Experimental Indian Cooking ? Masala Tofu

I was in a mood for experimenting and also had a craving for some good indian food. Looking around I didn’t have many vegetables to work with, but had a nice big block of tofu instead and that’s when I thought this one up. Shallow frying the tofu gives it a nice crunch on the outside, and gets the inside to melt in your mouth, it’s serene, you’ll see what I mean when you try it. I also wanted this recipe to give a full restaurant feel – hence using loads of cream. If you want it to taste even more like restaurant food, use butter for frying rather than cooking oil. You could also add in a small chunk of butter at the very end of the cooking process to give the curry a really nice shine. Overall, this dish will give you a full blast of flavour with the motherload of spices working their magic and it’s also very filling with the milk and cream. Hope you guys like it!

Here’s a quick overview of the recipe, if you want the one with all the jazzy photos, then please do click this link for the full version.

Preparation time: 5 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Servings: 4
Ingredients:

500 grams of firm tofu
150 grams of mushrooms
A few babycorn (Optional!)
3 tablespoons (45 ml) of cooking oil
2 small red onions, roughly chopped (50-60 grams)
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
10 gram piece of ginger, finely chopped
15ml (1 tablespoon) of tomato paste
10ml (2 teaspoons) of ketchup
50 grams of chopped coriander
5 grams (1 teaspoon) of powdered coriander
5 grams (1 teaspoon) of garam masala
5 grams (1 teaspoon) of turmeric powder
10 grams (2 teaspoons) of chili powder (Put less if you don’t want it too spicy)
A small handful of mint leaves (About 5)
300 ml of milk
200 ml of single cream
Little bit of salt for seasoning

Method:

Chop up the tofu into small cubes – about 2cm wide. Spread oil all over a pan, put it on a medium-high heat and sit all the tofu on it to let them fry.
You’ll know the frying is done with the sides turn a nice golden brown. It only takes about 5 minutes per side. Do this on at least two sides, then move onto some kitchen roll to soak up the excess oil.
You’ll still have some leftover oil on the pan which is great. On a medium heat, fry up the chopped onions, garlic and ginger on it. Once you can smell the garlic, drop the ketchup and tomato paste in. Mix it nicely.
Now for the colour! Mix in the coriander, coriander powder, turmeric powder, chilli powder and garam masala. The colour won’t look quite right just yet, but don’t panic, the milk and cream will sort that out for you soon.
Once it’s all mixed in, add half the milk and half the cream in. Mix. See? The colour’s now looking wonderfully rich. Awesome.
Now chop your mushrooms and baby corn into bitesize chunks and toss them in to let them cook. They’ll need a bit more time than the tofu to get perfect.
Let them cook for 3-5 minutes and then add in the fried tofu chunks, some salt, the rest of your milk and most of the cream (I like to keep a spoonful of cream to top off the dish at the end).
Remove it from the heat, top with the remaining cream and the mint leaves. Treat yourself to a little taste before serving it to everyone else, and enjoy the meal!