Sesame-Ginger Glazed Tofu

Food Prep and Cooking

Katie:

I'm pleased they included corn starch for us, as we definitely don't have any. Is that a normal thing to have in your kitchen? Moving on. I touch raw tofu, which I did not realize was so...wet. There was nothing too crazy to do in the prep this time, despite us making tofu which I'd always thought was incredibly complicated to make. Turns out, you just put it in your wok and kinda shimmy it in the sauce. 

Nick:

Pretty easy! The Green Chef MO seems to be taking a grain (rice, quinoa, faro), cooking that in a little pot, then prepping the veggies and combining it all in the wok at the end. This was also my first time making tofu; I'm not really sure what I expected, but as Katie said, you just throw it in the wok with some sauce and flip it once. Not too tough.

Post-meal thoughts

Katie:

I'm going to break it down into two sections--the tofu bit and the slaw part. 

Tofu bit--the tofu with the sauce was my favorite part. The mango 'salsa' (mangos, cilantro, and scallions essentially) went well with it. The quinoa, which we also hadn't made before, was fine. It was a little too salty but I may have added too much. I could have happily just had the tofu and mango salsa over regular white rice with about double the amount of sauce they gave us.

The slaw part--yuck. It just tasted live olive oil, which I like but not on its own. It needs to bring friends if it wants to come to my party. Just me and olive oil alone trying to play spin the bottle or pin the flavor on the taste buds is not a good time. If we'd been allotted more of the sauce to add, I would have liked it as a break from the tofu.

Nick:

Like Katie, I am going to grade the tofu and the "slaw" parts separately, as they don't really have anything to do with each other.

Tofu part - This was pretty good! I was worried because I really hate the texture on tofu, and sure enough eating a cube by itself was squishy and nasty. However, a forkful with the quinoa, tofu, and a mango piece was very good; the saltiness of the quinoa went very well with the savory, umami flavor from the sauce that was applied to the tofu (The tofu itself was well done, which added a nice little note.) I definitely enjoyed this more than I thought I would; in fact, I would probably get this again if we run out of new recipes, which is the first time in history I've requested more tofu. As Katie noted, the quinoa was too salty (the directions had us add only 1/4 of a tablespoon, but that was to just a cup of water), but it worked out pretty well in the end.

The slaw bit - Hmmm. When I think of slaw, I think of... mayonnaise? This was literally carrots and cabbage with a little bit of olive oil drizzled over it. I don't know what kind of world that counts as coleslaw in, but I don't want to live in it. I ate all mine, but only because it was a nice palette cleanser in between bites of mega-salt umami quinoa tofu. To improve this dish, I would either cut this part entirely, or make it more savory to contrast with the other half of the dish; maybe something with cream?

Bonus points: did you spot the odd brand name in the before picture?