Vegan Recipes

Contributor: Dr. Rashmi Chadha and certified delicious by a carnivorous 11-year-old

Serves 1-4, depending on greed

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Ingredients

1 pack of pressed firm tofu

3-4 tablespoons cornflour

2-3 tablespoons nutritional yeast (ground into a fine powder)

Salt and pepper

½ teaspoon smoked paprika

¼ teaspoon cayenne (or more if you like it spicy!)

Vegetable oil for shallow frying

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Method

• Cube tofu into bite sized pieces. Set aside.
• In a medium-sized bowl, mix cornflour with nutritional yeast (if you’re not used to the taste of nutritional yeast, use less the first time so you can know your preference the next!)
• Mix salt and pepper to taste (I use about 1 teaspoon of salt and ½ teaspoon of pepper). Add paprika and cayenne.
• Add the tofu to the bowl of dried powders. With your fingertips, gently toss and coat all pieces of tofu with the powder.
• Heat a wok with 1 inch of vegetable oil to medium-high. Shake excess powder off each piece of tofu and gently add each piece to the hot oil.
• Fry in batches - no piece of tofu should be touching other pieces to get an even crisp on them.*
• As each piece of tofu starts to crisp up to a light brown, gently turn each piece over using a slotted spoon.
• As each piece gets crispy on all sides, remove and leave to drain on a plate/dish lined with a paper towel.
• Serve immediately with a sprinkle of sea salt and more pepper.

*Side note: If the oil is too hot, the powder on the tofu will burn. If it is not hot enough, the tofu will be soggy. You will get a feel for it - I would recommend that if it’s your first time making this, put only 3 pieces of tofu in the first time so you can work out how to turn it and how crispy and brown you like it. In our family we like a cornbread yellow tinge to the tofu that has the texture of a crisp crunch as we bite in. Sometimes we have made it a light brown colour (i.e., left it cooking for longer) for times when the intention is to have it as leftovers the next day (which never happens - it always disappears).