Neil Gaiman's Tamarind Tofu & Sweet Potatoes

"There is a reason why the expression 'As tasty as tofu!' is not in everyday use."-NG

We finally found time to try another Neil Gaiman recipe, originally posted here on NG's blog.

Sweet Potato/Tamarind/Tofu/Polenta

INGREDIENTS
-firm tofu
-buckwheat and millet
-1 large sweet potato
-tamarind paste
-lemon juice
-mushrooms
-tumeric, cumin, & paprika
-maple syrup
-vegetable stock

NG'S INSTRUCTIONS:
1) Slice tofu and put it in freezer. I’d learned from various books on making tofu less boring that you can slice it and put it in the freezer. It freezes, and also dries out a little. If you then drop slices of frozen tofu still frozen into cooking liquids, you get a slightly chewier tofu that tastes more like the cooking liquid and less like nothing very much at all than tofu normally does. (There is a reason why the expression "As tasty as tofu!" is not in everyday use.)
     In the fridge I had some buckwheat-millet polenta. I'd cooked some buckwheat and millet the day before in the rice cooker with more water than I'd use for a grain, to get a porridge. Then I'd put it in the fridge and was slicing some off it as I needed it.
     I had a large sweet potato and, oddly enough, in a mostly empty fridge, in the cheese drawer I had a block of tamarind paste...

2) Slice the sweet potato and put it aside. Slice some mushrooms...

3) Mix about 1/4 of a cup of lemon juice and about 3 tablespoons of tamarind paste up, and start to simmer, stirring. Add the sliced mushrooms. Add a pinch of turmeric and cumin and paprika. Add a tablespoon of maple syrup. Add about half a cup of vegetable stock. Keep stirring. When the tamarind has all dissolved into it, add the frozen tofu strips to the mixture. (They thaw and absorb moisture and flavour as they do so, becoming incredibly Tamarindy tofu strips.)

4) Non-stick-spray a casserole dish. Put the sweet potato in. Pour the tamarind sauce and tofu over it. Stir it until all the sweet potato is covered with the sauce. Put a lid on it. Put it in a 400 degree F oven for 25 minutes. Then take it out, stir it around to make sure that nothing's sticking to the bottom, put it back in the oven for a final 30 minutes.

5) The buckwheat/millet polenta? Slice it up. I heated it in the pan I'd cooked the tamarind up in a few minutes before the casserole was ready.
     I added the Polenta at the end of cooking, stirred it all up and served it. Maddy wolfed it all down, although she wasn't a huge fan of the tofu, and she raved about it afterwards and today.

We don’t know what kind of tamarind paste NG used, but we needed to add a lot more water/stock to ours than NG did to make enough liquid to get absorbed by the tofu. We also didn’t have a closed lid casserole dish, so we just used an open top dish, which made the polenta a little crunchy. We served it with some yogurt on top to complement the tanginess and crispiness of the dish. Unlike NG’s daughter, our kids were not fans of the tofu sadly but we loved it (the tofu does come out tangy and chewy as advertised).



Finally for a musical pairing, there are a couple options. You could listen to Tori Amos's Tear in Your Hand in which NG will say hi to you:

or you could go with Lou Reed's What's Good (The Thesis) from his album Magic and Loss, which was largely inspired by the loss of a friend to cancer:

NG interviewed Lou Reed once and both raved about the video.