Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Tofu in Tomato Sauce

I can't believe I've been doing a food blog for over a year and never got around to giving my tofu in tomato sauce recipe. People LOOVE this dish. Scratch that. People ADORE this dish. It's great comfort food and crazy easy to make. It's essentially an Asian version of a bolognese sauce. You can find fried tofu in your health food store or at any Asian market. I have never seen it in any supermarket. Such a shame.

Tofu in Tomato Sauce

2 packages of fried tofu
1 large onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, chopped
2 carrots, sliced into 1/4 inch rounds
1 cup of fake ground beef (like Morningstar Farms)
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sambal olek or any kind of hot sauce
2 tablespoons of hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon black bean sauce
2 cans of diced tomatoes
1/2 cup of frozen peas

In a few tablespoons of cooking oil saute the onion, carrots, and garlic until the onion is translucent. Add the tofu and the soy sauce, sambal, hoisin and black bean sauce. Saute for a few minutes and then add the fake ground meat, tomatoes and peas. Simmer the mixture on low heat for 20 minutes until flavors marry. Serve over rice. Graciously accept the inevitable compliments.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've never had tofu, or fake ground beef, for that matter. I'd be a bit hesitant to try them, perhaps because of the taste stigma attached to those items. However, your sauce sounds delicious. Now, if I can get get up the nerve to find me some bean curd and Morningstar Farm products...

DC Food Blog said...

You COULD use ground pork/turkey/beef in place of the Morningstar farms fake meat. But it's part of the joy of being vegetarian.

Anonymous said...

You know, I'm not as "worried" about the Morningstar Farms items as I am about the tofu! Which is weird, because although I may not be the most "cultured" of eaters (I only tried sushi, for god's sake, for the first time a couple months ago), it doesn't mean that I'm not up for trying new things -- at least once. But tofu is really hard to put on the list of "must trys." I don't know why.

DC Food Blog said...

Using fried tofu in this is wonderful because it is like a sponge, soaking up the flavor from the tomato sauce. I would never use plain old tofu on this. One way to introduce yourself to tofu is to mariante it in basamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and garlic and use it in place of fresh mozarella in sandwiches. It's the same texture as mozarella and you have the flavor of a balsamic vinaigrette.

Anonymous said...

That's a good idea. A good Italian Caprese salad/sandwhich always gets top billing from me. Might have to intersperse the tofu and mozz, though. The really disturbing part of all this, though, is that I could taste tofu for the first time and totally love love it, thus realizing I've been missing out for so long...