Easy Dinner: Tofu Salad

I’ve already talked about how much I like the little black dress of proteins and today I have another easy, healthy recipe for you.

I’ve been seeing some good tofu recipes from some of my favorite bloggers in the last few weeks, and it reminded me that I haven’t made tofu in a while. However I also haven’t gone to the grocery store in a while so I decided to make do with what I have in my fridge and make a simple tofu salad.

tofu salad bowl

I just threw together a salad bowl brimming with a mix of spring greens and spinach, then topped it with some spicy tofu “croutons” plus grape tomatoes and blue cheese crumbles. Even though this was a salad bowl, this meal was still filling and comforting. I know that the usual connotation of “comfort food” is heavy, hearty meals (mac and cheese, chili, roasts, etc) and I love those kinds of foods too, but I also often crave for healthier fare. Believe it or not, I don’t always equate calories with comfort.

Also, I ate a chocolate bar after this salad.

the only thing I needed to cook was the tofu and I started with garlic, the base for any good marinade

I made an easy marinade with 3 cloves garlic and 1 tablespoon each of soy sauce, Worcestechire sauce, apple cider vinegar, and sriracha (I added some ground black pepper too – no need for salt since the soy sauce already has a lot of sodium)

marinate the tofu for about 30 minutes (I used Nasoya super firm cubed tofu)

in a big pan, heat about a tablespoon of olive oil and pan fry the tofu until it starts to brown

then just assemble your salad bowl: greens, tofu, tomatoes, a little bit of blue cheese

I squeezed some lemon juice on top of mine and drizzled with an herbes de provence olive oil

This was my first time eating tofu with blue cheese and I must say that I’m pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it (although really, I tend to like anything with blue cheese). I ate about half of the tofu and saved some for the next day, which I then ate with brown rice and broccoli (I ran out of barbecue sauce – booo).

I did not eat a chocolate bar the next day. Really.

I will be making more tofu dishes soon!

Speaking of dishes, I wanted to talk a little bit about a new website called Tasted Menu (Boston). It offers reviews of individual dishes at restaurants (for example, instead of just reading a review about Craigie on Main, you’ll read about specific dishes there like the burger and the crispy pig tails) which I think is pretty cool. I personally read a lot of restaurant reviews from blogs and Yelp and Urbanspoon and other resources (and I write a lot of reviews myself too), but Tasted Menu is a very user-friendly website – it’s easy to search for a specific restaurant or a dish/cuisine/ingredient. I’m an early contributor and I’m excited to see it take off! It is officially launching to the Boston public in mid-October, but if you want to request an invite, just go to the Tasted Menu site and use the word “bianca” as your invite code :)

And if you don’t feel like eating out and researching individual dishes at restaurants, well then you can always cook tofu at home.

It seems to me that tofu is like cottage cheese – people either hate it or love it. What do you think of tofu? Any favorite recipes?

   

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