Dry Fried Soy-Marinated Press Tofu

Wednesday, September 12, 2012


The package says "Marinated Press Tofu"; I meant to buy a baked marinated pressed tofu (like this or this), but this is something different it is airy and has holes (I think they make the holes by freezing the tofu and then defrosting it).


I tried eating some slices of the tofu cold (which is what I planned to do with the type of tofu I meant to buy). It was flavorless and not good tasting; this tofu needs to be warm or room temperature and it needs to have a sauce or be marinated.  I also tried sautéing some in oil; the tofu absorbed tons of oil because of the holes.

Dry sauting is a method used to dry out tofu so that it can soak up a marinade.  You can only dry saute pressed tofu (or firm tofu which you have pressed to help remove excessive water) which has a little bit of moisture in it. If your tofu came in a water bath then it has enough moisture and you should press it under a heavy weight for 10 - 15 minutes before you dry saute it.  Otherwise, if you have pressed tofu, you can check the the moisture by lightly pressing on the cut slices.  If water comes out, then it has enough moisture.  To dry saute you simply cut the tofu into thin pieces, and then saute it with no oil (there should be enough water in the tofu to help keep it from sticking) until the tofu doesn't  emit very much water when you gently squeeze it with a spatula. You should stir frequently or even constantly to help keep the tofu from sticking.

I decided to prepare this tofu using a dry saute to remove the existing water in the tofu, then marinate it with a flavorful soy-based liquid, and finally saute the marinated tofu.  I made up this recipe to use up this tofu; I ended up liking the results so I decided to post it here so that I can recreate this dish if I want to.  Since I didn't measure quantities, the quantities listed below are estimates.  Eating this type of tofu is fun because when you chew the tofu slices they squeak.

For the marinade, I used a a few Tbsp of the soy marinate left over from the "noodles in broth" that I made the other day (this was approximately 1 Tbsp dark soy sauce, 1 Tbsp light soy sauce, 2/3 Tbsp sugar, and 2/3 Tbsp mirin -- mirin is a Japanese ingredient, not a Chinese ingredient, so I would leave that out next time, and possibly substitue with Chinese cooking wine), and added 1 tsp of chili black bean sauce.  I let this sit for about 20 minutes, and then I heated up a saute pan with as little neutral flavored oil (e.g. vegetable or grapeseed) as possible, and then added 1 Tbsp of Sichuanese ya cai (pickled mustard green leaves), and sautéed until fragrant.  Then I added the marinated tofu, and the barest hint (prob about 1/4 tsp) of a ground Sichuan pepper and salt mixture (unfortunately since I didn't want to spend a lot of time cooking, I used a pre-ground mixture to save time).  Be careful to not add too much salt because the soy sauce is already very salty.  Then I sautéed until the tofu had absorbed the marinate, the surface of the tofu was mostly dry, and I didn't taste a "raw" soy sauce flavor (about 5 - 10 minutes).  I didn't sear or to brown the tofu, I just heated up the marinade and dryed it out.

Serve as a side dish, or with white rice.

It is probably heretical to mix Chinese and Japanese, but I liked eating mine with seaweed sheets and making little rice balls (onigiri) with the tofu in the middle, when the rice was hot so that the seaweed stuck to the rice ball.

Sichuanese ya cai


At least I think this is Sichuanese ya cai (see Fuchsia Dumlop's description here and here and also Jessie and the Giant Plate's description here).  I wasn't able to find a package market "ya cai" in English or one with the exact characters that she mentioned (though the it has one of the two characters), but this package says that it was made in Sichuan and the ingredients say that is it salted mustard.

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