soba noodle and vegetable stir fry with peanut crusted tofu

When I first saw my basket of ingredients for my final recipe for the Woolworths Masterchef Campaign I felt a little apprehensive. I’ve never been a big fan of tofu. In fact up until a recent extremely delicious tofu meal at a dim sum restaurant in town, I would have put it in my ‘never bother to eat’ folder. I also felt a tiny bit excited because this assignment meant I was forced to get up close and personal with the stuff, finally.

I think I have fallen in like with it.

Woolies gave me a plethora of vegetables and flavour to make an Asian inspired dish, the only thing missing, and critical, was a sweet element. This dish would have been taken up a notch if I could have added a sweet element to the sir fry dressing. I would normally add hoison, oyster, plum or sweet chilli sauce. Even a smidgen of palm sugar gives it the necessary edge.

Never the less the peanut crusted tofu gives a lovely texture to this stir fry dish and its a good way to cook this silky, protein-rich ingredient. Try and drain the tofu as long as possible to remove the liquid.

1. You can find my recipe on the Woolworths site.

You too can get involved and WIN!

Make your own recipe using the same ingredients I had (or any of the other bloggers) during the competition and Win a R10 000 gift card with Woolworths.

Here are all the details:

This year, it’s not just bloggers getting the chance to get creative in the kitchen along with MasterChef and Woolies. Create a recipe with the same ingredients used each week by the Woolworths Masterchef Competition bloggers and you could win one of 14 R1000 Woolies gift cards, or the grand prize of a R10 000 gift card. Head to the Woolworths Masterchef Hub for more info and T&Cs

And then I got a bit carried away……….

Whilst I was making my stir fry I got a little swept up in the tofu madness and thought Id try out a second recipe since I had all the ingredients up and running in my kitchen. An idea of tofu noodle fritters or patties occurred to me.

The thing I like the most about tofu is how light and clean it is. Being a protein rich, and generally super-healthy food, I love that I’m doing my body a big favour when I eat it. I snacked on these little noodle and vegetable cakes for a day or so after making them and they were quite tasty. Not necessarily the best thing I have ever made, but I thought the idea was worthy of inclusion in case it appeals to you. Perhaps you could make up your own version using your choice of ingredients.

This is my rough recipe and I used all the ingredients for my stir fry except I used leeks instead of the other vegetables, but included sprouts. I mixed together about a cup of cooked soba noodles (roughly chopped), mashed in 250g of soft tofu, one egg, 200g of finely chopped and lightly pan-fried baby leeks (spring onions), 1/2 cup of sprouts, 1 t minced garlic, 1/2 green chilli finely chopped, 2 tablespoons chopped peanuts and 1 tablespoon chopped coriander and I made a dipping sauce with soy and ginger. I formed the mixture into little cakes and pan-fried until golden on each side.

What do you think, and how do you like to eat tofu?

Disclosure: Woolworths have paid me to develop and write this recipes for their campaign. They have also given me with an allowance to buy the ingredients from their stores.

I look forward to connecting with you again in the future.

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