Japanese Food Series: Part 5- Agedashi Tofu
Hot and cold, crispy and creamy, this Japanese pub dish has it all. The star of the dish, soft tofu, is lightly dusted in potato starch and then deep fried to crispy perfection. The mildly milky flavored tofu is placed into an umami rich dashi broth. Cold grated daikon radish cuts the fried tofu's richness and pulls the tofu and dashi flavors together. Also, the contrast between hot fried tofu and cold grated daikon adds to the experience of eating the dish. Thinly sliced raw scallions add a fresh savory accent to the dish. This is usually the end of the dish in most restaurants, because you would be ordering other dishes. But, I like to add some lightly steamed vegetables to the dish to make it into a full meal.
Ingredients
You will need the following ingredients for 2 portions:
1 package Soft Tofu, drained and dried
1/2 cup potato starch
oil for frying
15 grams of Kombu
5 grams of Bonito Flakes
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 scallion thinly sliced
1 carrot thinly sliced
1/2 cup enoki mushrooms
1/2 cup grated daikon radish
Method
Make the dashi. Add the kombu into 1/2 liter of cold water and heat to nearly a boil. Just before it boils turn off the heat and remove the kombu. Add the bonito and let it steep for 5 minutes. Strain the dashi and season with two teaspoons of soy sauce. NOTE- This recipe for dashi is my variation of a classic recipe. In the book, Japanese Cooking, A Simple Art the recipe calls for equal parts of kombu and bonito. I find this ratio too "fishy" for this dish. So, I reduced the bonito to 1/3 of the original recipe. The resulting sauce has great umami flavor but lets the tofu shine as the main ingredient.
Lightly steam the carrots and mushrooms
Gently toss the tofu in the starch and shake off the excess starch. Fry the tofu in 350F oil until it is very crispy. This will take around five minutes.
Plate the dish as you like and enjoy.
I hope you have enjoyed this latest installment of my Japanese food series. This series will take you through my favorite dishes from Japan. Below are some links to the other posts in this series for you to enjoy and learn from.
Part 1
https://steemit.com/food/@chefsteve/japanese-food-series-part-1-ramen
Part 2
https://steemit.com/food/@chefsteve/japanese-food-series-part2-gyoza
Part 3
https://steemit.com/food/@chefsteve/japanese-food-series-part-3-chicken-karaage
Part 4
https://steemit.com/food/@chefsteve/japanese-food-series-part-4-okonomiyaki
I look forward to engaging with you about this dish in the comments section!
Steve
Agedashi tofu is one of my favorite tofu dishes. Thanks for the tip about adding vegetables to make it a full meal. Will try it next time. This is certainly a great candidate for a ‘myturn’ post. Do watch for it.
Yumm ... thanks for sharing!
I'll be waiting for your MyTurn! This is one of the first dishes that Angie introduced me to. I loved it instantly. And I always order it to this day.
I have something in mind for this myturn. Yeah!
Me and my family are big fans of Asian Cuisine. My son had turned vegan for 1 year and that time Tofu was the main ingredient in our kitchen but ya I could never prepare any exquisite dishes like these. Though I can try my hands on this one as it looks yummy :)
We can do an online Skype class where I teach you how to cook! and while we are doing that you can teach me your amazing and nutritious breakfast juice recipe and about crystals! Thank you for your support!
It sounds a great idea Steve. We can definetly plan it up, but can only do it in March as this month I am travelling. I would love to try my hands on one desert snd a nice asian dish.
Yum! I'd fake dashi by replacing the bonito with shiitaki (and maybe a tenny-touch of miso if I didn't mind giving up the clarity of the broth), but otherwise this is something I want to make soon.
The shiitaki miso combo is a great idea. I was also thinking of your fish sauce substitute as another idea for the bonito as a vegetarian substitute. If you get a chance to make your version, than please share it. There are a lot of people that would be interested in a vegetarian/vegan version! @amy-goodrich commented above that she would like to try this but she does not eat soy. I offered a work around that included your "fish sauce" and suggested a substitution for the soy sauce. I would like to know your idea to help her. Then we could all learn something!
BTW- we are getting close to finalizing our judging system for @cookwithus. This is the new food competition that I am forming with @offoodandart and @pandamama. We will finalize that system this weekend and then I will shoot you an email for your feedback. I did not want to waste your time before we had something fully flushed out. We really want to make sure the judging is fair. Our food contest @cookwithus will start in March and will be focused on home cooks and we will promote education, community and learning from each other. I think you will like it.
Nice, Chef Steve does Japanese food. That is not easy. Impressed! Like usual :) Was Japanese food part of your culinary schooling, or at the nice restaurant you used to work at? Doing Japanese food, I find intimidating.
Well done my friend!
