A Midweek Quickie

I ordered a Spralizer today and in preparation for it's arrival, I decided that I needed to make some room in my kitchen, which meant that the place was out of action for most of the day whilst I managed to sort through and clean just one side of it(!) Despite the bloody thing being tiny, I have managed to pack it to the gills and sorting through all of my kitchen equipment and oversized bags of various flours, pulses and nuts is much more of a task than it should be. Tomorrow I will tackle my hoard of jars and the condiments shelf of the fridge. I will, I will, I will. Probably.

Anyway, due to being rather bored of the kitchen by dinner time, I wanted something relatively quick and easy to knock up. I knew had some tofu which was close to being past best and I also had some leftover breadcrumbs from a quork (fake pork) escalope I'd had last week, so I was obviously going to bread some tofu.

As I nearly always go obviously Asian with my tofu flavouring, and I'd recently discovered that the local Co-op does a cheap English mustard with no nasties in it, I thought I'd try something different this time and do mustard tofu.

Unfortunately, due to my kitchen overhaul I didn't have enough time to properly press my tofu, so it was a bit thicker, wonkier and slightly more grease absorbent than I would have liked, but the tastiness of this- quite frankly- incredibly haphazardly slung together meal surprised me and I'll definitely do it again.

Mustard Tofu & Lemon Veggies

serves 2-4

for the tofu:

1 block of tofu, pressed & cut into 12 - 16 oblongs

2-4 tsp English mustard

gf breadcrumbs, seasoned

for the veggies:

1 onion, sliced

inch of ginger, diced

1/2 orange pepper, diced

1 stick celery, sliced

3 garlic cloves sliced

shimeji mushrooms

1 courgette, chopped into batons

juice of 1/2 a lemon

1 tsp dried thyme

salt & pepper

oil for frying

1. Heat a cm of frying oil, in a frying pan, over a moderate heat
2. Spread some English mustard on each slice (or chunky, wonky wedge) of tofu and roll in the breadcrumbs.
3. Heat a tsp or so of oil in a second frying pan over a moderate heat. Soften your onion, ginger, pepper, celery and garlic in this pan.
4. Pop your breaded tofu in the first, well heated, much greasier pan.
5. Add your courgette and mushrooms to the onion and ginger pan, season, squeeze over the juice of the lemon, stir and pop a lid on it to get all tasty.
6. Turn your tofu and cook until it is golden.
7. Drain your tofu onto some kitchen towels.
8. Serve atop the veggies and be surprised at how bloody good something so easy and so vegan can actually be.
9. Go and tell the world you can live without meat and cheese, because they really want to hear about it, you smug git. I should know.