Meat Free Everyday - Food for Thought

Cooking with tofu

Adventurous foodies who attempt to cook with tofu are usually bitterly dissappointed. And I'm not surprised. A block of plain, straight tofu is tasteless. Bland, insipid and more akin in taste to cardboard than food. But the benign taste of tofu is probably it's best attribute. It can be seasoned or crafted to work in a multitude of ways. Tofu comes in soft or firm textures. Soft tofu can be made into creamy desserts, soups, sauces, dressings or smoothies. Firm tofu can be used as strips, chunks, "steaks" or scrambled.

Tofu marinades well and absorbs flavours easily. The other interesting thing about tofu is that it's texture changes when frozen. It becomes firmer but also more flaky and porous. Almost sponge like. I often buy ready marinated tofu if I can find it. The vacuum packs last longer. But convenience sauces that you might have at home like pesto, curry sauce and chilli tomato paste also make perfect marinades. Leave your tofu to stand overnight and it will be perfectly flavoursome in the morning. You can eat it raw or dry fry it in a pan for a few minutes or bake it in an oven.

If you find smoked tofu, do try it. Smoked tofu is my best. I slice it like you would tuna steaks and flash fry it in a drop of olive oil in a non stick pan. Tofu, like all protein firms up when exposed to heat. Uncooked it is a little crumbly. Serve it with a sweet chilli salsa and a fresh green salad. Yum!

I also like to dip "steak" sized pieces of tofu in cajun dry spices. Leave it to soak up the flavours, and then dry fry or bake it. Tofu can be cut into strips, chunks or crumbled into stews, stir fries or pasta dishes. It goes with just about anything really. You can easily add tofu to a dish to power up the protein quotient of a meal. And a big plus is that tofu is very low in fat as opposed to animal protein sources.

Soft tofu is easy to whip into a dessert or smoothie. The varieties are as limited as your imagination. For smoothies add more liquid and for desserts add more firm textured items. Think berries, spices, soaked dried fruit, nuts, seeds, vanilla extract or cocoa powder.

You could make tofu cream by whipping tofu with a natural sweetener such as stevia or xylitol, a dash of vanilla and just a tiny bit of almond oil to add creaminess to the texture. Conversely you could make a savoury dressing by mixing together lemon juice and black pepper or blue cheese.

I also often add a block of soft tofu to soups to bump up the density. And of course to amp up the protein quota. Im not going to go into baking with tofu. These are meant to be simple ways to work with tofu but suffice to say tofu works well in baking. Once you get a little more confident, perhaps you will be inclined to buy a tofu recipe book and experiment with even more ideas.

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