Great question Dan, I did learn a little bit about Japanese food in culinary school. But, it was more of an introduction. When I worked in fine dining in NYC it was around the year 2000. I mostly worked in French restaurants. One restaurant that I worked at is called Jean Georges. The chef had spent some time working in Asia when he was younger and so he incorporated Asian touches to his French food. Around that time Japanese food was becoming really popular in NYC. So, we did some Japanese inspired dishes but they were still mainly French.
It was really my wife that gave me my real introduction to Japanese food. She mainly grew up in Bangkok, but also spent time living in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Taipei and Jordan before adulthood. When we were dating in the late 1990's in NYC we would go to Japanese pubs (Izakaya) after work around midnight to get a meal. These Japanese pubs in the east village of NYC were and still are incredible! I swear as you pull back the traditional curtain and walk through the doorway into the pub you are literally transported to Japan. The walls are covered with Japanese writing that list the menu items. The room is loud and packed with mostly Japanese people drinking and eating and back then they were all smoking too! I learned so much about Japanese food in those places and fell in love instantly. With the food and the woman! What was a real education to me was all the organ meats and other odd bits that were on the menu. Skewers of duck heart and gizzards were new to me. And monkfish liver was a revelation. To me it was far superior to foie gras. It has a clean ocean taste, if that makes sense. I could go on forever with how much I did not know at the time!
When we traveled to Japan it was an amazing experience. By that time I felt that I knew a good bit about the food. But Japan is another world to me. I saw a level of craftsmanship in the food that blew me away. Coming from a formal culinary education and working in the best restaurants in NYC, I suddenly felt that I did not know anything and that my skills were so lacking! We planned the trip to experience a wide variety of Japanese foods and we did our homework to make sure we did not get a bad meal. To this day that was one of my favorite food trips. I should write about it in more detail.
One last point, most Western chefs have a huge love affair with Japanese food. There is something about that cuisine that intrigues us. From the pristine ingredients, to the devotion to excellence and the wide range of flavors, it is one of the most sophisticated cuisines on the planet.
Ha! I should of turned this into a post! But true is in answering your question I have only scratched the surface. More to come!
Wow super interesting Steve. Thank you so much for sharing. Yes we seem to pull the best out of one another. Copy, cut, paste, add a couple photos, title, tags, and you've certainly got yourself a post right there.
My first taste of something really different from western food was when I first left Albany and landed in Seoul Korea at the age of 20 that really blew me away. One of my strongest memories of my first few months there was when I saw drunk korean men dipping small live octopus in soy sauce and swallowing it whole on the street. That was a bit much more me. But the more normal Korean food got me prepared for the years that follow.
Keep in mind I was a very ignorant 20 year old. I wish I was more adventurous with trying new foods at that time, like I am now. I've done several trips to Japan, but never prepared well, knew what to order or where to go. I so I did simple noodle dishes and stuff like that. Which was great but not like the experiences you describe.
You're talking about some real serious food adventure. At the time I wasn't too open to eating duck hearts and stuff like that so I didn't even try. But my next trip to that part of the world, or NYC for that matter I'm going to be all about it!
What you say about Japanese food. It really is a whole other world, the ingredients and preparation, is so unique I believe and western style trained chef would feel just how you did in their Japanese world.
I always enjoy hearing insight from you, a real no kidding profession chef! I just play one here in my hotel room and on steemit! lol
Have a great day! -Dan
Too bad I can't eat tofu or other soy products.... it looks so easy and yum! Love daikon radish!
You can make the same dish with Pumpkin. Just lightly steam the pumpkin first and then fry it. For the dashi sauce you can use a vegan fish sauce instead of the bonito in my recipe. @clweeks made a vegan fish sauce substitute https://steemit.com/food/@clweeks/vegan-fish-sauce-substitute The only issue is that he uses soy sauce in the recipe. I have read that people use coconut aminos as a soy sauce substitute. This could be a work around to enjoying a soy-free vegan version of this dish!
Just bought some pumpkin on the market today hehe... thanks Steve for the tips :0 Soy sauce in small amounts is ok since its fermented.. but can't do tofu... always messes up my system and hormones...
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Great dish!
Thanks @loveself! I appreciate your support! You make such inspiring posts that I enjoy reading.
I love Japanese food but don't make it at home @chefsteve. Thai food is also a firm favourite when dining out
I did not make Japanese food at home for years. Then after going to Japan and enjoying the food there, when I came back to the States, I had to make it! Most of the Japanese food in NYC is terrible in comparison! Except for the very high end places.
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This dish looks sooo great, Steve! I like to eat tofu and I love grated daikon radish very much! It is very fresh and so delicious for me, everything in the picture looks so beautiful, thanks for joining my contest! ;)
Thanks Maya! I like the grated daikon radish too. Especially when you mix it into the dashi broth. Makes the whole dish taste even better.
Please remember to resteem my original post if you want your post to be part of my contest, thank you.😊
Sorry! thank you for the reminder!