What's For Dinner?

September 8, 2009

Last night, we had had Agadeshi Tofu (Japanese Fried Tofu) and jellyfish over carrots and daikon.

Agadeshi Tofu is one of my favorite dishes. It's pretty easy to make, but it does stink up the whole place because of the deep frying.

Below is the recipe which makes 4 servings.

Ingredients:

• 2 blocks of firm tofu
• 1 cup dashi soup stock
• 1 tablespoon soya sauce
• 1 tablespoon mirin
• 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger (optional)
• potato starch or corn starch (preferably potato starch)
• vegetable oil for frying

How to cook:

• A few hours before frying the tofu, take tofu out from wrapper or container, put it on a plate wrapped in a towel and put another plate on top of it and put a heavy object on top of the plate. This takes the excess water out of the tofu
• Heat enough oil for in a sauce pan on high
• Meanwhile make your sauce by putting the dashi, soy sauce and pirin in another pan on medium high. Cook until sauce boils and set it aside
• Depending on the size of the tofu, cut it into quarters of halves
• Dust tofu with potato starch on all 6 sides
• Fry tofu in the oil until it turns golden brown
• Once all the tofu are fried, put tofu in a bowl and pour the sauce over it.
• Put grated ginger on top of each tofu (optional)

A note about the dashi stock. I buy the instant dashi (or Bonito Fish Soup Stock or Hon-dashi) because that is all I know. To make the instant dashi stock, you use one cup of water with 1 teaspoon of the little pellets. You also use this to make miso soup.

(Above: Hon-Dashi)

(Above: Agadeshi Tofu)

We also had the jellyfish. This was the instant jellyfish. It came in a packet with premade seasonings and sauce. It was ok. The ones at the restaurant is better.

(Above: Jellyfish with carrots and daikon)

This morning I went to Hannaford's to do my grocery shopping. After picking up a bunch of stuff I went to the check-out counter. There were four people in front of me waiting to be checked out. There was only one line and it was not moving. Turns out that all the cash registers in the store was not working and they had to reboot it.

Fine, five minutes later the store employee tried again, and this time one of the register was working. We all moved to the other register in a civilized manner, except for one person who was at the back of the line and cut in front of all of us who were already in line.

I was surprise by this because we here in Massachusetts do not do that. We rush to the next available register wanting to be the first in line. I'm pretty impressed.

The guy in front of me had a couple of items and needed to use the credit card machine. Turns out that the credit card machine was also down. He did not have cash, so he abandoned his groceries. I checked my wallet and realized that I only had $18 of cash, and knew this was not enough. I told the cashier that I had to go to the car to get cash. She said fine, and she rang the person behind me.

I ran to the car and took my emergency cash. This consisted of a bunch of one dollar bills and three five dollar bills. I got back and my grocery rang up to $36 plus some change. I crossed my fingers as a slowly counted the wad of cash. Ta dah... I had $3 extra to put back in my emergency stash.

Moral of this story is, keep your singles and fives in the car just in case you need cash.

Quilt & Bitch