Hot and Sweet Sesame Tofu

Here's one of my favorite recipes I've made with my cooking buddy, so far. Super easy and quite delicious. It's great as a quick meal or a fun appetizer, if you're having guests over. There's a little bit of prep because you have to get the excess water out of the tofu, either with paper towels or by placing something heavy on it and let the water drain that way. We found extra firm tofu was the way to go and we doubled the sauce recipe (that was just our preference), except for the red pepper flakes because that made it too spicy the first time we tried it, which means we've definitely enjoyed this recipe more than once. This one is a winner, even if you don't like tofu, give fried tofu a chance.



Ingredients:

• 1 block of extra firm tofu
• 1/4 cup of cornflour or corn starch 
• pinch of salt
• 2 tbsp of white sesame seeds
• A small bunch of green onions (not entirely necessary, if you don't feel like buying them)
• 1/2 cup of oil, more or less, for shallow frying

for sauce:

• 3 tbsp of honey
• 1 tsp of soy sauce
• 1 tsp of vinegar 
• 2 tsp of red chili flakes
• 1 tsp of freshly grated ginger
• 1 tsp of freshly grated garlic
• 2 tsp of sesame oil (we added a bit of this when we were frying, as well)

1. Mix all the sauce ingredients together in a pan.
2. Simmer on low heat until it starts to bubble up a bit. Continue to simmer for 2-3 min, then turn off flame.
3. If your tofu came in packaged in water, drain the water completely with paper towels or a heavy plate. Cut into bite-sized cubes and dredge in cornflour until fully coated.
4. Heat oil in a deep pan and add tofu in small batches, making sure they don't overlap. Fry until light golden brown. Allow them to cool on kitchen or paper towels to absorb some of the oil.
5. Add fried tofu to large bowl, pour sauce on top and toss until coated
6. Top with sesame seeds and green onions.

Recipe courtesy of Honest Cooking (Nagalakshmi Viswanathan)