Miso Lime Tofu

I've been watching some cooking shows on Netflix recently. A few of the guilty-pleasure "reality" format (anything featuring Gordon Ramsay from the UK) and a few of the actual cooking variety. What I've noticed is that people use a lot of spices. Heaping handfuls of the lighter herbs, pours of salt, multiple teaspoons of dry spices. Compare to the sprigs, pinches, and dashes I usually use, I can see a problem with my cooking. The other big difference was variety of ingredients; I tend towards one or two spices per dish (plus the onion/garlic/salt/pepper component). In an effort to improve, I made this.

It was heavily flavored, prepared somewhat properly, and quite good. My only failing was not fully committing to curry; I used no coconut milk and only though to add corn starch at the end when I noticed how thin everything was, disregarding the boil-simmer-reduce one seems to find in recipes for thick sauces. But everything else was spot-on; the tofu had a bit of flavor from the marinade. The lime and ginger were overpowering flavors, with miso close on their heels.

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Miso Lime Tofu

Serves 2

Marinade
1 anaheim pepper, diced
1 Andre-the-giant thumb of ginger, peeled and minced
an amount of minced garlic equal to ginger
juice of a lime
2 tbsp miso
1 tbsp mirin
1 tsp soy sauce

Curry Sauce
The marinade from above
1 anaheim pepper, diced
1 tsp sesame oil (probably leave this out?)
1/2 cup water
thickening agent, volume unknown (corn starch or roux; roux probably a better idea)
salt

Everything Else
Rice
Handful of spinach leaves
Bunch of broccolini
12oz firm tofu

To make the marinade, combine all the ingredients in a bowl and mix. Really simple. Chop the tofu into pieces that you want to eat and put it in a ziploc bag with the marinade. Give it at least 30 minutes. Once you think it is marinaded appropriately, start the rice. Take the tofu out of the bag and place in a heated frying pan with some oil to brown it.

Be lazy like myself and pour the marinade out of the bag into a bowl, then add the additional pepper, water, sesame oil, and salt to taste. Tofu should be getting sufficiently browned, so chop up the broccolini and add it into the frying pan. Cook for a few minutes, then add the curry. Bring to a kinda-boil, then reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes, until the broccolini and tofu are soft. Add the spinach on top and stir a few times.

Remove from heat and serve over rice.

Cookin By The Book

Doing something new - following a recipe. To the letter. Well, minus E's dislike of spicy things. We cooked some Baingan Bharta last night. A dish we originally ordered because, honestly, we were too immature to not order a dish that sounded like an XXX version of a sitcom that doesn't exist. A dish we were surprised to find looked like cat vomit, but tasted nothing of the sort. Not that I would know, but if cat vomit tasted as good as the dish we had you can't really blame cats for eating it. The original plan was to make ratatouille, like in the movie of the same, but the grocer only supplied giant eggplant so it wouldn't be as pleasing to the eye. Hence, cat vomit. Obviously.

The recipe involved cooking with yogurt, something we swore would never be done again. There have been some spectacular fails of meals involving that ingredient. But it seemed to work out fine; I think because we used plain yogurt, not greek, and we cooked it at a high temperature for ten minutes. The only modification we made to the recipe was removal of the jalapeno and the addition of some cayenne pepper. We used two small heirlooms, one red and one green, for the tomato portion. They barely colored the dish. It still looks like vomit. But quite tasty.