Dan Bites

Last night I was back at it with Meatless Monday. I haven’t used tofu in a while so I decided to make a dish with it. I treated it like a piece of fish or chicken and cooked it en papillote with some vegetables. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I used foil instead of parchment paper. Same cooking method though.

I had some baby bok chow in the fridge, so I finished that up by separating it into individual leaves. I sliced half of an onion, a small red bell pepper, and halved some shiitake mushrooms. I picked up a block of firm tofu, I prefer silken because of its silky texture but they didn’t have any. Any kind of tofu works. I pressed the water out of it for about an hour in the fridge then cut it into 4 equal “steaks” before cooking. I also picked up some yellow string beans.

On a square of aluminum foil I first laid down a couple of bok choy leaves. On top of that some onions and then a tofu steak. I scattered some pepper slices, yellow beans, shiitake, and more onions on top and around the tofu. Then I put a couple small pats of butter on top with 1.5 teaspoons of soy sauce and 1 teaspoon of sake. A little bit of black pepper and my packet was ready to be sealed. I make 4 packets. I wanted to make sure that the foil was completely sealed so that the vegetables would steam inside and not lose any good juice.

I threw them into an oven at 425 degrees and let them cook for about 20-25 minutes. They were opened at the dinner table to keep the steam in. I used chopsticks to open mine so that I wouldn’t burn myself with the steam.

For the tomato and bread soup I used 6 Roma tomatoes, two cloves of garlic, three dinner rolls, and some fresh basil from my balcony. I started by skinning the tomatoes in hot water. Just make a small “x” with a sharp knife on the bottom of each tomato and drop them all into boiling water for about 15 seconds. The skin will come loose and you can easily peel it off. Then I chopped the tomatoes into half-inch square pieces. I also chopped up the rolls about the same size. The garlic was minced and the basil chopped.

In a hot pan I poured about a quarter cup of olive oil and threw the garlic and basil in for about a minute. Then I added the bread and let it go for another few minutes.

Then I added the tomatoes and seasoned with some salt. I poured in about a 1.5-2 cups of the water that I used to skin the tomatoes. Once that came to a boil I lowered the heat to medium, covered the pot, and let it simmer for about 20 minutes. That’s it, just check for seasoning and serve, along with white rice.