Crunchy Tofu Salad with Caulifower Rice

Hey guys!

I wanted to come up with a delicious side dish that could be added to any of my various East Asian inspired dishes, and I thought that I had wildly underused tofu on my website. It’s not my favourite thing to cook with because for me, you have to really deconstruct it unless it’s being used as an egg replacer or in desserts. Savoury tofu often is like eating a makeup sponge, and I can’t even describe some of the odd textures I’ve tried over the years. One I really liked, was a crunchy tofu salad that Yo Sushi used to do, which was not the height of great cuisines but it was very tasty. So I came up with a fresh tofu salad, that you could maybe take elements from and put into a main dish.

Ingredients

• Tofu Block

• White Flour

• Sesame Seeds

• Chilli Flakes

• Vegan Honey (Green Bee)

• Dark Soy

• Light Soy

• Sesame Oil

• Mirin

• Chilli Paste

• Garam Masala

• Tomato Puree

• Rice Vinegar

• Mirin

• Scallions

• Onion

• Salt

• Pepper

• Cauliflower Rice (Grated Cauliflower)

So the first thing you want to do is prepare the cool tofu block, and I basically went to ham on it trying to remove every microbe of water. I used about 10 kitchen towel presses and you want it to be dry. I’d also say that there is another way to change the texture of tofu and that is freezing it, and letting it defrost. The shards of ice that form sort of rearrange the tofu so it’s more like a meat alternative. I don’t love it like that, so I stuck to my recipe. I chopped mine up into cubes and coated with flour, salt and pepper. If the flour is not sticking to the outside of the tofu, just go over them with a bit of soy milk and redip them into your flour, like your’e doing a batter. You want to then add them to a hot pan of oil, and fry until golden brown. Set aside on a tissue to drain the fat.

Next, we’re going to prepare the dressing and it’s got to be so ridiculous that it disguises the tofu-ness. I used a tbsp of honey, two cloves of garlic, 1 tbsp dark soy for colour, 1 of light soy for salt. A tsp of sesame oil, one of mirin, one of tomato purée, one of salt, one of pepper, one of chilli paste, one of Garamond masala and one of rice vinegar. If you wanted to add ginger, I think it would go well too. Soak the fried tofu cubes into the mixture for about two hours.

Now we’ve got the most yummy, tangy dressing for a tofu salad, we just need to add loads of lightly toasted sesame seeds. Just throw them in a hot pan for a few seconds until they go toasty, and coat the marinaded tofu with them. Add some chilli flakes and scallions. I decided to serve this with cauliflower rice because I think it was lighter than sushi rice, but do what you prefer. I always add vinegar and salt to rice when it’s in a salad dressing so it’s got a great flavour to it, so that’s what I did here.

Let me know what you think and if you try this out at home. It goes amazingly as a salad side, or something to add to a lunch box, or you could make twice as much and add with noodles as a main dish.