the weekend and you're Alex and I you probably have a snack and stick with it.  But if it's mid-week, you scramble for something else that cooks up in 30 minutes or less.  In this case, you go ahead and broil up some tofu smeared with miso paste.  We have made a similar recipe before with eggplant, but I have been holding onto this recipe for an occasion like last night where you need to whip something up in a hurry for some time.  And man does this cook up in a hurry.  Miso packs such a punch that a little goes a long way - the tofu doesn't require any salt (or additional seasoning) whatsoever.  I think Alex liked the dish a little more than I did, but he generally likes miso more than I do.  For the record, it's not that I disliked the dish in anyway, it's just that I had my heart set on something else and somehow this didn't quite satisfy in comparison.  I also tend to find almost straight up miso a little overwhelming at times.  But no complaints here.  The dish was very quick, super easy and fairly tasty.  What more can you ask for?

Recipe after the jump!

Bean Curd with a Deliciously Spicy Sauce

After Alex's work retreat this weekend (which I sometimes refer to as "science camp") he requested something light and not buffet-like for dinner.  I figured that tofu was light, and as not buffet-like as you can get.  I guess you might find tofu on some Asian buffets, but I'm fairly certain that you won't find it here in the United States.  I had initially intended to make tofu dengaku, but we were out of red miso.  And we had everything we needed for this recipe.  So I decided this recipe would be an equally tasty alternative.  It's basically a vegetarian version of mapo tofu, only less spicy and with less chili bean paste/fermented black beans.  I have to say that I preferred this dish to the Ma Po Tofu we made back in August.  This dish was far less oily than the Ma Po Tofu, which made the flavors taste cleaner.  You could really taste and savor the flavors of the garlic, ginger and scallions, whereas the flavors in the other dish were a little muddled.  And I think adding just a little of the chili bean paste and/or fermented black beans made the dish taste much lighter.  It was flavorful enough that I didn't miss the ground pork (or beef) at all this dish.  Actually, adding the pork would have just made the whole dish feel a little clunkier.  So I'm glad we left it out.  I found this tofu dish to be totally delicious and satisfying.  Welcome home honey - I hope dinner was everything that you were hoping for.

Recipe after the jump!

Ma Po Tofu

Before I lived in China I was fairly certain that tofu was evil.  Well, maybe not evil but I certainly thought it was bland and far from delicious.  But once I was in China I realized that tofu can actually be really tasty.  It can also be very stinky, but that's beside the point.  Ma Po Tofu is one of my favorite tofu dishes (as well as one of my favorite Sichuan dishes).  But there are some really bad versions out there.  I have had one that I can think of in New York where the tofu was swimming in a puddle of very spicy, but otherwise flavorless oil.  And then I have had the truly phenomenal version at Little Pepper in Flushing. This version falls somewhere in the middle.  It was neither the best, nor the worst version of ma po tofu that I have ever eaten.  It was good, but it was missing the exact balance of flavors and spice that I enjoy in the best renditions of Sichuan cuisine.  Part of the problem was that our Sichuan peppercorns are getting old and have lost a lot of their pungency.  I think it's time to head out the Flushing for a fresh batch.  There wasn't as much of the slightly sour, numbing flavor of the Sichuan peppercorns as I wanted.  And Alex complained that the dish also didn't have enough chili flavor from the Sichuan chilis in the dish.  So it seems like lack of chili-flavor is our chief complaint.  It was also just a little too oily for me.  If I were to make the dish again I would definitely cut down on the amount of oil.  Other than that I just don't know...

Recipe after the jump!

