Serious Eats: Recipes
Dinner Tonight: Almond Tofu with Buckwheat Noodles and Snow Peas
This is not my kind of food. No disrespect, it's just not what I dream of on my way home from work with a grumbling stomach, lunch long past. Strips of baked tofu, a sauce made with almond butter, and a pile of buckwheat noodles? But I will always respect a recipe that tastes really good. Always. And this one, from Lucid Food, does.
The soul of this dish is the sauce, a complex and sweet mixture of almond butter, soy sauce, maple syrup, and sesame oil. This lovely concoction is painted on the tofu while it bakes into dense, chewy strips; these are then the centerpiece of a quick stir-fry with ginger, garlic, scallions, and rice vinegar, bulked out with soba noodles and scattered with crunchy snow peas.
It doesn't belong to one cuisine; it's just vaguely Asian. But it all comes together quite well, finished with a handful of cilantro and doused with sriracha. It wasn't until I was halfway through that I realized I was eating a rare vegan meal. I didn't have much reason to complain.
Almond Tofu with Buckwheat Noodles and Snow Peas
About the author: Blake Royer founded The Paupered Chef with Nick Kindelsperger, where he writes about food and occasional travels. After a year in Estonia, he's now living in Chicago.
