Continuing on the nostalgia food train, another food that my family would order at Cantonese restaurants was this dish called “braised tofu in brown sauce.” It wasn’t until recently that I learned its proper name as I grew up calling it, “the brown tofu dish.” After a series of google searches for iterations of “braised”, “tofu”, “brown”, I found a recipe from The Woks of Life that sort of looked like it from my memory. I ended up making this for my weekly team meeting potluck.

First step was deepfrying the tofu. I first sliced up the silken tofu into about 16-18 pieces and left it out for the next 30 minutes to sort of dry out or continue weeping so I could drain out more moisture later. To be honest, even after the instructed 30 minute wait period, it didn’t look to be that much dryer and I feel like if I were careful enough, I could patted down the tofu dry with a paper towel. In hindsight, I’d skip this step.

Or if I were okay living dangerously, maybe I could have just skipped drying the tofu altogether and go “screw it, let’s just throw it into this hot vat of oil and see what happens.”

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Anyway, in the meantime, I prepped the rest of the veggies (oyster mushrooms and bok choy), ginger, and garlic as the tofu was “drying”. Much of this process reminded me of making the panfried crispy noodle–this was essentially the vegetable topping that went on top of it. Even the act of deep-frying the tofu was very reminiscent of deepfrying the noodle, albeit not as extensive.

Deepfrying the tofu was relatively straightforward. Mimicking what I did with frying the noodle, I eyeballed a shallow amount of oil into a wok (~1.5 cups of vegetable oil) and heated it on medium high to a temperature of what I hope was 350F (this is why I need to invest in a candy thermometer…). I gently lowered the tofu into the wok and watched it deep fry into a nice golden brown color, which took closer to 7 minutes, more than the 2-3 minutes mentioned in the recipe, making wonder if my oil temperature was actually high enough. Alas, I was doing this blind.

Roommate who was watching tofu fry with me: …Hey, it’s been longer than 2-3 minutes, I think it’s done.

Me: No.

Roommate:

Me:

Anyway, after awhile and frying the two batches, the tofu was done. It reminded me of the golden tofu puffs. To my disappointment, it didn’t look like the deep characteristic brown color for the tofu that I usually see at restaurants.

Anyway, back to the veggies. Repeating what I did for the oyster mushrooms, I first fried the ginger, then added some green onion stalks and garlic, then added the oyster mushrooms, cooking it for a couple minutes until the moisture cooked out. Then, I dumped the bok choy in and cooked till soften before adding the Brown Sauce (6:11:1 oyster sauce : soy sauce : sesame oil + a bit of sugar + 1 cup of chicken stock). Such a basic stirfry sauce with the Asian trinity of aromatics–ginger, garlic, and scallions. Anyway, after tossing in the tofu with half of the sauce and waiting it to boil, I made a quick cornstarch slurry to thicken it.

The sauce looked like it was a lot so I aimed to add it more slowly before realizing that by the sheer quantity of stuff inside the dish, more liquid was needed. However, a roommate felt very strongly about sauce-y dishes and insisted I only add half of the sauce, even taking away the bowl of sauce out of my hands before I could add it all.

The end result looked alright, not as sauce-y as I wanted. It didn’t look like what I remembered eating at restaurants in my memory but it still looked like something that I would eat.

Me: It looks dry.

Roommate: It looks sauce-y enough, otherwise it’s too much sauce, too salty. It’s better this way.

Honestly, it tasted pretty great with rice. It scratched my nostalgia itch and it ended up being a pretty solid veggie dish, which came in clutch when it turns out that most of the other potluck dishes were mostly meat or carbs of various sorts.

I even tried making this again (a simplified version), using panfried tofu (no 30 minute wait period), which also turned out pretty solid too. This is a solid, versatile stirfry recipe to use in the future that’s relatively quick to execute. I’ll put this in my rotation for “quick lunch recipes.”

…Interestingly enough, when I sent a picture of the final product above to my mom, she had something to say:

Mom: It looks dry. You didn’t want to add more sauce?

Me: (ʘ‿ʘ)

Bonus: Easy Tortilla Jian Bing

I found a recipe for this from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok. This is a snack hack. This is some bastardized version of an authentic food that definitely probably tastes a lot superior.

I don’t care, this is really good. For the low price of a tortilla and an egg, this is a snack that scratches my late night goblin cravings.

There is a reason why people like quesadillas. Take that reason and amplify by 10 times, because this tastes way better than quesadillas and requires maybe 5% more effort to make. The rewards outweigh the opportunity/manufacturing costs in this situation here.

After slapping a tortilla with some oil on the stove, I just whisk an egg and add some cilantro, chives, sesame seeds and a pinch of salt before pouring it over the tortilla. After letting it chill in the pan for a hot minute, I flipped it over for about 20 seconds and flip it back again before slathering some hoisin sauce and chili oil on top. Afterwards, I folded the tortilla into quarters.

It was crunchy, spicy, and sweet–a solid breakfast food. I even made this a few times with pork floss and it was excellent. If I were still part of the DT bfast rotation, I would make this as my dish. If I were chilling at home and needed a snack, I would make this. If it were 2AM and I were a sleepless hangry goblin, I would make this. And you should do so too.