A favourite quick snack is crispy fried chilli tofu, made with fresh homemade curd. Coating the tofu in corn or gram flour before frying helps it to crisp up and as it fries it will puff up slightly. As ever the essentials for successful tofu are pressing and marinating. In fact it is so essential I shall repeat “press and marinate” – taking an extra 10 mins to quickly press and marinate will go a huge way towards more tasty tofu. I like this dish as a pre supper nibble with a beer after work, or serve with vegetables or salad as a main course.
Crispy Chilli Tofu (serves 2 as a snack)
4oz (100g) firm tofu
2 tbs soy sauce
1 tbs chilli oil
1 tbs corn flour
1 tsp sunflower oil
Sea Salt & Pepper
1 spring onion – shredded
Slice the tofu into ½” (1.5cm slices), place between 2 tea towels and press under a chopping board and a couple of tin cans (or a cook book or the fruit bowl) for at least 10 mins. Mix the soy sauce and chilli oil together in a bowl to make a marinade, cube the pressed tofu and add to the marinade – leave for at least 10 mins.
Drain the tofu, reserving the marinade and coat in the corn flour; fry in the sunflower oil in a hot pan until golden and crispy – it should start to puff up. Add the spring onions and the remains of the marinade and cook until the marinade has thickened and reduced.
Serve immediately with lots of sea salt and pepper.
Variations
Use olive oil in place of the chilli oil in the marinade, add a finely chopped red chilli when cooking, add finely grated ginger and or lemon to the marinade. Use gram flour in place of the corn flour.
Sophie
This looks really tasty – I’m liking tofu more and more these days! Hadn’t thought of having it as a nibble but that’s a great idea.
I like pan frying tofu as you have done but griddling also works well to get a bit of a crispy coating without using much oil. I must try out your flour coating trick next time!
Hippolyra
Thanks Sophie,
I am going to try baking it next.
When will you be making your own tofu from scratch? The difference in taste is unbelievable. I am on a mission to get the whole food blogging world into homemade tofu!