We’re going to continue on a vegetarian theme that we seem to have started and introduce ourselves to tofu. Chez Venza? Meet Tofu. Pleased to meet you!
We’ve experienced tofu before, but we’ve never bought it from the store or even thought about what we should do with it. It’s actually pretty easy to work with and can be quite versatile. We decided to do a Chinese stir fry recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. There were a lot of steps to the recipe, but overall it was very tasty and satisfying.
We went with extra-firm tofu, because we wanted it to hold its shape, especially since it was going in a stir fry. The first step is to press the tofu to get rid of any excess water. Here, our Joy of Cooking book finally starts pulling its weight (haha!).
After about 30 minutes or so, you’ll see a little pool of water. Just pour that off and you’re good to go.
Then we get all arts-and-crafty with it and cut it into little triangles. I found this part particularly fun.
We’ll get back to the tofu in a bit. There’s a lot more prep work that needs to be done before we get cooking. It’s better to have all the chopping and mixing done ahead of time! Here are some of the usual suspects when it comes to Chinese cooking: sesame oil, soy sauce, oyster sauce, chicken broth, and corn starch. Corn starch works as a good thickener for the sauce. It’s also used to coat the tofu, which gets it good and crispy.
We also got to use bok choy for the first time (also known as Chinese cabbage). I think of it as sort of a cross between celery and spinach. It has a good crunch factor to it, but the leaves will wilt down like spinach when cooked.
We found out that there are two kinds of bok choy. Baby and big. The big were HUGE, so we got the baby. Pay attention, there will be a test at the end of this blog. It will be multiple choys.
Lots of slicing and dicing. We separated the bok choy stalks from the leaves and chopped them up. We also diced some carrots, ginger, and garlic.
Back to the tofu. We coated it in corn starch and then fried it in a little oil.
Starting to look yummy, right?
We poured in some of the sauce we made earlier, tossed it around to coat, and then pulled it out and set it aside.
Onto the veggies. First up is carrots. Carrots can take a while to cook, so we steamed them in some chicken broth with the lid on.
The carrots were pulled out and set aside. Then we cooked the bok choy stalks and leaves along with some snap peas. I told you there were a lot of steps to this!
Next we added a ton of garlic and ginger and let it heat through.
Now, finally, we get to mix everything back together. We also added our sauce from before and let it heat up and start thickening. We’re almost done!
We poured the final dish on top of a bed of rice and garnished with some sesame seeds.
I wouldn’t say that this was faster or easier than ordering take-out, but it was a lot more fun, not as greasy, and totally worth it.
Test:
The kinds of bok choy are:
a) Baby and big.
b) None of the above.
MULTIPLE CHOYYYYYYYS
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