Dreaming of a Nicer Home, Part Three: Open Concept Closet Edition.
Forget for a second that this is a warehouse for an online shop. Picture it as my loft. Every morning I’d get up, throw on my slippers, pour a cup of coffee and then take a stroll down Rolling Rack Lane.
(DOANH is quickly becoming a regular series. I’ll stop once I find the perfect apartment.)
Marilis and I made Orange Tofu for dinner tonight. We’ve gotten into the habit of making dinner together once a week, usually something chinese, because the ingredients are cheap, the cooking is quick, and it involves a lot of vegetables, tofu, and rice, which I almost always have around. We used a recipe for Asian Orange Chicken as a guide and made some changes as we went along.
Here’s how it’s done:
1) Start cooking brown rice
2) Bake cubed tofu in the toaster oven with a bit of soy sauce (This is a new trick I’ve been using a lot. It makes the tofu seasoned and a bit harder before you add it into the pan)
3) Bring to a boil in a saucepan: water, orange juice, rice vinegar, lemon juice, minced garlic, minced ginger, chopped green onions, hot sauce (or dried chilies), soy sauce, orange zest, and honey. Take off the heat after a minute or two.
4) Quickly fry veggies with a bit of oil, leaving them slightly crunchy. We used coarsely chopped carrots, mushrooms, green beans, and spinach.
5) Toast sesame seeds in a small pan with no oil until they become golden and fragrant. Add sesame oil and put aside.
5) Coat the tofu in corn starch and the sesame mixture. Fry in oil until crispy.
6) Slowly add the sauce that was put aside earlier, plus salt and pepper. Lower heat to simmer. Add veggies and cook until the sauce thickens. Serve with rice!
Here’s a recipe for Orange Tofu that I found after dinner, in case you want exact measurements. You can use these steps and just change the sauce to make a bunch of different delicious chinese-type dishes. A few weeks ago we did Sweet and Sour Tofu, which was awesome.