Tofu Omelet with Sweet Peanut Sauce (Tahu Telur)

What does it say about Alex and I that when we were looking through our fridge and the only things we had to make were eggs and tofu my first thought was to make a tofu omelet.  I knew that The Asian Grandmother's Cookbook had a recipe for a tofu omelet and I was pretty sure that we had everything we needed.  Alex kind of laughed about it - of course this was the recipe we came up with after scrounging around in our fridge for a little while with no idea what to make for dinner.  In his opinion most normal people would make spaghetti or chicken parmesan after scrounging around in their fridges, but we made a recipe with esoteric ingredients like shrimp paste, Indonesian sweet soy (ketjap manis) and tofu.  Most people would have to plan ahead and search for ingredients like those.  We just have them.  I said it was a little scary that the second he started talking about eggs and tofu I knew exactly what cookbook had a recipe for a tofu omelet, but otherwise I didn't think it was that weird.  In the spirit of full disclosure I must admit that I spend a lot of time pouring over our cookbooks while sitting on the couch.  I find that flipping through cookbooks while meal planning inspires all sorts of fun ideas.  And I like fun ideas.

This recipe isn't for just anyone.  I know that I talked about the intensely shrimpy and funky nature of shrimp paste when we cooked Water Spinach with Shrimp Paste and Chilis (Kangkung Belacan).  The recipe actually called for black shrimp paste, which is different from the belacan dried shrimp paste that we used for the water spinach.  But we figured that we could use a little of the belacan (less than the recipe called for since black shrimp paste has sugar and water and isn't quite as pungent) and add a little sugar to the sauce to make up for the substitution.  The sauce has a ton of components - fried garlic, chilis, lime juice, Indonesian sweet soy (ketjap manis), peanut butter and water - but less than a teaspoon of shrimp paste still provides it with a distinct funk.  I liked the funk.  I thought it was an acceptable level of funk, but if you're not into funk then leave the shrimp paste out entirely.  The omelet is really hearty and filling, but if you think about it the omelet has 5 eggs and just under a pound of tofu in it.  Of course it's filling.  I was worried that we wouldn't have enough to eat, but I couldn't even finish my half.  Granted, I threw on a few handfuls of pea shoots that I picked up at the farmer's market on Sunday.  The recipe called for celery leaves or cucumber as a garnish, but I wanted to use up my beautiful pea shoots instead.  It was definitely an interesting meal.  I enjoyed it.  I don't think it will be a crowd-pleaser because of the moderately high funk factor and somewhat lame description (a tofu omelet sounds about as exciting as a study in beige), but I'm glad we made it.

Recipe after the jump!

Warm Tofu with Spicy Garlic Sauce and Korean Cucumber Salad

I have been meaning to try out this recipe for awhile.  It wasn't exciting enough to make the list of "must try" recipes, but I bookmarked it a year or two ago for a nebulous future (vegetarian) dinner.  It was something along the lines of an experiment because we have never cooked soft tofu before.  Somehow we always pick out recipes that call for firm tofu.  And this recipe seemed so perfectly simple that it was hard to resist.  Who doesn't love the idea of throwing something in a pot and forgetting about it for awhile?  And by awhile, I mean 5-10 minutes.  According to the recipe you can keep the tofu warm in the simmering water over very low heat for up to 4 hours, so if you wanted to forget it for a few hours, that is an option too.  Either way, simmering the tofu gave it a really nice texture.  I expected it to make the tofu softer and mushier, but instead it seemed to firm it up a little.  It was still definitely soft tofu, but it almost felt like it retained its shape a little better than soft tofu generally does due to the bath in simmering water.  You drizzle the spicy garlic sauce over the warm tofu and voila.  The spicy garlic sauce is really potent and it gave the tofu a lot more flavor than I expected, especially considering the tofu was simply simmered in water without any seasonings.  There wasn't even any salt in there.  Actually, I found the sauce to be a little too salty - perhaps I should have used a low sodium soy sauce or simply cut back on the amount of soy sauce a little.  We did leave the sauce out on the counter for a few hours, which might very well have contributed to the overall saltiness.  Oops.  Our bad.  But it was a very satisfying vegetarian main course.  We served the tofu with a Korean cucumber salad that we found in our cookbook Korean Kitchen and some white rice.  The cucumber salad was nice and fresh and spicy, all at the same time.  It was a really nice side for the tofu and I think it would be a nice accompaniment to any Korean meal.

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