Chicken Fried Tofu

Well, technically, it isn't fried and there's nothing chicken-ish about it, but you get my drift. I was thinking about how much my husband has always loved the meat-starch-veggie meal that is the perfect portrait of a quintessential American dinner plate. Pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy with green beans. That was one of his all-time favorites. So. I thought long and hard about how to recreate that for him, and this was my answer. I took some extra-firm tofu and sliced it into a pleasing size. I dipped them in soy sauce (which was an idea I got online somewhere) and then coated them with breadcrumbs, salt, nutritional yeast, oregano, and basil. For the gravy I used a vegetarian creamy gravy mix from Cosmo's Vegan Shoppe. It wasn't bad at all. It needed some salt, but aside from that, I was quite pleased with it. In the end, we had a very enjoyable meal, indeed. The tofu was quite tasty, and the texture was really all I could've hoped for. It was really, really good. My only complaint is that it sat very heavy and was much richer than I imagined it would be. Considering that I have eaten a lot of tofu in my lifetime and feel very comfortable and familiar with it, I was surprised to be taken so...by surprise, by the way I felt after eating it.

Alrighty, here's the recipe:

Chicken Fried Tofu

1 Container Extra-Firm water-packed Tofu, pressed, and sliced (ours yielded 6 slices)

2-3T Soy Sauce

2T Nutritional Yeast

1T Corn Meal

3T Plain Breadcrumbs

Dried Oregano and Basil to taste

Spray a cookie sheet or broiler pan lightly with nonstick spray. Get two small bowls just large enough to dip/dredge your tofu slices. In one of these, mix the bread crumbs, yeast, herbs, and corn meal. In the other, put your soy sauce. Take each slice of tofu, dip it in the soy sauce, and then dredge it in the bread crumb mixture until it's fully coated on all six sides. Place on your baking pan about an inch or so apart. Bake at 375-degrees for 10 minutes, flip, sprinkle on more bread crumbs if needed, and then bake for another 10 minutes. Remove from oven. Serve with a cream-style gravy while still hot.