Almond Tofü with Broccoli

Easy schmeezy tofü coming right up! Trying to cut back on the meat and poultry, are ya? Well tofu is for you. Üpon my recent trek to Thailand, I learned many a secret to creating great tasting Thai dishes... namely, how the heck to cook tofu properly... here's the scoop....

Prep

• Buy a package of extra firm tofu and drain it from the watery package.
• Slice it in half horizontally creating two cakes.
• Depending on your preference you can slice those cakes in half horizontally as well.
• Salt and pepper both sides of each cake. I also use Goya Adobo seasoning on each side.
  
• Cut the cakes into small triangular shapes or cubes whichever you prefer. I prefer the triangles because the texture is very lovely when cooked properly and they are thinner than cubes which means they'll cook more evenly.

Dry Fry

• Place your tofu into a DRY non-stick frying pan. You want to dry-fry the tofu on both sides. Why? Because dry-frying will evaporate the water in the tofu- creating a sponge-like food that is ready to absorb the marinade that you will let it rest in momentarily. This is very important to dry fry the tofu. Do not even spray Pam into your frying pan.

• Once you have dry-fried all the tofu place it into a marinage of your choice.

Marinade

• I used my kitchen sink marinade mix for this recipe. I just take enough water, soy sauce, rice vinegar, ginger preserves, liquid smoke, a little brown sugar, salt and pepper, hoison sauce, teriyaki sauce, meat magic seasoning, a few cloves of chopped up garlic, a small chopped onion, etc... and enough Newman's Low Fat Sesame Ginger salad dressing to cover the tofu in a bowl...
  

Let rest for 30 minutes covered in the refrigerator...

• After marinading you can stir fry some veggies (onion, broc, shaved carrots) with the tofu. When finished cooking, spoon about 2 tablespoons of the marinade over your Jasmati rice that you have prepared ahead of time.

• Sprinkle some shaved almonds over the top. I also like to add a little peanut sauce to give this tofu dish an authentic Thai flavour but you can skip this step if you do not like peanuts or peanut sauce. Simply take a a tablespoon of peanut butter and melt it in the microwave for a minute or so, stirring often. Add a few dashes of soy sauce and enough water to make a liquid that you can easily spoon or pour over your dish. Oh so good!!!

Enjoy!

XOxoOx <3>Üdo

If you are so inclined, a great recipe for Vegetarian Pad Thai...