tofu, shrimp, vegetables

I'll get a craving for tofu and theoretically that should suffice but it never does. Around here tofu always ends up being combined with another convenient protein. 

Part of the vegetables are frozen. That's another convenience. I saw the capsicums in the grocery freezer, and thought, "Those look kind of good." They're not bad, but not as good as fresh. Freezing does quite a number on their delicate little cells. 

The marinade is my favorite Asian things all combined in small amounts. I didn't even taste it. Water added to top the tofu.

* soy sauce (salty)

* mirin (sweet, if not mirin then honey or sugar)

* fish sauce, about 1/2 teaspoon (umami)

* saki (I don't know what that does, it's just everything is better with sake. If I didn't have sake then I'd use any white wine. If not that, then vinegar, preferably rice vinegar, so I suppose sake is sour)

* cayenne

* black pepper

* coriander because I love it

Your marinade can be anything you prefer. A hint to interesting marinades is to consider the areas on the tongue and try to hit those with something, and then balance out the hits. 

Right before frying, the tofu is drained, the marinade reserved. Now, chefs will always tell you not to reuse marinade for sauce to avoid cross-contamination, and I suppose there is wisdom in that caution, but it is not a rule I live by. I ask you, what here is being cross-contaminated? The shrimp is not soaking. If anything is alive in that marinade it will be killed by boiling. So for resource conservation purposes, and because I'm incredibly lazy, one teaspoon corn starch is whisked directly into the marinade after the tofu is added to the pan of frying vegetables. The shrimp is added to the pan of frying things last, of course, and removed before it cooks completely, confident that carryover heat will finish the job in a reserve bowl. All the combined fried items are heated in sequence as a stir-fry; mushrooms with garlic, then tofu, then fresh courgette and yellow squash, then frozen and thawed vegetables, finally shrimp. It's all removed to a separate bowl, caryover heat finishing off the shrimp.  

Now the pan is still hot and available for the tofu marinade with whisked corn starch. The mixture is re-wisked because the corn starch tends to settle, the whole bowl is dumped unceremoniously into the hot pan. It thickens immediately into a glossy syrupy bubbling sauce, a thing of real beauty to behold, if only plain brown. 

Once set up, the cooking is done very quickly. No fussing around at the hob. 

Oh, I forgot to mention, but it's showing in the photo, the tofu is squeezed between layers of kitchen towel to rid it of excess water before being placed in the marinade. The idea is to help the tofu to be a better sponge, so that towel ↓ is damp with tofu-water. 

ARTS !