Don't try this at home

Tonight's dinner was not so good. It was another attempt at Asian Cuisine; this time I tried Chinese. I've actually done Chinese successfully before. But this dish was definitely less than steller.

I love all of the Chinese "Something and Broccoli" dishes (Shrimp and Broccoli, Beef and Broccoli, Chicken and Broccoli). I decided to try something along those lines, except, (being Lent and all), I decided to make this dish with various mixed vegetables (Red Pepper, Sugar Snap Peas, Onions, and Broccoli). And, in place of Chicken/Shrimp/Beef I chose Tofu. Now I what you're thinking... "Tofu? Tofu has no taste!" And that is exactly right -- tofu really doesn't have any taste. But I believe we can use that to our advantage... if we know how. Clearly though, I need more practice cooking with Tofu.

You see, tofu has a lot of moisture, and in order to put any flavor into it, we need to get the moisture out. My absolute, all-time favorite cook book, "I'm Just Here for the Food" by Alton Brown, has a recipe for "Bar-B-Fu" (Bar-B-Q Tofu). The suggested technique in that recipe is to place the tofu "steaks" on a cookie sheet with several paper towels both underneath and on top of the tofu. Then, place another cookie sheet on top, and weight it down with several heavy cans of food. Wait 30 minutes to 1 hour. Then, marinate the tofu in the Bar-B-Q sauce for several hours before cooking.

That makes good sense, but it's a lot of prep work, and I'm not much for prep work (which means I will probably never become an outstanding chef -- "mise en place" and all that jazz you know).

So I just decided to throw the tofu (moisture and all) into my wok along with the onions and red pepper that I had cut up. This was mistake number one. Even though I bought the firm tofu, with all its moisture, it's still not that firm. So when I went to do the saute toss (you know, to get an even coating of oil over everything), the tofu just sort of crumbled. What I ended up with was something like fried onions and red peppers with scrambled tofu -- not terribly appetizing, and I hadn't even gotten to the Broccoli yet.

Meanwhile, my rice is taking forever, probably because I kept taking the lid off to stir it, which I understand you're really not supposed to do, but whatever -- I've never been one to follow directions well.

In an attempt to salvage dinner, I decided to pick out the onions and red peppers one by one (they were done by this point), and let the tofu cook a while longer (it was still pretty mushy). I set them aside and let the "scrambled tofu" cook until it was nicely browned. Finally my rice has finished cooking, but I still had this tofu mush to deal with, and for some reason, I got the bright idea to add the tofu to the rice!

I think I was thinking about fried rice when I did this. Chinese fried rice generally has a scrambled egg added to it, so I figured: scrambled egg, scrambled tofu -- what's the difference?

I finished cooking the rest of the vegetables in sesame oil (the broccoli, and sugar snap peas). I mixed in the red peppers and onions, then added some ginger, curry, salt, and soy sauce. It was actually starting to smell somewhat good.

I plated the rice and topped it with the vegetables and then went to work on a brown sauce. My goal was to replicate the brown sauce that you get with most Something and Broccoli dishes. To do this, I just took a guess: soy sauce, sesame oil, water, chili flakes, pinch of ginger, pinch of curry, and some cornstarch for thickening. I still think I was on the right track, but my ratios must have been waaaaay off because I almost threw up (honestly) when I smelled this sauce. It smelled so bad that I couldn't even taste it. I ended up just eating the vegetables and rice with no sauce.

My wife actually didn't mind the dish. Actually, she said it was fairly good. So I said "Great! You can have it tomorrow for lunch too, and I'll have the left over Carrot Soup!" I definitely got the good end of that deal.

Comments Welcome.