Flaky Tofu

Ingredients

Serves 3 hungry fellows.

Tofu

• 1kg firm tofu
• 200 mL unsweeetened soy milk
• 100 g flour
• 3 tablespoons[0] corn starch
• 200g unsweetened corn flakes

Dipping sauce

• 4 tablespoons peanut paste
• 4 tablespoons black bean sauce (see below for an image)
• 4 tablespoons tomato purée
• 2 tablespoons of rice wine vinegar
• dash of soy sauce
• soymilk
• corn starch

Salad

• ~500g carrots
• 2 large cucumbers
• sesame oil
• soy sauce
• rice wine vinegar

Method

Get ahold of two shallow dishes for the batter. In one of the dishes, mix and stir soy milk, flour and corn starch. In the other dish, add your corn flakes. I did crush few of them a bit but made sure to have loads of unharmed ones remaining.

Make sure to remove a fair amount of liquid from your tofu by patting it with kitchen paper and gently pressing. If you press too long or too hard, it might start falling apart. Once the tofu has appropriate consistency, cut or tear it into shapes of your liking.

Now the battering shall begin! I find that the good old one-hand-per-battering-dish technique deserves special merit. Take a bit of tofu at a time, let it soak on all sides in the liquid and cover it in corn flakes by gently rolling it in each of your dishes separately.

Once your batch of tofu bits are done you might or might not want to dust them with sweet paprika powder. I also tried a curry powder but wasn’t fully sold on it. Then, you might either fry them in a pan or put them in the oven (I went for ~10’ on each side at 180 degrees Celsius). In any case, try to be very gentle when handling the tofu - you do not want it to lose its precious flakes. Since the tofu doesn’t ’need’ any cooking, you can just look for the crunchiness of the flakes that you’re after.

Preparing the sauce really only consists of mixing together the ingredients and gently heating them in a pot. I merely used the soy milk and corn starch to thin it out the taste and to adapt viscosity.

I can recommend using a peeler to create long thin strips of carrot and cucumber. Other than that just chop the coriander and spring onions and adapt the vinaigrette to your needs and desires. Generally, I would suggest slightly undersalting it sine the sauce will likely be very salty.

Thoughts

• To my great surprise, I actually ended up preferring the oven-baking method over pan-frying. Despite the tofu having become a bit dryer, the crunchiness of the flakes was unbeatable.
• The light and fresh salad is worth a thousand bucks with this otherwise very much heavy-hitting meal.

Many thanks to Nick.

[0] All of the non-liquid ones are meant to be ‘heaped’.