Recipe&Wine Pairing: Burmese Tofu
Background
It’s not often that you can get legitimately excited about a tofu dish. This dish, however, featured on prominent Toronto restaurant, DaiLo’s menu, is a delicious and interesting alternative. And the base of the recipe is easy enough that you can try it at home.
Burmese Tofu is not soy-based tofu. It’s based on chickpea flour, so texturally it’s a little firmer than soy tofu, but it also has a real depth of flavour that works wonderfully with stronger ingredients. Burma (Myanmar) is sandwiched between South-East Asia (Thailand, Laos, Cambodia) and South Asia (India & Bangladesh) and it’s food is pretty indicative of all these cultural influences. The use of chickpeas in place of soy makes sense geographically, and again, gives the tofu the nutty, beany richness which is so good with heavily ‘spiced’ flavours.
At the restaurant, our tofu is flavoured with coconut and yellow curry and served with a black bean and mushroom duxelles. A duxelles is a preparation for mushrooms in which you cook them low and slow until all the liquid has evaporated, giving the mushrooms the texture of ground meat. To cut through the strong flavours of the tofu and sauce, we finish the dish with a bright salad of matchstick Asian pear and radish. The dish as a whole is super versatile. We’ll often use it as an appetizer, to be shared with the table, or in a larger portion as a completely vegetarian main course. For us, it’s fun to show people how awesome a tofu (or vegan) dish can be.
You may not have fermented black beans or Asian pear in your pantry, but the tofu component is something you could easily prepare as a snack, or as a veggie main. It’s basically a firm savoury cake that you could use anywhere you would use tofu. It can be fried crispy, grilled, steamed, baked. It’s the kind of recipe you can keep in your back pocket and use in a thousand different ways.
Wine Pairing
We’re choosing to pair this with Benoit Gaultier’s Sparkling Vouvray. Sparkling is great for fatty (or in this case beany-coconutty) richness, and the zippy acid and bubbles always work well with spicy curry favours. Notes of verbena, green plumb and Bosc pear give way to a soft and silky mouthfeel. Acidity brings forth hints of ginger and quinine.Floral aromas in wine and the roasty lees contact of sparkling in particular are also great with curry dishes.
Recipe
Step 1 Ingredients:
250ml water
400ml (1 can) good quality, full-fat coconut milk, like Cha’s Organic
3 cloves garlic, smashed
3 stems rosemary
Step 2 Ingredients:
2 cups Chickpea flour
750ml water
2tsp curry powder
salt, to taste
oil, for frying
METHOD:
Line an 8X8 casserole dish with parchment or plastic wrap, making sure all surfaces are covered
Add all ingredients from PART 1 to a pot and bring to a boil, reduce to a simmer and let the garlic and rosemary flavours infuse into the liquid for 5 mins.
While PART 1 is simmering, whisk together dry ingredients from PART 2. Add water and whisk until smooth. Taste mix at this point and adjust salt as needed.
Strain PART 1 into a measuring cup or other pourable container and discard garlic and rosemary
Combine PART 1 and PART 2 into a pot and whisk over medium heat for 5 minutes. Pour mixture into lined casserole dish, pressing additional wrap or parchment onto the top surface.
Set in fridge for at least 2 hours, until completely chilled and set (it’s best left overnight)
To serve: remove from casserole dish and portion into cubes (or fingers for kiddos to dip)
Heat oil over medium heat in a non-stick frypan or cast iron and add tofu cubes, leaving space in between to easily turn cubes
Turn tofu shapes every few minutes to get crispy and golden on all sides
Serve with your favourite dipping sauce (even if that’s ketchup) and a fresh seasonal salad
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