Let me start off by saying, I love Tofu! Seriously, I could eat it everyday and be just fine. It’s naturally delicious and a great starter for just about anything. Before my first living experience in Japan, I’d never had tofu. Nope, it just wasn’t available in our little town (thankfully that’s changed now). So when I landed in Japan my first experience was of unfamiliarity and indifference. While there, I lived with a smart world traveler who kept telling me everything should be tested at least 3 times before giving an opinion. She believed it to be essential to be a world cultural traveler. Thankfully I listened to her and I loved tofu after my second attempt- she was right.
As many vegans, we love to make vegan “scrambled eggs” for breakfast, into quiches and so on. At times, one just runs out of ideas for variations, so I seek what others are doing and that is just the case with last night. We chose to make Olives for Dinner’s ‘Tofu Scramble with Seared Shiitake and Caramelized Shallots’. So posh sounding – all of their recipes sound so fancy compared to my sad nomenclature. Knowing my terrible system, I’d probably call this ‘tofu with mushrooms and shallots’. LOL Thankfully I didn’t name this one. We’re still not sure if this is supposed to be for breakfast or for dinner. But then again, who cares because breakfast is good any time of the day, right? If not, new house rules…
Once everything is chopped, sliced and mixed, the recipe runs fast. There are a lot of steps considering everything must be sauté separating but that’s okay. It’s totally worth the steps. We found using the tahini (ground sesame seeds) was a different twist on the soy sauce flavored types I usually make. It was a slightly creamy but still chunky at the same time, sounds weird but works. Genki Husband took his first bite and he fell in love instantly and asked for it again.
Of course I did change things up and here’s the differences: Instead of shallots, I used one small onion (cheaper in our area) Baby shiitake mushrooms instead of two large ones (again, large price difference) 1 (16oz) pkg of tofu instead of ½ Smoked salt instead of black salt Rice instead of toastOtherwise everything was the same – I just wanted something a bit heartier since we do not eat much bread. Since we run and weight-lift, we need more carbs than on a rest day. We separated the items for dinner but the husband enjoyed a mixed on-pot meal as leftovers for lunch the next day. He said it was delicious warmed up in the microwave.
*Sorry for the bad photo, it was done at night with bad lighting.