Spicy FriedTofu with Japanese Bean Sprouts and Asparagus

I still have a couple of Japanese recipes, I have wanted to post for some time now. Since there is not really anything spectacular happening in my life right now, I'll post the first two of them. I hope you remember that this is NOT a food blog, even though my life seems to revolve around cooking and eating. It will get better next week because tomorrow we are leaving for Birmingham. But until then enjoy some Japanese cuisine. The first one is a spicy fried tofu. Originally it was made with minced pork but I ruthlessly veganised it.

Unfortunately I have forgotten where I had the original recipe from. It was probably on cookpad but I can't find it there anymore. Anonymous cook, if you think this was your recipe, please comment. And here is my recipe:

Spicy Fried Tofu

Ingredients

1 package firm tofu (cotton tofu) about 450 g

300 g soy mince

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped

1 bunch of green onions, chopped

1 bottle passata (450 ml)

2 tablespoons of chopped unsalted peanuts

2 tablespoons soy sauce

starch and water for thickening

sesame oil

rice flour for coating the tofu

What to do

1. Cut tofu in slices and pat dry. you may want to press the tofu slightly with a kitchen towel to remove as much moisture as possible. Coat the tofu slices in rice flour.

2. Heat the sesame oil in a frying pan and bake the tofu golden brown, put aside.

3.Wipe the pan clean with a paper towel and heat 1 tablespoon of sesame oil. Add the minced garlic, chopped ginger, and most of the green onions (keep some for decoration). Stir-fry with the soy mince. Add the passata, mix well and let cook on a low flame for a couple of minutes.

4. Add the soy sauce and chopped peanut and heat through.

5. Thicken to the desired consistency with some starch disolved in cold water.

6. Put tofu on top and let simmer to reheat the tofu.

7. Sprinkle with the remaining green onions and serve with rice.

8. You may want to add some spices to your sauce. It is completely up to you how hot you want to go. I added some chili pepper, cumin, and pepper.

Since this is a heavy load of proteins (C made a bike tour the day before and needed to restore his muscle power) I added a Japanese vegetable dish; beans sprouts and asparagus and this time I know where I got the recipe from :) It is from the lettuce club webpage.

What looks like some kind of weirdo spaghettis are actually bean sprouts. Yes they were a bit thinly but I didn't want to drive to the Asia shop in town. So that was the best I could do. But it was very yummie so they served their purpose.

Japanese Bean Sprouts and Asparagus

Ingredients:

1 bag of beansprouts

1 bunch (500g) green asparagus

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1 clove garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon mirin

coarsely ground black pepper, salt, sesame oil

What to do:

1. Carefully wash the beansprouts, put them in a colander and let the water drip off

2. Peel the lower third of the asparagus, cut dioganally in thick slices 

3. Heat the oil in a frying pan and fry the garlic until fragrant; add the asparagus and fry with low heat until asparagus is done but still crispy. You may add a little bit of water and cover the pot for 2 or 3 minutes.

4. Add the beansprouts, mix quickly and add the mirin, salt, and spices.

5. Sprinkle with sesame oil.

And that is what everything combined looked like:

Sorry for the Chinese chop sticks *blush*

One can't get enough of Japanese food

I'm back! We have changed our internet provider and now I'm back online, only our telephone still doesn't work, oh well, I don't like calling people anyway. It's much more fun to have a cup of coffee with a friend than talking for hours on the phone.

But I wanted to post some super easy and delicious Japanese food. While testing some recipes for the culinary tour for which I -of course- made more recipes than entries I can make, I found so many which are worth blogging about. But these are the ones I did for our dinner, so I present you the second meal with Japanese food we had in this week. 

It consisted of sato-imo with sesame, natsu-don (eggplant bowl), lotus root kinpira (simmered lotus roots), quick-fix kyuri tsukemono (pickled cucumbers) and of course (brown) rice.

Shizuoka Gourmet  had a recipe for sato-imo (taro) which I wanted to try for a long time. This was the perfect opportunity. The recipe is so simple and yet so tasty, it is really worth trying it out. But let's get a bit nostalgic about taro first ... with a waka poem by Muko Kokushi:

http://darumamuseumgallery.blogspot.com/


on the leaf of a taro


a white dewdrop lingers


and then falls off -

yes indeed this is


a tear of joy (of the Buddha)

Here are sato-imo, cooking in the pot:

This is how they look cooked and peeled. Yes, you can already guess that they are a bit slimy. But sliminess is an important tactile feature in Japanese cuisine. You should alway try to have different textures in your meal to stimulate your tactile sensitivity. Thus sliminess is very important! It took me a while to appreciate slimy food and I still can't stand tororo (white slime from grated tororo imo) on my soba noodles. But with time ....

But in the end the sliminess blended perfectly with the sesame and it was my favourite this evening, so if you want to impress with a very Japanese dish which is actually not time consuming at all but rather done in a jiffy, try this recipe.

Next the lotus root kinpira; I love lotus roots because of their crunchy texture. You can find the recipe here. don't they look beautifully?

And the finished version together with the natsu-don, for which you can find the recipe on Vegan Ronin's blog. She included a nice photo tutorial.

An equally easy dish was the quick-fix cucumber tsukemono. There is no real recipe, but I try:

Ingredients

2-3 mini cucumbers (or Japanese cucumbers, or any variety with small seeds)
1 teaspoon salt
1-2 tablespoons rice vinegar
crushed sesame

What to do

Wash and cut the cucumbers fist in halves and then in very fine slices, massage in (important!) salt, let sit for at least 15 to 30 min. Then gently squeeze out the water and add vinegar. Sprinkle with crushed sesame (not gomasio, that would be too salty, you can use toasted whole sesame seeds instead). That's it, you are already finished, so lean back and enjoy!

And, just for the fun of it, I want to add a random friend photo. This is Gottfried, the little kitten from my friend K in Austria: