General Tao's Tofu..

Basically, I had leftover white rice from making the veggie burgers, which led to last night's meal of fried rice and General Tao's tofu - based on the famous vegweb.com recipe.
***Edited 3/13/2007 - check out my new post for an adapted recipe and photo, click here. ***





Thomas frying rice..

The final meal consisted of fried rice (leftover cold white rice, garlic, canola oil, broccoli, carrots, green onions in Thomas's half, green bell pepper, bean sprouts, soy sauce and toasted sesame oil), and General Tao's tofu/chicken with broccoli and carrots. My version differed from the original recipe as follows:

-I fried the tofu/chicken with garlic and red pepper flakes in canola oil and spooned the sauce on once served.

-I doubled the sauce recipe as recommended (and because it was so easy anyway), cut down on the sugar a little and the vinegar a lot. Maybe I'm becoming a vinegar wimp, but it was too overwhelming with the original amount of vinegar. I didn't have white vinegar, maybe that was it, so I used a little bit of apple cider and rice vinegars.

-I rolled the tofu in cornstarch before frying, as I didn't have any ener-g in the kitchen. I don't use it unless a recipe insists on it, and I don't come across that often in my cooking. My preferred egg replacers are actually soy yogurt, flax meal goop and silken tofu. I think I'll leave out the corn starch altogether next time, I like tofu just as well without the crunchy shell. I did, however, prefer the corn starch crunch much better than the rice flour method. I also topped mine with sesame seeds, inspired by Emily.

Next time, I'll make this spicier, add more garlic and thicken up the sauce a bit. I'd also serve it with brown rice and again, just pour the sauce on top. I have leftover sauce so I'll probably be eating veggies and/or tofu with this again tonight. I'll probably sautee broccoli, carrots and tofu in oil, a lot of garlic and red pepper flakes and then add the sauce. Thomas and I both recommend it, just keep in mind it's a really sweet chinese style sauce. It wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but it was something I'd consider making again with modifications. I think I preferred the fried rice to the tofu part, and Thomas is the other way around. The fried rice needed more garlic and soy sauce, but I can dig kinda plain foods, and the sesame oil was the perfect touch. I'd definitely make the fried rice again with our next batch of leftover rice.