Recipe Test: Crispy Fried Tofu & Asian Salad

Credit: ourlifeinaclick.blogspot.com

Click here for original Tofu Recipe

Credit: heatherchristo.com

Click here for original Asian Salad Recipe

There is a Thai restaurant here in Omaha that has crispy fried tofu with a sweet / hot peanut sauce that is a huge favorite of both mine and Hubby's.   I had a hankering for this last time I was doing my meal planning so I decided to stray just a bit from whole / real foods for a night.  Not too much of a stray but there is clearly a debate over Tofu and if it is too processed of a food.  I played it safe by making sure to get tofu marked "no GMO" as I've learned that GMO means "genetically modified organisms" - basically meaning that the soybean plant that it came from has had DNA introduced into it in a way other than the combination of male and female gametes ... genetic engineering instead of nature.   Why is this bad?  From what I understand (and note that my understanding is very limited since I'm new to all these issues) is that these altered plants are created to be able to live through the dousing of all the chemicals needed to destroy weeds and pests.  But then nature has evolved to survive as well and there are now herbicide resistant "super weeds" that lower yield and increase costs for the farmer ... so more pesticides / chemicals are used.

The other naughty is of course that this is 'fried' ... but come on - a girl has to get that fix now and then!  I started with the original recipe which called for dipping in soy sauce and then dredging through nutritional yeast.

Then frying (I used my new pan & peanut oil.

I found that the nutritional yeast made the tofu taste cheesey - which was good but doesn't quite go with the whole Asian thing I was going for.  I also made the mistake of over-seasoning with salt & pepper which honestly ruined it.  But I was bound and determined to have my crispy tofu fix and Hubby was out with the boys so I gave it a second try.   This time I used a different method.

I left off the soy sauce and just rolled the tofu in the nutritional yeast.  Then I dunked it in egg and then dredged it through a mixture of whole wheat panko bread crumbs with a little salt in it.  Next to the frying pan: 

This worked perfectly!  I noticed that the first few were that just right golden but as I went the oil seemed to get too hot and I had to watch for burning.  You can tell by the one in the bottom corner of this pic:

With my homemade sweet & sour sauce that I'd figured out with my recent egg roll failure it was just the thing!  It's just water, honey, brown rice vinegar and hot hot hot siracha sauce!

I had a slightly revised version of the Asian Salad recipe on the side.  I'd made this before and found that  I really liked the cabbage part of it more than the regular lettuce so this time I used green and red cabbage. Also forgot the avocado but honestly didn't miss it.  It really is such a pretty salad!

This time with the cabbage the leftovers kept wonderfully - almost like a coleslaw keeps in the fridge.

Here's dinner (with the first test round of tofu - but you get the point):