Death by Tofu: A Chronicle

The things I do to honor a commitment…  But I said I’d make every recipe in the book, even when THIS is what I have to cook.  Look closely at this substance, and I defy you to argue that it appears edible, much less tasty.  It looks more like the damp cardboard container that something edible came in!  To be fair, it could be argued that it resembles a block of cream cheese, but it is not.  It.  Is.  Not.

I’ve eaten tofu on several occasions.  Sometimes I have even enjoyed it.  This, my friends, was not one of those times.  There are two main schools of tofu thought: silken and extra firm.  Silken is exactly that; it has a smooth consistency and no real flavor of its own, so I’ve created a pretty good (high protein!) chocolate “cream” pie and made passable smoothies with it.  It’s harmless enough.  Extra firm tofu is supposed to be the “meatier” version of this soybean curd delicacy, but I’m sorry, there is no saving it from itself.  Square chunks in egg drop or won ton soup?  Manageable, but not exactly the highlight of the bowl.  Seasoned and deep fried tofu slices?  Even THAT wasn’t enough to make me want to eat the full portion.  This application though, was by far the least appealing for me.  That is not to say it actually tasted bad.  The phrase, “you eat with your eyes first” is 100% accurate.  There’s only so much lipstick you can put on a pig, and no amount of camouflage could make this appetizing.  Unfortunately, you also eat with your mouth, and I don’t mean just the taste buds.  The flavor here wasn’t the issue; the texture on the other hand, left something to be desired!  Let me walk you through how Recipe #133: Tofu Lettuce Wraps went…

Step 1: Drain the water out of the package of tofu.  Eww.  I tried drying it off with a paper towel too, in order to aid in getting some color on it while cooked, but that didn’t really help.

Step 2: Heat olive oil in a skillet and “sear” the tofu.  You know what doesn’t take a sear?  You guessed it: tofu.  But I didn’t go down without a fight!  I decided to forego the olive oil and head straight for the big guns.  I used bacon grease.  No one ever accused me of being a vegan!  I thought it might help to throw some flavor at this block of Styrofoam, but no such luck.

Step 3: Break up the tofu blob so it crumbles into what looks like overcooked, poorly scrambled eggs.  Appetizing, no?

Step 4:  Ruin a perfectly good bag of frozen corn by adding it to this mess, and season with some chili powder. 

Step 5:  Drown it in soy sauce, hoping to impart color and flavor to the still stubbornly pale tofu chunks.

Step 6:  That’s it.  Wait, what??  No more culinary tricks?  No more tasty ingredients?!  Heck, I’d even take cayenne at this point!

Alas, this is all the cooking sorcery that goes into Tofu Lettuce Wraps.  I did mention LETTUCE wraps, right?  Because it was.  Wrapped in lettuce I mean.  Nothing like taking an uninspired filling and encasing it in something that also has essentially no flavor identity of its own.  I tried to add another coat of lipstick to this pig, even threw in some false eyelashes and blush, but I still didn’t love it.  I topped it with my favorite taco add-ins, sour cream and avocado slices, but the texture was just squishy on squishy on squishy.  The Romaine lettuce leaf was the only thing with a crunch factor, but it was just plain unpleasant to eat.  Redeeming qualities?  The flavor wasn’t half bad.  The chili powder and soy sauce combo actually made it possible for me to carry on eating it.  There was something about the taste that made me want to take another bite, even while 90% of my brain was screaming “Order a pizza!”  It was also practically a zero-calorie, high protein meal.  If you’re on a diet, this is for you!  Personally, I’d like to take the whole idea, swap the tofu for chicken, and give it another whirl.  I could even keep the lettuce idea, as long as I got some MEAT!  Alas, they can’t all be winners…  The silver lining here is that this was the recipe I most dreaded, and it is now in my rearview!  Final 5, here I come!

P.S.  Lest you think this went over well with other members of the family and I was just being picky, rest assured tofu received a unilateral thumbs-down.  Following a meltdown, dinner was only finished employing copious amounts of ranch dressing and the “clothespin on the nose” technique!