Neither Mr NQN or I are strangers to tofu. As a hippie kid, his childhood was literally paved with the stuff whilst my my mum loved cooking it. So when we were offered the chance to learn how to make tofu lasagne, tofu chocolate cake and tofu bread, we jumped at the chance!

We would be making 7 courses today including  drink (which we missed out on as we were running late). There would be tofu lasagne, okara and tofu nuggets, two types of thin tofu bread, tofu & spinach salad, yogurt soy cotta and okara chocolate cake. The items I was most interested in were the tofu lasagne and the thin tofu bread having tried neither. Yoshiko’s focus is on healthy soy based cooking with less sugar and less fat.

The fried seasoned tofu

The tofu lasagne features lightly floured salt and pepper dipped tofu slices that have been fried. This is paired with a homemade tomato sauce and bechamel sauce and topped with cheese. The key here is to make sure that the tofu has been drained properly before frying  and this can be done by draining it under a heavy weight for 2-3 hours or putting the tofu is a microwave for one minute and then cooling it down and draining the water away.

Roasted tomatoes for the sauce

The roasted tomatoes, carrot and onions emerge from the oven and once the skins are removed they are then blended up to make a rich sauce. Once the sauce is done, it’s a matter of layering the tofu pieces, the roasted tomato sauce and the bechamel until the tray is full and then it’s given a final sprinkling of cheese on top.

Topping the lasagne with cheese

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They say handwriting can reveal a lot about a person. I hope that this isn’t true because a cursory glance at my cursive would reveal:

a) a confused individual

b) a lost individual

c) a lazy individual

Ransom note message from Mr NQN

Just plain messy

I’m not the only one with illegible handwriting. Mr NQN’s admits that his is the kind of handwriting that serial killers or kidnapper’s ransom notes are made out of. My illegibility could make me a doctor although I’m sure that doctors aren’t as afraid of blood as I am. My poor handwriting has gotten me into trouble before. I have looked at my calendar (yes I still have an old skool calender, how ancient) and have found myself staring at an entry wondering what on earth I have scheduled myself to do at a certain time that I just cannot read.

I first saw Faith’s recipe for these gorgeous Beef Biryani bowls months and months ago and had actually put this on the shopping list. I wrote basmati rice but in my haste and sloppy scrawl I had written something that didn’t resemble those words. Instead I stood at the supermarket wondering what b….. r….. item I was to pick up. Beef rissoles? Hmm unlikely. Beetroot relish? Maybe… Bacon Rinds? Definitely not.

My pantry finally stocked (I used the smoked rice I bought on my Marrickville tour) I decided, rather foolishly to make this on a day that I was hellishly busy. I thought that there was no way that I was going to get this done and photographed in time but once the beef was done I cooked the rice for ten minutes. I thought that it might be complicated to do and I may have issues unmoulding it so I tested one and it was so easy and unmolded so readily that I had dinner ready much quicker than I thought.

Smoked rice

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When I was young, cakes and biscuits were a scarcity. So much so that I thought that when we were given them it seemed only on birthdays and special occasions that I would receive them. I would grab a small bag and place some sweeties in it and keep my stash for later. Strange hoarding behaviour I do admit. Monte Carlos were the bees knees. Not only were they from Monte Carlo and that is where they have princes and princesses (no they weren’t of course, but to a hungry child’s mind they were) but they had pink and white icing sandwiching them together and ripples on the cookie bit which seemed so…so…ritzy (don’t you just love that word?).

When I was  little older but not much, I came across a recipe for the Monte Carlo cookies and proceeded to make them. They weren’t too bad actually probably owing to the fact that I used butter in them and not shortening or whatever they tend to use nowadays. The smooshing together of both halves was less successful though and I have visions of a particularly messy looking jumble of cookies. Putting six aside for us we thought that we’d give the remainder to someone else. No-one else was home but my sister and I and so we knocked on our favourite neighbour’s door. She wasn’t home.

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