Soba Salad with Clementines, Avocado, Cashews, Red Cabbage, Spicy Tempeh & Red Pepper with Mirin Sesame Dressing

Spicy Crispy Popcorn Tofu with Tahini Kale

This is a beautiful warm salad with spicy crispy tofu on a bed of warm kale salad with tahini lemon dressing. It’s delicious, filling, yet light, low fat and very tempting. I’m trying to put together some of the things I cook a lot that are delicious, yet vegan.

I coined the phrase ‘popcorn tofu’ to describe a tofu coated with corn flour and garbanzo bean (chick pea) flour and a number of herbs & spices, depending on what you fancy. Sometimes I go very Indian with the spices, adding turmeric, coriander, cumin, chili, garlic, ginger to the coating and fry it up really nice and crisp, which is a great contrast against the soft fragrant kale. I think to finish this dish I will add toasted slivered almonds for a bit of nut crunch and perhaps a few toasted black sesame seeds.

It’s really very tasty, easy to prepare and very cheap to make.

Recipe

Cut firm or soft tofu into cubes. In a plastic bag add a few tablespoons of cornflour and a couple garbanzo bean (chick pea) flour (not essential) to which add dried spices as per taste: cumin, ginger, turmeric (gives the nice yellow colour - see below for how it can heal you), coriander, chili, onion powder, flakes coriander, parsley, garlic powder. Add the cubed tofu and shake until the tofu has taken on a good coating of the flour, then shake out the excess in a sieve.

Get a pan really hot with about six tablespoons of olive oil. Add the tofu. Need to cook until all sides are crispy - about ten minutes.

For the kale, steam washed and chopped kale until tender - just a couple of minutes. Add a little lemon juice and olive oil as well as salt & pepper. Mix tahini sauce with a little water to dilute, add a little dijon mustard and a touch of honey. 

When tofu is crispy shake some over the bed of kale, sprinkle toasted flaked almonds and some toasted black sesame seeds. Season with salt & pepper.

Enjoy!