I chose to make this dish because I was cooking with my friend Kenny and we were short on time. We agreed this looked easy and tasty, so we went for it. I got this recipe from "Vegan Yum Yum" the cook book. The author also has an amazing blog I have mentioned before called Vegan Yum Yum, check it out!
Vegan Yum Yum
Since tofu scares me a little, I decided to make some rice to it tofu. My family recently got a new rice cooker and I have no idea how to use it. And because I have always had a rice cooker, I don't actually know how to cook rice. So in the pictures coming up you will see rice, but it wasn't even cooked. Such a failure.
Here is the recipe, with suggestions. . .
1 14-ounce package tofu, drained and well pressed.*
2/3 cup coconut milk
1 half lime, peeled
2 teaspoons sugar
zest of 1 lime
1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Oil an 8x8 inch baking dish.
2. Cut tofu into 8 equal pieces as follows: Lay the block in front of you, hamburger style (widthwise if you missed pre-school) Cut into 4 equal slabs. Lay each slab on its side and cut in half, hotdog style, making a skinny rectangle.
3. Add coconut milk, soy sauce, lime, sugar and lime zest to a blender or food processor and blend well. This will make a marinade.
4. Add the tofu to a casserole dish and pour the marinade over it. Bake for 25 minutes, flip, and bake for additional 10 minutes, or until the vast majority of the marinade is evaporated. Remove and let rest before serving.
*Pressing tofu is removing the moisture. Freezing works well, but it changes the texture. I suggest taking a paper towel to it. I didn't remove enough moisture from this dish, another reason for its failure.
My suggestions:
For one, we cut the tofu way too thick, when we cooked it in the oven it took twice as long and it was still very mooshy. This is NOT a quality I like my tofu to have, actually any of my food, for that matter. As you can see the marinade is barely covering the tofu in the picture above.
Another note, this recipe calls for WAY too much lime. I'd use half or less. Needless to say, this dish was just not good, for many reasons. I actually didn't eat any of it except a little nibble. I tried to dress it up in the finished pictures but there was no going back really. Better luck next time.
I got this recipe from the book "Vegan Yum Yum: Decadent ( But Doable) Animal-Free Recipes for Entertaing and Every Day" (c) Lauren Ulm 2009
