It's not often that I will actually cook a meal for myself (ie. non-microwaveable), but when I do it tends to me extremely simple. Today I'd like to share one of my secret recipes with the rest of the Internet, so prepare yourself to be underwhelmed with the amount of effort involved!
A few years ago I was introduced to the use of simmer-sauces to create meals. The idea never dawned on me before, probably due to my lack of a willingness to spend longer than five minutes preparing food for myself. Also, I could lie and say that this is an original recipe, but like many great artists, I "learned it" from someone else. Originally it used chicken, but after dating a vegetarian/wannabe vegan I swapped that out for tofu, which not only is easier to work with but way cheaper, too.
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| Bean curd awaiting a hot death |
You want to start by removing excess water from the tofu and then portioning it into bite-size pieces of your geometric preference. I try to get extra firm tofu whenever available because there's less water to drain and it's easier to work with in general. I'm not loyal to any brand in particular, but obviously some taste much more tofu-y and bland than others, so going with a good "regular" firm tofu is also fine. When using a less firm tofu though, I like to employ the draining method shown above to increase the "surface area to drain cloth ratio" as much as possible; let the paper towel do the work for you so you don't end up ruining the structural integrity of the precious bean curd.
You want to use a large/as-deep-as-possible frying pan because you're going to be throwing a lot of shit in here later on. Heat up some oil (I usually use olive, but canola or vegetable work well, too) and lay out the tofu in a single layer, which might be more difficult depending on how many pieces you chopped up.
"Cook on medium heat until golden brown on both sides"... blah blah blah. The only thing to keep in mind is that if you cut the pieces into uniform cubes or something, you're going to spend a lot more time browning each of the six sides, which is a true pain in the ass. Thicker pieces like that also tend to resist flavor-induction later on too, resulting in that bland tofu flavor when eating.
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| Super secret ingredient made from scratch... I swear. |
When the tofu is all crispy and sexy, grab your own personal family recipe of ready-made curry simmer sauce. Seriously, you have to make this by hand... and no, I'm telling you how/where to find it otherwise.
Shit... I forgot to tell you that you should've probably started your rice cooker like 10 minutes ago so that it would be ready by the time you were done cooking the tofu. Sorry.
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| Please note the curry sauce NOT in the pan, this is hard to avoid. |
Now comes the tricky part of adding the curry sauce to the hot pan whilst trying not to spill/splatter it all over the place. You actually need to add a cup of water to this sauce mix which you could do before pouring into the pan, but if you're like me you say "fuck that noise, I'm not getting another bowl/jar dirty". There is a solution that fixes this problem, but since it requires two hands I couldn't take a photo of it. Here's a crudely drawn diagram to illustrate it though.
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| Basically use a lid/pizza pan to cover 90% of the frying pan and then dump the sauce in that small opening. When it's all in there, cover the gap, fill up the jar with enough water from the sink, then go back and add that to the pan. The addition of the water will bring the temperature down enough to subside further splattering. |
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| More home-grown ingredients |
At this point you'll want to grab those vegetables you grew in your backyard, you know... the ones you that already washed, cut and put in the freezer for convenience sake? I like green beans and broccoli, but did try it with carrots a few times, which was alright, too. I've never used fresh vegetables before, but I imagine they would just take less time to cook... which might actually be a bad thing because you want this stuff to simmer for awhile and the frozen vegetables lend to that extension of time (I think?). Go ahead and use fresh vegetables if you want to be a jerk.
Dump all your vegetables in the pot and then cover with that lid/pizza pan that you previously used for splatter protection.
"Bring to a boil then reduce heat to medium and simmer" for however long you want. I usually let it simmer for 10-15 minutes, or until the sauce has reduced back to it's original viscosity and the vegetables become nice and soft. I try to time it so that the rice is done at the same time, too, because at this point I'm too impatient/hungry to wait any longer.
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| This looks good to me. You might have some residual water in there but who cares? |
Serve over rice (I like jasmine rice) and guess what? You just made an awesome dinner... ENTIRELY from scratch! However, if you did end up going to Trader Joe's or something to buy all the ingredients, you did it wrong and I hate you.
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