Plenty of Plenty: Brussels Sprouts and Tofu

Fresh off of last week’s spicy Moroccan carrot salad success and feeling fairly confident, when it came time for me to choose the next recipe to tackle in Ottolenghi’s vegetarian bible Plenty, I decided it was time for me to take on a main course (mostly because I was starving approximately one and a half hours after eating the carrot salad for lunch). Skimming through the pages and pages of deliciously intimidating sounding recipes (what is even in a Halloween soufflé???), I quickly fixated on the magical appearance of my two all-time favorite foods: brussels sprouts and tofu.

While it certainly wasn’t as snazzy-sounding as some of the cookbook’s other offerings (looking at you “scrambled smoky duck eggs on sourdough” and “tomato party,” the latter of which I can only assume would be a party in my mouth), I simply could not pass up the opportunity to make enough Brussels sprouts and tofu to serve four people and eat more than half of it myself. Although I was momentarily thrown off by the lack of a full-page, dazzling picture to accompany the recipe (how will I know if mine looks right??), I was also comforted by the fact that I will not have to feel inferior when my bowl looks nothing like the Ottolenghi’s (because they really never do).

Armed with all of the ingredients except for fresh red chilis (thank you, instacart) and more than a little trepidation (the carrot salad confidence was beginning to wear off), I began my next venture into the real world of cooking. The recipe started off easily enough, and as I whisked together the marinade for the tofu I began to think that maybe I was actually getting the hang of this cooking thing, even allowing a little swagger to creep into my whisking. This of course promptly caused me to send some of the marinade flying over the side of the bowl, ending that delusion. However, besides the occasional spill, I successfully made it through the beginning of the recipe with no major setbacks, with only the tiniest of panic-attacks as to how thick exactly is a 3/8-inch thick piece of tofu (because who thinks to keep rulers in a kitchen??).

The real challenge presented itself when it came time to cook the sprouts. Following Ottolenghi’s instructions, I heated up the sunflower oil “well” (whatever that means) and then threw in half the sprouts. As he explicitly said to “throw” the sprouts (and because I apparently have no common sense), I was more than a little surprised when my carefree toss was met with a mini tsunami of burning hot oil that flew out of the pan and directly onto my hand, shirt, and basically any other body part it could get reach. While it did sting, I sucked up the pain and continued with the rest of the sprouts until they were singed and crispy (I may be a lot of things but I am certainly not a wimp). Repeating the same process for the mushrooms and onions (here I substituted red chili paste for the fresh red chilis the recipe calls for), I was much more careful and managed to successfully cook the rest of the veggies without major incident.

The tofu’s turn was when the real fiasco occurred. While I started off okay, with the heat on high as instructed and the tofu spaced evenly about the pan in a single layer, I somehow missed (re: forgot) the part where he instructs you to turn the heat on medium to cook the tofu, and I just barely got the tofu into the pan before I had to quickly take them back out again, as they were close to burning. By this point, the smoke was pouring out of the pan with an unstoppable force, but I was still entirely too caught up in trying to figure out why my tofu was only taking approximately thirty seconds to cook when he said that it should take one to two minutes to take action. It wasn’t until the smoke alarm went off that my reverie was broken, the screeching wails too loud to ignore. Luckily I had finished all of the actual cooking, all of my tofu having been safely transferred to the sprouts bowl, and could focus all my attention on fanning the smoke away from the alarm so that it would stop before the entire high rise had to be evacuated. Despite that briefly terrifying incident, however, my brussels sprouts and tofu went off without a hitch, and after spending approximately an hour cooking, it took me all of ten minutes to eat my entire bowl, and then some.

Brussels Sprouts and Tofu

Ingredients:

2 tbsp sweet chile sauce
1 ½ tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tbsp maple syrup
5 oz. firm tofu
1 lb Brussels sprouts
about ¾ cup sunflower oil
salt
1 cup sliced green onions
½ small fresh red chile, deseeded and finely chopped
1 ½ cups shitake mushrooms, halved or quartered
1 cup cilantro leaves
1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds (optional)

Directions:

Whisk together in a bowl the chile and soy sauces 2 tablespoons of the sesame oil, the vinegar and the maple syrup.
Cut the tofu into 3/8-inch-thick slices and then slice each again into 2 square pieces, stir into the marinade and set aside.
Trim the bases off the sprouts and cut each from top to bottom in 3 thick slices. Add 4 tablespoons of the sunflower oil to a large nonstick pan and heat up well. Gently place half the sprouts in the pan with a little salt and cook on high heat for about 2 minutes. Remove to a bowl once the sprouts are almost burned in a few places and cooked through but still crunchy. Repeat with more oil, salt and the rest of the sprouts.
Add 2 more tablespoons of sunflower oil to the pan, heat up and sauté the green onions, chile and mushrooms for about 1 to 2 minutes. Transfer to the sprouts bowl.
Leave the pan on high heat. Transfer the tofu pieces from the marinade into the pan, spacing them apart and in one layer. Reduce the flame to medium and cook for 2 minutes on each side, or until they get a nice caramelized color. Transfer to the sprout bowl and repeat for the rest of the tofu.
Remove the pan from the heat and return all the cooked ingredients to it. Add the remaining tofu marinade and half the cilantro leaves. Toss everything together and allow to cool down slightly in the pan. Add salt to taste. Stir in the remaining sesame oil, and garnish with the rest of the cilantro leaves and sesame seeds (if using).

— Emily Waxman