Of Sweet and Sour Perfection

Oh my, my, my but we made something tasty a few nights ago.  Running low on almost everything, Nick and I took a quick trip to the French Market, brought home a red pepper and some jalapeños, and sliced up our reserve block of tofu.  Using an improvised blend of a couple of recipes from the book Chinese Vegetarian Cookery by Jack Santa Maria, we made an astoundingly good sweet and sour tofu.  Here's how.

I pressed and sliced an extra firm block of tofu into triangles and marinated them in 3 tablespoons of sherry that had 1 teaspoon of salt in it.  After letting that soak for about 20 minutes, I dredged the tofu first in 2 eggs-worth of egg replacer (prepared egg replacer - that is, the powder mixed with the appropriate ratio of  water and whisked really well).  Then I rolled them in flour.

Nick fried these puppies up in enough canola oil to cover the bottom of the pan.

Once golden all over, he drained them.  You will note some darker and some paler triangles.  He was afraid he had burned the first batch, but by the time we ate the tofu smothered in sweet and sour sauce, the really firmly fried dark ones ended up taking the sauce better.

While I had been preparing the tofu, Nick has sliced all the veggies.  We used red pepper, garlic, onion (not pictured -- it got its own bowl, we used so much), jalapeños and some dried black fungus, which had been soaked for about an half hour.  The green onions were for the rice.

While Nick was frying the tofu, I started the rice cooking.  I usually use a little bit of veggie broth along with water.  We save our vegetable scraps and make our own broth, so we always have plenty on hand.  I also add a pat of butter and several bay leaves to the cook water.  I recently procured some "Indian" bay leaves from a local Asian market and find them to be even more fragrant than the kind I am used to using.  They don't look as pretty, being thinner and more easily broken, but their flavor is much better and more intense.

After the rice was going, I began stir frying the veggies.  First the mushrooms, then the peppers and onions.  I let these cook for a couple of minutes and then added the jalapeños and garlic.

When the vegetables were still crispy, I poured in 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar, 1 tablespoon sherry, 3.5 tablespoons brown sugar and 3 teaspoons of cornstarch, which had been dissolved in a cup of water.  I stirred all of this very well and let it simmer for about 7 minutes while the sauce thickened.  I gave it all a light sprinkle of salt, but not too much, and tossed it with sesame seeds.

All plated and ready to be delicious.

And the money shot that makes me want to devour it all over again.  Nick is taunting me by eating these leftovers as I type!  The result was scrumptious.  We'll be making this again very soon and inflicting it on some of our friends.