SOY-GLAZED TOFU WITH CRISPED RICE - p. 129
I chose this recipe because, hey, it’s vegan. But I gotta say, I was impressed with it upon reading through it. So tweak it I did. My main gripe was the way the author prepares the tofu. She pan-fries it, unseasoned, and dredged in corn starch. I’ve been working with tofu for a long, long time, and I know that isn’t going to give a very tasty or appealing result. She also doesn’t reduce the glaze with the tofu in the pan, she just pours the glaze on the unseasoned tofu after it’s plated. In the past, I would have probably deep-fried the tofu, then put it into the glaze (letting the glaze reduce while also soaking the fried tofu). That would be good. But I recently upgraded my Breville Smart Oven to an air-frying model, so I wanted to air-fry the tofu. For air-frying, I like to start by seasoning the tofu. Since the recipe doesn’t call for any seasoning on the tofu, I went my own way, and seasoned it with some salt, onion powder, and garlic powder. I let the slabs of tofu sit with the seasoning on them for a while, to allow the salt to penetrate the tofu. Then I dusted the tofu with cornstarch, sprayed it with Avocado oil, and air-fried it at 400F for 25 minutes. This gave me tofu that was well-seasoned and had a crisp exterior. Because of that, I could just reduce the glaze separately and pour it over, as the recipe instructs, and it was fine. But as written, this would not be fine.
As for the glaze itself, it’s just garlic and ginger, sautéed, then you add in rice vinegar, black vinegar, and soy sauce, and let it thicken. There is a lot of soy sauce… I reduced it a bit, but found the glaze very salty (although my tofu was salted, so there is that to consider). The tofu is accompanied by the crisped rice… you just take cooked rice and spread it in a heated, oiled pan, and let it cook until it crisps up, then flip it and crisp the other side. And there is also a slaw, which is just julienned vegetables dressed in sesame oil, rice vinegar, salt, and pepper. My CSA started up this week, so my vegetable choices are going to be driven by what’s in the box. I decided to make a salad out of some CSA lettuce and daikon radish. I dressed it using the ingredients called for in the slaw, but not the proportions. I just tossed the salad with a small bit of sesame oil, seasoned with salt & pepper, then tossed in a little splash of vinegar. Mine was a lightly dressed salad.
Overall, this dinner was fine. Nothing to write home about. The tofu was good as I cooked it. The crisped rice was, to my mind, a waste of time. If you are really into tahdig, you might find it worthwhile, but I’m not and this wasn’t. I’d be just as happy with plain rice.
