Cookbook Club – Plenty

For April’s Cookbook Club, we used Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty. I chose the Black Pepper Tofu. Go to my Cookbook Club site to see all the fresh vegetarian fare at our Plenty picnic. For now – my dish!

We did this event as a picnic in the park. I was a bit worried that the fried tofu wouldn’t stay crisp during transport to the park, but this dish sounded so good that I figured it was worth the risk. I tried to minimize the amount of time the tofu might have to get soggy by waiting until the last minute to start cooking. The dish took me a lot longer than I was expecting (you’ll see why!), so I ended up being super late to the party! 

I cut a block of firm tofu into ~1-inch cubes, tossed each piece in cornstarch, and fried them.

I melted butter, then added shallots, chiles, garlic, and ginger. I sautéed for about 15 minutes until everything was shiny and soft.

I stirred in kecap manis, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and sugar.

I added black pepper – 5 tablespoons, hand crushed! Grinding that many peppercorns in the mortar and pestle took me forever – my hand was cramping by the end of it. Good thing I did it before I started cooking the sauce.

I added the tofu to the sauce and warmed it up for about a minute. Then I stirred in green onions.

The dish tasted pretty incredible – it ought to be considering that on top of the 5 tablespoons of black pepper, it had ginger, 3 kinds of soy sauce, sugar, and I kid you not – 11 tablespoons of butter, 12 shallots, 8 fresh red chiles, 12 garlic cloves… and a partridge in a pear tree 😉 All for one block of tofu! It was definitely worth the effort though – I’d make it again, maybe even with chicken wings instead of tofu.