Tofu Challenge: Chinese Five Spice tofu and veggie stir fry

Friday, February 29, 2008

I can’t believe it’s the last day of February - and the end of the tofu challenge!  As someone who does not routinely eat a lot of tofu, I feel like I learned a lot this month.  Mostly, I learned that I really like tofu...and for the first time ever, I can actually see how people could want to eat and be satisfied with Tofurkey for Thanksgiving.  Not that I intend to give up being a carnivore, but I get it.

Late last week I made a fried tofu dish inspired by a recipe in This Can’t Be Tofu, a book recommended by Allison (as a testament to how crazy busy the end of the month has been, I’m only getting around to posting it today).  It was absolutely delicious and almost entirely local.

This dish could not have come at a better time - there was a bag of local hydroponically-grown yellow bell peppers in my fridge that were getting ready to go.  I purchased them a few weeks ago at the Fair Food Farmstand.  It seems very wrong to have bell peppers in the middle of Winter, but I could not resist at least trying them.  While I can say they were absolutely not as good as Summer bell peppers, it was still lovely to have them and know they were locally grown.

In addition to the bell pepper, I included a locally grown onion, white button mushrooms, spinach, and Chinese Five Spice pressed tofu from Nature Soy [a local tofu manufacturer].  The only thing not local: the tomato, hot pepper flakes, salt and pepper, curry powder, soy sauce, and cumin seeds.

The tofu was cut into cubes and then pan-fried, and then mixed with the other stir-fried veggies.  Delicious!