Week 6 – 2021

This is another post from the series “I tried something new this week”.

I have tried for a while now to cook tofu in different ways and this week I decided to use one of the sauces I bought recently – Gochujang. In case you haven’t cooked with it before, it’s a red chilly paste popular in Korean cooking. I like it because it has a good balance of savoury, sweet and spicy.

The recipe I tried this week is very simple but it makes a delicious meal.

Ingredients

• 250g tofu
• 200g rice
• Gochujang paste
• Kimchi
• oil
• soy sauce
• mirin
• ginger
• garlic
• salt
• pepper
• white sesame seeds

Method

Step 1

Preheat the oven at 200°C. Start boiling the 200 ml water for the rice. Wash the rice and add it to the pot. It depends a bit on the rice but if I use basmati I boil it for 10 minutes and then I leave it covered to rest for another 10 minutes.

Step 2

Cut the tofu in 2cm cubes and try and get it as dry as possible. I wrapped the cubbed tofu in kitchen roll and put it between two plates with a can on top, so that the tofu is squeezed a bit. Leave the tofu to dry for a bit, even 15 minutes helps a lot but if you dry it for 1 hour you get really good results.

Step 3

Toss the tofu in oil and soy sauce, dress with salt and pepper and put in the oven for 20 minutes, turning half way through.

Step 4

While the tofu is baking, prepare the sauce. Mix 150 ml water with 1 teaspoon of soy sauce, 1 teaspoon mirin, 1 teaspoon of grated ginger, 1 teaspoon of crushed garlic and 2 tablespoons of gochujang paste. Add the sauce to a pan, get the tofu out of the oven and mix through. Gently simmer for a few minutes until the mix gets a bit sticky.

Serve the tofu hot with the rice, some sesame seeds on top and Kimchi on the side.

Tips

Next time I will do this recipe I will also add something green and crunchy, like spring onion and finely chopped cucumber. It’s a great dish but it would be even better with a bit more texture and freshness.