When the tofu gets going

Today's scheduled blog entry has been pre-empted by late breaking bloggity: I ventured into the kitchen this evening. In the fine tradition of charcoal pancakes and exploding eggs, welcome to another edition of "In the Kitchen with Seema."

This particular edition starts with your over confident chef, yours truly. Yours truly had a good cooking night Saturday when she whipped up Spanish rice (from scratch, not a box, thankyouverymuch) and corn/tomato/black bean quesadillas. Emboldened by that success, I decided not to warm up the frozen pizza, and instead, marinate tofu and have that for dinner. I cubed the tofu, and then marinated it in a hodgepotch marinade of: honey, ginger soy sauce, peanut oil, a bit of Greek salad dressing and a touch of balsamic vinegar (hey, Lori is the one who said to improvise!).

Around the time I was marinating the tofu cubes, S. called up and asked, based on an earlier conversation, if I still wanted mac and cheese for dinner. Feeling very good about my tofu cubes I said, no, no, no need to run to the grocery store; tofu it was. I was even patient, letting the tofu sit for the full hour (mind you, I'm the one who always cooks on HIGH, because why cook on low or medium if you can cut the time in HALF by cooking on HIGH?). All went well. I dumped the tofu cubes into the pan, set it in the oven and turned on the broiler.

All was well with the world and "American Idol" when I started hearing these little popping noises. After a few minutes, I got off my beloved futon and went to investigate. The tofu was popping, sizzling, crackling, and generally having just way more fun than any food stuff in a broiler ought to be having. I figured I should stir up the tofu, make sure it got broiled all good and even. So I grabbed my oven mitts (the same mitts, btw, from this incident) and a pot holder and reached in to grab the pan.

That's when the stand-off began. For some reason, I was absolutely terrified of the dancing, sizzling and generally having a good time tofu. I stared at it and it just kind of bubbled. Finally, I took a deep breath, heaved the pan out, and SPLAT. The pan slipped out of my hand, crashed down on the oven door, and there was tofu everywhere. The worse part of it, that marinade had honey in it!

Anyway, with a huge mess in the oven and on the floor and the surrounding cabinets, what's a girl to do but eat what's left of the tofu (it was good, btw), and watch "The Amazing Race"? After the show was over, I went back and tackled the oven, which had thankfully cooled down by that point (I'd also taken the liberty of dousing it liberally with Fantastik during one of the commercial breaks). I have no doubt, like in the egg story, I will be discovering tofu in weird places for months to come.

Tofu might look like all washed-out and wiggly -- y'know the wallflower of basic food staples? -- but the truth of the matter is, you just don't mess with the tofu when it's having a good time.