We all know how versatile tofu can be. It soaks up any combination of flavours and you can cook it countless ways. This recipe’s preparation is pretty basic and you can use the technique and then change the flavours to be whatever you would like.

The basic preparation is pressing the tofu to remove as much water as possible, then comes marinating and baking. The process is a little time-consuming but it really ensures that the flavours soak in to the tofu. When I say time consuming though, it’s not all hands-on time so it’s honestly not so bad to make. The tofu marinates for up to 1.5 hours in the fridge. For the baking however, it was about 30 minutes of total cook time but that involved flipping the pieces over and basting with the marinade a couple times. But again, this really makes sure you don’t have flavourless tofu!

The marinade of this tofu was a mixture of shallot, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, brown sugar, chili garlic paste, soy sauce, lime juice, rice vinegar and oil. This was my first time cooking with lemongrass and I love how fragrant and fresh it was. The recipe says to just roughly chop those first few ingredients but I wanted to cut them a little bit smaller because the last basting of marinade is when tofu comes out of the oven and I didn’t really want to bite into big chunks of those raw ingredients. It had really good flavours, all balanced together.

I baked them up, making sure to follow the directions as written, and they came out of the oven looking pretty nice. I served them with a little vegetable stir fry and some noodles and this was a really good dinner. The tofu was really good on its own too, you could add this to anything and it would just be a great hit of protein.

The other thing that’s great about this sort of preparation, is that it’s perfect cold, room temperature or hot. This is very accommodating tofu.