I was watching the Food Channel which inspired me to make this dish with shitakes. Although this is nothing like the meal they were making, as it was a meat dish but the sauce was a dark brown shitake sauce.

At the start of coming up with this, I did want to make the stock sauce made on the food channel to go over the tofu. However progressing along, I realised I could come up with some entirely different and more visibly presentable for us vegetarians.

This meal also has the two accompaniements of Cabbage and Broccolini with Soy Sauce, which the recipe was posted for last week. A great book for inspiration with tofu is Kylie Kwong’s Simple Chinese Cooking.

Serves:

Two big serves!

Ingredients:

• 125 grams firm tofu
• 1 tbs tofu
• 1 tbs dry sherry
• 1 sweetener pack or sugar 1 tsp
• salt
• 4-5 slices shitaki, soaked for at least an hour in 1/2 cup water
• 2 spring onions
• 1/4 tsp garlic mince
• 1/4 tsp ginger mince
• 1 tsp sesame oil
• 1 tsp rice wine vinegar
• pinch white pepper
• 2 serving thin noodles

Instructions:

1. Boil the rice noodles and once cooked, rinse through with cold water and set aside.
2. Place all (minus the tofu and drained water from shitakes) of the ingredients in a vitamiser/blender. Blend the mixture down until it’s all mixed and the shitakes have become mince.
3. Pour in half of the shitake water and blend again until the mixture is a little more thinner.
4. Cut the tofu into thin slices.
5. At this stage, you can marinate the tofu for at least half an hour or if you’re impatient like me, just soak the tofu in the marinade and pour the whole mixture into your wok pan.
6. On a low heat (barely a simmer), cook the tofu spooning the marinade over the top as you go.
7. Cook for about 20 or so minutes, continually watching and spooning the mixture over.
8. Carefully remove the tofu and most of the sauce to top with.
9. Add the noodles into the wok with the rest of the sauce and mix through throughly before serving on your plate also.
10. Garnish with some chopped spring onions or fried spring onions as you like.