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Recipe: sesame tofu

I had the opportunity to enjoy several meals with my parents this summer, because of their extended stay in Boulder. It became so routine that my parents would sometimes order Chinese takeout and supplement it with some of their own Chinese dishes. On one occasion, Mom had ordered sesame tofu. Believe it or not, I had never had it before. It was good, albeit greasy in that Chinese restaurant way. A few weeks ago, I had a sudden craving for sesame tofu and said to myself (as I always do), “I bet I could make that.”

sesame seeds, red pepper flakes, ginger, green onions, tamari, sesame oil, honey, rice vinegar, cornstarch, tofu, garlic

Don’t you just love when you find out how easy it is to make a recipe at home? And the more experience you have with cooking and baking, the more accessible recipes become. Not only does it demystify cooking, but you also understand what goes into your food and ultimately, into your body. Plus, you get to tweak it to your liking! I’m all about customization, don’t you know.

The first step is to press the extra-firm tofu. It always sounded so tedious to me, but it’s quite simple. Wrap the block of tofu (extra-firm) in paper towels and place it on something flat. Then set a heavy flat-bottomed something or other (bowl, plate, etc.) on the tofu to help press out liquid. While gravity and pressure do their things, you can prepare the sauce.

pressing the tofu

sesame oil, rice vinegar, tamari, minced garlic and ginger, honey, hot pepper flakes

adding tamari to the mix

stir the sauce together and warm it on the stove

While the sauce is on a low simmer, mince your green onions and then unwrap your tofu if it has been pressed for 20 minutes. 20 minutes is not a magic amount of time. I actually pressed the tofu for 30 minutes because I was shooting two recipes at the same time. Oh well. Pat the block of tofu with dry paper towels and dice it. I cubed mine to just under 1-inch cubes… more like 3/4-inch cubes.

mince the green onions

towel it off

large dice

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Recipe: thai red curry with tofu and basil

The hardest part of any giveaway is wrangling our “random number generator” to actually pick a number rather than stare at us expectantly for a dog treat. The next hardest part is finding ten toys that haven’t been completely ripped to pieces. We received a total of 213 comments (one or two were not “entries”, but that’s a real pain for us to shift things around, so they just don’t win if selected and we draw another number). You all shared so many sweet, touching, and hilarious summer memories – some that really tugged at my heart. Thank you for that.

So how did this work? Good question. We selected ten of Kaweah’s toys and assigned each one a number from 0 to 9. We piled the toys in the middle of the room and then got Kaweah all riled up so she’d run and grab a toy (she does this when she’s excited and there appears to be no rhyme or reason to her selection). This happened 15 times and generated five 3-digit numbers.

the random number generator machine

Each number (811, 977, 980, 766, 076) mod 213 resulted in: 172, 125, 128, 127, 76. Congratulations to: jwen, amanda, laura h, linda, and na! I’ll be sending your emails along to the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek so they can contact you about shipping your s’mores packages and give you details for the (awesomely) discounted rate at the Park Hyatt! Thanks to all of you for participating and many thanks to the Park Hyatt Beaver Creek for sponsoring this super fun Colorado giveaway.

Time to get tropical. The weather dictates much of my culinary mood. Typically I’d be cranking on the soups and stews, but with unseasonably warm weather lasting for more than a month (a week, I can hold out – a month, I cannot) I thought a compromise was in order. Something tropical, yet stewy enough to warm our tummies when we dip below freezing at night.

red curry paste, fried tofu, bamboo shoots, baby corn, straw mushrooms, limes, chiles, thai basil, coconut milk, fish sauce, sugar

slicing the fried tofu chunks in half

Southeast Asian food combines so many contrasting flavors that I find myself craving it often. It’s not just the sweet, sour, salty, herbal, creamy, and spicy, but the abundance of fresh and bright flavors that draw me in. This is a simple and satisfying Thai red curry that I like to throw together. [Edit: I buy the red curry paste at my local Asian grocer – Asian Seafood Market in Boulder.] I typically toss in whatever needs to be cleaned out of the refrigerator, but for guests, I’d prepare it as shown in this post. I buy the tofu already fried. They aren’t tofu puffs, but tofu pieces that have been fried and maintain a firm texture.

oil, red curry paste, coconut milk

add the tofu and vegetables

lots of basil

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Recipe: hunan tofu

At the beginning of the week you’re tip-toeing across frozen goose poop-laden grasses an hour before sunrise and by the end of the week you’re dodging fancy cocktails and flame throwers on a packed second floor of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. Oh wait, that’s me. I was shooting the Boulder’s Best Mixologist competition on Sunday. Quite a change of scenery.

one of the sponsors

hapa sushi’s station was hopping

the gals from the kitchen were shaking things up

oak was on fire

No matter if I’m on the road in Middle-of-Nowhere or navigating the great eateries in Boulder, it doesn’t take long before I miss a home-cooked meal. That’s partly because I am a homebody and partly because I know how to cook. I hear of people getting bored with the same five meals each week and wonder to myself when was the last time I repeated a recipe at home? It seems there are always new recipes to discover and try.

ingredients: green onions, tofu, garlic, thai bird chiles, country ham

shaoxing cooking wine, dark soy sauce, sesame oil, black bean sauce, cornstarch, chicken broth

I have been on the lookout for a tofu recipe for several years. My grandma always ordered it when we went to dinner at Chef Chu’s in Palo Alto: tender tofu slices fried then simmered in a sauce with some salty country ham, a little heat, some black beans, garlic, and green onions. They called it Hunan Tofu. I scoured my recipe books, looked online, and chatted with Grandma on more than one occasion about what we thought might be the recipe, but nothing seemed to match.

helps to wear disposable gloves when handling the chiles

sliced and julienned

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