Green Curry Tofu

I feel like fashion bloggers always show their ZARA hauls and I should do the same thing for Whole Foods. I love food shopping, I love picking my own produce, I love talking to the people at the fish counter about their recommendations, and I love seeing the new products at my local Whole Foods. The following vegetarian dinner was inspired by a new Yai’s Thai Coconut Green Curry sauce. Why did this particular jar of curry stand out to me? A. It’s not green and B. I liked the ingredient list, specifically the inclusion of lime juice and jalapeños, and the exclusion of any sort of chemicals or food stabilizers – YUCK. Also, it’s vegan – so HELLO VEGAN RECIPE 🙂

SHOPPING LIST: 2 packs of extra firm tofu, 1 bunch asparagus, 2 heads cauliflower, Green Curry Sauce, garam masala, chopped garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper

You could make this dish with chicken, shrimp – whatever you are in the mood for – but I knew I already had tofu at home. For the the tofu, this first step is the MOST important so you don’t end up with squishy, falling apart, gross tofu. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and cover a sheet pan in paper towels. Take each brick of tofu and slice it in half linearly, so you end up with two equal rectangles. Then slice each rectangle into small cubes (you should get about 20 cubes per slice). I like to place all the cubes on the paper towels, and then use another few paper towels to squeeze out any excess water. Remove the paper towels, make sure your sheet pan is completely dry, and then drizzle your tofu cubes with olive oil. Mix well and season with garam masala and salt. I chose to use garam masala even though I was using a Thai sauce because there is just SO much flavor in your typical garam masala blend and tofu can be a very difficult thing to flavor. Roast you tofu cubes for about 40 minutes, using a spatula to mix every 10 minutes so that each surface gets a turn to properly brown. You’ll know the tofu cubes are done when they are FIRM to the touch.

While your tofu is roasting, the same applies for your cauliflower. Cut off your florets, toss the cauliflower in olive oil, salt and pepper, and roast on a separate sheet pan in the 400 degrees for the same amount of time. For both the tofu and cauliflower, you really want to get a nice caramelization on your ingredients so they hold up nicely in the curry sauce. If your oven has a convection feature, I would highly encourage using it for roasting your vegetables. Once the vegetables and tofu cubes are sufficiently roasted, I reserved them in my serving bowl, covered with tin foil.

To finish this dish, heat 1 tB. of coconut oil in a sauce pan and saute 1 tB. of chopped garlic. Take your bunch of asparagus, slice off the ends, and then slice the entire bunch on a diagonal creating 1″ long spears. Once the garlic is browned, sautéed the asparagus over medium-high heat for 5 minutes. Season your asparagus with salt and pepper. Once the asparagus has a little char, add the entire jar of Yai’s Thai Coconut Green Curry Sauce and bring to a simmer. *** I feel like a serious broken record here but you can do this EXACT dish with any another brand of a green curry, or a red curry, or an Indian tikka masala or any other sauce you tastebuds might be craving! *** Once your asparagus are fork tender, pour the entire sauce pan over the asparagus and tofu and mix well. We served this with Brazilian garlic rice, which has been on repeat at our house as of late. Anytime you are serving a “saucier” main course it’s nice to have some sort of starch to soak up all the flavors!

As you can see, this recipe yielded quite a large serving, and three adults literally licked this entire blue plate clean. As for this new non-green green curry sauce, the flavors are actually very mild. Because I am a flavor junkie, if I were using it again, I would actually add the zest and juice of an extra lime to really accentuate those flavors, and perhaps incorporate a chopped jalapeño into the sautéed asparagus to up the heat factor as well. What can I say? Some like it hot.