Adventures in Cooking: Tofu Stir-Fry

Tonight I made this for dinner:

It had been a while since I cooked for real at my own house. I really need to do this more often because I'm much more competent at it than I remembered. The above meal, for example, was totally delicious. It's a vegetable and tofu stir-fry!

I would tell you how to make it but I don't really remember anything except the rough basics. This is one of those "play it by ear" kinds of meals that can't really be explained scientifically with measurements and times. I'll give y'all an idea, though.

The Supplies

• 2 cloves garlic


• 2 thin slices white onion


• a good handful of white mushrooms, I think I had four or five?


• a block of firm tofu


• a nice smallish stalk of broccoli


• an orange bell pepper


• a handful of baby carrots


• soy sauce, vegetable oil, and a bunch of pretty basic spices
  

The Process

1. Get out a nice big skillet and pour in enough vegetable oil to just coat the bottom. Do this even if it's nonstick. You will want to use a medium heat to get the oil going while you prep.


2. Crush and mince the garlic, and mince the onion. Slice the mushrooms into nice thin slices. Put this stuff in first after you get the oil sizzling. This is important. It puts flavors into the oil.


3. While that stuff is sizzling, chop up everything else into manageable pieces. Put the tofu in when the mushrooms are starting to brown. It is a wet food and you want it to go in a little before the hard vegetables. In a minute or so, you can put everything else in.


4. Add a splash of soy sauce, and dashes of the following spices: salt, black pepper, oregano, basil, and garlic powder. Take it easy on this stuff. You don't want to overpower the vegetables.


5. Now this is the judgment part. You stand there shifting and flipping stuff around with your spatula because you don't want anything to sit still too long and burn. It takes maybe around 5-8 minutes to cook everything up at this point. Keep an eye on it and start tasting when the broccoli's color gets brighter. The carrots and broccoli are the main vegetables to test, since they take the longest to soften up. When the tofu is brown enough and the veggies are soft enough for your taste, take it off the heat and put it in your mouth.

The vegetables you use are pretty adjustable (I had a zucchini I wound up not using just because it didn't seem to fit with everything else). Just make sure you have a few different plants with contrasting colors and flavors, else it will be boring to eat.

You should also make some rice to go with this. I shouldn't have to tell you how to cook rice, though, and I learned it by reading the Achewood Cookbook anyway.

Before you think I am a culinary genius, you should know that afterwards I made apple cinnamon muffins by following some instructions off the side of a box. But they were so good.